(JDear Colleagues:
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(JI asked you about pronunciations of (weak forms of) the definite article "the" in English in general and in (General) American English in particular. My question was how "the" is pronounced in the following seven phrases (th[@] or th[i]?): the United Kingdom, the United Nations, the university, the year, the yen, the young, the youth. Several people have kindly responded to me for the past ten days. Thanks very much again for their kind cooperation! To facilitate argument, I'll copy some responses with their permission. Comments welcome!
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(JKensuke
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([log in to unmask] wrote:
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(JMy impression is that young Californians have schwa in all these
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(Jitems, as they also have where you might not expect it in "the old,
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(Jthe uncle, the aunt" etc. in fact practically everywhere. Even in the
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(Jcitation form it is usually schwa.
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(JPeter
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(JPeter Ladefoged
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(JProfessor of Phonetics, Emeritus
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(JChurch, Los Angeles
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([log in to unmask] wrote:
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(JI'm a native speaker of British English and a phonetics PhD student at the
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(JUniversity of Cambridge. Whilst I don't have any data on the GenAm
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(Jpronunciations for you, I would say that the presence of a high front tongue
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(Jposition for [j] is probably causing some degree of coarticulation in the
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(Jschwa vowel, such that it is (or sounds) higher and fronter than its
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(Jcanonical target should be. The [edh] will also cause tongue fronting, so
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(Jit's not unexpected that the schwa should sound very [i] or [I] like. If
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(Jthis is the case, than schwa should sound similar in other words too. For
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(JBritish English, we could test that in phrases like 'ladder year' etc.,
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(Jthough of course GenAm is rhotic, so phrases like 'soda year' would have to
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(Jbe used. In the latter cases, my [@] is definitely fronted between [d] and
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(J[j]. What you're hearing may not be phonology at all.
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(JMark
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(JMark Jones
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(JDept. of Linguistics
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(JUniversity of Cambridge
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([log in to unmask] wrote:
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(JI have th[i] in all the cases you ask about. The schwa assimilates to the following palatal glide, so [j] is not, in my speech, a consonant before which I would say th[@]. I am, by the way, a speaker of Inland Northern American English.
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(JHerb Stahlke
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([log in to unmask] wrote:
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(JMy opinion would be that in slow careful speech we have the expected [D@]
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(Jbefore the consonant [j], but that in faster conversational speech the
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(J[-@j-] sequence may indeed be slurred into a kind of [i].
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(JIn slow speech 'the year' [D@jI@] and 'the ear' [DiI@] are different,
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(Jlikewise 'the yen' and 'the en(d)', 'the young' and 'the un(grateful)'. But
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(Jat conversational speed they may be identical.
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(JRemember, though, that we are inclined to poke fun at people from South
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(JWales for pronouncing 'year' and 'ear' identically. So the rest of us
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(Jcertainly *believe* that we always make a difference between them - even
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(Jthough at some speeds it may be imperceptible for the listener.
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(JThe same thing can happen in RP etc in phrases such as 'another year',
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(J'better use', 'rather young', where the final [@] of the first word can
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(Jfuse with the initial [j] of the second to give an [i]-like effect. So it's
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(Jnothing specifically to do with the definite article. (Obviously, these
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(Jexamples do not work in AmE, because of the retention of historical /r/.)
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(JJohn Wells
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(JKensuke Nanjo
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(JTenured Assistant Professor of Phonetics
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(JDepartment of English
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(JFaculty of Letters
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(JSt. Andrew's University
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(JEmail: [log in to unmask](B