6

This question is related, but not quite identical, to a previous one and to another similar one.

In a recent video, phonetician Geoff Lindsey claimed that the words "off" and "on" do not have weak forms; see his previous video on weak forms for some background.

I claim that this is wrong, and that in fact some speakers (including myself) do reduce "on" to something like [?n] or [?n] or just [n], with the vowel sound absent or barely perceptible. Here are some examples on YouTube (found via YouGlish), though you will likely need to reduce the playback speed to make it more obvious:

I don't think it's a coincidence that Geoff Lindsey is British, and that all of these speakers are (as far as I can tell) speaking American English. Geoff Lindsey does mention that weak forms may differ among accents, though he doesn't mention any exceptions in his discussion of "off" and "on." Presumably this isn't universal; it's probably also limited to cases where "on" can't be confused with "in" or "and."

Am I hearing these examples correctly? Is this indeed evidence for a weak form on "on," contra Geoff Lindsey? Is weakening "on" more common or acceptable in American English than in British English?

Improve this question
18
  • 1
    Your clips certainly sound a little odd to me, as a BrE speaker.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 9:16
  • 3
    @KateBunting Interesting! I think the phrase "the guy on the phone" is the best example for me; when I say that out loud, the "on" is just [n].
    – alphabet
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 13:05
  • 2
    Some sound natural and unremarkable to me; a few rather sound like they belong to specific accents.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 16:02
  • 6
    In American English, all monosyllabic prepositions have a vast range of "weakening", ranging from odd vowels, loss of consonants, centralization to schwa, or a grunt, or a modified following consonant, or complete deletion. Nobody always pronounces them the same, and different people have different habits. You need a sociological dialect survey with phonetic, locational, economic, and social parameters to answer a question like this. Plus spectrograms, and statistics. It's very expensive, but nobody really wants to find out.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 22:26
  • 3
    @alphabet Much of linguistics is formal and doesn't deal with real variation or phonetic data. A formalist is usually defining binary distinctions instead of multivariate systems. And linguists do argue, especially about Official Designations, which are sort of like academic gang colors.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 23:10

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.