LINGUIST List 10.26

Thu Jan 7 1999

Qs: American /t/, Intro ling book in Spanish

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

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Directory

  1. Dan Faulkner, American /t/
  2. Johanna Rubba, Intro ling book in Spanish

Message 1: American /t/

 Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 09:32:32 -0000
From: Dan Faulkner <Dan.Faulkneraculab.com>
Subject: American /t/

Dear LINGUIST,

I am a British English speaker currently working on the pronunciation of
General North American English (whatever "general" is supposed to mean), and
I have a couple of questions regarding the distribution of voiced alveolar
taps /D/, glottal stops /?/ and 0 as allophones of phoneme /t/ in an
inter-sonorant context.

e.g.

British English = BE			American English = AE	

(1)	HATING

	(a) BE - / h ei' t i ng /	
	(b) AE - / h ei' D i ng /	
	
(2)	WINTER
	(a) BE / w i' n t  /	
	(b) AE /	w i' n  R /	

(3)	IMPORTANT
	(a) BE - / i m p oo' t  n t/
	(b) AE - / i m p oo' R ? n t /
	(c) AE - / i m p oo' R D  n t /

 - Is it correct to say that there is no realised stop or tap in (2b)? If
so, is it elided because of the preceding alveolar nasal? This would lead to
AE realisations such as: 

	ENTITY
	/ e' n  D ii / 
	
	QUANTITY
 	/ k w aa' n  D ii /

 - Is (3b) or (3c) or neither correct for AE? My (obviously non-native)
intuition is that (3b) is correct, and could perhaps lead to a
generalisation that the /t/ phoneme is realised as a glottal stop before
syllabic /n/. This would lead to realisations such as:

	POTENT
	/ p ou1 ? n t / rather than / pou1 D  n t /

	LATENT
	/ l ei1 ? n t / rather than / l ei1 D  n t /

I realise that lexical stress location is an important factor in the
realisation of phoneme /t/ also, but taking that as read, I would be very
grateful if someone could correct or verify the above
transcriptions/generalisations. 

I would also be very interested to hear of any good references regarding
American pronunciation (is there an American equivalent to "English Accents
and Dialects" by Highes and Trudgill?).

Depending on response, I will publish a summary of all information received.
Thankyou very much in advance.

Dan Faulkner

Tel +44 1908 273 933 
Fax +44 1908 273 801
Mail Dan.Faulkneraculab.com		
http://www.aculab.com
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Message 2: Intro ling book in Spanish

 Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 10:30:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Johanna Rubba <jrubbapolymail.cpunix.calpoly.edu>
Subject: Intro ling book in Spanish


Can anyone recommend a few introductory linguistics books that are in
Spanish, for beginners not familiar with linguistics? I think it would be
helpful to be able to recommend such books to those of my students whose
first language is Spanish, and who have trouble reading about linguistics
in English. Note that I'm looking for general linguistics books, not books
about the linguistic structure of Spanish. (Though those woud be a good
second choice.) Thanks!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba	Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184	Fax: (805)-756-6374		 ~
E-mail: jrubbapolymail.calpoly.edu 		 ~ 
Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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