For words ending in "-ity" is it ~t or ~d

[Mark Mandel]

Save your breath, James. T.Z. is a True Believer in American Speech, as
spoken and analyzed by Himself.

m a m

On 6/17/07, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >I found differences between the sounds in spoken words and the phonetic
> >spellings. No one here seems to dispute the fact that "ity" is pronounced
> >rather with a d-like sound as I've pointed out.
>
> Well, there seems to have been a certain level of dispute over
> whether that sound is a tap (or flap) or a solid [d]... But if you're
> designing a new spelling system to reflect the way things are really
> said, you'll want to reflect the way thing sare said when they're
> said carefully, I presume. All sorts of things change when people
> speak casually. In English, both /t/ and /d/ have a tap as an
> allophone, but of course it's not a separate phoneme. Now, if you say
> "I see disparity in this parody," and someone else says "What? I
> can't hear you," you'll probably say [dIspErIti] with a clear, crisp
> [t] and [pEr at di] with a definite d, even though you had a moment
> before most likely said them both with the same sequence of sounds
> starting at [p]. Naturally, this more careful form is also what the
> dictionaries tend to reflect.
>
> When you hear people saying the -ity endings with the sound in
> question, you're hearing the relaxed way of saying it, but how do you
> propose to get the target articulation, the one that they have in
> mind and that guides their  pronunciation but that they seldom
> articulate in full detail? I know that the relaxed form influences
> understanding of the citation form; I've certainly seen the spelling
> "celebrady" for "celebrity." But among well-educated users, aware of
> the spelling etc., the target articulation, the one that they would
> shout or say to someone hard of hearing or say in the most formal way
> possible, will have a [t]. And will yet be a tap or flap most of the
> rest of the time.
>
> >  There is no other way to
> >simply notate that sound other than with a "d".  English dictionaries do
> not
> >have a symbol for an r flap or tap.  It does not exist in Engilsh and I
> find
> >it strange that anyone would say that it's a flap when native tongue
> >Americans don't go through the tongue motions to make a flap in their
> normal
> >phoneme set.
>
> Well, that "anyone" includes thousands of phoneticians, I reckon.
> "Murder" is normally said with a flap by many, perhaps most,
> Americans and Canadians. You can say that it isn't, but you're up
> against a lot of experts who disagree with you. It's not a motion
> that requires a lingual detour when we use it; the entire reason for
> its use is that it takes less effort. But that flap is not a separate
> phoneme, certainly; it's an allophone, in this case of /t/, in other
> cases of /d/ and even at times /n/ (though nasalized in that case).
> We have no shortage of allophone that not only aren't in the phoneme
> sent but that some people will even think they can't say -- the
> semivowel that /l/ usually turns into when Albertans say "Calgary,"
> for instance.
>
> >A tap, I suppose, is just a short d.  No doubt many sounds have
> allophones
> >(slightly different versions of the same sound usually usually due to
> >interference with adjacent phonemes).  But dictionary notation doesn't
> get
> >so technical.
>
> Yes, I think we're in agreement on that much. Dictionaries aren't
> really detailed phonetic expositions. They're references with a
> certain purpose in mind, and exact description of casual speech isn't
> it.
>
> James Harbeck.
>
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>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org