Re: Mutations in General

At 3:14 PM -0700 10/21/02, Nihil Sum wrote:
>I say the n in "ant". And in vent, went, runt, plant, restaurant. And the N
>in bank, brink, honk, and the m in lump, lamp, limp, stomp.
>
>>Muke says that his pronunciation of 'ant' actually lacks a nasal consonant,
>>and
>>that nasality is expressed on the preceding vowel (if I read his
>>transcription
>>correctly). My own pronunciation agrees with this.
>
>I know exactly the pronunciation you're talking about. It does happen, but I
>wouldn't call it universal. (of course, I don't tend to call much of
>anything universal)
The fact that many English speakers routinely delete the nasal in such clusters
gives support to the existence of such a tendency. Of course there will be
speakers who pronounce a full nasal; this doesn't mean that the tendency isn't
real (or "universal"), just that it's not active in that variety of English.

I figured the discussion of mutation would eventually get bogged down in the
particulars of English pronunciation; it seems to be one of the strange
attractors for threads on this list.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                               Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the appreciation of
fact." - Stephen Anderson

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