"di?nt" (with glottal stop)

[David Bowie]

From:    "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>

: background: most (though not all) u.s. speakers have a glottalish
: (glottalized in some way, or just a glottal stop) variant of /t/ after
: an accented syllable and before syllabic n (mitten, cotton,...), and
: also in syllable-final position (hat, hothead, fitness,...).  these
: two phenomena are probably related: /t/ in an accented syllable before
: syllabic n is syllabified with the preceding syllable, and so gets
: syllable-final allophony.  (in contrast, /t/ after an accented
: syllable and before other syllabics  is [depending on your religion]
.                                                            ^^^^^^^^
: ambisyllabic or syllabified entirely with the following syllable, and
: so gets a voiced allophone, [d] or a voiced tap or whatever.)

Is it too much of an admission of cluelessness to say that i can't tell
whether this is a typo for "region" or a non-typo?

<snip>

(FWIW, i'm cheering for non-typo--watching linguists argue about
syllabification certainly *is* similar to watching people argue about points
of religious dogma, after all. Not to mention that the idea of Buddhists and
Taoists having different syllabification rules is nothing if not
smile-at-able.)

David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.