"Process continuum"

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:23 PM +0000 9/4/08, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>What you describe as a "process continuum" is what linguists call
>"variable rule". That is why I said that the CCS rule is variable.
>However, linguists rarely use the term "slurred speech" except in
>describing the speech of people who are intoxicated; "unintelligible
>speech" is not studiable, is it?
>
>It is well-known that /t/ and /d/ are variably deleted after /n/ in
>DON'T and WON'T. I have also heard this in CAN'T as well, though
>that can lead to ambiguity. N'T deletion is far less global than the
>CRR.
>
Hearers often use either vowel quality or stress pattern ("I can GO"
vs. "I CAN'T GO") rather than absence/presence of final [t] to
disambiguate "can" and "can't", although in some contexts, e.g. where
"can" is contrastively stressed, no disambiguation is not secure.

LH

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