Re: The [??] attribute

Herman Miller wrote:


>On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 19:57:42 -0700, Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
>wrote:
>
>>And when they talk about "syllabic consonants," what does this mean in
>>practice? A definition I found: "A syllabic consonant is a phonetic
element
>>that normally patterns as a consonant, but may fill a vowel slot in a
>>syllable." One of the examples given is the word "bottom" -- but why don't
they
>>describe this as /bAtVm/ with a very short V? (I'm from California, in
case
>>we're known for having a strange pronunciation of this word. :)
>
>I don't think I've ever heard "bottom" with a syllabic consonant. I think a
>better example, at least in American English, would be "kitten". I don't
>normally pronounce any vowel in the second syllable of "kitten" between the
>/t/ (which in this word I usually pronounce as a glottal stop) and the /n/,
>but instead the /n/ sound acts as the vowel in the syllable. But I'm from
>Michigan, and I don't know for certain if "kitten" is pronounced with a
>syllabic /n/ in California.
>
One would think that if they were truly syllabic, there could be
alternations with non-syllabic, [C=] ~ [C].  In most of the nasal-final
words, it sound very unnatural to think of ['bAtm=] ~ ['bAtmiN] 'bottom,
bottoming', or ['kItn=] ~ ['kItnIS] 'kitten, kittenish'. (Substitute [?] for
[t] if you wish.)  Note too that in "bottom" the _t_ is flapped; not so in
"kitten".

rhythm ~ rhythmic and the other -thm words yes, but they're weird furrin
words.

We do get alternations with final /r, l/:  ['fajr=] ~ ['fajrIn] 'fire,
firing', ['b&tr=] ~['b&trIN] 'batter, battering' (this last maybe more
typical of British than US, but permissible here in fast speech) or ['bAtl=]
~ ['bAtlIN] 'bottle, bottling', ['sEtl=] ~ [sEtlr=] 'settle, settler'.

Personally I've always preferred to indicate the schwa in these cases, if
only becuase in a phonological derivation it's simpler to account for
vowel-deletion than to account for a change in syllabicity.

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