Re: Drifting phonemes [was: Re: The AmE 'o' sound]

From: Miguel Carrasquer (mcv_at_wxs.nl)
Date: 11/16/04 

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:19:35 +0100

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:58:52 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>When Diakonoff came to Chicago (in 1988, for an honorary degree), and
>the question of one letter/two segments came up, he pointed out that
>[St] is the Leningrad (where he was) pronunciation and [SC] in Moscow --

[St] is the Bulgarian pronunciation.

In Russian, it used to be [S'tS'] (s^'c^'). Clarification:
Russian /S/ (s^) is "hard" [flat post-alveolar shibilant],
Russian /tS/ (c^) is "soft" [palatalized post-alveolar
affricate]. The cluster /StS/ (s^c^) is also soft. I think
such a "soft" s^c^ is still the standard Moscow
pronunciation. In Piter and elsewhere, the pronunciation is
[S'S'] ([S':], [s^':]), i.e. a long soft shibilant. The
difference between <s^> and (non-Moscow) <s^c^> is that the
first is hard (non-palatalized) and short (non-geminated),
the second soft (palatalized) and long (geminated).

>> I disagree that, graphically. the new ja seems closer to the
>> old ja than to e~, but I can't argue that very well in
>> e-mail. Consider deleting one (merging two) of the legs:
>>
>> _ _
>> /_\ /_\
>> / | \ => | \
>
>I like
> _ __
>| / | / |
>|/__| => -/-|
> / |

The initial | segment would not have simply disappeared (cf.
ju). If you look at the miniscule handwritten form, the
<ja> begins with a small "curl", like only <l> and <m>,
letters that started with an initial segment / (not |).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@wxs.nl