Pre-tonic /ʌɪ/ ∼ /ɨ/-variation in Contemporary English

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article is concerned with the question of why the pre-tonic /ʌɪ/ of a word such as biology never changes to /ə/ or /ɪ/, whereas the pre-tonic /ʌɪ/ of a word such as direct often monophthongizes to a qualitatively reduced vowel. That is, b/ʌɪˈ/ology vs. d/ʌɪˈ/rect ∼ d/ɪˈ/rect or d/əˈ/rect. It is argued that in general, pronunciations with /əˈ/ or /ɪˈ/ are more rhythmic than unreduced pronunciations with /ʌɪˈ/, which might count for an English speaker as a stress clash (i.e., /ˌʌɪˈ/). However, in the case of some words, the reduction of pre-tonic /ʌɪ/ is inhibited by (1) structure preservation in word-formation (e.g., /ˈʌɪ/rony → /ʌɪˈ/ronic); (2) the existence of an alternative stress pattern such as ˈmigrate, with primary stress occurring upon the diphthong /ʌɪ/ itself (rather than upon the syllable immediately following it); and (3) orthography, which means that in the case of some orthographic combinations/individual letters (e.g., ai of Nairobi, a of Naomi), the diphthong /ʌɪ/ makes more sense than the short monophthongs /ə/ or /ɪ/. In few cases (e.g., Italic languages vs. italic characters), there are also semantic reasons to prefer a reduced vowel in one environment vs. the diphthong /ʌɪ/ in a different environment.