English questions

[Imralu]

Does anyone else have a consistent phonemic contrast between enable and unable?

Yes. That's completely standard outside of the US and a few STRUT/schwa-merging regions in, from memory, mid-north-ish England.

enable /əˈneɪbəl/ [əˈnæɪ̯bɫ̩]
unable /ʌˈneɪbəl/ [äˈnæɪ̯bɫ̩]

[jcb]

Does anyone else have a consistent phonemic contrast between enable and unable?

Yes. /E/ vs /V/.

[Travis B.]

My difference between the two is enable /əˈneɪbəl/ [ɘ̃ːˈne̞ːbɯ(ː)]~[n̩ːˈne̞ːbɯ(ː)] versus unable /ˌʌnˈeɪbəl/ [ˌʌ̃ːɾ̃ˈe̞ːbɯ(ː)].

[Glenn]

My unable appears to contain [ʌ] - at least, it seems to be my STRUT vowel, which in my case is definitely centralized, not back, similar to my schwa - but the first vowel in my enable is definitely farther forward than [ə]; it moves toward [ɛ] in careful speech and toward the center in rapid speech, but still more fronted than my schwa.

[Travis B.]

I have been noticing tonality in my dialects's surface forms beyond what has been discussed recently.

Take the following:

dad [tæ̀ːt]
sad [sæ̂ːt]
bat [pɛ̌ʔ(t)]
cat [kʰɛ́ʔ(t)]
middle [mɪ̈̀ːːɯ̯]
little [ʟ̞ɪ̈́ːɯ̯]
milled [mɪ̈̀ːɯ̯t]

While in the cases of dad, sad, bat, and cat the tonality can be trivially derived from the non-tonal surface forms and thus does not count as true tonality by itself, in the case of middle versus little things cannot be explained away so easily. In this case the historical /t/ surfaces as a high tone combined with a shorter vowel.

[Imralu]

dad [tæ̀ːt]
sad [sæ̂ːt]

Is that because of the initial unvoiced /s/ raising the start of the tone, or does it possibly correlate with my distinction between /æ/ and /æː/.

What do you have for:

mad,
glad,
rad,
bad,
Brad,
Manning (name),
manning (gerund),
banner (one who bans),
banner (long, horizontal flag)?

[Travis B.]

dad [tæ̀ːt]
sad [sæ̂ːt]

Is that because of the initial unvoiced /s/ raising the start of the tone, or does it possibly correlate with my distinction between /æ/ and /æː/.

It's because of the initial voiceless /s/ -- your distinction between /æ/ and /æː/ is entirely foreign here.

What do you have for:

mad,
glad,
rad,
bad,
Brad,
Manning (name),
manning (gerund),
banner (one who bans),
banner (long, horizontal flag)?

I don't have the time to provide transcriptions at the moment but I will say that all syllables in these are low tone.

[jcb]

What kinds of pleonasms does English have? The only ones I can think of are "baby animal + adult animal" ones, like "bunny rabbit, kitty cat, puppy dog". Are there any others?

[Travis B.]

What do you have for:

mad,
glad,
rad,
bad,
Brad,
Manning (name),
manning (gerund),
banner (one who bans),
banner (long, horizontal flag)?

I don't have the time to provide transcriptions at the moment but I will say that all syllables in these are low tone.

I should also note that the stressed vowel in mad, glad, rad, bad, and Brad is [æ̀ː] and the stressed vowel in Manning, manning, banner (1), and banner (2) is [ɛ̀ə̯]. The difference in quality is because I do not raise TRAP before /d/ and I raise and diphthongize TRAP before /n/. These all have long vowels because the following consonants before the end of the word or the next vowel do not include fortis consonants.

[Travis B.]

Has anyone else only really learned about the 'correct' usage of whom, there-PreP, and like from learning German despite English being one's native language?

[jcb]

Do people here perceive the NCVS (Northern Cities Vowel Shift) to be *the* defining accent of the American Midwest? I've lived in the Midwest my whole life (or on the edge of it, at least), but don't have it, so it feels a bit strange to potentially be excluded for lacking it.

[Travis B.]

Do people here perceive the NCVS (Northern Cities Vowel Shift) to be *the* defining accent of the American Midwest? I've lived in the Midwest my whole life (or on the edge of it, at least), but don't have it, so it feels a bit strange to potentially be excluded for lacking it.

There are substantial contrasts between the dialects of the core Great Lakes region (Wisconsin, Chicagoland, Lower Michigan) which are characterized by the NCVS and dialects of more westerly, southerly, or northerly (in the case of the UP) parts of the Midwest. I do not find it odd that there are Midwesterners without the NCVS myself, as the NCVS simply does not cover the whole Midwest. (And here in southeastern Wisconsin at least it is normal for Black people to lack the NCVS.)

[Travis B.]

Wikipedia claims that so-called 'g-dropping' (a misnomer since typically no /g/ is dropped in the first place) is of markedly low status in English (with it being indicated as being primarily lower working class, and I assume they are using the typical American meaning of 'working class' here, and especially Southern NAE and AAVE), yet I never perceived present participles of form -/ən/ ('-in'') as being lower working class or as being Southern or AAVE, as I grew up in a very 'middle class' and very White suburb of Milwaukee and it was the norm for the English I grew up with.

However, at the same time I always implicitly perceived 'g-dropping' outside of present participles and the specific word something as being very marked for social class and for Southernness or AAVE-ness, a distinction that Wikipedia does not appear to make. And indeed, 'g-dropping' outside of present participles and something is rather foreign to the English I grew up with.

Does anyone else make this same distinction?

[Travis B.]

I have been noticing tonality in my dialects's surface forms beyond what has been discussed recently.

Take the following:

dad [tæ̀ːt]
sad [sæ̂ːt]
bat [pɛ̌ʔ(t)]
cat [kʰɛ́ʔ(t)]
middle [mɪ̈̀ːːɯ̯]
little [ʟ̞ɪ̈́ːɯ̯]
milled [mɪ̈̀ːɯ̯t]

While in the cases of dad, sad, bat, and cat the tonality can be trivially derived from the non-tonal surface forms and thus does not count as true tonality by itself, in the case of middle versus little things cannot be explained away so easily. In this case the historical /t/ surfaces as a high tone combined with a shorter vowel.

Actually, I was mistaken ─ little is [ʟ̞ɪ̈̂ːɯ̯], with a falling tone.

[bradrn]

A puzzle encountered while conlanging… generally you can extrapose an NP focussed with ‘not even’ in two different ways, like so:

He doesn’t even like David Attenborough.
→ Not even David Attenborough, he likes.
→ Even David Attenborough, he doesn’t like.

(She went to Paris, and…) She didn’t even see the Eiffel Tower.
→ Not even the Eiffel Tower, she saw.
→ Even the Eiffel Tower, she didn’t see.

However, with the following sentence the second form appears to be blocked:

He didn’t even eat a crumb.
→ Not even a crumb, he ate.
*→ Even a cumb, he didn’t eat.

The motivating factor appears to be definiteness, because if I alter the second sentence to have an indefinite focussed NP, it behaves the same way:

(She went to Paris, and…) She didn’t even see a patisserie.
→ Not even a patisserie, she saw.
*→ Even a patisserie, she didn’t see.

Why is this? Is definiteness really the only factor here?

[zompist]

He doesn’t even like David Attenborough.
→ Not even David Attenborough, he likes.
→ Even David Attenborough, he doesn’t like.

I can't help you here, because these are ungrammatical for me.

I think I'd accept "Not even a crumb he ate."

[bradrn]

He doesn’t even like David Attenborough.
→ Not even David Attenborough, he likes.
→ Even David Attenborough, he doesn’t like.

I can't help you here, because these are ungrammatical for me.

Interesting. Does it get better with context? e.g.:

The man hates all documentaries. Doesn’t matter whether it’s by Werner Herzog or Louis Theroux. Even David Attenborough he doesn’t like.

(Forgive my total ignorance of documentary makers.)

[zompist]

Interesting. Does it get better with context? e.g.:

The man hates all documentaries. Doesn’t matter whether it’s by Werner Herzog or Louis Theroux. Even David Attenborough he doesn’t like.

Not too much, but I have to say it sounds very Yiddish-influenced. To cite a random example from Maus:

"It's good for my heart, the pedaling. But tell me, how is it by you? How is going the comics business?"

You can do a lot of extraposition in American English, but Jewish American English seems to allow even more.

[bradrn]

Interesting. Does it get better with context? e.g.:

The man hates all documentaries. Doesn’t matter whether it’s by Werner Herzog or Louis Theroux. Even David Attenborough he doesn’t like.

Not too much, but I have to say it sounds very Yiddish-influenced.

Fair enough, I suppose. I wouldn’t say my speech is very influenced by Yiddish, at least in the grammar, but maybe there’s a connection somewhere.

(I’m interested in this because I’m trying to understand how negation interacts with scalar focus. Sometimes it seems like the scope of negation makes no difference, other times it does. Beyond that I haven’t gotten much further.)

"It's good for my heart, the pedaling. But tell me, how is it by you? How is going the comics business?"

Now I’m remembering how my grandfather used to greet me with ‘how’s by you?’. I miss him…

[jal]

He didn’t even eat a crumb.
→ Not even a crumb, he ate.
*→ Even a cumb, he didn’t eat.

Fwiw in Dutch these would be fine (as far as a very marked construction is "fine"):
Zelfs geen kruimel at hij
Zelfs een kruimel at hij niet


JAL

EDIT: Fixed typo