LINGUIST List 11.94

Tue Jan 18 2000

Qs: Phonology/Flap, Japanese/English: CA Approach

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Jorge Guitart, Phonology: American English Flap
2. Hideki.Saigo, With regard to a CA approach

Can anybody tell me why the classic A Pronouncing Dictionary of American
English by Kenyon and Knott--I have the 4th edition (1953)--does not
recognize the existence of the American English Flap? (AEF). The AEF is
not listed among the sounds of American English and all words with
intervocalic /t/ and /d/ (e.g., petal, pedal, writer, rider, etc.) are
transcribed as being pronounced with [t] and [d] respectively. 

Incidentally, the standard dictionary I use, The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language (Houghton Mifflin 1992) does not
recognize the existence of the AEF either.

Is there a contemporary pronouncing dictionary of AE that recognizes
that /t/ and /d/ are flapped where they are?

Jorge Guitart
SUNY Buffalo

I am a PhD student of the University of Durham, working on
inter-cultural interaction between Japanese native speakers and English
native speakers in Japanese language. 

Although I am very keen to investigate my topic using CA techniques, it
seems very difficult and complicated to apply a CA approach to data in a
language other than the language of analysis. 

I would therefore greatly appreciate it if anyone would give me any
advice or information with regard to the matter above. Especially, I
welcome any responses from PhD students who face the same problem.


Hideki Saigo (Hideki.Saigodurham.ac.uk)
Dept. of Linguistics and English Language
University of Durham