A nice Southernism . . .

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

There would normally not be /t/ deletion after /n/ (or any other voiced phoneme). However, any voiced stop may be variably deleted in final consonant cluster simplification, which is what the rule is usually called.

------Original Message------
From: Arnold M. Zwicky
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Sent: Sep 3, 2008 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] A nice Southernism . . .

On Sep 3, 2008, at 7:48 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 10:38 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky
> <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>>> One student included in her introduction the following clause:
>>> "Once I was
>>> old enough to fin for myself . . . ."  A Southern belle just
>>> swimming along
>>> in the school!
>>
>> entertaining, but just ear spelling (raising of [E] before [n], final
>> t-deletion), probably from someone who had rarely seen the word in
>> print.
>
> I hope you mean final d-deletion. ; )

well, i meant t/d-deletion (applying to [d] in this case).

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org