Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

On 26 Jan 00, at 21:36, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Matt Pearson wrote:
> > (1)  VCV is almost always syllabified as V.CV, not VC.V
>
> Unless there's some resyllabification rule, like English /'h&p.i/ (which
> can be shown by the fact that it's ['h&pi] and not [h&:p_hi])
>
[snip]
> > For example, when asked to break up the word "happy" [haepi] into
> > syllables, many native speakers will hesitate between [hae.pi] and
> > [haep.i].
>
> But it's pronounced as the second, as shown by the allophones.
> Syllable-initial voiceless stops are aspirated, and vowels followed by
> voiceless obstruents are shorter.  /h&.pi/ would be [h&:p_hi], while
> /h&p.i/ is [h&pi], the way it actually is.
>
I'm going to cautionsly suggest that some Scots (i)di(o|a)lects have
[h&:p_hi], particularly a (nearly) glaswegian ex-colleague of mine.  In
relation to the rest of her accent, this might be an overly-tight phonetic
analysis, however.  Any scotophones(?) on the list, or British English
dialect experts?