Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/236

 upon American phonology to be published, and shows very careful observation and much good sense. Unluckily, Krapp finds it extremely difficult, like all other phonologists, to represent the sounds that he deals with by symbols. He uses, for example, exactly the same symbol to indicate the a-sound in cab and the a-sound in bad, though the fact that they differ must be obvious to everyone. In the same way he grows a bit vague when he tries to represent the compromise a-sound which lies somewhere between the a of father and the a of bad. "It is heard…chiefly," he says, "in somewhat conscious and academic speech," as a compromise between the former, "which is rejected as being too broad," and the latter, "which is rejected as being too narrow or flat." This compromise a, he says, "is cultivated in words with a, sometimes au, before a voiceless continuant, or before a nasal followed by a voiceless stop or continuant, as in grass, half, laugh, path (also before a voiced continuant, as in paths, calves, halves, baths, when the voiced form is a variant, usually the plural, of a head form with a voiceless sound), aunt, branch, can't, dance, fancy, France, shan't, etc." Krapp says that this a-sound is commonly an affectation, save in New England, and, as we have seen, it originated as an affectation even there. The flat a, on the contrary, is "widely distributed over the whole country," and may be regarded as the normal American a. Krapp notes "the purist tendency to condemn [the flat a]" and goes on:

The result has been to give to [the compromise a] extraordinary dictionary and academic prestige in the face of a strongly opposing popular usage. The reasons for this are several: first, that standard British speech and some forms of New England speech have [a broad a] in the words in question; second, that New England has exerted, and to some extent continues to exert, a strong influence upon formal instruction and upon notions of cultivation and refinement throughout the country; and third, that [the flat a] is often prolonged, or drawled, and nasalized in a way that makes it seem not merely American, but provincially American. To steer between the Scylla of provincialism and the Charybdis of affectation and snobbishness, many conscientious speakers in America cultivate [the compromise a]. The writer has tested this sound on many different groups of speakers from various sections of the country, and has never found one who used the sound who did not do so with a certain degree of self-consciousness. If the cult of this sound continues long enough, it may in time come to be a natural and established sound in the language. In the meantime, it seems a pity that so much effort and so much time in instruction