"didn't" with ?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Oct 9 18:22:50 UTC 2006


At 2:01 PM -0400 10/9/06, Laurence Horn wrote:
>Did we already have a discussion at some point about the
>(innovative?) dialectal pronunciation of what we might call 'the
>"didn't" of incredulity' as in "No, you (she, they) dI?In" (with
>falling tone)?  I hear it on SNL or MadTV, but not in real life, and
>it seems to express incredulity/amazement/scorn/..., along the lines
>of 'I'm surprised that you (she, they) did'.  Anyone have a rough and
>ready characterization of the phonetics and/or sociolinguistics of
>this marker?
>
>LH
>
P.S.  In case it wasn't obvious, that ? is supposed to be a glottal stop.

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