/l/ environments in English and Introductory Phonology by Bruce Hayes

Question

Note: I am on my phone, so linguistic symbols are not intuitive to type, so I typed out phone names in prose

Hello, apologies if this is a dumb question, but I'm reading through Bruce Hayes' "Introductory Phonology", and he provides an example of complementary distribution of the allophones of English /l/; he provides four allophones for analysis: l, velarized l, [voiced l followed by voiceless release] and [velarized l with dental articulation]. He posits that these allophones, being in complementary distribution, are realized in unique environments: [voiced l followed by voiceless release]: after voiceless C [velarized l with dental articulation]: before interdental C Im a footnote, he adds that word-final and after voiceless C are environments that DO NOT overlap since English has no words which end in a voiceless consonant followed by a word-final /l/. However, what of words like "apple" or "tackle", which I understand to be [æp(velarized syllabic l)] and [t^hæk(velarized syllabic l)]?

These words seem to put /l/ word finally AND after a voiceless consonant. Is this due to a light unstressed [ə] prior to the /l/ which prevents the environments from overlapping? Is Hayes' claim an oversimplification? Does it have anything to do with the syllabic nature of /l/ in these environments? Or perhaps rule ordering? Any assistance appreciated!

Answer 1

The transcription of English words in the profession is extremely variable, because we don't agree on how narrow to transcribe. If you look at the transcriptions of English that he uses, he does not transcribe syllabic sonorants for reduced VR syllables in English, and in "dreadful, crucible" on p. 44 he writes syllabic l with [əl], not [l̩]. With respect to his transcriptions, the claim is probably not an oversimplification, and it is due to the supposed schwa in words like apple, crucible. I would not transcribe those words with [əl], but I speak a mildly different dialect, so I would accept that as a correct statement about his pronunciation.

An alternative is that he also actually says [æpl̩], and this illustrates the point that a phonetic transcription is always a work in progress, if you are trying to provide a narrow transcription. I assume (as many people do) that syllabic sonorants in English derive from reduction of əR sequences, so the proffered generalization could be correct at that point, but then there is further reduction, which messes up the generalization. The underlying question is, or should be, what are his generalizations generalizations about? Actual pronunciation?

What Hayes does not talk about (and at the level of introductory textbooks, this is universal) is that there are two things mushed together under the rubric "allophone". One is where you have a true phonological rule which categorically changes one sound ("set of distinctive features") into another categorically distinct one (flapping is an example). And, there is also phonetic implementation, where a physical feature of a segment is realized continuously within a range. For example, the amount of nasal air flow in English words like "rant" varies from speaker to speaker and context to context. In that case, we are filling in values of a physical parameter for a single unit, not selecting between units. There is reason to believe that, in fact, pronunciation of /l/ is so variable that some of it should be treated in continuous phonetic terms. Specifically, ostensive devoicing of /l/ is actually the result of overlap of glottis spreading from the preceding consonant and a following sonorant (it's just more salient in the case of /l/ because of the spit that [ɬ] generates). L-darkening is a well-known rule that applies "to a degree".

Answer 2

There are two theories of how words like "apple" work in English. One says that there's a syllabic consonant: /æ.pl̩/. The other says that there's an underlying schwa, /æ.pəl/, and a phonological rule that turns resonants syllabic between schwa and a syllable boundary.

In this case, Hayes is using the theory with the schwa, and saying that the syllabic [l̩] is a phonetic detail, not a phonological one. In other words, "apple" is /æ.pəl/ [æ.pl̩]. With these assumptions in place, it is indeed true that you can never have a voiced consonant immediately preceding /l/.