TASK DEFINITION: Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
PROBLEM: Possible Duplicate: Pronunciation of voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ as (/sh/) in slang? My understanding was that the cluster 'str', for example in 'stress', is usually pronounced /sts/, just like Wiktionary mentions. Their audio sample confirms this. However, I sometimes hear a different kind of pronunciation, namely 'shtress' or something like /ts/ (forgive my IPA knowledge). As an example, Jay Z is rapping about the 'New York city shtreets' (here at ~ 0:30), not 'streets'. The actors from the Jersey Shore seem to do it as well, so I'm starting to believe this is an East Coast / New York thing? So, regarding this oddity: Where in the English world do people speak like this? Is this even localized to a certain area? Is this a recent development? I didn't hear about this back when I was learning English at school. More formally, is this a 'mistake'? My naive explanation would be that it's simply a natural development because the 'sh' forms automatically when you pull back your tongue from forming an 's' to 'r'.

SOLUTION: After digging for a while, I found the answer in a paper called Assimilation at a Distance by Wayne P. Lawrence.1 It's a little dated (2000), but also cites studies from 1993 and earlier describing this phenomenon. The recent history of American English includes a sound change that seems to have gone unattested in the scholarly literature.1 This is the change of /s/ to // before /tr/ (i.e., a PHONEMIC CHANGE), which involves a palatalization of the initial sound in the cluster /str/, typically in initial position but not exclusively. The author further mentions that 'this phonemic change seems to be neither dialectal nor regional.' However, it's definitely an American English peculiarity. It seems that it was first heard on television or radio broadcasts and became popular over these channels. Of course, the internet helps spreading such a linguistic 'oddity' and even I know I picked it up from television shows and continue to (subconciously) use this pronunciation. Regarding the phonetic principles behind this change, Lawrence summarizes: More concretely, this pronunciation is an implicit 'assertion' on their part that in their grammar /r/, being [+ interrupted], is marked with respect to the opposition INTERRUPTED versus CONTINUOUS - exactly the same way that [], being [+ compact], is marked with respect to the opposition COMPACT versus DIFFUSE. The marked character of /r/ is prompted and confirmed phonetically, of course, by its high degree of retroflection in American English.7 This would explain the fact that we only hear this in American English. What's interesting is that the same does not appear to happen to 'spr', which can be explained by the phonetic differences in 't' and 'p': I would surmise, therefore, that /str/ lends itself to realization as [tr] while /spr/ remains unaltered also due to the phonological value of /t/ and /p/. Another more recent paper was written by David Durian.2 It goes into the details of social background and 'shtr' as well as providing some more explanations for its development. 1 Lawrence, Wayne P. (2000) 'Assimilation at a Distance,' American Speech Vol. 75: Iss. 1: 82-87; doi:10.1215/00031283-75-1-82 2 Durian, David (2007) 'Getting []tronger Every Day?: More on Urbanization and the Socio-geographic Diffusion of (str) in Columbus, OH,' University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 13: Iss. 2, Article 6

PROBLEM: I know the ultimate meaning of this is 'I have no money.' But why? If ain't means have not, then isn't it true that 'I ain't got no money' would be read as 'I have not got no money'? Can I have not got [no money] be interpreted as double negative, and hence determining that 'I have money', which is not the true meaning of such saying?.

SOLUTION: Ain't, in I ain't got no money means have not. With that meaning, it originally represented the London dialect, which uses sentences such as they ain't got nothing to say. About the usage of ain't, the NOAD has the following notes: The use of ain't was widespread in the 18th century and is still perfectly normal in many dialects and informal contexts in both North America and Britain. Today, however, it does not form part of standard English and should not be used in formal contexts. The sentence then contains a double negative, but the double negative is sometimes used to give emphasis to a negative. The NOAD has the following notes, about the usage of double negatives: According to standard English grammar, a double negative used to express a single negative, such as I don't know nothing (rather than I don't know anything), is incorrect. The rules dictate that the two negative elements cancel each other out to give an affirmative statement, so that, logically, I don't know nothing means I know something. In practice, this sort of double negative is widespread in dialect and nonstandard usage and rarely causes confusion about the intended meaning. Double negatives are standard in other languages such as Spanish[, Italian] and Polish, and they have not always been unacceptable in English. They were normal in Old English and Middle English and did not come to be frowned upon until some time after the 16th century. The double negative can be used in speech or in written dialogue for emphasis or other rhetorical effects. Such constructions as has not gone unnoticed or not wholly unpersuasive may be useful for making a point through understatement, but the double negative should be used judiciously because it may cause confusion or annoy the reader.

PROBLEM: I'm aware that when we say things like: It's a cheap cell phone. That's a cheapo, throw it out. It does mean something is clearly of bad quality. But how about when comparing things? for example: Those shoes are cheaper than these. That hotel is cheaper than this one. Does it give the impression of lower quality, too? How subtle is it? Should I avoid it in any case?.

SOLUTION:
Cheap has two meanings. Cheap is often used to convey low quality. It easily gets attached to any object being described, even if the price is not low at all. These cheap shoes cost half my paycheck! It can also mean a price that is lower than expected. In fact, the original meaning of cheap was 'bargain'. To make sure it has this meaning, use the adjective to modify something related to the price and not the item itself. Look at the cheap price tag on these shoes! To illustrate, note how the meaning shifts in the following sentences: I bought a cheap laptop. I bought a laptop for a cheap price. The 'low quality' connotation is minimized when 'cheap' becomes the comparative adjective, 'cheaper'. It imparts some context that it is probably the price of two items you are comparing. However, because you are not stating clearly that it is the price that is cheap, it still conveys a the possibility of low quality.

