"didn't" with ?

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Mon Oct 9 18:47:26 UTC 2006


On 10/9/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> 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?

There was discussion in Nov. 2004 under the subject line, "'di?nt'
(with glottal stop)".

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--Ben Zimmer

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