query re AAVE

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Mon Jul 17 22:53:23 UTC 2006


stanford student doug kenter reports to me a black rapper (from NYC)
who at least sometimes has /k/ for word-final /t/, as in "vomick" for
"vomit" and "run ick" for "run it".  this was news to both john
rickford and me.  i eventually devised a hypothesis about how you
might get there from here: lots of speakers not only glottalize word-
final voiceless stops, but also sometimes neutralize word-final [t']
and [k'] to a glottal stop; someone hearing the glottal stop has to
figure out how to "restore" the point of articulation, and could
easily get it wrong sometimes.  (i'm ruling out the possibility of
some substratum effect from hawaiian or a similar language with /t/
and /k/ both mapped onto [k].  first, because it seems so socially
unlikely in this case, and second, because the effect is only in word-
final position, not across the board.)

does this phenomenon look (well, sound) familiar to anybody here?
wilson?

arnold

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