till

[Dennis R. Preston]

This is an intersting discussion, but I think it has no resolution at
the allegro speech level being cited. That is, a reduced "to" and a
reduced "till" (indeed, even a reduced "until," which, as we have
been instructed, is the correct form,) may very well end up
exhibiting the same (minimal) phonetic residue.

We must rely on the exmaination of less casual speech data (or the
clever elicitation of data, as in Bill Labov's famous pretense not to
have understood "fourth floor" to get a more "formal" variant) to
discover the "underlying" form. For example, reduction does not
happen in final position, so we might look there to find out what a
reduced "tuh" really is

What time did you say it was?
Quarter to (of, till, until, etc...)

in which "quarter tuh" is impossible.

dInIs

TlhovwI at AOL.COM,Net writes:
>I still can't decide if I'm saying "quater to" or "quarter til(l)".
>All I
>get is "quarter t' "!

Sometimes I think I'm say "tuh".

Regards,
David

barnhart at highlands.com

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736