Breaking doubled consonants into syllables

Herb Stahlke hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
Wed Aug 29 04:14:12 UTC 2012


Tom,

If you want to see what really does happen in the slosh of typical
speech, a nice phrase, by the way, you have to transcribe phonetically
directly from sound spectrograms--voiceprints.  There's been a fair
amount of work on this, and the results can be astonishing in terms of
the amount of reduction that goes on.  However, in what are called
"citation forms," for example, the way we pronounce the headword of a
dictionary entry, separate consonants don't have to be separated by a
vowel sound.  This is obvious when the two consonants aren't
identical, like the "st" in "stir," "rest," or "rested."  When the two
consonants are identical, as "unnatural," "non-native," "thick crust,"
etc., the two last longer than in words like "illegal," "attend," etc.
 This is particularly true when the syllables containing the two
identical consonants are both stressed.

Herb


On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 4:52 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> Yeah but what does really happen in the slosh of typical speech.  For insta=
> nce the word "non-negative".  If we were to say "nah negative" it would be =
> closer to the way we actually say it.  The final "n" of "non" bleeds into t=
> he leading "n" of negative.  No pause or gap which to me would be needed to=
>  hyphenate it there aurally.  Take the word "syllable" ~silibool or si-li-b=
> ool (~bool rhymes with "wool").  We don't aurally split those l's aurally.
> In truespel phonetics stress default is on the first syllable but shifts to=
>  the vowel after a double consonant like "desert" and "dessert".  So unnatu=
> ral is ~unnacherool.  I find that double consonants are subtle indicators o=
> f stress on a following vowel (but for silent e suffix rules).
>
> Tom Zurinskas=2C Conn 20 yrs=2C Tenn 3=2C NJ 33=2C now Fl 9.
> See how English spelling links to sounds at http://justpaste.it/ayk
>
>
>  >=20

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