Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 09:24:31 EDT
From: Alphonse Vinh VINH%YALEVM.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: your mail
My gratitude goes to Bob Howren for his information. I sure will look up that O
uter Banks article. At the moment I am still gathering names of specialists on
Tidewater, East Carolina, and Low Country dialects, and would be grateful for f
urther news from anyone out there in lingualand. Speaking of the East Carolina
speech, would anyone like to comment on the use of "won't" as in "it won't me?"
Outside of East Carolina, has anyone heard that term used by native speakers in
other parts of Dixie?
--Alphonse Vinh
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 09:01:45 MDT
From: Ron Southerland southerl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ACS.UCALGARY.CA
Subject: won't contraction of was not
Having grown up in (south)eastern North Carolina, I can certainly
attest to the existence of this curious contraction. 'I went to see
Jim but he won't there.' I think LAMSAS has already noted such
usages as 'fair off' (for 'clear off' -- a cloudy (or rainy) day
becoming sunny) which are largely limited to esastern NC. One odd
expression which I alwyas use when I'm in NC but cannot use
elswhere is -- 'get up with'. I remember referring to my PhD
supervisor at Penn as being 'hard to get up with'. My fellow
students (from the northeastern US mainly) couldn't process this
at all. I had to explain that I was having trouble making contact
with the guy. Needless to say, 'get up with' doesn't have much
resonance here in western Canada, either.
Ron Southerland
Linguistics
Calgary
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 13:05:00 EDT
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR%MSU.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: your mail
There is no such thing as 'It won't me' for 'It wasn't me.' There is a
pronunciation of 'I wasn't me' which sounds like 'It won't me' (to a
nonlinguist I guess), but it is the result of regular phonological matters
which are common in many parts of the South. The facts are these: /z/ --- /d/
before a following /n/ (in a following unstressed syllable). Therefore,
'isn't' --- 'idn't'; 'business' ---? 'bidness.' In the nest step the 'd'
completely assimmilates to the following /n/; therefore, 'wadn't' ---
'wan't.' Finally, since the 'caret' (the vowel in 'fun' etc...) is tenser and
more retracted in many varieties, it might strike some as an /o/ (or 'open
'o'').
The point of all this is that there is no lexical confusion here at all; only
well-known, widespread phonological stuff at work.
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 13:28:00 MST
From: BBOLING%UNMB.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: whitlow
Does anyone know the form "whetin" as a variant of "whitlow" (swelling
and inflammation of a finger joint; other variants--among many: whittle,
whuttle)? I have collected the variant "whetin" from a Hiberno-English
dialect of west Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and I wonder whether it
occurs in American English dialects spoken in areas settled by emigrants
from Ulster.
Bruce D. Boling
University of New Mexico
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 14:29:53 CDT
From: Salikoko Mufwene mufw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU
Subject: Re: your mail
As a rejoinder to Dennis Preston, doesn't a glottal stop sometimes substitute
for /d/ in the /z/~/d/ alternation? I have been convinced it often does and thus
could account for the problem here... but don't trust my nonnative
perception.
Salikoko Mufwene
s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 06:39:13 +0501
From: Robert Howren howren[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GIBBS.OIT.UNC.EDU
Subject: [wont] in Carolina
I must respectfully differ with Dennis Preston in his categorical claim that
[wont] for "wasn't" doesn't exist in eastern NC. The vowel in
this contraction is (1) pronounced as a close -- not open -- "o"; and (2) it is,
to my ear (I consider myself a competent phonetician and linguist),
essentially identical to the vowel of "want," which is in this area
frequently homophonous with "won't." I agree with Dennis's explanation of
the derivation of [wont] from [wadnt], however.
Bob Howren (r_howren[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]unc.edu)
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 10:19:50 MDT
From: Ron Southerland southerl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ACS.UCALGARY.CA
Subject: Further to 'won't wasn't'
A follow-up to my own and others' postings on 'won't wasn't'.
Despite the certitude of Dennis.Preston 22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET as
to the nonexistence of this contraction, it is alive and well in
eastern NC. There is also another contraction of wasn't (used by
different folks from those who say 'won't'). Within the limits of
available ascii it's [wV?n] -- where 'V' = wedge, '?' = glottal stop
and the 'n' is syllabic. Same thing happens with 'isn't' -- [I?n].
All of these exist in eastern (at least southeastern) NC. The
vowel in 'won't wasn't' is, incidentally, phonetically exactly
the same as that in 'bone, loan, etc.' -- as these are pronounced
in southeastern NC, that is. That vowel (diphthong) is
characteristically different from the analogous segment in any
other dialect of English I know of. It's a little like what one
hears in the Philadelphia area but with a higher nucleus I think.c
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 14:25:00 EDT
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR%MSU.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: [wont] in Carolina
Someone is not reading my mail carefully. I did not claim that something which
sounds exactly like 'won't' was not used for 'wasn't' in North Carolina (and
many other parts of the South). In fact, I pointed out how that arose
phonologically. What I did claim was that the lexical item 'won't' was not
used to replace wasn't, which seemed to be the early (silly) claim.
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 14:34:00 EDT
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR%MSU.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Further to 'won't wasn't'
I will bother with this once more. Of course peolple all over the South are
saying things like [w^dn] and .[w^n] and [wodn] and [won] and [wont] for
'wasn't.' I still (with great certitude) claim that no-one in the South or
anywheres uses the lexical item 'won't' for wasn't. I am still puzzled that
anyopne who read my phonological derivation of [wont] like forms from 'wasn't'
could have misunderstood me.
Dennis Preston 22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 15:44:45 EDT
From: Alphonse Vinh VINH%YALEVM.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
I fully agree with Dennis. "won't" is a phonological matter not a grammatical
one. As a Southerner I say [wadn] or [idn] rather than [wasn't] or [isn't].
I initially brought up the word [won't] because I think the pronunciation is
unique to Eastern Carolina.
--Alphonse Vinh
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 09:11:10 EDT
From: Ellen Johnson ATLAS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
Never having lived in the North, I'd like to get some feedback from those of
you who do concerning [wadnt]. In fast or casual speech do Northerners really
use [z]? Perhaps the difference is one of degree rather than qualitative
difference. Here in Georgia, the [d] or [?] is part of the regional standard
speech. I only use [z] in the most careful speech situations, usually with
educated or non-Southern strangers. It almost has the status of a spelling
pronunciation. I'm interested in finding out how widespread this is. Somehow
I suspect it's not limited to the South, as previous messages on this topic
seem to assume.
By the way, I just read a message elsewhere with the topic identified as:
"Your work in Ex-Yugoslavia". Ellen JOhnson atlas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 09:31:47 EDT
From: Alphonse Vinh VINH%YALEVM.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
As a Southerner living in Northern exile I get plenty of opportunities to hear
Yankee dialects. I have lived in every region of the United States save the
Pacific Northwest and everywhere I hear Northerners say [wasznt]. We
Southerners usually drop the [z] sound in contractions such as [idn't],
[didn't], [wadn't]. In conjunction with this is a Southern tendency to soften
the [t] pronunciation in words. My Canadian grandmother corrects me on the
telephone whenever I say [Etlanna] for [At-lan-ta]. It idn't in me to
pronounce those hard [t] sounds. Another thing I've noticed about the Southern
New England accent of working class people...In Dixie we say [you all] or
[yall] when we are addressing more than one person or when we are addressing a
person who stands in for a non-present group, I have heard native speakers in
New Haven, Connecticut say [youse] to mean yall. And all this time I had
believed this was only Bronxspeak or Jimmy Cagney/Edward G. Robinson dialect.
--Alphonse Vinh
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 09:28:42 -0400
From: "J. Chambers" chambers[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EPAS.UTORONTO.CA
Subject: Labov, Yaeger & Steiner
Tom Veatch cited Labov, Yaeger & Steiner recently and that made me
think that people on the ADS-List might like to know that it has been
reprinted (finally). It's identical to the 1st printing, and it costs
$25 from the Linguistics Lab, U of Penn, 619 Williams Hall, Phila PA
19104. This is an unsolicited commercial announcement, but I was
overjoyed to find out it was avbailable again (I found out by acident)
and esp. pleased to replace the 1976 phtocopy of a photocopy made on
an English machine that was mainly grey on grey. --Jack Chambers
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 10:13:00 EST
From: ALICE FABER FABER%LENNY[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
In response to Ellen Johnson's query, I can't imagine circumstances (other
than, perhaps, recent dental anesthesia!) in which I WOUDN'T pronounce wasn't,
isn't hasn't etc. with a clear [z]. I grew up in the NY metropolitan area, and
when I moved to Texas and first heard pronunciations like [Idnt], I believed
they were a deliberate use of a baby talk form, for purposes of cuteness (?),
until classmates put me straight.
Alice Faber
Faber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]Yalehask.bitnet
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 11:29:28 -0400
From: "Philip Hiscock, MUN Folklore & Language Archive" philiph[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]KEAN.UCS.MUN.CA
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
Ellen Johnson ATLAS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.BITNET says:
Never having lived in the North, I'd like to get some feedback from those of
you who do concerning [wadnt]. In fast or casual speech do Northerners really
use [z]? Perhaps the difference is one of degree rather than qualitative
difference. Here in Georgia, the [d] or [?] is part of the regional standard
speech. I only use [z] in the most careful speech situations, usually with
educated or non-Southern strangers. It almost has the status of a spelling
pronunciation. I'm interested in finding out how widespread this is. Somehow
I suspect it's not limited to the South, as previous messages on this topic
seem to assume.
Here in Newfoundland I hear [wVzn?] (where V is the unround, sometimes
rounded stressed vowel whose IPA symbol is - an upsiddown V)
in normal, uncareful speech. It is not a 'careful' form;
nor is [wVznt] for many speakers. It is often heard
reduced to something like [wV:n] with or without a glottal stop at the
end. Because there is a lot of rounding on central vowels here, I
have sometimes heard the V or V: raised a little to the usually short,
unstressed, round vowel near [u] - that's the vowel whose IPA symbol
is now a round w with a roof, and in my dialect the sound in roof.
Thus students, when transcribing speech in 'normal' orthography,
sometimes write what should be "wasn't" as "wouldn't", a perfect
homonym in their dialect.
-Philip Hiscock
MUN Folklore & Language Archive
philiph[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]kean.ucs.mun.ca
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 16:15:00 EDT
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR%MSU.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
As a 'wadn't,' 'idn't,' bidness' speaker I sympathize with Ellen Johnson's
incredulity thatNortherners would not follow this amazingly simple procedure
for the pronunciation of these items (at least when they were relaxed,
informal, and the like, but they do not. Nobody around me in Michigan (with
the exception, of course, of African-Americans and the large displaced South
Midland population brought here to work in the failed US auto industry, but
all these speakers have their pronunciation rooted in the South.Even my
MIlwaukee wife (whom I have had one or two oportunities to see in a casual
speech mode) never makes this elegant and reasonable adjustment.
Dennis [dInIs] Preston
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 15:40:45 CST
From: Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU
Subject: DINIS
Speaking, as dInIs preston just did, about the pronunciation of our
name, I must admit that it took me a long time to realize people
saying Dinnis instead of Dennis were talking to me when I hit central
Illinois after growing up with the rarefied speech of Queens, NY.
I have since learned to repronounce my surname, abandoning a very low /a/
for a much exaggerated /ae/ so now it sounds like Bair-on, otherwise
nobody around here understands me.
But my best north/south dialect clash story comes from a question
a linguist friend from New Orleans, also landlocked in central Illinois,
once asked. It was a question she in her self-conscious r-lessness had
been saving till she met a sympathetic Yankee linguist.
"Hweah," she asked me, "oh, hweah is the ah in Hahvahd?"
To which I replied without missing a beat (one of the few times in my
life I got a line off right), "You're not gonna believe this, but
they is two of 'em." Adding, to her relief, that Bostonians often
posed the same question she had. Or should I of said, axed?
Dennis (Baron)
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 20:18:07 CDT
From: "Donald M. Lance" ENGDL%MIZZOU1.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
Rudy Troike, Chair of English at U Arizona, several years ago did some
research on the -d- in 'wadn't' 'idn't' etc. And I think he published an
article, but I'm not free to break away from my own stuff and look it up
right now. DMLance
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 08:28:48 EDT
From: Bill Kretzschmar WAKJENGL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
The Troike article Don Lance mentioned is in JEngL 19 (1986), 177-205, and is
called "McDavid's Law". There was a more recent paper on the subject at the
LAVIS II conference in Auburn by Natalie Estes, of North Carolina State. Has
anybody heard from Bruce Southard on the point; he is now at East Carolina
(though I don't know if he is on the net) and has done some work on their
local speech.
Bill Kretzschmar 706-542-2246
University of Georgia FAX 706-542-2181
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 07:53:07 -0500
From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
Has
anybody heard from Bruce Southard on the point; he is now at East Carolina
(though I don't know if he is on the net) and has done some work on their
local speech.
On the net and on this list.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 09:30:12 EDT
From: Ellen Johnson ATLAS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
Dental anesthesia indeed! OK, I guess I've shown my provincial bias.
The [wadnt] pronunciation is below the level of conscious awareness of
speakers here (previously including myself) so I had never paid attention
to it in other places. I wonder if it will become stigmatized as
more Yankees infiltrate the "Sun Belt", since it is apparently quite
noticeable to many who responded. Thanks for clearing that up.
Has anyone ever heard of "lisom molasses"? We received a query about it
with a citation from South Carolina that mentioned it's use with lemons as
a remedy for whooping cough.
Ellen Johnson atlas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 09:44:02 -0400
From: Bruce Southard ENSOUTHA%ECUVM1.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
Since Bill Kretzschmar mentioned me, I thought that I would stop lurking in
the background and add that 'won't' is still found in eastern NC. As Bill
pointed out, Natalie Estes' LAVIS II paper "Evidence and Argument in the
Development of Prenazal [z]-- [d]" contains a number of good examples.
Natalie also points out that 1st and 3rd person "weren't" is common as well in
Ocracoke. She notes that phonological processes can also lead that form to
become "wa'nt".
Thus, there may be two possible origins for the form under discussion.
Regards,
Bruce Southard
English Department, East Carolina University
ensoutha[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ecuvm1.bitnet
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1993 10:15:00 EDT
From: "James_C.Stalker" STALKER[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.EDU
Subject: Re: Further to 'won't wasn't'
Two brief comments. I grew up across the river from Dinis, but my
distribution of /Iznt/~/Idnt/ and /wVdnt/~/wVznt/ varies from his somewhat. I
have both, but they seem to be distributed by formality, the /d/ variety in
casual, the /z/ in more careful "stranger" talk. Of course, having now lived
in Wisconsin and Michigan for the past 24 years, I've probably been corrupted
and the /z/ is creeping into my casual speech.
Re: "won't" for "wasn't". When I lived in Chapel Hill, I worked with a
"won't" speaker. Although I can't recall the details of his dialect after 20
some odd years, I do recall that other aspects of his dialect led me to assume
that his "won't" was derived from "weren't." Dennis's derivation clearly gets
us to "won't, but I would like to hear more about the r-less derivation.
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 22:34:00 EDT
From: "James_C.Stalker" STALKER[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.EDU
Subject: /hw/~/w/
This seems to have been a persistent problem over the years, and the demise of
/hw/ has been predicted for quite some time it seems. Herewith a couple of
quotations to indicate the longevity of the variation.
"But there is one defect which more generally prevails in the counties than
any other, and indeed is daily gaining ground amongst the politer part of the
world, I mean the omission of the aspirate in many words by some, and in most
by others. . . .For not only certain words have a peculiar energy, but several
emotions of the mind are strongly marked, by this method of shooting out the
words (if I may be allowed the expression) with the full force of the breath.
As in exclamations what! when? where? why? how! hark! hist! -- In the words
hard, harsh, heave, hurt, whirl, whisper, whistle." Thomas Sheridan, A Course
of Lectures on Elocution, 1762.
"The aspirate h is often sunk, particularly in the capital, where we do not
find the least distinction of sound between "while" and "wile," "whet" and
"wet," "where" and "were" &c." John Walker, A Critical Pronouncing
Dictionary, 1791.
stalker[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.edu
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1993 08:53:01 -0400
From: meyer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UMBSKY.CC.UMB.EDU
Subject: Corpus of Spoken American English
We are presently putting together a million word corpus of spoken
American English and were wondering whether there were
any ADS members who would be interested in helping us collect various kinds
of spoken English from different regions of the country. We want
the corpus to be as regionally and ethnically diverse as possible,
but we are logistically constrained from sending research assistants
around the country to collect different varieties of speech.
We are interested in collecting the following kinds of broadcast English
(particularly radio and television programs that are locally produced):
interviews/discussions
call-in shows
news broadcasts
demonstrations
speeches
sports commentaries (e.g. broadcasts of baseball games, local tennis matches)
city council meetings, school board meetings, etc. (i.e. anything
broadcast over local access cable channels)
If you can help us out, all you have to do is:
1) Tape the entire program (commercials and all)
2) Use as good a recorder as possible and a Cr02 90 minute cassette
(we'll send you a blank replacement cassette; also, video cassettes
are fine too)
3) Mail Charles Meyer the tape along with the name and phone number
of the station the program was broadcast on (we will need this
information in order to obtain copyright release)
We're also collecting face-to-face conversations, so if you have good
recording equipment (particularly a good microphone), let us know and
we'll forward tapes and consent forms.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact one of us.
Thanks for your help.
Jack Du Bois Charles Meyer
Linguistics Dept. English Dept.
University of California UMass-Boston
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Boston, MA 02125
(805) 893-3776 (617) 287-6748
dubois[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]humanitas.ucsb.edu meyer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]cs.umb.edu
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1993 12:58:00 CST
From: Beth Lee Simon BLSIMON[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MACC.WISC.EDU
Subject: Ellen Johnson's address please
Ellen,
I have some material on _ocean_, but have misplaced your email
address. shall I send it snail mail?
beth
blsimon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]macc.wisc.edu
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1993 15:13:40 EDT
From: Ellen Johnson ATLAS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: Ellen Johnson's address please
Beth (et al.),
My address is Dept. of English
254 Park Hall, UGA
Athens, Ga. 30602 atlas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga
That is, until July 8, when I leave for Chile, where I'll be teaching through
December. My mail will be forwarded, but it may not be too reliable. If
something gets returned to you try the alternate address 111 McNeal Rd.
Hoschton, Ga. 30548
I will be at the Universidad Arturo Prat in Iquique for a month, then at
the Universidad de Chile in Santiago.
Thanks for the info on fresh-water oceans. Ellen
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1993 10:20:32 -700
From: Warren Keith Russell keru[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CPU.US.DYNIX.COM
Subject: ISO STANDARDS
Does anyone know where I can get copies of ISO-8859-1 and ISO-8859-2?
We are adding multilingual capabilities to our software, and I understand
these include 256-byte character sets for supporting the major languages.
This may not be the most appropriate forum for such a request, but I
have not been able to find any other linguistics-related mail lists
on the Internet. Is anyone aware of any?
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