Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 August 21

= August 21 =

Trisyllabic laxing
Anyone know of an example for the school → scholar shift? In our article I moved that pair to a section on disyllabic laxing, but now we lack an example for trisyllabic. — kwami (talk) 22:35, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * line → linear? or else incline → inclination?  --Lambiam 01:43, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I meant for /uː/ ~ /ɒ/, as is lose ~ lost. I can't think of any which fit the trisyllabic pattern, and the fact that published descriptions keep using 'scholarly' (which is a trivial derivative of disyllabic 'scholar') suggests that perhaps there aren't any. — kwami (talk) 04:57, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Goose, gosling? Bazza (talk) 08:11, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's about tri-syllabic laxing, the /ɒ/ should be contained in the third-to-last syllable. --Theurgist (talk) 08:44, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Something new to learn! Bazza (talk) 08:55, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

True, but goose ~ gosling is an excellent example of disyllabic laxing. School ~ scholar is likely two distinct loan words, whereas goose ~ gosling are cognates, so I'm changing the example. (Still looking for a trisyllabic example, though.) — kwami (talk) 09:44, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's made my day :-), but I may still be learning how this works. introduce ~ introductory (or the repro- equivalents) has the wrong lax vowel (ʌ) for your request, but is not included as (uː→ʌ) in the table in the article. Does this mean it's not an example of trisyllabic laxing? Bazza (talk) 12:17, 22 August 2020 (UTC)


 * A Greco-Latin written "o" vowel letter does not commonly become pronounced as a vowel sound [u:] except under unusual circumstances ("school" an early loanword not borrowed through French, "zoo" a spelling pronunciation of an abbreviation), so the odds would seem to be against you... AnonMoos (talk) 12:30, 22 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Examples of failed /uː/ ~ /ɒ/ laxing (trisyllabic constipation?): nude ~ nudity; fume ~ fumigate; fury ~ furious. --Lambiam 15:54, 22 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Lambiam -- Those words all have or had (depending on which English dialect) a [ju:] pronounciation (not simple [u:]) and are spelled with the letter "u", and so are not too relevant to the issue under discussion... AnonMoos (talk) 19:53, 22 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Another tempting but wrong case is prove ~ providence. Unfortunately, they're not even cognate. I don't think you're going to find an example of trisyllabic laxing (as opposed to other processes) for the reason AnonMoos gave. --ColinFine (talk) 20:06, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I found a source that this is no longer a productive alternation, so I think I'll just leave it at that. — kwami (talk) 22:41, 22 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Lose to Lost clearly isn't an example; the o in lost has the darker sound of caught, not the short o sound of cot. Georgia guy (talk) 23:37, 22 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Depends on your variant of English's adherence to the cot–caught merger. In my own, the "o" in "cot" and "lost" is nice and short. Bazza (talk) 08:20, 23 August 2020 (UTC)