A nice Southernism . . .

[Charles Doyle]

Consonant cluster "simplification":

I find myself quite unable to pronounce the second "-f-" in the word "fifth" or the "-th-" in "clothes."  How "wasp" will come out out of my mouth on a given occasion is unpredictable--especially the plural of the word.

As Ron said, the rule isn't SIMPLE; it's not an "anytime" matter!

--Charlie

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---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 11:16:54 +0800
>From: LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject: Re: A nice Southernism . . .

>On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 12:11 AM,  <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

>> However, CONSONANT CLUSTER is a well known term in linguistics. And FINAL CONSONANT CLUSTER SIMPLIFICATION is the usual term employed to name the rule that describes the phenomenon in English whereby a word-final consonant is variably deleted iff it is alike in voicing with the consonant that immediately precedes it (i.e., both must be either voiced or not voiced) .

>
>You're saying that anytime you have this situation at the end of a word:
>
>{unvoiced consonant} + {unvoiced consonant}
>
>or
>
>{voiced consonant} + {voiced consonant}
>
>that the second consonant can be deleted?
>
>So (according to your rule) for the word "wasp", you can just say
>[was]?  And for "bulb", you can just say [b^l]?
>
>I'm pretty sure I've never heard anybody in any English dialect say
>either of those, or anything similar.  The final consonant cluster
>reduction rule that I'm aware of only affects [t] and [d], and it
>doesn't have much to do with voicing, but rather what kinds of
>consonants are next to the [t] or [d] in question.  It's not simple
>enough to make a one-sentence rule about; and the processes involved
>form a "process continuum" that ranges from speaking in citation forms
>to slurred and unintelligible speech.
>
>--
>Randy Alexander
>Jilin City, China
>My Manchu studies blog:
>http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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