Date:  Fri, 24 Oct 1997 15:51:16 -0500
From:  Mark Mandel <Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM>
Subject: Summary: AmEng external sandhi

I asked on the LINGUIST List (#8.1442) and on ADS-L (the American
Dialect Soc'y list):

 I am looking for descriptions of external sandhi in American
 English, especially such pronunciations as are often written
 "gotcha" (for canonical "got you"). I will post a summary to the
 list if there is sufficient interest.

Many people kindly replied. Here is a summary of their replies:

=====

Peter T. Daniels <grammatim[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]worldnet.att.net> wrote:

You need the work of a short-lived school of phonology called
"natural generative phonology," which flourished(?) in the early
1970s in connection with the generative semantics school centered
on the University of Chicago. The key name is David Stampe, whose
dissertation was originally called "What I did on my summer
vacation" but was retitled "A dissertation in natural phonology."
You'll find articles in this genre in the Proceedings of the
Chicago Linguistic Society from those years, and a volume from a
Parasession on Natural Phonology in 1975 or so.

[And I have the CLS volumes from that period at home, somewhere,
from my Berkeley years. -- MAM]

=====

James Giangola <jamesg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]genmagic.com> recommended _Patterns of
English Pronunciation_ by J. Donald Bowen (UCLA), 1975, provided
some samples, and even offered to fax me the relevant pages.

[Thanks, James, but I found a copy at MIT.]

=====

Ben Brumfield <benwbrum[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]berserker.lensflare.com> pointed out a
regional example:

Piedmont Virginia (Pittsylvania County, at least) features the case of
/rajc^ yi:r/
Ri-Cheer
For "Right Here"

=====

Mel Resnick <resnickmc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]centum.utulsa.edu> pointed me to his
article:

Resnick, Melvyn C. "The Redundant English Phonemes /c^,j^,s^,z^/."
  Linguistics 86 (1972): 83-86.

Those symbols in the title are of course in place of the usual
wedge symbols.

=====

Aaron Drews <aaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ling.ed.ac.uk> recommends "any introductory
linguistics text for a description of GA (General American)
sandhi."

=====

The redoubtable Arnold Zwicky <zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ling.ohio-state.edu>
advised:

the problem here is that there's so much literature. for the
GOTCHA stuff, one good place to start is joel rotenberg's 1978 mit
dissertation, The Syntax of Phonology.

[And whaddya know, Arnold, I found that one at MIT too!]

=====

Betty Phillips <ejphill[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]root.indstate.edu> pointed me to

Holst, Tara & Francis Nolan. 1995. "The influence of syntactic
structure on [s] to [ ] assimilation." _Phonology and Phonetic
Evidence: Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV_. Eds. Bruce Connell &
Amalia Arvaniti. Cambridge UP. 315-333.
(where [ ] = "esh")

[Also found at MIT.]

=====

 Alan Grosenheider <alang[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu> and
 KIM DAMMERS <kdammers[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hotmail.com>
mentioned some more English examples, and
 Kate McCreight <katemccreight[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]alum.mit.edu>
described some work she's currently involved in.

=====

My thanks to all!

    Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
  Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
      Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/