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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: PIN =/= PINK !
In-Reply-To: "Chris G. Perrott"'s message of Wed, 07 Aug 1996 19:20:18 +0800
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.96Aug7163015@netcom16.netcom.com>
Sender: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com
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References: <4u996o$bfq@cantuc.canterbury.ac.nz> <32087BF2.3655@pacific.net.sg>
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 23:30:15 GMT
Lines: 27

In article <32087BF2.3655@pacific.net.sg> "Chris G. Perrott"
<cperrott@pacific.net.sg> writes:

>Bill Taylor wrote:

>>The fact is, the short "i" phoneme has two *very* different phones in it, to
>>my ear at least.

>>"pin" and "pink" (or "ping") are pronounced quite differently.

>You sure this isn't purely an NZ phenomenon?

No.  The raising of [I] to [i] (or at least some higher, more tense vowel, if
not quite cardinal [i]]) before [N] is well-recognized.  At least I think it
is.

I was once called a liar by another linguist for stating that I had heard,
among children, a pronunciation of the gerund ending "-ing" as [in] rather than
as [In], which I hypothesized was based on the tenser vowel preceding the velar
nasal (prior to fronting thereof).  He didn't believe that I had ever heard any
such pronunciation.  The subject under discussion was the very raising under
discussion.
-- 
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_
