Talk:/æ/ raising

Italics

The usual convention is that linguistic example material should be italicized, not the prose commenting on it. The main table currently uses the opposite convention. Any opposition to switching this around? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 13:52, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Examples needed!

This article sure could use some recorded examples! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.12.42.139 (talk) 09:49, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Social things forgot

Southern american is highly stigmatized along with african american vernacular, so for status the raising is working more often than for natural or random totally shifts--this raising not being as high as great lakes thats more near KIT vowel. rather, southern is at /ei/ or /e/ near merging or shoving out.

So social side should be in the article. Same for why backing was lost in new england, as it likely was seen rural, but this reasearch i think is harder found.Yoandri Dominguez Garcia 18:53, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Some /ŋ/ problems

1. The sound files for untensed language and thank you here seem to feature over-correction - the inherent effect of a velar nasal coda is taken out, such that /æŋg/ and /æŋk/ are something like [æˑ.ⁿg] and [æˑ.ⁿk], which could leave speakers of varieties without any unpredictably distinct /æ/+/ŋ/ allophone(much of the eastern US + most places outside North America as far as I'm aware), as well as Danes a bit confused.
2. Since the varieties which do have special shifts before /ŋ/ or before /ŋ/ and /g/ tend to be the ones which have them across the whole front vowel set, and this results in raising, not lowering diphthongs, giving /ŋ/ its own sound samples and table row at all is misleading.
3. Regardless, the transcription [eɪ], both here and on Wiktionary, is somewhat problematic, because that is the position pre-/ŋ/ tensing accents typically give to /ɛ/, while /æ/ gets [ɛɪ](or potentially lower with the Californian and Canadian shifts putting the base allophone of /æ/ at [a].) To be fair, the only potential minimal pairs involve uncommon loans, but we are talking about narrow transcriptions of a non-phonemic system. Célestine-Edelweiß (talk) 18:44, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

1. I agree that those pronunciations sound unnatural. It would probably be better if we had pronunciations from someone whose native accent didn't tense or shift /æ/ in that environment, alongside pronunciations from someone who does natively shift /æ/ before /ŋ/.

2. I might be inclined to agree that ash-tensing before eng and /g/ should be treated separately, given that other vowels shift in those environments as well, I'd have to see what different reliable sources say. Maybe this depends on dialect/accent? ie in some dialects ash-tensing before eng and/or /g/ clearly patterns with ash-tensing in other environments, while in other dialects shifting before eng and /g/ is best considered separately.

3. I'd have to see what reliable sources say when it comes to narrow IPA transcriptions. Erinius (talk) 20:53, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

1. I believe the speaker is being slow and slightly exaggerative in his articulations to make distinctions clearer, which may be affecting the surrounding consonants (I, too, notice the odd /g/ at the end of hang, though thank you sounds ok to my /æ/-unraised self, if a bit self-aware and deliberate). For any newcomer to the idea of /æ/ raising, these audio files seem, to me, "good enough!"

2. I may not understand your problem here exactly. Doesn't the chart on this very page, "/æ/ raising in North American English", already answer this problem? The only dialect that shows /æ/ raising before /ŋ/ in tandem with all environments generally is the Great Lakes dialect.

3. Looking at sources couldn't hurt, but at least phonetically [eɪ] seems about right for most Americans (here, I hear everything from [eɪ] to [e] to [ɛ] and we need to choose one for our transcription). I'm sure many Americans have a merger of /ɛŋ/ and /æŋ/, though I can't remember if literature I've seen recently confirms it. Maybe check "Bag, beg, bagel" (Freeman 2014) or "The Bag that Scott Bought" (Benson et al. 2011). Wolfdog (talk) 04:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

1. Here and here are some alternative recordings I've just made. I can add them in if everyone finds it preferable to no change or removal, though clipping somebody else's file feels iffy to me so we might want to get new audio for the tensed pronunciation too.

2. My problems with having separate /g/ and /ŋ/ table rows and /ŋ/ sound clips:

- The second paragraph of the lead doesn't include the closing variant in its list of tense /æ/ realizations

- New England doesn't have pre-/ŋ/ tensing but I think we'd agree only 1 column for the nasal system is ideal

- NYC's all voiced stops rule is obfuscated

- Pre-velar tensing substitutes the qualities of existing base phonemes whereas /æ/ tensing otherwise results in nuclei only comparable to other allophones

- Outside the South, conditions besides voiced velar tense only /æ/

I think there should be a footnote like, "Before voiced velars, much of the Midwest, West, and Canada approaches a merger of /æ/ and /ɛ/ with /eɪ/, and sometimes complementarily /ɪ/ with /i/. See those varieties' pages for more information."

3. I'll look through those sources and more for which particular qualities the front vowels are arriving at in different accents - California's probably the best continental bellwether. Considering how /iŋ/(or /in/) for -ing as one example is rapidly gaining among young people all over, North American English pre-velar tensing might merit its own article. Célestine-Edelweiß (talk) 23:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)