'sup?

[Dennis R. Preston]

>Could be; maybe more than one path to get there.

dInIs



>Dennis R. Preston said:
>>The reduction of 'What's up' regularly occurs as /tsup/ (adding
>>another item to the 'tsetse fly' list of onset /ts/ forms in
>>English). The next stage of reduction compensatorily lengthens /s/
>>(/ssup/), but the last stage, as one would suspect from the
>>phonotactics of English, does away with this lengthening and yields
>>simply /sup/.
>
>I'd always assumed that 'sup, definitely with a lengthened /ss/, was
>a clipping of "whassup", with the /t/ already having assimilated to
>the following /s/.
>--
>==============================================================================
>Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
>Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
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