Re: USAGE: h&ppi? (was: RE: Importance of stress)

At 07:04 +0100 21.2.2000, Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>I hesitate between ['h&p.pi] and ['h&.pi] - but it seems to me that
>['h&p.i] is incorrect syllabification for what I hear around me.
There are phonologists of English who have suggested that consonants may be
ambisyllabic, i.e. closing one syllable and opening another at the same
time!  While I would not subscribe to that theory I can well think that
when a language simplifies its geminates they may still be treated
phonologically as geminates, although being phonetically non-geminate for
some time.  I would expect this "abstract geminateness" to disappear within
the familiar third-generation limit, though.  English de-gemination is far
older than that, though it seems from your South Wales 'valleys' example
that it may be different in some areas with a Welsh substrate, where
gemination was probably introduced by first-generation English-speakers as
a spelling pronunciation.

Or is the /p/ of that pronunciation you are hesitant about aspirated?
Perhaps [h&p_hi] has been re-interpreted as /h&p.hI/!  Or it may have to do
with the fact that the final /I/ is higher and tenser than medial and
stressed /I/s, approaching the typical value of /i:/, so that for some
speakers the final syllable has more (energetic) stress than for others.



/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto: bpj@...> <mailto: melroch@...>
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