Scouse final plosives (was: vowel descriptions)

At 1:39 pm -0600 15/12/98, Tom Wier wrote:
>Nik Taylor wrote:
>
>> Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>> > (or in Scouse - one of my colleagues is Scouse - [bu:kx]).
>>
>> [kx]?  Interesting.  Is that a general rule, syllable-final (or perhaps
>> word-final) [k] --> [kx]?
>
>Also, do all voiceless stops become affricates like that? So, are
>there things like p --> [pf] / _# and t --> [ts] (or even [tT]) / _#?
Yep - the final voiceless plosives have homorganic fricative release.  So
final /p/ becomes not, in fact, [pf] but [pF] where [F] is the _bilabial_
fricative.  Sometimes final /t/ is described as [ts], but this is clearly
incorrect.

In the Scouse dialect the fricative release goes when /s/ is added so that,
e.g. the plural of [bu:kx] is [bu:ks].  I have difficulty in telling
whether my colleague is talking about one cat or many of them.

The fricative release after final /t/ seems to me closer to [T] in sound,
but it is not the standard dental [T]; it is an _alveolar_ fricative which
otherwise does not occur in the dialect.

Ray.