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From: rdd@usa1.com (Aaron J. Dinkin)
Subject: Re: Tendency of Inflections to Disappear - Why?
Message-ID: <rdd-1208961106000001@dmn1-66.usa1.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:06:00 -0500
References: <4suk93$pob@carrera.intergate.bc.ca> <DvFBv0.DL9@world.std.com> <4u7ud1$2k@dove.nist.gov> <4ubacb$43a@news.xs4all.nl> <4ucv9m$255@netsrv2.spss.com> <rdd-0808962054360001@dmn1-46.usa1.com> <ALDERSON.96Aug9092452@netcom16.netcom.com>
Lines: 33

In article <ALDERSON.96Aug9092452@netcom16.netcom.com>,
alderson@netcom.com wrote:

> 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.

It's quite true that they have the same phoneme, but one easy way to find
allophones is to trick your vocal apparatus into believing you're saying
something else. That is to say, suppose your dialect shortens and raises
/aU/ to [VU] before an unvoiced sound, so "gown" is [gaUn] (in my dialect
it's actually [g&Un], but this is a hypothetical situation) and "gout" is
[gVUt]. Then tell your vocal apparatus to say "gout", and they will begin,
[gVU] - _but_, before they articulate the final consonant, [t], _change
your mind_ and say [n] instead. Thus, you have tricked your tongue into
using the allophone that occurs before /t/ before /n/, by pretending you
were going to say [t] and not changing your mind until after the allophone
has already escaped. Try it; it's not very hard.

-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom

