Date:  Wed, 26 Apr 1995 17:55:09 -0400

From:  "H. Stephen Straight (Binghamton U,

     SUNY)" <sstraigh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BINGSUNS.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU>

Subject: Re: Why, and how we transcribe it



As one of those who claim that the voiceless labiovelar glide ["turned"

W] differs (phonetically?/phonemically?) from a sequence of voiceless

glottal spirant and voiced labiovelar glide [hw], I feel obliged to

respond to Bill Kretzschmar's comment that he



> had never thought

> of this as a voiced/unvoiced contrast because I always thought that the

> /w/ was +voice, whether or not an initial aspirate was present. Is there

> acoustic or other evidence to support one side or the other? Or is the

> difference in notation simply a residue of the segmental-phonology wars of

> the 50s and 60s.



I hear two differences between the voiceless-segment versus the cluster

renditions, though I'll concede up front that they reside at the two

poles of a phonetic continuum, and that I know of no lexical contrast

that employs the two, so I guess they're allophones of a single phonemic

unit (whether a segment or a cluster). The two differences are those

implied by the transcriptional contrast: The voiceless glide is shorter

and induces initial voicelessness on a following vowel, while the

(longer) cluster exhibits voicing in the [w] portion with a clear

formant-transition voicing into the following vowel.



Sociolinguistically, though, my less-than-systematic conclusion is that

[hw] is found only in the speech of those for whom the w/wh contrast is

dead or dying, and only in words for which there exists a minimal pair

that they are trying to preserve (wail/whale, wet/whet, wile/while,

wine/whine, wit/whit, and, rarely, wen/when, wear/where,

weather/whether--the wh-words having been among the first to "lose their

h", so to speak).



Reactions invited!



H STEPHEN STRAIGHT, Assoc Prof of Anthro & of Ling, Binghamton Univ (SUNY)

Director: Grad Studies in Anthro, Prog in Ling, and Lgs Across the Curric

MAIL: Box 6000, Bing, NY 13902-6000; 24-hr vmail: 607-777-2824; fax: -2477

EMAIL: <sstraigh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]bingsuns.bitnet> or <sstraigh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu>