Re: USAGE: Voiced/voiceless stops in English, was: Re: Pronouncing Tokana...

Ray:
> Some in north west England have [r\] (alveolar approximant) for medial /t/
> and would, presumably, pronounce 'at all' as [@r\O:l]
First, it occurs only 'foot internally' -- that is, where the preceding
syllable is stronger than the following, e.g. "get off/away/out" /ger .../
"shut up" /SUrUp/. I can't think of examples of it happening word-medially.
Possibly I have mischaracterized the constraint, and it is more like t > r
following a lax vowel, but [@r\O:l] sounds totally out to me. I suspect,
furthermore, that t > r is lexically conditioned, i.e. its applicability is
contingent on the lexical identity of the word containing the /t/. In this
respect it is similar to the "r > z / lax V __ weak V (sonorant) #" rule,
which in most of England applies only to first names (Sharon > Shaz etc.),
but in certain sociolects on the west Lancashire coast extends more widely
through the lexicon (sorry > soz, borrow > boz, etc.). This last, btw, is
one of my favourite phonological rules, in that it is hard to find any
phonological motivation for it at all; it is a mere phonological caprice.

> At 9:08 pm -0500 1/2/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
> >Raymond Brown wrote:
> >> Some in north west England have [r\] (alveolar approximant) for medial /t/
> >> and would, presumably, pronounce 'at all' as [@r\O:l]
> >
> >ONLY for medial /t/, not for medial /d/?  Interesting.  That's a rather
> >odd change, I think, stop to approximate.
>
> I think medial /d/ is likely to be treated the same way.  It's not a
> dialect I'm over-familiar with.  I've heard it on TV and met one or two
> people that come from area. /Surup/ for 'shut up' sort of sticks in the
> mind  :)
I'm not so sure. Certainly "sod off" would not be /sOr Of/. Conceivably
"should have" could be /SUr@/, but seems plausible only in allegro contexts,
whereas t > r occurs even in slow and deliberate articulation.

--And.