Dan Sulani wrote:
> Speaking of swallowed syllables and schwas, this got me thinking
> about the example I always give to prove that native English-speakers
> can't just go into a classroom and teach English to non-native speakers.
> It's the quick version of "What are you going to do?".
> As far as I can tell, I seem to do it in _one syllable_ ...
Try as I might, can't get it down to one syllallable. But what really
struck me as interesting--
> 2. coarticulated [g] and [n] (Is this really possible?
Intervocalic IMO yes, provided there's a syllable boundary-- e.g. Sanskrit
nagna 'naked'. Also possible initially-- Germans manage both /kn-/ and
/gn-/ without difficulty, though the latter may be orthographically correct
|gen-|.
> Is it possible to have a voiced velar plosive and an alveolar nasal
> without going through schwa?)
With training and practice it should be possible. Whether the vowel-like
sound that can appear in the brief transition period between end of [g]
closure--movement of tonguetip--velum lowering would be a real IPA schwa is
another matter-- probably more likely just simply the fundamental frequency
of one's voicing. That would show up on a spectrogram.
> I don't feel like I am producing a schwa. Tongue feels too high
> during the [S]. Could I be wrong?
See above.
> Does any of this make any sense? Can I be producing a sentence,
> in English, with no vowels? Do any other native English speakers do
> anything similar with the phrase "What are you going to do?" ?
Maybe as a Hebrew speaker you're more practiced at producing clusters??
:-))) I can't reduct this phrase past [tS*g*n'du] where * indicates very
brief periods of "furtive vowel" necessitated by the mechanical transitions.
Thus it seems to be 3 syllables; possible secondary stress on -[g*n]- with
occasional lengthenging of the [n]
> In any event, it's amazing to what extent one can mangle a lang
> and still be understood!
Someone back in the 70s, I think it was David Stampe, made himself famous
with an analysis of fast speech rules and the phrase "divinity fudge".