| Term | Definition |
|---|
| English in North America | basis reflects 17th century Modern English, rhoticity, ae in dance, fall = autumn, mad = angry, 3 settlement centers (westward expansion over the centuries) eastern Mass, Conn, Hudson Valley, NY, NJ: permanent contacts with UK, Philadelphia, Baltimore, including first German, Irish, Scottish settlers, Virginia, South Carolina: southeastern British aritstocracy |
| General American | -not necessarily a single, unified accent, but a useful concept/norm to be followed/taught, -is not a regionless standard pronunciation, -covers all speakers who do not have marked eastern or southern characteristics (internal regional differences (west, midwest, north) are possible) |
| GA vowel inventory | rising dipthongs ei, ai, oh, oy, out, no centering dipthongs due to rhoticity, pot merges with a, port is lowered, sometimes also a, (rarely with r) |
| no centering dipthongs due to: | rhoticity: /ɛə/ = /ɛɹ/, /Iə/ = /Iɹ/ |
| RP vowel /pot/ corresponds to: | GA /ɒ/ (stop, dog, modern, etc.) with few words still resisting the change in most accents (gone, song) |
| rhoticity | r is pronounced in all positions; GA retains r in syllable final position (car) |
| phonetic realization of /port/ is much lower in GA than in RP and in many accents becomes: | /part, pot/ as well (thought, cause), though rarely when followed by a liquid (port, call) |
| words in the flat A-Group with /ae/ in GA, but /a:/ in RP (half), (past): | words in 18th century British English split into two groups: those with long /ae:/ lowered and backed to /a:/ (staff, castel, ask), the others retained /ae/ (giraffe, math, hassle) which is now modern RP /a/, -no phonological conditioning (e.g., basket vs. mascot, bath vs. math): purely based on lexical diffusion |
| lexical diffusion | process by which a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon and spreads gradually to other lexical items: for example English /uː/ has changed to /ʊ/ in good and hood but not in food |
| /oʊ̯/ retains back starting point as opposed to: | RP mid starting point /əʊ/ |
| I, ɛ, ʊ, ʌ with schwah-offglide before: | voiced consonant (e.g., [bɛəd] |
| /ɛ/ and /ae/ neutralized as: | [ɛ] before intervocalic /ɹ/ (merry vs. marry) |
| dipthong /aʊ/ often raised to | [aeʊ] |
| /l/ tends to be dark: | in all environments, certainly intervocalically (jelly) |
| /ʍ/ used by many speakers in original: | wh- words (which vs. witch) |
| later yod dropping: | /j/ is eliminated from underlying /ju/ or /jʊ/ if /r/ follows |
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