Re. your first question, I suppose this could be the same thing,
though if Ferguson is calling it "flapped or 'snapped'", then it
sounds like this is a variety involving the tongue tip. Again, this
comes back ultimately to the point raised by Bob and others that we
don't really even know what's been described without some kind of
direct measurement (i.e., what is meant by "dark" in this
description? And is it possible that the flap/snap percept could
result from somthing other than the tongue tip?).
As for the questions on l-breaking and the place of the back
constriction for N.Am. /l/, I'd be happy to send you a couple recent
papers relevant to this if you're interested.
bg


At 2:44 PM -0400 9/22/03, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>Thanks a lot, Bryan, for your detailed description of this variant
>of /l/. In addition to Martha C. Pennington's description of uvular
>/l/ I cited in my previous message, I noticed the following remark
>when I was reading Charles A. Ferguson's paper "Phonology as an
>Individual Access System: Some Data from Language Acquisition"
>(1979):
>
>  "Examples of individual phonetic variants are plentiful in American
>English. A common one is the range of pronunciation of /l/. The
>allophonic differences which depend on position in the syllable and
>the quality of the following vowel (e.g., extremes of 'lee' and
>'hall') are widespread and well known (cf. Jones, 1956) though even
>in these there are regional differences (e.g., the /l/ of 'million'
>may be either 'clear' or 'dark' depending on the area) and social
>differences (e.g., the highly labialized velar /l/ of much 'Black
>English'). What is not mentioned in the phonetics textbooks is the
>quite common 'abnormal' dark /l/ pronunciation (sometimes flapped or
>'snapped') in positions where the clear /l/ is expected [Note 2].
>
>  Note 2: It is possible that the sporadic individual extension of
>the velar /l/ is part of a long term change of all /l/s to velar
>pronunciation or vocalization to /w/ or /u/, but it is difficult to
>investigate this without extensive data.
>
>  Now, do you think what Ferguson calls "the quite common 'abnormal'
>dark /l/ pronunciation" is something you describe in your message:
>an upper-pharyngeal/uvular /l/ with no tongue tip contact?
>
>  One more thing:
>
>
>
>>Further, if /l/ is velarized in British English, it is in
>>  my experience uvularized or pharyngealized in North America.
>>
>
>
>  I agree. In my 1994 presentation, I showed that British word-final
>dark /l/ sounds like a close back vowel [tongue body raising] while
>American word-final dark /l/ sounds like a open(-mid) back vowel
>[tongue body lowering/retraction]. I argued that this explains the
>difference in the phonetic environments of "pre-l breaking" between
>the two accents. As the 2nd edition of LPD (2000: 99) rightly points
>out, "Some speakers of GenAm have pre-l breaking after /u:, oU, aU/,
>thus 'rule' [ru:@l]," but those of RP don't.
>
>  Best regards,
>
>  Kensuke
>
>  -----------------------------------------------
>  Mr. Kensuke Nanjo, M.A., ABD
>  Tenured Assistant Professor of Phonetics
>  Department of English
>  Faculty of Letters
>  St. Andrew's University
>
>  Email: [log in to unmask]

--

Bryan Gick
Interdisciplinary Speech Research Laboratory
Department of Linguistics
E270-1866 Main Mall
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC  V6T 1Z1  Canada
604-822-4347
Fax: 604-822-9687
http://www.arts.ubc.ca/isrl