Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 12:39:36 -0700 From: Rudy Troike Subject: Southern Palatal Glide in /aesh/ Re Tim Frazer's note of Dan Rather's pronunciation of , I hadn't noticed it because it is normal Southern/South Midland to have a /y/-glide after lax front vowels before palatals, e.g. /sh/. Perceptually to non- natives, this may sometimes appear to raise the vowel into the next higher position, or create homonymy, whereas for natives it is a low-level phonetic rule which, while exerting a raising effect on the vowel, generally does not change its phonemic status. Occasionally words do slip over the line, however, as in becoming /kEch/. The same glide rule operates before Nasal + Vl. Stop clusters for /ae/, parallel to the backing to /a/ in British English, and again occasionally changes the phonemic status of the vowel, as in shifting from /kaeynt/ to /keynt/. But native speakers are normally not aware of the phenomenon, and keep the vowels separate phonemically. I imagine this is the same thing going on in David Bergdahl's hearing of the pronunciation of . Natives would have to be consulted to see if they had really restructured the lexical entry to homonymize with . --Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)