MDDM23: A Curious Accent

[jbor]

on 26/2/02 5:59 AM, Dave Monroe at davidmmonroe at yahoo.com wrote:

> "It faced me...its ominous Beak crank'd open...it
> quack'd, its eye holding a certain gleam, and began to
> speak, in a curious Accent, inflected heavily with
> linguo-beccal Fricatives, issuing in a fine Mist of
> some digestive Liquid, upon pure faith in whose
> harmlessness I was obliged to proceed.
> "'So,' spray'd the Duck,--" (M&D, Ch. 37, p. 375)
> 
> Main Entry: fric·a·tive
> Pronunciation: 'fri-k&-tiv
> Function: noun
> Etymology: Latin fricatus, past participle of fricare
> Date: 1863
> : a consonant characterized by frictional passage of
> the expired breath through a narrowing at some point
> in the vocal tract
> - fricative adjective
> 
> Either ...

fricative - two vocal organs come so close together that the movement of air
between them causes audible friction, as in [f], [z], [h]. Some fricatives
have a sharper sound than others, because of the greater intensity of their
high frequencies: [s], [z], [†] (as in "shoe"), and [Z], as in French "je".
These are known as sibilants.

>From David Crystal's _The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_, p. 157.

So, Daffy rather than Donald? Even before taking into account Pynchon's
scathing attacks on Disneycorp product, and explicit preference for the
alternatives, elsewhere in his texts. (Then again, the fragment from the
fictional Galuppi toon she sings at 377.21 does indeed seem to signify Daisy
e Donald ... perhaps "she", in her liaison with Armand, sees a correlation
with Daisy's predicament vis à vis Donald?)

best