Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:13:07 -0000, And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:

>Andrew Smith:
>> And's comment about _to_ being realised as [?] is very interesting, too,
>> which doesn't sound quite right to me. On the other hand, And's ear for
this
>> kind of thing is normally very good, and I may well be being distracted
by
>> native speaker syndrome, so could I ask for an example? For instance, I
>> would say the common phrase "I'm off to the pub" as [amQft_h@?p_hUb]
>
>Afaik, no English accent allows [?] after a fricative. But "go
>to the pub" could be [gO:?pUb], "went into the pub" [wEnthIn?pUb],
>"want to go" [wQn?gO:], "I've got for to go" (= Std E "got to")
>[avgQ?f@?gO:].
>
>--And.
Thanks very much indeed for these; now I understand what you mean.

Interestingly (or perhaps not :-), I have always analysed these differently,
perhaps due to 'contamination' from the standard.

To take the first two, the phonetics is spot on, so "I'm going to the pub"
is [amgOIn?pUb], with a glottal stop replacing "to the", but note that you
could equally say [amgOInD@pUb] if you don't "drop the article", with no
glottal stop and apparently without a preposition at all. I'd rationalised
that as the directionality of _to_ is already expressed in _go_ , so you
don't need it twice.

But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced you're absolutely
right, and to _is_ often realised as [?] or [?@], even in less set phrases
than those you gave. Something like "He allowed me to come in" could be
[i:@laUdmI?@kUmIn], for instance.

Thanks very much again. Very enlightening.

Andrew

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