Re: The [??] attribute

Roger Mills wrote:
> One would think that if they were truly syllabic, there could be
> alternations with non-syllabic, [C=] ~ [C].
Why?  That would represent the loss of a syllable.  In a pronunciation
like [kIt?n=], I can't see any way of interpreting that sound as
anything but syllabic.  The adjective would be [kIt?n=IS], three
syllables.

> Note too that in "bottom" the _t_ is flapped
There's also no syllabic nasal, at least in my dialect.  For me, only
/n/ can be syllabic, and only when following /t/ or /d/, "bottom" is
simply /bA*@m/

> rhythm ~ rhythmic and the other -thm words yes, but they're weird furrin
> words.
Again, in my dialect, those are /rID@m/ - /rIDmIk/, and I don't think
I've ever heard a syllabic /m/ in that word.

> We do get alternations with final /r, l/:  ['fajr=] ~ ['fajrIn] 'fire,
> firing', ['b&tr=] ~['b&trIN] 'batter, battering'
In your dialect, perhaps, but I say ['fajr=iN] and [b&*r=iN].

 (this last maybe more
> typical of British than US, but permissible here in fast speech) or ['bAtl=]
> ~ ['bAtlIN] 'bottle, bottling', ['sEtl=] ~ [sEtlr=] 'settle, settler'.
Again [bAtl=] ~ [bAtl=iN], [sEtl=] - [sEtl=r=], maybe [sEtlr=] in rapid
speech.

> 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.
Even if you don't pronounce the schwa?  Except in the most careful
speech, I have no schwa in any of those words.  I could see positing an
*underlying* schwa (but then why not do the same for [r=] and [l=]?),
but if there's no schwa on the surface, why show it in a phonetic
transcription?

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