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

[Paul Johnston]

Allophones of /n/ and /g/?  Eng has never been, even historically, an
allophone of /g/ in English--in Classical Greek, yes, but not
English.  It was once an allophone of /n/, appearing before velars,
and still is in parts of the English West Midlands, where it never
occurs without a /g/ or /k/ after it.  In America, except for certain
"Longg Islanders"--and even they don't say /sINgz/ for "sings"--it's
a phoneme:  cf. thin/thing, sin/sing contrasts.  I'm sure m-w.com
agrees.

Paul Johnston
On Jun 18, 2007, at 8:59 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: For words ending in "-ity" is it ~t or ~d
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> ---------
>
> Thanks James,
>
> I agree with what you say.  Citation speech versus normal speech-
> which is
> best to represent in a dictionary?  Funny thing is that m-w.com
> while going
> the great extra step in providing voice files of every word (again a
> marvelous resource) illustrates the problem.
>
> In my dictionary, which is the VOA dictionary plus truespel for
> pronunciation, I show both.
>
> Truespel is just a simple notation.  If it sounds like a "k" it
> goes in the
> k-bin.  I even treat "ng" as being not a separate phoneme, but
> allophones of
> "n" and "g".
>
> Truespel notation is OK for dictionaries, but even at this level I
> find
> pronunciation may have changed and current notation not kept up in
> current
> dictionaries.  Perhaps current dictionaries want to merely keep
> citation
> spelling and not bother with new updates.  Consistency regardless of
> reality?
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> See truespel.com - and the 4  truespel books plus "Occasional
> Poems" at
> authorhouse.com.
>
>
>
>
>
>> From: James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: For words ending in "-ity" is it ~t or ~d
>> Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 23:00:07 -0400
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>> Subject:      Re: For words ending in "-ity" is it ~t or ~d
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>>> 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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