Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 20:53:52 -0600 From: "Donald M. Lance" Subject: Re: Ast for Ask >>>>>>Isn't ast for ask fairly easy to understand just in articulatory terms? >When >you pronounce the s, you then have to move your tongue way back in your >mouth to do the velar k. But if (without really thinking about it) you kind >of naturally slip into making things a bit easier on yourself, tonguewise, >then from an "s" tongue-position in the mouth, the nearest voiceless stop >for an English speaker is t, not k.<<<<< You guys may be making a little too much of "ease of articulation." Ron seemed to say that we move the apex of the tongue way back to make the [k]. I doubt that he meant quite that; I also doubt that all of his brain was in gear as he was typing - like I am sometimes. Do the people who say ast for ask also say bast for bask? And bastet for basket? Some, maybe. "Is he basking in the sun?" "I'll ast him. He's a real bastet case." When an adult says bastet, we assume some sort of defect in maturation, but we attribute ast to dialect or ease-of-articulation assimilation. What gives?