oooh, linguists
i just downloaded Audacity so i can record speech tokens and mess around with them and figure out formants and maybe some more about my own phonology.
like this, which i've always known about, but the actual rule just occurred to me today:
t -> ? / # ___ (V) [(syllabic) alveolar nasal]
which means that in my speech, and for a lot of people who talk like me, /t/ turns into something called a glottal stop (the consonant that no one ever notices after the "uh" in "uh oh") in words like "button", "kitten", "Shelton" - where the /t/ is at the beginning of that syllable, and the rest of the syllable is either a vowel and then an /n/, or a syllabic /n/.
edit: forgot to add that this is because of dissimilation. awww yeaaah.
(/t/ and /n/ are similar because you make them both with the tip of your tongue, right behind your teeth. since they're so similar, it's a pain in the butt to pronounce them right in a row like that - unless you're British - so many of us dissimilate them by turning one [the /t/] into something different.)
but i can't get myself to speak naturally into the microphone :( baaahhh.
i guess what i'll do is record myself having a phone conversation and try and ignore the microphone.
now i know why my subjects always feel so weird when i'm recording them :P but it's even weirder talking into a microphone when nobody else is around.
like this, which i've always known about, but the actual rule just occurred to me today:
t -> ? / # ___ (V) [(syllabic) alveolar nasal]
which means that in my speech, and for a lot of people who talk like me, /t/ turns into something called a glottal stop (the consonant that no one ever notices after the "uh" in "uh oh") in words like "button", "kitten", "Shelton" - where the /t/ is at the beginning of that syllable, and the rest of the syllable is either a vowel and then an /n/, or a syllabic /n/.
edit: forgot to add that this is because of dissimilation. awww yeaaah.
(/t/ and /n/ are similar because you make them both with the tip of your tongue, right behind your teeth. since they're so similar, it's a pain in the butt to pronounce them right in a row like that - unless you're British - so many of us dissimilate them by turning one [the /t/] into something different.)
but i can't get myself to speak naturally into the microphone :( baaahhh.
i guess what i'll do is record myself having a phone conversation and try and ignore the microphone.
now i know why my subjects always feel so weird when i'm recording them :P but it's even weirder talking into a microphone when nobody else is around.