Re: English syllable structure

On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Roger Mills wrote:

> Fabian wrote:
>
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Roger Mills" <romilly@...>
> >
> >> Then too you have to decide how inclusive to be:  natively, /S/ only
> >> precedes /r/, but if you include germanisms and yiddishisms it occurs
> >more
> >> widely, 'spiel, schlemiehl, schmuck etc'.  /labial-w.../ occurs only in
> >the
> >> loan 'bwana'; /Cj.../ only if followed by /uw/, except for 'piano' and
> >> 'chiaroscuro'etc. etc. But certain things are totally no-no, of course.
> >
> >My normal pronunciation os stupid is /StSu:pId/. Nix one theory.
>
> Not nix IMO.  You are presumably in the dialect group that permits [ju]
> after alveolars, as in tune [tjun], vs. (much of US) [tun].  [tj] may easily
> become [tS], so that I submit your [stSu:pId] is underlying phonemic
> [stju:pId].
I wouldn't say that for here. It's very definately /tS/, not /tj/, even if
some major Australian dictionaries can't see their way to admitting such
sacralige(sp). `Chew' and `tune' differ by the addition of an /n/ to those
who do use /tS/. Oh, and the point of [] and // is for phonemic and
phonetic: `the underlying phonemic would be /stju:pId/'.

> Reverting to pw...-- I've heard "pueblo" pronounced [pju'Eblo]; and some BBC
> newsreaders pronounce "Nicaragua" as [nIk@'ra_gju_a], which is non-US and
> certainly non-Spanish.
Erm? I didn't realise there was any other pronunciation (although when I
was younger, I used to pronounce it /nIkj@"rA:gju@/, but that extra -j- is
just something I do with V@C, where V is a Velar consonant and C any one
(burglar=/"b3\:gj@l@/)).


Tristan

anstouh@yahoo.com.au

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