Re: OT: Phonetics (IPA)

Christophe wrote:

> It's true that affricates and clusters are different things. [...]
> But at the same time, most people don't make the
> difference, and the difference, at a normal speed of speech, is
> indeed minimal. To me, the difference between "catch it" and "cat
> shit" is more a matter of intonation than a matter of affricate vs.
> cluster.
and Roger wrote:

> The question of cluster vs. unit is tricky.  The old phonemicists
> had recourse to the concept of "juncture", which they never quite
> managed to define.  (Essentially it meant "syllable boundary", but
> that's tricky too, since "syllable" may depend on more than just
> phonetics.)  So there's a juncture in 'cat shit', but not in 'catch
> it' (the classic ex. is night rate vs. nitrate),  This is probably
> crossing the boundary from pure phonetics into phonology-- note that
> you can subsitute [?] for the /t/ before juncture, but not in the
> unit affricate.
Even in my speech, which I like to think of as fairly close to RP,
'catch it' = [k{t_SIt], but - and I'd never noticed this before! -
'cat shit' = [k{?t_SIt] (yes, with affricate).

As well as the glottal stop preceding (or glottalisation of?) the
affricate, there's a distinctive rhythmic difference, which is (to me
at least) auditorily more important.  There's definitely a geminate-
stop feel to the latter example, I think probably caused by a period
of complete glottal +/- alveolar closure, giving a period of silence
between the words that isn't there in 'catch it'.  Do other people
feel/hear the difference as rhythmic, or am I unusual? :)

Jonathan.

[reply to jonathan underscore knibb at hotmail dot com]
--
'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'

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