Arkansas 24

Listen to Arkansas 24, an 85-year-old man from Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 85

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/05/1934

PLACE OF BIRTH: Fayetteville, Arkansas

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white (non-Latino)

OCCUPATION: part-time student, part-time faculty

EDUCATION:

The subject has a MSChE from the University of Arkansas and two more years of graduate study at the University of Michigan. “Being in the USAF [United States Air Force], I was never able to take the time to do a dissertation,” he says, “but I have 40 refereed publications.”

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

He served in the U.S. Air Force for 28 years, so he lived in several states and countries for short periods of time.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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): 21/01/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I started at the University of Arkansas in kindergarten in the summer of 1940. Uh, at the time, my father was a high school agriculture teacher in Des Arc in Prairie County, Arkansas. But we spent the summers in Fayetteville, and he’d, buh, go to graduate classes at the time. S-so I was enrolled in kindergarten in Peabody Hall. And that worked out good because we were staying at my grandmother’s, and she lived on Leverett Street, a block and half to the, uh, north of the campus. Only thing that I had to do that required any great skill was to cross Maple Street. But the first day of kindergarten, they decided to give me a mathematics entrance exam. They didn’t tell me that was what they were gonna do. They and, uh, uh, and they was a, uh, young lady who was getting a bachelor’s degree in education, was gonna be a school marm. She was probably a junior or a senior.

She handed me a rubber ball, and she said, “I want you to bounce this rubber ball, and I want you to count. And when you get as far as you can count, then you can quit bouncing.”

Well, she didn’t know it, but I could’ve counted farther than she could. I was good at counting. But I was pretty poor at bouncing balls. So I took that ball in my hand, and I threw it down, and it bounced up, and I missed it. So that was “one,” and I stopped.

She tried every trick in her bag of tricks to get me to count farther. But I had heard her instructions to begin with: “Count as many as you bounce it.” And I wasn’t about to have those instructions changed just because I couldn’t catch the ball.

So after a while, she decided that was not really my great skill, and I think she put me down as deficient in mathematics. Took me to another room and tried to get me to do some finger-painting. I wasn’t particularly interested in finger-painting, and I was still kinda annoyed about the my inability to catch the bouncing ball. But I was stuck in that room with my blue finger paint and a piece of paper. And I didn’t think I was ever gonna get out of there until I developed the very clever idea: If I have no finger paint, then they won’t make me paint. So I ate the blue finger paint.

I got to take a note home with me. What this young lady tried to explain to my mother what had happened, and she says, “I don’t think the blue finger paint will do him any harm, but it might cause his stool to be blue.” And that was my introduction to the University of Arkansas in the summer of 1940.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/01/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Subject rounds lips slightly on the short vowel /ɒ/ (LOT), sometimes /ɑ/ (PALM) in common American usage, creating the vowel /ɔ/ (THOUGHT) (strong, cloth, dog, cross, Arkansas). Words that begin with a bilabial continuant, /m/ and /n/, and also have the /r/ consonant in the medial position, drop all other vowels (nearer, Mary, mirror). Ending /i/ (FLEECE) vowels, when they are in the final position of a word, become an unstressed /e/ (DRESS) (hurry, forty, pretty, very, me). And /r/ consonant is inserted in a medial position of the word, “wash.”

The subject drops the final /d/ consonant in the words “old” and “hand.” The stressed /e/(DRESS) vowel becomes /eɪ/ (FACE) in the word “measure.” A schwa /ə/ (COMMA) precedes long vowels /u/ (GOOSE) and /i/(FLEECE) (teacher, to, room). The /u/ (GOOSE) vowel becomes a schwa /ə/ (COMMA) when the word “you” is unstressed. The /æ/ (TRAP) lengthens, suggesting /eɪ/ (FACE) in the word “bag.” Subject drops the first /t/ and the second /e/ (DRESS) vowel in the word “interested.”

The /aɪ/ (PRICE) often loses its second vowel before voiced and unvoiced consonants (I, fine, time, wiped, required, implied). Ending /g/ drops in the word “calling.” Ending /oʊ/ (GOAT) becomes the schwa /ə/ (COMMA) in the word “yellow.” The /t/ sound in the word “Fayetteville” can drop altogether.

Note the pronunciation of the town of Des Arc.

COMMENTARY BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/01/2020

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