英語短-A語音史
/æ/ 拉緊式 > Phonemic /æ/ tensing in the Mid-Atlantic United States

In Baltimore, Philadelphia and metropolitan New York, the tense /eə/ is a separate phoneme from /æ/ (in Labovian linguistic variable notation, the phonemes are represented as (aeh) and (ae) respectively), since certain minimal pairs can be found:
can /keən/ 'metal container' vs. can /kæn/ 'be able'
halve /heəv/ vs. have /hæv/
In these accents there has thus been a phonemic split. Nevertheless, the distribution between /æ/ and /eə/ is largely predictable in the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York regions: In Philadelphia and Baltimore, tense [eə] occurs in closed syllables before the /n/, /m/, /f/, /θ/, and /s/, as well as the words mad, bad, and glad. In New York, tensing occurs in all those environments as well as before voiced stops and /ʃ/. Lax [æ] usually occurs before /ŋ/, /l/, and voiceless stops, and also usually occurs in open syllables regardless of the following consonant.  The word avenue normally has tense [eə] (unlike average, etc.).
In Philadelphia, tensing in some lexical items before /l/ and nontautosyllabic nasals has been reported.
| Tense [eə] | Tense [eə] | Lax [æ] | Lax [æ] |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| man | [meən] | hang | [hæŋ] |
| ham | [heəm] | pal | [pæl] |
| laugh | [leəf] | lap | [læp] |
| bath | [beəθ] | bat | [bæt] |
| pass | [peəs] | passage | [ˈpæsɪdʒ] |
The main exceptions to the above generalizations are:
When a vowel-initial word-level suffix is added to a word with tense [eə], the vowel remains tense even though it has come to stand in an open syllable:
mannish has [eə] like man, not [æ] like manage
classy has [eə] like class, not [æ] like classic
passing has [eə] like pass, not [æ] like Pasadena
When a polysyllabic word with [æ] in an open syllable gets truncated to a single closed syllable, the vowel remains:
caf (truncation of cafeteria) has [æ], not [eə] like calf
path (truncation of pathology) has [æ], not [eə] like path 'way, road'
Mass (truncation of Massachusetts) has [æ], not [eə] like mass
Function words and irregular verb tenses have lax [æ], even in an environment which would usually cause tensing:
and (a function word) has [æ], not [eə] like sand
ran (a strong verb tense) has [æ], not [eə] like man
[eə] is also used in these accents before intervocalic /r/ in words like dairy and Mary and in non-rhotic varieties of these accents in words like square and scarce (which rhymes with glass for many non-rhotic speakers).
The phonemic tensing of /æ/ is similar to the broad A phenomenon of certain other dialects. The environment of broad A overlaps with that of /æ/ tensing, in that broad A occurs before voiceless fricatives in the same syllable and before nasals in certain environments; and both phenomena involve replacement of the short lax vowel /æ/ with a longer and tenser vowel. However, the "broad A" is lower and backer than [æ], while the result of /æ/ tensing is higher and fronter.
It is also related to the bad–lad split of some Southern British and Australian dialects, in which a short flat /æ/ is lengthened to [æː] in some conditions. The most significant differences from the Philadelphian system described here are that bad–lad splitting dialects have the broad A phenomenon, so the split can't occur there; that 'sad' is long; and that lengthening can occur before /ɡ/ and /l/.
In Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961; Springfield, Mass: Merriam-Webster Inc.), the Mid-Atlantic tense /æ/ (written with \aa(ə)\, the lax /æ/ being \a\) is shown at individual entries as a variant pronunciation; for instance, the pronunciation of can "container" is \'kan, -aa(ə)n\.  In the 11th (2003) edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which is partly derived from the Third unabridged, the distinction is discussed in an introductory section on pronunciation but ignored elsewhere in the text. The editors justify their decision by maintaining that "this distinction is sufficiently infrequent that the traditional practice of using a single symbol is followed in this book" (p. 34a).