I found myself being just a tiny bit querulous when commenting on a posting in Language Log<\/a>. […]<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In reply Mark Liberman, the usually very knowledgeable writer of the post in question, said just <\/span><\/p>\n Short answer: I don't know. I've never heard a discussion of this point of pronunciation variation, except with respect to the varieties of English that have [w\u026af] or [w\u026av].<\/span><\/p>\n There followed a string of commentators reporting what they said or what this or that dictionary reported.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Finally I felt I must chip in:<\/span><\/p>\n Doesn't anyone ever consult my Longman Pronunciation Dictionary? There you will find both preference statistics and graphs for\u00a0w\u026a\u03b8<\/strong> and\u00a0w\u026a\u00f0<\/strong>in both American and British English. Also a note mentioning that \"in Britain,\u00a0w\u026a\u03b8<\/strong> is nevertheless frequent in Scotland\" – again, with statistics. I suppose the problem is in the phrase \u201cfinding it online\u201d.<\/span>People now no longer look for information in books, or in libraries: they expect to be able to locate it in in Wikipedia or via Google. They don\u2019t want the inconvenience and expense of buying a book or locating the book in a library. <\/span><\/p>\n So the only way I can reasonably expect to disseminate the research I carried out into whether people prefer w\u026a\u03b8 or w\u026a\u00f0 is indeed to put it online, which I shall now proceed to do, Here\u2019s the entry for with from LPD.<\/span><\/p>\n In my defense, I will note that my little \"How to pronounce with<\/em><\/a>\" post was written in haste as I was about to head out to the airport to fly to Amsterdam (ironically, for a committee meeting to discuss plans for a conference on \"Patterns of macro- and micro-diversity in the languages of Europe and the Middle East\"). I do own a copy of LPD, but frankly I'm not sure which of 15-20 bookcases in which of several places it's in, and I didn't have time to look for it. So I worked from (as it turns out not very well informed) memory, and from those resources I could quickly find online.<\/p>\n And wouldn't it be nice if LPD were online? Pearson now owns Longman, I believe — they've got the expertise to do it easily, and the marketing muscle to monetize it. But maybe not richly enough, I don't know…<\/p>\n Anyhow, I had a spare hour today in Amsterdam, and I happen to have the TIMIT database<\/a> on my laptop, so I thought I'd take a look at what it tells us about American pronunciations of with<\/em> in various contexts, at least as of the time it was recorded (circa 1986).<\/p>\n Some results were not very surprising. Thus in 21 repetitions (7 each) of three sentences where with<\/em> was followed by a<\/em> or an<\/em>, \u00a0there were 6 instances of voiced with<\/em>, for 6\/21 = 28.6% voiced with<\/em>. (The sentences that I checked were \"Seamstresses attach zippers with a thimble, needle, and thread\", \"The misquote was retracted with an apology\", and \"Remove the splinter with a pair of tweezers\".)<\/p>\n In 28 repetitions (7 each) of four sentences where with<\/em> was followed by a vowel-initial content word, there were 9 instances of voiced with<\/em>, for 9\/28 = 32.1% voiced with<\/em>. (These sentences were \"Cooperation along with understanding alleviate dispute\" [sic], \"Cory attacked the project with extra determination\", \"Etiquette mandates compliance with existing regulations\", and \"The local drugstore was charged with illegally dispensing tranquilizers\".)<\/p>\n In these examples, the voiced intervals may look something like this:<\/p>\n Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here<\/a>. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWhy do I bother, if no one reads what I write?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/JohnWellsWith.png\")
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