tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post8218550374845899665..comments2024-03-09T09:19:07.054+01:00Comments on Jabal al-Lughat: On OlatheLameen Souag الأمين سواقhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-77827218887626543902021-06-27T19:03:49.252+02:002021-06-27T19:03:49.252+02:00Athena transforms into an eagle, and has the epith...Athena transforms into an eagle, and has the epithet “Aethyia,” a title related to the greek word for the seabird known as the shearwater. Just a thought. Interesting coincidence I have an aunt who's maiden name is Arrington first name Olethea. So it's not a surprise to me that it might mean this, as she's an eagle eyed lady, very observant & smart.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05195928953912202196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-31009022899743272552017-04-08T14:09:08.260+02:002017-04-08T14:09:08.260+02:00@petre @Lameen: From what I've read and observ...@petre @Lameen: From what I've read and observed, a lowered value of final /ǝ/ occurs in BrEng too – even all the way down to [a] in traditional Cockney.Lazar Taxonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13221219358689771815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-1450960016857027872017-02-28T23:31:31.131+01:002017-02-28T23:31:31.131+01:00I think Protouralic is right, and hypercorrection ...I think Protouralic is right, and hypercorrection can become so pervasive that it is a regular rule rather than an irregular change. Initial /h/ in the English of England (not Scotland or Ireland) was pervasively lost by 1550 or so, and then restored almost everywhere by hypercorrection from the spelling, so that the few unhypercorrected words like <i>heir, hour, honor, honest</i> stand out. AmE adds <i>herb</i> to this, but hypercorrection has given it /h/ in England today. If we didn't know this history, we'd assume that initial /h/ > zero was a rare sporadic change.<br /><br />As for "<i>happa</i> for <i>happy</i>", they may in fact have said that — and then the change was missed by <i>abbot-rabbit</i>-merging field researchers before <i>happy</i>-tensing! I've noticed that it is much harder to notice how you or others pronounce reduced vowels: they are out of psychological focus.<br /><br />John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-48189698303710008302017-02-28T23:09:47.900+01:002017-02-28T23:09:47.900+01:00Re the updated position: hypercorrection and phone...Re the updated position: hypercorrection and phonetic regularity surely do not need to rule each other out! This would not the the first time when a dialect, upon increasing exposure to a prestige variety, ends up "inverting" some of its characteristic features. I can't claim to have detailed statistics on this, but my rough feeling is that this is particularly common when a basilect represents phonetic structures A and B of an acrolect the same, as A. If realizing acrolectal B as A (such as /-ə/ as /-ɪ/ ~ /-i/) ends up as a stigmatized feature, speakers may end up adopting an "inverse" sound change A > B (/-i/ > /-ʌ/)… while still not actually making the contrast (and now thus having B also for acrolectal A).<br /><br />(I happen to have just read earlier today of a neat exact example of this, from Torne Valley Finnish as described by Martti Airila in 1912. Here A = word-initial <em>uo-</em>, <em>yö-</em>; B = word-initial <em>vuo-</em>, <em>vyö-</em>. The contrast is marginal but established in most varieties of Finnish: the only native examples of type A are <em>yö</em> 'night' and <em>yökätä</em> 'to gack, to vomit', while a few additional examples such as the personal name <em>Uolevi</em> 'Olaf' are found in loanwords in some dialects. Examples of type B are more common, e.g. <em>vuosi</em> 'year', <em>vuotaa</em> 'to leak', <em>vyöryä</em> 'to roll'. Around 1910, some older speakers of Torne Valley Finnish had uniformly no <em>v-</em> in either category — but most speakers seemed to have shifted to uniformly <em>v-</em> in both. Airila remarks that this brings the dialect closer to standard Finnish, although it does have the effect that now it's instead the few exceptional forms like <em>vyö</em> 'night' that stand out as a dialectal shibboleth.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-56815956933854491402017-02-28T21:11:26.243+01:002017-02-28T21:11:26.243+01:00JC: That sounds good, but I'm not sure it work...JC: That sounds good, but I'm not sure it works out: surely they don't go so far as to say "happa" for "happy"? Or has the change been reversed on common words by the influence of mass media?<br /><br />Petre: Yes, RP does not have final /ʌ/ as far as I recall. In American Standard English, however, the two "a"s of Ithaca are not pronounced the same: the first "a" is [ə], the last is [ʌ].Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-54651419145866521542017-02-28T14:27:16.331+01:002017-02-28T14:27:16.331+01:00"standard English word-final /ʌ/"
I'..."standard English word-final /ʌ/"<br /><br />I'm not aware of any such in British English, except as a conscious imitation of Southern US or other foreign speech. We have [ə] of course, in many contexts an allophone of /ɪ/. I can't work out whether my failure to understand what you're getting at is just a matter of different transcriptions, or whether there's a substantial point that eludes me. Elucidate!petrenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-72736919471564243602017-02-27T21:33:21.397+01:002017-02-27T21:33:21.397+01:00When Leoti was founded in 1885, it was apparently ...When Leoti was founded in 1885, it was apparently not allowed to have its chosen name at first, because there was a Leota post office elsewhere in Kansas at that time. Perhaps the pronunciation had an [ʌ] right from the beginning.<br /><br />Leota is a woman's name, which I suspect was pronounced Leoti by some final-a-raisers, so the story is more akin to that of Chillicothe than that of Olathe. Ynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-60758925519849654342017-02-27T15:57:17.630+01:002017-02-27T15:57:17.630+01:00I think the Missoura-accent is accounted for by ph...I think the <i>Missoura</i>-accent is accounted for by phonological rule ordering. In many AmE varieties (including mine), final [ɪ] > [i] (<i>happy</i>-tensing) and then all remaining unstressed [ɪ] > [ə] (the <i>abbot-rabbit</i> merger). But in this accent, the merger applies first, bleeding <i>happy</i>-tensing.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-14244470890696669112017-02-27T10:56:44.450+01:002017-02-27T10:56:44.450+01:00Also, it appears that the pronunciation with final...Also, it appears that the pronunciation with final [ʌ] was already in place by 1893, when we find the name spelled "Oletha": http://shawnee-bluejacket.com/uploads/3/4/8/4/34847868/volume_3_page_5.htm .Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-57445625764715373452017-02-27T10:51:47.078+01:002017-02-27T10:51:47.078+01:00Guillaume: Interestingly, I notice that in a late ...Guillaume: Interestingly, I notice that in <a href="http://shawnee-bluejacket.com/uploads/3/4/8/4/34847868/butler_dialogue.htm" rel="nofollow">a late 18th-century Shawnee dialogue recorded by Butler</a> we find the spelling "wil-li-thie" (glossed as "handsome") for later <i>holeθi</i>. That seems to fit the *wal- etymology.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-30908041325633644692017-02-27T10:25:04.924+01:002017-02-27T10:25:04.924+01:00Thanks everyone for some great comments!
Guillaum...Thanks everyone for some great comments!<br /><br />Guillaume: That seems plausible; -eθi does seem to be a Shawnee VAI final, and that would be compatible with Gatschet's <i>Huthámi huléthi</i> "she was too pretty". On the other hand, Gatschet also records <i>olethí</i> "pretty, tumblers, glass (tissues)"; I know Algonquian has a number of irregular animates, but I don't remember glasses being on the list.<br /><br />Y: After looking at the data presented in that article, I agree that hypercorrection is not an adequate explanation for a phenomenon that turns out to be quite systematic. Rather, it seems that American English, like British RP, used to allow final [ɪ], and that some dialects - notably, ones in a large circle around Kansas City - reduced the latter to a schwa.<br /><br />Anonymous: Good point. I had actually wondered whether German-American influence might be involved here, but I rejected that hypothesis because I figured the θ wouldn't have survived in that case.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-34431796814567212272017-02-27T05:23:08.000+01:002017-02-27T05:23:08.000+01:00I think some words from German ending in "e&q...I think some words from German ending in "e" may be anglicized with the /ʌ/ vowel (even though that's more like German "er"). I'm thinking of the usual pronunciation of "Goethe" as "Gerta", and the two-syllable pronunciation of "Porsche".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-70775451000834272292017-02-26T23:17:24.178+01:002017-02-26T23:17:24.178+01:00The town of Leoti and Miami county, both in Kansas...The town of Leoti and Miami county, both in Kansas, are supposedly pronounced /liˈoʊtʌ/ and /mǝˈjæmʌ/.Ynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-85882626553831589432017-02-26T21:31:21.956+01:002017-02-26T21:31:21.956+01:00In the 19th century, standard English word-final /...<i> In the 19th century, standard English word-final /ʌ/ was often pronounced dialectally as /i/</i><br /><br />Incidentally there is a similar phenomenon in some dialects of Yiddish (in some Lithuanian and Polish cities) where word-final schwa is pronounced as /i/.Alexanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03702207795969761295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-76664200177123332692017-02-26T17:22:46.980+01:002017-02-26T17:22:46.980+01:00(Forget the last sentence.)(Forget the last sentence.)Ynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-43606963297072474902017-02-26T17:16:26.790+01:002017-02-26T17:16:26.790+01:00Wouldn't someone wanting to sound educated hav...Wouldn't someone wanting to sound educated have used a spelling pronunciation?<br /><br />For more on this final lenition, specifically in the context of <i>Missouri,</i> see<br />http://missourifolkloresociety.truman.edu/Missouri%20Folklore%20Studies/THE%20PRONONCIATION%20OF%20MISSOURI.htm . The author seems skeptical of hypecorrection explanations for words like <i>sody,</i> but I haven't seen his paper on that subject.<br /><br />Chillicothe, Ohio (pronounced with a final /i/, not /ǝ/), is from a the name of a Shawnee group which I have seen spelled as Chalahgawtha or Chalakatha. Since the final vowel is not ǝ, I'm not sure if this can be explained as another instance of final /i/ lenition.Ynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-28815309066412504822017-02-26T16:23:53.164+01:002017-02-26T16:23:53.164+01:00The final -eθi in holeθi seems to be from the VAI ...<br />The final -eθi in holeθi seems to be from the VAI *-esi- final; I have not checked any Shawnee dictionary, but I surmise that this VAI verb means "pretty, beautiful" of an animate entity, probably not the most appropriate term for a piece of land. The initial stem is probably from *wal-, the same you have in the name of Oregon: http://www.ohs.org/research-and-library/oregon-historical-quarterly/upload/OHQ_105_2-Goddard-Love-Oregon-the-Beautiful.pdf<br /><br />Those interested in Shawnee historical phonology can have a look at http://research.library.mun.ca/920/3/Muzaffar_TowhidB.pdfGuillaume Jacqueshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00057915086735521613noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-76379980431744075012017-02-26T14:51:12.831+01:002017-02-26T14:51:12.831+01:00Fascinating.Fascinating.David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.com