Date:  Tue, 31 Oct 1995 08:56:28 -0500

From:  Wayne Glowka <wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAIL.GAC.PEACHNET.EDU>

Subject: Re: Sulking Over Silky Milk & Other Words of That Ilk



Peter McGraw wrote:



The rule deleting the l seems confined to the environment

>after back vowels. Clearly it's most solid (i.e. most general) after low

>back vowels (I would be amazed to the point of incredulity to hear of any

>AE speaker who pronounced an /l/ in "walk")



After trying to teach transcription to students from Sandersville, GA, for

15 years, I have given up arguing that there is no /l/ in words like "walk"

and "talk." The open-o in this area is so heavily diphthongized as

something like [ao] or even [[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aow] that I have a hard time convincing these

students that they have no /l/ before the /k/.  They hear no /l/, however,

in words like "law." The off-glide in words like "half" and "calf" also

sounds like /l/ to them.



By the way, one of those announcers with a stay-pressed smile on ET last

night pronounced the name of Dekalb, Illinois, with an /l/. There is no

/l/ in "Dekalb County," a county in the metro Atlanta area.



And speaking of transcription woes, I finally abandoned categorical

statements about there being no /g/ at the ends of words like "sing."

After arguing with students from Sandersville for years about there being

no /g/ except for some reading hypercorrection (which is, of course, a real

/g/ after all), I married a woman from Milledgeville who--like her sister

and other female relatives--pronounces a /g/ in "sing" and other related

words.



Wayne Glowka

Professor of English

Director of Research and Graduate Student Services

Georgia College

Milledgeville, GA 31061

912-453-4222

wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu