Re: The [??] attribute

Emaelivpahr Roger Mills:
> Apparently I'm a pedant-- I distinguish both words quite clearly in
pronunciation.

M-W has the pronunciation as /m&'men(")tO/ which is what I normally use myself,
except that the & vowel is very short -- as is their sound file example of the
word. Is there a way to mark for an extremely short vowel? When I say
"memento," I start in on the second syllable almost immediately after starting
the &.

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'm wondering if these two questions aren't related... could my pronunciation
of "memento" be described as having a syllabic m at the beginning? Probably not
-- that would something more like "mmmmento," with a "mmm" like "mmm, that's
tasty," wouldn't it?


--
Arthaey

Che'lorav v'eshalndaseh t'ves che'llav mlaetml shadiln kes.

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