Groggy Linguistics

[winterkoninkje]

I'm sick. I shouldn't be online. But just wanted to prattle on about a thing that'd take too long on twitter. A day or two ago I came across a linguist being cited somewhere in some article about celebrity couple name blends. In it they noted how certain syllables like "klol" and "prar" are forbidden in English. They phrased the restriction as forbidding CRVR (where C means a consonant, R means a liquid/sonorant —I forget how they phrased it—, and V a vowel).

There's something of merit going on here, but the specifics are far more complicated. Note that "slur" is perfectly acceptable. So, well maybe it's just that the C has to be a plosive. But then, "blur" is perfectly fine too. So, well maybe it's something special about how "-ur" forms a stand-alone rhotic vowel. But then "trill" and "drill" are just fine. So, well maybe...

Comments

[chrisamaphone]

could it be just when the two liquids are the *same one*? "dreary" is the only counterexample i can think of...

[chrisamaphone]

"flailing"... although both of these are separated by diphthongs, not pure vowels, so maybe they don't count..

[winterkoninkje]

::awake now, and feeling a bit better::

Yeah, I think it has something to do with them being the same one on both sides, but "flail" is a great counterexample to that. I'd only come up with examples that lack the consonant ("li'l", "lull", "loll", "rare", "rear", "roar"...). Of course, "flail" uses a fricative rather than a stop, so that seems to also be part of it.

The diphthongs might be important. Though, —at least in my dialect— "dreary" doesn't have one (I pronounce it as /driri/ with the same vowel as in "see/sea", "seem/seam", "meet/meat",...). The bigger thing about "dreary" is which syllable(s) the second "r" belongs to; if it's "drea-ry" then it doesn't count. (I pronounce it as "drear-ry", so that should be fine; though it raises the question of whether the syllable is allowed when the following syllable doesn't begin with the same consonant.)

[geekosaur]

It occurs to me that it could also be that shorter vowels are forbidden but long vowels are enough to break it up; "flail" having /ā/ in that position, the examples having /ŏ/ and /ä/ (or possibly /ə/ depending on dialect?).

[winterkoninkje]

In my dialect/idiolect "roar" /rɔ˞/ isn't long, but then there's the issue about the rhotic vowels vs a properly consonantal sound. I also wouldn't describe "rare" /rer/ as being long (though it is tense). I probably would call "rear" /rir/ long, though I don't know whether length is really the important factor (or if it's just an effect of the vowel quality). But yeah, if the diphthongs matter, it's definitely because they give enough "space" between the identical liquids. I could even imagine a lengthening process that converts monophthongs into diphthongs in this context (assuming diphthongs matter in the first place).

I just thought of another one: "drawer" which in my dialect is the single syllable /drɔ˞/ (becoming [ʤrɔ˞] via standard assimilation of TR clusters).