Arkansas 29

Listen to Arkansas 29, a 69-year-old woman from Huntsville, Arkansas, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 69

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/05/1950

PLACE OF BIRTH: Fayetteville, Arkansas, but grew up in Huntsville

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: retired English teacher

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree in education

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: none

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject’s parents and all four grandparents were from Arkansas and lived in the area.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/02/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

In the sixties, my grandmother and I were spending the afternoon together, and she said, “I really need to tell someone something, and while I already told your grandfather, that was not satisfactory to me. I really need to tell someone su-, about something that happened.”

She said, “I was out on the front porch, and a large object, which I could hear, lowered itself into the field near our home and hovered there,” she said. She went on to say she thought she was having a spell of some kind, which she never did because she was a very, uh, rational, down-to-earth human being. And she was concerned about her sanity, I believe. But she described this large object and its color and its lights and its sound and its hovering there.

Unfortunately, that was in the sixties, and I forgotten all the details of those things. But what I most remember was that she said, “Your grandfather, of course, did not believe me and interrogated me about that incident. Every time he did, I told the story a little bit differently because that’s how memory works when you take the story out the second or third or fourth or fifth time. You tweak it a little, and now I am starting to doubt myself, although I know I saw something, and it was real.”

As I said, my grandmother was a really no-nonsense kind of a woman, and I never doubted her story. But I wish I could remember it better, and I guess I really wish she were here to tell it to me again the way she saw it and the way she remembered it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/02/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

/r/ is pronounced and slightly lengthened. The vowel /e/ (DRESS) can become /ɪ/ (KIT) (then, when, object, remembered). Beginning /hw/ is pronounced (while, which). The /u/ vowel (GOOSE) is hit rather hard (duke).

The /aɪ/ diphthong (PRICE) monophtongizes, reducing the diphthong to /a/ (kind, lights, liking, fire). The /eɪ/ (FACE) diphthong, with a slightly lowered tongue, becomes /aɪ/ (PRICE) (daily, plain, ate, made face, say, way).

The /ʌ/ (STRUT) vowel sometimes replaces the first vowel in the /oʊ/ (GOAT) diphthong (so, bowl, no time) or the second vowel in the diphthong drops (owner). A schwa /ə/ (COMMA) can precede the vowel /i/ (FLEECE) (things, me, believe). Lastly, notice the pronunciation of “veterinary.”

COMMENTARY BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/02/2020

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