'sup?

[Alice Faber]

Dennis R. Preston said:
>The reduction of 'What's up' regularly occurs as /tsup/ (adding
>another item to the 'tsetse fly' list of onset /ts/ forms in
>English). The next stage of reduction compensatorily lengthens /s/
>(/ssup/), but the last stage, as one would suspect from the
>phonotactics of English, does away with this lengthening and yields
>simply /sup/.

I'd always assumed that 'sup, definitely with a lengthened /ss/, was
a clipping of "whassup", with the /t/ already having assimilated to
the following /s/.
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Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                                     fax (203) 865-8963