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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Tendency of Inflections to Disappear - Why?
In-Reply-To: rdd@usa1.com's message of Thu, 08 Aug 1996 20:54:36 -0500
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Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 16:24:52 GMT
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In article <rdd-0808962054360001@dmn1-46.usa1.com> rdd@usa1.com
(Aaron J. Dinkin) writes:

>"Gown" and similar words were on their way down from Middle English /gu:n/ to
>present-day /gaUn/; I believe in Shakespeare's time they were something of the
>order of [gVUn]. If you're American (or probably anyone else, but AmE is the
>only one I'm sure about), try saying "gout" and switching the [t] to an [n] at
>the last instant before actually articulating it to get what I mean.

That will work only for Americans from the Tidewater Basin in Virginia, and for
folks from southern Ontario.  I think for most Americans, "gout" and"gown" have
the same diphthong /aw/ internally.  Note well the phonemic slashes, used to
indicate that I don't care how they pronunce them, but that they will rhyme
them nevertheless.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
