Bob,
> This sounds very familiar to me as a way that some English speakers
> articulate, though I don't study sound systems, so I can't point you to
> any work on the issue. I think that it's probably the velum closing and
> opening that you heard, and not the uvula.
I considered that possibility, but it definitely does not sound like a
typical 'ng' initial - which I hear a lot in Chinese dialects I'm
familiar with, so I think I'd recognize it as such if that's what it
were. If I try to imitate King's /l/ with a velar nasal it sounds all wrong.
> Seems to me (and I think I was taught this by a sociolinguist somewhere
> along the line) that some people have dark /l/s everywhere.
Yes - it's fairly common, and sounds a bit "hyper-American" to my ears.
More
> importantly, you talk about dark /l/ as if it's only an allophone. But
> of course, it's just a sound, and while it may be conditioned in some
> varieties/speakers of English, it could be in free variation or be the
> only realization of the /l/ phoneme in others.
Yes. But I think there is a strong tendency to use a clear /l/
prevocalically and dark /l/ elsewhere, though in American you tend to
get lots more dark /l/s than, for example, in standard British. I just
had a conversation with an RP speaker, and he pointed out that I used a
dark /l/ in _let's_ due to linking when I said, "We*ll, l*et's see...",
with perseverative assimilation. He says he'd have an anticipatory clear
/l/ in _well_ in the same context.
If you heard contact at
> the uvula/velum, it's *not* a clear /l/ by the definitions I was taught,
> no matter where in the word it occurred.
Yes, of course. I say 'clear /l/' only to refer to the *position* where
one would expect a clear /l/ in average speakers of General American.
Thanks much for your comments. Anybody else have any thoughts on this?
Do try to listen to the file yourself, if possible. It's at
http://www.amazon.com/
Karen Chung
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