Classification of /oʊ/ as a monophthong according to Wells (and this article)

I'm not familiar with Wells' classification of vowels in American English, but I'm quite confused why the "goat", "home", "toe" vowel is listed as a monophthong. Has there been some sound change in American English in this vowel, or was Wells just wrong? The article does also gives the vowel's IPA diphthong transcription, but doesn't mention why it's considered a monophthong according to Wells (or indeed why it's categorised under the "pure" vowels in this article, despite the article giving its IPA transcription as /oʊ/)

Can anyone shed any light on this? Or perhaps add a note to the article explaining the reason for the conflict (both internally to the article, and with the reality of General American English, at least in the present day)

--Tomatoswoop (talk) 05:19, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Tomatoswoop: Search for /i, u, eɪ, oʊ, ɑ/ are considered to compose a natural class of tense monophthongs in General American, especially for speakers with the cot–caught merger. in the article. There's your explanation. I agree that using a monophthongal long back [oː] is probably not a part of General American. It's more Canadian, Scottish or Northern English. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:29, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) See Accents of English, vol. 1, pp. 120–1. Wells analyzes FLEECE, FACE, GOOSE, and GOAT in GA as underlyingly tense monophthongs, but transcribes FACE as /eɪ/ to avoid confusion with RP /e/, which represents DRESS, not FACE. Nardog (talk) 09:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting, thank you both for drawing my attention to that. Whether that analysis should be considered the "consensus" and therefore reflected in the categorisation system of this article, I absolutely couldn't comment, but assuming that this categorisation is the right way to go about this article, maybe it would be prudent to move that clarification to a more prominent place. Perhaps just before the categorisation into "pure vowels" and dipthongs. Or if not to move the whole bullet point, perhaps add a small note just before the pure vowels table to point out that /oʊ/ and /eɪ/, while written in the table as diphthongs are instead here considered part of the group of "sometimes diphthongised tense vowels" as per Wells. --Tomatoswoop (talk) 03:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Kbb2, if you disagree that putting /oʊ/ into the the monophthongal category is the right choice, perhaps you have another reference about general American that is better? I'm no expert, but it does seem to me that the American /oʊ/ is clearly a diphthong, not just a tense vowel, isn't the monophthongal /o/ exactly what Americans mock when parodying a Canadian accent? I won't change it because I'm talking about my own impression here, not some peer reviewed reference, and I'm no expert.--Tomatoswoop (talk) 03:37, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Are there major sources beyond Wells's 1982 one that regard /oʊ/ and /eɪ/ as monophthongs "underlyingly" or of a "natural class" (what does this mean?)? In other words, is this widely agreed upon and practiced in the American phonological community (of which I'm not even sure we can say the British phonetician Wells is a part) or just one phonetician's view? Labov, for example, seems to avoid speaking of monophthongs vs. diphthongs at the phonemic level in favor of a distinction between "long vs. short vowels" or "checked vs. free vowels" (which Wells uses too). Wolfdog (talk) 23:38, 5 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Narrow transcriptions

I notice Kbb2 has a tendency to resist and change narrow transcriptions to broader ones. I get the thinking behind this (that we go with a broad phonetic transcription), but, especially when we have exact audio files of speakers, why can't we have very narrow transcriptions? (Maybe we could represent both?) Wolfdog (talk) 12:34, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Wolfdog: I assume you're talking about this revert? I reverted you because /l/ in the syllable coda before a consonant or a pause is always velarized (or vocalized) in Standard English (save for very few speakers). The canonical value of the IPA sign ⟨l⟩ does signify a lateral approximant without a secondary articulation, but it can be apical or laminal and dental, alveolar or postalveolar, depending on the language. I see no reason to mark the velarized allophone of /l/ because of how predictable its occurrence is.
The vowel in [mɛlk] probably also isn't a perfect cardinal [ɛ], no? What about the velar stop? Can it be preglottalized or perhaps slightly aspirated? If so, that's not a perfect canonical [k] either.
Are there any other edits of mine you'd like to discuss? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:02, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The reason to mark the velarized allophone is because it's pronounced that way in the exact audio, which is also a great example of how Americans in general tend to pronounce /l/. I don't understand the urge to change that. I've just noticed you have a tendency to remove narrow markings that make sense and could be useful. Why can't [ˈpɑɹɾi], for instance, be [ˈpʰɑɹɾi]... which is actually what a listener will hear in the audio? Wolfdog (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Wolfdog: Ok, but what about [ɛ] and [k]?
I don't find it a particularly great example of that. Coda /l/ is velarized by almost all speakers of what you could call Standard English. It's not a marked feature of any accent (in fact, the opposite of that is a marked feature of Welsh and Irish English) and it's allophonic. Plus, you're still assuming that [l] can only denote a 'neutral' lateral approximant without a secondary articulation. It's not true. Besides, why should we only denote the velarization and not the fact that it's apical alveolar? Because the canonical value of IPA ⟨l⟩ can be apical or laminal and dental, alveolar or postalveolar. It's not apical alveolar by definition. Plus, [ɫ] (assuming that this denotes a velarized apical alveolar [l]) isn't the only allophone of /l/, as this consonant can be advanced to the dental position before /θ/ and retracted to the postalveolar place of articulation before /r/. It's also devoiced after onset /p, t, k/.
I write the lateral approximant in [mɛlk] as such because I consider the velarization diacritic to be implied by context, just as the apical diacritic is also implied by context here. In play [pleɪ], the velarized, apical and devoiced diacritics are implied by context as well, whereas in wealth [wɛlθ] the implied diacritics are velarized, laminal and dental. We follow this practice on Australian English phonology, English phonology, Received Pronunciation and other articles. There's no need for a special treatment of a few articles to the exclusion of others.
Similarly, the initial /p/ in party is aspirated by almost all speakers of Standard English. It's the standard allophone of word-initial /p/ and using an actual unaspirated [p] sounds like /b/ to native speakers. You need to differentiate between the two transcriptions. The only signs in [ˈpɑɹɾi] that you could read literally are the first one (the primary stress mark) and the fifth one (the symbol for an alveolar tap). ⟨ɑ⟩ doesn't denote a cardinal [ɑ] but a sound that is more front than that and ⟨i⟩ doesn't denote a cardinal [i] but a sound that is more mid-centralized than that. ⟨ɹ⟩ doesn't denote an alveolar approximant either but a postalveolar or a retroflex one, so ⟨p⟩ in this context denotes an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive. Broad [ˈpɑɹɾi] translates into narrow [ˈpʰɑ̟ɹ̠ɾi̽].
The voiced plosives are in fact typically unaspirated voiceless or partially voiced, so writing [ˈpʰɑɹɾi] for party and [du] (rather than [d̥u]) for do would be inconsistent even when you disregard the other inconsistencies.
This isn't the first time I see an editor say that using the dark l symbol or the aspiration diacritic somehow makes the transcription narrow. We could write milk with the dark l symbol if we talked about velarization. If we wanted to be consistent, we could use narrow transcription in all places - but there's no point in doing that. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 14:29, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You're turning back transcriptions where you feel extra detail is already implied by context, but my argument is let's not assume anything is implied. Why make assumptions when we can be straightforward to readers at all levels of familiarity with IPA? This is a website that anyone can view and edit, not a linguistics library. As for your party argument, I get that you're worried about a slippery slope, but [pʰ] is a general established feature of American English (and even English overall, as you say -- and it is clearly what the speaker is doing in this one particular recording) in the exact same way as [ɫ] -- these are in fact the standard AmE allophones -- whereas [i̽] is a token that you're hearing, more open to subjective different transcriptions based on listener. So, yes, I get that initial /p/ in party is aspirated by almost all speakers of Standard English, yet I'm not getting why that means we should leave out the aspiration diacritic. So what? You think aspiration is assumed so let's leave it out, and I'm saying let's not assume that. Not everyone here is an IPA expert: let's leave it in.
I also think you're missing that I'm saying when we have exact audio recordings, even [ˈpʰɑ̟ɹ̠ɾi] would be perfectly appropriate and acceptable. I never brought up the Western New England English example you keep arguing about, but I guess I will now. That revert just continued to make me aware of how you revert narrowing transcriptions that can be useful: WNEE speakers certainly use a velarized /l/ and I still don't really see how it could hurt to show that. I wonder what other editors think. Wolfdog (talk) 23:31, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I lean towards more narrow transcriptions, even when the phonetic detail conveys predictable allophony, but I do understand the concern about too much detail. Perhaps a good middle ground here would be, outside of immediate discussions of a particular feature (e.g. vowel nasalization, precise vowel height, de-voicedness of lenis stops), we stick to transcribing English with the level of detail we would give it in an IPA for X convention if it were another language we were transcribing for Wikipedia articles. That is, we avoid the level of detail that requires diacritics. Off the top of my head, I imagine that we'd want to indicate predictable vowel length, aspiration, l-velarization, vowel reduction, flapping, and glottalization. I'm sure there's more we could indicate, but we'd want to come to an agreement on it. We can probably get away with avoiding r-coloring of vowels and syllabic vowels consonants, but we'd want to be consistent on how we represent those. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 00:29, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Wolfdog: "Let's not assume anything is implied" is never how the IPA works. All sorts of stuff is implied in most transcriptions; in fact, this is how you transcribe words yourself whenever you don't use fully narrow transcription. This is why I asked whether [ɛ] in milk is a cardinal [ɛ] and whether the final [k] was an actual [k] or a preglottalized [ʔk]. It was a recent revert of yours, so it made sense to me to bring it up (especially since it's relevant to the topic of this discussion). You should read the quotes on User:Nardog.
The voiceless stops /p, t, k/ have many allophones in English, and generally they're most variable in the word-final position. How would you transcribe the word top? [tʰɑp]? If so, that's inconsistent. If you wrote it [tʰɑp̚] that'd be only slightly closer to the most common variant as the citation form varies between [tʰɑp] (perhaps with slight aspiration of the final /p/) and [tʰɑp̚], but when top occurs immediately before a word that begins with a vowel it can no longer be pronounced [tʰɑp̚] but either [tʰɑp] or [tʰɑp͡ʔ] (the final /p/ may be glottaly masked). [tʰɑp͡ʔ] may sound the same as [tʰɑp̚] but it's physically impossible to pronounce an intervocalic unreleased plosive. So, given the fact that final /p, t, k/ are actually more variable than initial /p, t, k/ it only makes sense to use the broad transcription of ⟨p, t, k⟩ for those sounds, so what's the problem of transcribing initial /p, t, k/ with ⟨p, t, k⟩? They're invariably aspirated, so [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] are the only possible allophones.
Narrow transcription of English plosives is just as problematic in the case of RP: the citation form of top is any of the following: [tʰɒp, tʰɒpʰ, tʰɒʔp] (or with affrication instead of aspiration, the vowel is also variable [ɑ ~ ɒ ~ ɒ̝ ~ ɔ̞]), but before a vowel only [tʰɒp, tʰɒpʰ] are possible. So what do we do? We write it [tɒp]. I think we should strive for more or less the same level of narrowness across all articles on English accents and to leave our excessive detail that we probably wouldn't include in articles on the pronunciation of other languages.
Note that speakers who consistently release their final stops don't sound native in American English, so [tʰɑp] can't be said to be a narrow transcription of top.
You're worried that laymen may assume ⟨l⟩ to mean a clear lateral approximant - but that's on them, not on us (or perhaps it's also on us if Wikipedia is actually failing to convey that there are levels of narrowness of phonetic transcription). American /l/ is consistently velarized in all positions, at least in General American, so our readers can always assume [l] to be equal to [lˠ]. In fact, all allophones of /l/ in GA can be defined as velarized lateral approximants, because GA /l/ can be apical or laminal and dental, alveolar or postalveolar, depending on the environment (even though the canonical value of ⟨l⟩ in GA is a velarized apical alveolar lateral approximant).
If we were to also use the ⟨ɫ⟩ in Received Pronunciation, that'd introduce complication to transcription as RP /l/ is dark only before consonants (but not /j/ - another complication) and pauses, so that law, ceiling, million and call up would have to be transcribed with ⟨l⟩ but call and pills would be written with ⟨ɫ⟩. It's better to write [lɔː, siːlɪŋ, mɪljən, kɔːl ʌp, kɔːl, pɪlz] and let the reader figure out which laterals are velarized and which aren't (the rule is very simple, and the fact that General American /l/ is pretty much categorically velarized is even easier to remember). In General South African English call up is [kɔːɫ ʌp] but other words are pronounced the same as in RP. It's simpler to just use ⟨l⟩ for these sounds. Also, younger speakers of RP (but not of General South African English) may vocalize the final /l/ in call and pills, so they should actually be written [k̠ʰɔ̝ːɫ ~ k̠ʰɔ̝ːʊ̯] and [pʰɪ̈ɫz̥ ~ pʰɪ̈ɤ̯z̥] in truly narrow transcription (the /l/ in call up can also be [ɫ] or [ʊ̯] if you put a glottal stop in front of up. So even in RP there's some variability).
It's not our goal to transcribe the recordings but the variety of English in question (I remember that you even argued for transcribing a cot-caught merged pronunciation of water as such in this article). I don't consider [ˈpʰɑ̟ɹ̠ɾi̽] to be an acceptable transcription of party in this context, and by saying that you do you're showing that you need to better differentiate between narrow and broad variants of phonetic transcription. As you said yourself, this isn't a linguistic paper but an encyclopedia.
Also, note that IPA ⟨ɫ⟩ denotes a velarized or pharyngealized lateral (depending on the language), not just a velarized one. American /l/ is rarely (if ever) pharyngeal, so [mɛɫk] isn't really more narrow than [mɛlk], at least in some sense. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 15:18, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks -- Nardog's page is helpful in some ways, though I have to read your above explanation about a million more times to wrap my head around it. I still find it odd that predictable sounds are the ones most left out rather than the ones that can most easily be left in. My study of IPA was that it was indeed largely phonetic and less so that single symbols represent in fact vast allophonic possibilities in phonetic transcription. Anyway, it just seems to be you and me mostly. If people are ever interested in coming up with a standard for American English here on Wikipedia, I'd be happy to help engage in that work. Wolfdog (talk) 15:46, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I for one would be in complete support of Aeusoes1's suggestion for a compromise. In fact, I really was trying to argue for some kind of middle ground too, since I recognize Kbb2 is concerned about a slippery slope. So! As Aeusoes1 said (I think more clearly than I was able to), I'd agree with indicating down to a "predictable" level of detail, and I'd be totally on-board for the specifics suggested: predictable vowel length, aspiration, l-velarization, vowel reduction, flapping, and glottalization. This would cover of course the two features I mentioned above, but not such insane level of detail as the [i̽] token that worried Kbb2. Wolfdog (talk) 11:11, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Side-note: I just noticed/remembered that we already had a discussion in the same vein as this with one Erutuon, Nardog etc. over a year ago titled "Aspiration". Although I just skimmed it (and will need to reread it a couple of times), it did seem there was a general consensus for a middle-ground position -- as Aeusoes1 says, now we'd want to come to an agreement on the details. Kbb2, under "Mr KEBAB", it seemed even you were more shifting towards a compromise position at that time. Erutuon seemed in favor of [pʰ] for both pay and play, whereas you commented I think using [CʰV] with vowels and [CC̥] with consonantal sonorants is a good and necessary compromise. Anyway, I'd love to participate in a discussion on the details we'd want to include. Wolfdog (talk) 11:37, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Aeusoes1: Our IPA for X conventions don't include aspiration and velarization when those aren't phonemic. Flapping is different than that because it's less predictable than aspiration (which in fact is fully predictable, as is velarization), so we should include it. I'd argue that using distinctively fully voiced stops in the citation forms of words such as bad (especially in the case of the final /d/) sounds just as non-native as not aspirating initial /p, t, k/, even though the vowel length is sufficient to differentiate between bad and bat.
By predictable vowel length do you mean simply transcribing the free vowels with ⟨ː⟩, including in phonemic transcription (so that keep is transcribed /kiːp/ and father /ˈfɑːðər/? If so, I fully agree with that.
What exactly do you mean by vowel reduction? /ə/ is widely considered to have phonemic status in English and that's how we treat it here.
I think that NURSE and LETTER should be transcribed as r-colored. Wells (or whoever it was) made an unfortunate decision to treat those as vowels, rather than as syllabic consonantal approximants. Transcriptions such as [ɜːɹ] or [əɹ] are, IMO, bad practice and even LPD and CEPD write those as r-colored, even though their transcriptions are otherwise to a large extent phonemic. The only difference between SQUARE and NURSE/LETTER is that the latter is a syllabic consonant (sometimes pronounced with a slight schwa onglide), whereas the latter is a front vowel followed by a consonant. Transcriptions such as [ɜːɹ] or [əɹ] fail to show that.
If we want to show glottalization then I think that we also want to explicitly denote syllabic consonants, because pronunciations such as [ˈbʌʔən] for button are probably still used by a minority of speakers. Plus, it's a widely accepted practice to explicitly denote optional schwas (or syllabic sonorants, same thing really) in transcription. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 15:18, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Kbb2: Outside of aspiration and velarization, I think we're in broad agreement on most of what you're saying. I think diacritics are the better framework to consider than what would sound non-native or unnatural if it were missing. We should be phonetically precise enough to be accurate, but not so much that we would need combining diacritics on vowels.
I think that indicating aspiration and velarization would be helpful to lay readers. We specialists consider the distribution of aspirated phones to be predictable, but lay readers may not (even if they're native English speakers who produce it). Indicating aspiration is more phonetically accurate and doesn't fall down the trap of too much phonetic detail that we want to avoid.
Velarization is only predictable within a given dialect, and a reader shouldn't be expected to know it. I think we wouldn't want to indicate velarization only if we don't think we could provide consistent accuracy in transcriptions. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 21:15, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I, of course, still agree will Aeusoes1's points. I am and have been concerned with lay readers. As long as we come to some common agreement, we can practically transcribe American English however we want within IPA parameters. Wolfdog (talk) 13:45, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so we add aspiration, length marks, remove the rhotacized diacritic and write NURSE with [ɜːɹ] and LETTER with [əɹ] and transcribe the dark l's. Would everyone be happy with that? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:20, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That all sounds good to me... I think, ha. Can I just get three clarifications, Kbb2? See below:

  1. We're talking about coming to an agreement on what basic level of narrow transcription to use across all articles falling under American English, correct?
  2. Can you remind me what we're meaning here by predictability of length marks (which is non-phonemic but still fairly predictable in AmE)? i.e., Are we talking about, for example, where lengthening tends to happen in AmE before voiced consonants but not before voiceless ones? That use of length marks? In the articles you've edited so far, I think you've been simply aligning the length marks to the BrE style; is there a reason to do this for AmE?
  3. Kbb2, I thought you would prefer something like [ɚ] to represent NURSE and lettER rather than [ɜːɹ] and [əɹ], no? (Though I do love your use of the inverted "R": [ɹ].)

Wolfdog (talk) 12:21, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am in favor of showing aspiration and velarization, but I second Wolfdog's request for clarification about length marks, and prefer transcribing both nurse and letter as an r-colored schwa [ɚ]. — Eru·tuon 19:50, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Kbb2, can you clarify? Wolfdog (talk) 19:06, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so I propose GenAm transcription should include these features (some of which are being newly proposed, I think):
  • /l/ is transcribed in all environments as [ɫ]
  • /r/ is transcribed in all environments as [ɹ]
  • Both NURSE and lettER are transcribed in all environments as [əɹ]
  • Aspiration is shown in appropriate environments; e.g., popping as [ˈpʰɑpɪŋ]
  • /æ/ is transcribed before /m/ and /n/ as [ɛə]
  • /t/ is transcribed in appropriate, highly predictable environments as [ʔ]; e.g. catfish as [kʰæʔfɪʃ]
  • /t/ and /d/ are transcribed in appropriate, highly predictable environments as [ɾ]; e.g. rating [ˈɹeɪɾɪŋ] (though some words, like skeletal, appear to vary more greatly: [ˈskɛɫətʰəɫ] or [ˈskɛɫəɾəɫ])
There may be others features to delineate, like the inclusion or exclusion of length marks; I personally feel this is a minor element of AmE, trivial for GenAm, but we can discuss. Thanks, all. Wolfdog (talk) 20:10, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
GenAm has dark l in all contexts?! — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 20:08, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Have you seen the bullet on L-velarization under "Consonants"? Wolfdog (talk) 13:06, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean. That looks very suspect and runs contrary to what I've seen in general about GA. I'll have to dig into the matter, but based on what I know so far, I wouldn't be in favor of velarizing l in all contexts, just in the syllable coda. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 19:35, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's a prominent feature of Received Pronunciation (and I guess many accents in England) that l is noticeably less velarized in certain positions than in General American or Australian. It's one feature that I have occasionally noticed in British actors who are using an American accent: they failed to sufficiently velarize their syllable-initial l, giving an odd sort of Irish quality to certain words (sometimes mixed with incongruous features like r-dropping). In my own speech the main contrast between initial and final l seems to be that the final l is somewhat more velarized and the tongue often doesn't touch the teeth or alveolar ridge (l-vocalization). — Eru·tuon 21:41, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with every one of Erutuon's above sentiments and have made similar observations myself. There may be slight articulatory differences between initial and final /l/ in AmE, but they're both still fairly velar. John C. Wells' Accents of English (Volume 3) says "GenerAm /l/ tends to be rather dark. Before stressed vowels it is neutral or only slightly velarized; preconsonantally and finally definitely dark (velarized)" (490). So... I'd still err on the side of showing velarization in all cases for our broad GenAm transcription. Certainly, as Erutuon suggests, if someone pronounced a perfectly clear initial /l/ and a perfectly dark initial /l/, only the first could sound to my ears like a non-American (or perhaps Spanish-influenced American) dialect. Even the darkest pronunciation of an initial /l/ would fly completely under my radar. Wolfdog (talk) 13:40, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it seems like the onset-coda allophony present in RP is echoed in GA, except that onset /l/ can have a slight degree of velarization. But that varies from speaker to speaker. Transcribing all of these as dark would make our transcriptions more opaque by eliminating any representation of this allophony and implying that GA is like Scottish English, which has noticeably dark /l/s in all position. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 14:35, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I guess we just disagree then. Wells is saying that velarization is basically everywhere in GenAm and only differs from one context to another by degree. I think the "echoing" or light/dark allophonic distinction in GenAm is insignificant (probably even absent in some AmE speakers... I certainly don't hear it in my own conscious speech). Every American /l/ is dark compared with RP, as confirmed by Erutuon when noticing some British actors' /l/ pronunciations still sounding wrong when attempting American accents. What Erutuon is presumably noticing is a clear /l/ in non-coda positions when listening to these actors. Americans don't have any clear /l/. Wolfdog (talk) 16:40, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The quote you've provided indicates that Wells believes it to be "slight velarization." The difference between slight velarization and velarization is not insignificant and Wells demonstrates he sees these two as different elsewhere in Accents of English, when he says (p. 74):

"In RP, GenAm, and many other accents two perceptibly different allophones may be distinguished, clear and dark. The details of the environment in which the dark allophone is used vary, however: thus intervocalically, as in silly, RP uses clear /l/, thus [ˈsɪlɪ], while GenAm uses dark, thus [ˈsɪɫɪ]. In this word, as in others where /l/ is intervocalic (valley, yellow, column), RP thus sides with Irish English against GenAm; compare words such as belt, milk, halt, where RP and GenAm agree in having dark /l/, but Irish English uses a clear variety."

The use of a dark l in additional phonetic contexts may help account for Erutuon's perception of noticeably darker l's in American English that are clear in RP. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:23, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Would you be in favor then of transcribing GenAm lilly as [ˈlɪɫi]? Wolfdog (talk) 18:04, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I would. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:25, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do we know how this allophony for /l/ works postconsonantally in GenAm? For instance, is the /l/ in /fl/ clearer than the /l/ in /gl/ due to voiced/voiceless reasons? Wolfdog (talk) 16:51, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Probably. My guess is that the differences are slight and the general tendency is how Wells describes it. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 03:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another source that suggests "General American /l/ is velarized in all positions" (though I admit the sentence doesn't seem to make grammatical sense to me). And this source says (see under the section "Velarized alveolar lateral) that a velarized /l/ is used "in most Northern varieties of American English" which I take to mean non-Southern (including GenAm) varieties. Another source confirms (per my allophonic distinction question) that American dark /l/ appears strongest in both postvocalic and intervocalic positions, so it works for me too that we represent it that way. Wolfdog (talk) 14:41, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm interested in the Kbb2's proposal to change the transcription of the NURSE vowel to a syllabic consonant, presumably [ɹ̥]. Does anyone know of a published transcription that does this? — Marquetry28 (talk) 06:53, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a strong preference in any direction, but I notice sources that use [ɚː] here or [ɚ] here. I do see one use of syllabic [ɹ] here, which happens to be discussing Canadian English but which could just as easily be discussing GenAm, I suppose. Wolfdog (talk) 14:41, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Old vowel chart

When I first read this article, I found two vowel charts. The first was a graph of vowels for GA speakers without the cot-caught merger; the second, with. Apparently the one for speakers with the cot-caught merger was deleted, along with the reference to the source from which it came. Why was it removed? AnUnnamedUser (talk) 02:24, 21 July 2019 (UTC)AnUnnamedUser (talk) 02:24, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@AnUnnamedUser: (We're talking about this chart, which originally was uploaded as [1]) It's not useful. The article already explains that the merger is a possibility and how it works. No vowel chart on Wikipedia (maybe with one or two exceptions) covers all of the allophones of any given phoneme.
This chart, which is how the source used to depict (it's been deleted) the vowels of AmE, isn't 100% correct: /u/ is too back, /ɪ/ too front, /ɛ/ too high and [ɚ] could be too low (I think it should be close-mid, like Australian NURSE). Whether we choose this one or the Wells's one would be arbitrary, except for the fact that the latter is based on a more reliable source that actually exists.
Besides, one of your edit summaries reads Kbb2, I think you accidentally deleted the reference for the proper chart with the vowels for GenAm with the low back merger instead of the one without it. Why would I remove Wells's chart and what's "improper" about it? I've demonstrated that the monophthong chart from that Australian source is just as flawed if not more so.
The source itself has deleted the chart with the cot-caught merger, along with the New Zealand English charts and the RP ones. The RP ones are roughly the same as the ones in Received Pronunciation. The NZE ones are clearly unreliable (/e/ is too low, /ɵː/ is too close to /ʉː/, the ending point of /æʊ/ is wrong and so is the starting point of /ɐʉ/), and so is the diphthong chart of cot-caught-merged AmE (the starting point of /eɪ/ is too low, the starting points of /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ too high and the starting point of /oʊ/ is probably too low and/or not central enough (it should be [ɵʊ] or something like that). Wells's diphthong chart looks more correct and less chaotic. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 06:39, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2 August 2019

General American → General American English – (edited) The phrase General American will be meaningless to most readers until they click the link to the article and begin reading. Article titles should be natural and recognizable for the non-specialist reader, which generally includes using nouns or noun phrases. American as a noun for the language is fairly uncommon in normal usage; see Google Ngram, for instance. (Yes, I'm aware of the 2005 PBS series; it seems obvious that the title was meant to be attention-getting and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, rather than refecting normal usage.) Insofar as General American is used in academia, it's specialist jargon that should be clarified. This is consistent with other pages in Category:American English, such as Southern American English, Western American English, New England English, Inland Northern American English, Appalachian English, etc. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:11, 2 August 2019 (UTC) --Relisting. Dicklyon (talk) 02:05, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(Addendum) See this list of sources that use General American English for the linguistic variety GBooks search results for General American English. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 06:09, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: A walk through our five criteria for deciding on an article title:

1. Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.
  • The current title is certainly a name that I—being someone familiar with the subject area—recognize. As I said above, I would hesitate and not be sure if an article entitled General American English deals with the same subject.
2. Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.
  • As I write this, General American had 17,268 page views in the past 30 days, General American English had 295. So it seems that the majority of Wikipedia users did not come here via the latter page. And our subject is actually called General American in English, not only in specialized literature, but also in leading English dictionaries such as Webster's and the OED.
3. Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.
  • General American seems to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
4. Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
  • General American is shorter than General American English, which would be longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
5. Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles.
  • General American is consistent with the naming pattern of page titles such as General Australian and General British, which also refer to accents of English that are used nationwide.

Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 07:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the current title is "ambiguous" – that's what I said. The proposed move removes the ambiguity. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:47, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Mouton-de Gruyter. p. 263. ISBN 978-3-11-016746-7.
  2. ^ Van Riper, William R. (1986). "General American: An Ambiguity". In Allen, Harold B.; Linn, Michael D. (eds.). Dialect and Language Variation. Academic Press. p. 123. ISBN 978-1-4832-9476-6.
  3. ^ Quote: "[S]peakers of General American English include an /r/ in both blur and doctor. This is a syllabic /r/, or an /r/ which takes the place of the vowel. In General American dialect, the words are pronounced..."
  4. ^ Ambiguity as used here is unrelated to whether a title requires disambiguation pages on the English Wikipedia. For example, "heart attack" is an ambiguous title, because the term can refer to multiple medical conditions, including cardiac arrest and myocardial infarction.
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