Post by Peter T. DanielsPost by RossPost by Peter T. DanielsPost by RossPost by Peter T. DanielsPost by b***@shaw.caA Vancouver TV station has a news reporter named Anita Bath.
She has the usual NA English bad habit of pronouncing her "t"s as "d"s,
and she signs off every story: "I need a bath, Vancouver".
Native-speakers, though, interpret the short i as marking a following
voiceless stop, so homonymy isn't perceived (and doesn't actually exist).
Therefore, if native speakers get the joke (as I did), they
are making a mistake?
_Jokes_ do not need great fidelity.
So what was the point of your intervention?
To correct the perpetual canard that AmE "doesn't distinguish" t from d
in that environment.
Which, as I pointed out, is not what Bill said.
It seems to be taught by incompetent dialog coaches
Post by Peter T. Danielsin English theater training programs, for instance (when they're not
busy failing to get them not to use the LOT vowel. Anyone who makes the
claim is simply unaware/unobservant of vowel phonetics.
Post by RossPost by Peter T. DanielsThey are not hearing "Ah need a,"
they're hearing "Anita," and bill simply repeats the canard
that AmE doesn't distinguish t and d (in that environment).
Bill said non-distinction was "usual" in "NA English".
That is, of course, wrong.
So what is the correct statement of the case?
There's the added complication that his first
Post by Peter T. Danielslanguage was Netherlandish [a sop to JJ there], and it's possible that
he retains a slight accent, as even some who immigrated at an early age do.
His accent (speaking) would have nothing to do with
the present question. But you are suggesting that
his first language might make him unable to hear
the difference between t/d in flapping environment.
(But then you admitted that whether he heard it or
not would make no difference to getting the joke.)
Post by Peter T. DanielsPost by RossYour oft-expressed view is that AmE _never_ fails
to distinguish t/d, even in the flapping environment.
Yet here you seem to be suggesting that only the
preceding vowel gives evidence for the distinction.
I've never said anything different. Are you suggesting
there is some other evidence for the distinction in that
environment?
I've heard you negate the so-called "canard" many times,
but I don't recall you saying this before.
So you're saying:
that the realizations of /t/ and /d/ may, in fact, be phonetically identical in certain environments in AmE.
(And the so-called "canard" is merely an over-generalization of this.)
BUT that flapping does not create homophones,
because there is an allophonic difference in vowel
length which makes it possible to distinguish them.
So what I want to know next is: Is this true for all
vowels and diphthongs? (bitter vs bidder etc.?)
And for all speakers?
My Canadian-raising, for example, makes writer/rider
and pouter/powder quite distinct, but I don't think
it works for other vowels. And I seem to recall, from
discussions of it back in the 60s, that some speakers
who have both CR and flapping nevertheless have the
above pairs as homophones. (It was explained by
rule-ordering at that time.)
Post by Peter T. DanielsPost by RossYour reference to "short i" is seriously misleading
-- you mean, not the vowel in "knit", but an allophonically
Golly, you managed to figure that out on the basis of umpteen previous posts and published descriptions of English allophony, all by yourself?
Your sarcasm is getting clumsy. You must be upset.
I know what readers of this newsgroup are likely to
understand by "short i".
Post by Peter T. DanielsPost by Rossslightly shorter version ("neat" vs "need") which
persists even when the consonant is voiced. I wonder
if you know of any studies that have shown this to
be universal in AmE?
You mean, spectrograms of 325,000,000 people? No.
Well, that's disappointing, but I'd settle for any
study showing that some speaker(s) of AmE other than
yourself can reliably hear this distinction. Perhaps
the references in the Wiki article will have something.
Post by Peter T. DanielsPost by RossThis article and its references may give some idea
of the complexity of the matter. I doubt that either
your view or the "canard" (its negation) is true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping