Re: Aspirated stops vs. fricatives (was Re: Tit'xka (Pretty Long Post))

At 17:34 on 30.12.1998, Tom Wier wrote:

[snip]
>
> In any event, /t/ intervocalically in most American dialects is a voiced tap,
> which in many languages, like Spanish, is an allophone of /r/.  In most
> American dialects, this does sound like a [d] to some extent, but the fact
> that it's still considered an allophone of /t/, and not /d/, is shown by the
> fact that people will actually say things like [stVt_hi:] for "study" (as I
> have personally heard) when trying to emphasize the fact (though it might
> be said that this is just an example of hypercorrection), where the <d> in
> 'study' is also a voiced tap.
>
> (The whole situation is kinda weird to me, in fact.)
What I've found real weird is that the voiced tap that is the intervocalic
allophone of /r/ in my Swedish speech doesn't sound right as an
intervocalic /t/ to American ears, while a *retroflex flap* does!  I tried
this because the American intervocalic /t/ sounds just like the Hindi
retroflex flap to me, and was very surprised that it worked!  (And happy,
since the basilect in the area where I grew up has a lateral retroflex
flap, and contrasting a retroflex continuant /r/ with a de-lateralized flap
comes much easier to me than contrasting it with the tap, which is "a kind
of /r/" to me! :)

/BP


    B.Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
    ----------------------------------------------------

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)