Now Kirk, since we've established that "haily" and "Haley" don't rhyme for you, I'd also like to ask about:
"haily"~"daily"
These two don't rhyme in my speech, because they have different morphological boundaries. I treat "daily" as a direct adverbial derivative of "day", so it's "hail-y" ["heI5.i] versus "dai-ly" [deI.li]. Is this the same for you?
Also, there are some exceptional cases where /l/ seems, for whatever reason, not to have combined with the preceding vowel in my speech, in environments where you might have thought that it would. Three pop to mind:
"polo" ["p_h7U.l7U] - compare my "polar", "stroller", "Napoleon", all of which use [oU5...]
"feline" ["fi.%laIn]
"saline" ["seI.%lin]
Oops - I meant to add: How would you pronounce those last three words?
<<Now Kirk, since we've established that "haily" and "Haley" don't rhyme for you, I'd also like to ask about:
"haily"~"daily"
These two don't rhyme in my speech, because they have different morphological boundaries. I treat "daily" as a direct adverbial derivative of "day", so it's "hail-y" ["heI5.i] versus "dai-ly" [deI.li]. Is this the same for you? >>
Exactly the same for me. Adverbial 'ly' seems to pretty reliably be a case where I always have a light l.
<<Also, there are some exceptional cases where /l/ seems, for whatever reason, not to have combined with the preceding vowel in my speech, in environments where you might have thought that it would. Three pop to mind:
"polo" ["p_h7U.l7U] - compare my "polar", "stroller", "Napoleon", all of which use [oU5...]
"feline" ["fi.%laIn]
"saline" ["seI.%lin]>>
I tried the different /l/s for both of those and it seems I usually have a clear /l/ in "feline" and "saline" (tho dark l didn't sound too weird). "Polo" can have either one for me, which is interesting because, like with you, the dark /l/ makes me have a more rounded and backer /o/ than I'd normally have so depending on which /l/ I use the vowel can actually vary.
I've noticed that some American newscasters (especially older ones) often have light /l/ in words like "million" and "pavilion" while I always have dark /5/ there. Another /lj/ thing--I was listening to the Beatles song "I want to tell you" earlier today and it struck me George had a light /l/ in "tell you." Of course singing isn't the best way to judge an accent but even singing I would never use a light /l/ there. "Tell" only has [5] for me no matter what follows it.
<<I've noticed that some American newscasters (especially older ones) often have light /l/ in words like "million" and "pavilion" while I always have dark /5/ there. Another /lj/ thing--I was listening to the Beatles song "I want to tell you" earlier today and it struck me George had a light /l/ in "tell you." Of course singing isn't the best way to judge an accent but even singing I would never use a light /l/ there. "Tell" only has [5] for me no matter what follows it.>>
Yeah, I think I also tend to pronounce /lj/ sequences as [5j].
By the way, regarding /lj/ in "million" (and "billion"), I've heard some people (Southern and AAVE speakers, I think) simplify the /lj/ here to /j/, so it's ["mI.j@n] and ["bI.j@n]. (m-w.com actually lists the /l/ in "million" and "billion" as optional.)
<<Yeah, I think I also tend to pronounce /lj/ sequences as [5j].
By the way, regarding /lj/ in "million" (and "billion"), I've heard some people (Southern and AAVE speakers, I think) simplify the /lj/ here to /j/, so it's ["mI.j@n] and ["bI.j@n]. (m-w.com actually lists the /l/ in "million" and "billion" as optional.)>>
Yeah /lj/ > /j/ does strike me as particularly Southern or AAVE. That's a pretty predictable change cross-linguistically so it's interesting to me it hasn't actually happened in more English dialects.