more in the bu'et?

This a continuation of an earlier blog posting on the description of glottal stop usages.

Eugene Howard Babbitt in his 1896 publication on The English pronunciation of the lower classes in New York and vicinity mentions the usage of the glottal stop in the New York accent on p. 8:

Jespersen in his book Fonetik of 1897-1899 makes this comment on p. 299:

 Joseph Wright in his 1905 English Dialect Grammar briefly mentions the fact that in some Scottish dialect areas intervocalic /t/ is replaced by the glottal catch:

In his Modern English grammar, vol. 1 (1909), Otto Jespersen writes this:

Jespersen distinguishes between glottal reinforcement and glottal replacement. Besides /t/, the two other voiceless stops are mentioned as well.

In 1913 William Grant publishes his Pronunciation of English in Scotland. On p. 30 we find this observation:

Not only are glottal reinforcement and replacement to be heard in connection with /p, t, k/ but also with /n, ŋ/.

I wonder if Dobson has anything to say on this topic in his monumental English pronunciation.

stress minimal pairs - a subgroup

credit: Gary Allman

I think it was John Maidment who started the ball rolling when he put a posting online dealing with stress minimal pairs. I'd like to draw your attention to a subgroup, namely stress minimal pairs the members of which are semantically unrelated.

Consider /ˈtɔːment/ (= severe suffering) and /tɔːˈment/ (= to make someone suffer severely): They share the same number and types of phonemes and they are semantically closely related. 

/ˈɪnsaɪt/ (= clear understanding) and /ɪnˈsaɪt/ (= encourage someone to do something) also share the same number and types of phonemes, but they are semantically unrelated (well, sort of). It this latter group I'm looking for. Here's a first list (some of the items may have identical stress):

1. ˈessay (= writing) - esˈsay
2. ˈforebear - forˈbear (vb)
3. ˈforegoing - forˈgoing
4. ˈincense - inˈcense
5. ˈinsight - inˈcite
6. ˈintern - inˈtern
7. ˈtrusty - truˈstee
8.  
9.  
10.  
11.  
12.  
13.  
14.  
15.  

Any further examples are greatly /əˈpriːsieɪtəd/!

a li'le bi' of bu'er

The IPA symbol (no. 113) for the glottal plosive is this: [ʔ] This isn't breaking news, is it?
But there have been other suggestions. 
A. M. Bell in his Visible Speech of 1867 describes the glottal "catch" (p. 60) like this:

 The symbol he uses looks like the Greek letter χ or two round brackets (see comments below). In his list of consonant symbols on p. 93 we find a sample word written <buʼer>:

Here Bell indicates the glottal plosive by an apostrophe.

A. J. Ellis in the 4th volume of his Early English pronunciation of 1875 quotes Bell's example on p. 1344, but he uses the semicolon [;] for the glottal stop:

Bell is once again mentioned in Sweet's Handbook of phonetics of 1877 on p. xvi and p. 7. He calls the sound "glottal catch" and uses the symbol [x] for it:

In the 5th edition of his Grundzüge der Phonetik of 1901 Eduard Sievers states on p. 278 that the glottal stop ("Kehlkopfverschluss", which Sievers also calls "Stosston"), for which he uses the symbol [ʾ], replaces an oral closure in some English accents:

Henry Sweet in his Sounds of English of 1908 uses the symbol [!] to indicate a glottal stop:

Daniel Jones in The Pronunciation of English (I have access to the 2nd ed. of 1914) uses the familiar glottal stop symbol (see p. xvi):

______________
This blog posting is greatly indebted to Bjørn Ståhlhane Andrésen’s book Pre-glottalization in English Standard Pronunciation (Oslo, New York, 1968).

Merry Christmas

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

ʧœːmən kœriwɜːst ɪn soːhoː

Off-topic posting:

credit: www.herman-ze-german.co.uk/

If you happen to be in London and you're into German worst - sorry: wurst - then you've got to pop into "Herman ze German". The menu can be found here.
They have two shops:

credit: www.herman-ze-german.co.uk/

            

19 Villiers Street and
33 Old Compton Street


BTW: I don't get any royalty payments for this blog post

Cruttenden's new edition

credit: Routledge

The new eighth edition is due to come out in February of 2014. The accent described will no longer be RP, but General British (= GB). I'm looking forward to the justification for the change from RP to GB.
Here's the table of contents:
PART I: Speech and language
1. Communication
2. The production of speech
3. The sounds of speech
4. The description and classification of speech sounds
5. Sounds in language
PART II: The sounds of English
6. The historical background
7. Standard and regional accents
8. The English vowels
9. The English consonants
PART III: Words and connected speech
10. Words
11. Connected speech
12. Words in connected speech
13. Teaching the pronunciation of English

There will be a companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/cruttenden.

You can pre-order it now. The recommended retail price is ₤ 29.99.

psst!

credit: http://www.4teachers.de/

While preparing a lecture on sound sequences in English words, I put up a list of 'illegal' initial consonant clusters, e.g. */pt_/. Words such as ptarmigan, pterodactyl or Ptolemy start with /t_/. I can't offer a word with initial /pt_/ or can you?
What about /ps_/? Yes, there a few:
psst
psi
and optionally though rare in
psittacosis
psoriasis
psephology

reverse transcriptions

In my phonetics classes of this semester I asked my young professionals to convert phonemically transcribed words into their spellings, e.g. /ˈbʊlətɪn, kɑːm, tʃɪmpænˈziː, kənˈspɪrəsi/.

One of the 'trickier' ones was /kənˈdem/. A handful of students came up with this suggestion: condom. Greetings from Sigmund Freud?

approximant, sonorant, resonant or what?

In my blog entry on open approximation - see here - I wrote that academics call sounds which are produced with open stricture either approximants, sonorants, resonants, glides, semi-vowels or even frictionless continuants.

A helluva lot of terms for this sound group, innit? Which one should be preferred?
Here's a brief random survey first.

Ashby, P. (2011), Understanding phonetics
Sounds which are produced with wide approximation are called approximants by the author. She points to the fact that phonologists distinguish sonorants (= vowels, approximants, nasals) from obstruents (= plosives, fricatives, affricates. The English sounds belonging to the group of approximants are [ɹ, w, j, l].

Ashby, M., Maidment, J. (2005), Introducing phonetic science
In their glossary of the book an approximant is described as a "consonant sound made with a constriction between two articulators which is not narrow enough to cause air turbulence" (190). On p. 57 approximants are equated with sonorants - "[...] approximants are sonorants [...]" - meaning that approximants are a subgroup of sonorants. Reference is made to "older terms" (59) for approximants: glides or frictionless continuants. English approximants are [ɹ, w, j, l].

Collins, B., Mees, I. (2013), Practical phonetics and phonology
The authors present a clear-cut, unambiguous division of the English consonant system on p. 52:

credit: Routledge

Cruttenden, A. (2008), Gimson's pronunciation of English
Cruttenden's classification of sounds according to their noise component due to the degree of constriction in the vocal tract leads to two classes of sound - obstruents (comprising plosives, fricatives and affricates) and sonorants (nasals, approximants and vowels).

Knight, R.-A. (2012), Phonetics - a coursebook
When the articulators are positioned in wide approximation we produce the English approximants /w, j, l, r/. Approximants together with nasals and vowels belong to the larger class of sonorants. Plosives, fricatives and affricates are subsumed under the category of obstruents.

Laver, J. (1994), Principles of phonetics
Sounds produced with open approximation during their medial phase are called resonants by Laver. They are divided into central resonants - comprising the approximants /j, w, r/ and the vowels (which Laver calls vocoids) - and the lateral resonant /l/.

Lodge, K. (2009), A critical introduction to phonetics
Sounds produced with the articulators too far apart for friction to occur are called approximants (Lodge also makes mention of the equivalent terms frictionless continuants and semi-vowels). This class of sounds encompasses [ɹ, w, j, l].

Roach, P. (2009), English phonetics and phonology
The sounds /m, n, ŋ, l, r, w, j/ are called continuants (p. 46), and are subdivided into the nasals /m, n, ŋ/ and the approximants /l, r, w, j/.

Windsor Lewis, J. (1969), A guide to English pronunciation
Here is Windsor Lewis's classification in diagrammatic form based on paragraph I, section 8 of the book:

What are we to make of all this?
The majority of phoneticians mentioned above prefer to use the term approximant for sounds produced with wide/open approximation. So I'm going to call [ɹ, w, j, l] approximants. (Kraut locutus, causa finita)