Sociological Linguistics

[Tom Wier]

Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>         In spoken American English final /-t/ often becomes /?/
> So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of
> stress & tone
>         I can go /aykaeGO/ with rising tone on the last syllable
>         I can't go /ayKAEN?go/ with rising tone on the 2nd syllable

Not in any dialect of American English *I* know of... all varieties of
American English feature unrelease of the stop there, which, though
in some ways acousticly similar to [?], is not the same thing as [?].

The only case I know of where [?] is an allophone in American English
is before syllabic nasals, as in "button".

>         Now, as a non-linguist, I don't know the
> dynamics/inter-relationship of stress & tone but both tone and stress are
> clearly involved --thereby creating a new complication.

In most places, such features are not actually needed.  In phrases like
"I can go",  the vowel is entirely eliminated, producing a syllabic nasal
[ai kn, gou]. "can't" can't undergo this process of reduction, at least in
my dialect.

(Also, for me at least, this occurs to the extent that to use "can" with a full
vowel is a mark of high stress, in which case I would likely be very clear
in articulating the /n/ as opposed to the /nt/)

But this doesn't really change the thrust of your point: that complexities
in one area of a language, when reduced, will be compensated new
complexities elsewhere.  Here, morphosyntactic relationships become
more complex as the former phonological distinctions become less so.

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Tom Wier <artabanos at mail.utexas.edu>
AIM: Deuterotom ICQ: 4315704
<http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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