"at all" = "a tall"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 6, 2008, at 7:29 AM, Marc Velasco wrote:

> Sounds mostly Southern to me, and perhaps vaguely British as well.

hold on here.  there are several ways "at all" could be pronounced
according to regular principles in english.

possibility 1 is that it's treated as two phonological words.  in many
varieties of english, that would mean that the t of "at", being word-
final, would have a glottal variant -- glottalized t or a glottal
stop.  (this is one of my favored variants.)

possibility 2 is that it's treated as a single phonological word, in
which case the t is syllabified as the onset of the second syllable.
then, since the first syllable is unaccented and the second syllable
is accented, the t will be aspirated (just as in "attack").  (this is
the variant Wilson reported for black speakers, and i've noticed it a
lot in british english -- surely british phoneticians have studied it
-- but it's available for many other speakers as well.  i certainly
have it sometimes, perhaps in emphatic speech, but i haven't looked at
any data.)

possibility 3 is that, as in #1, it's treated as two phonological
words.  but the combination is a single phonological phrase, and many
american speakers allow "flapping" to be extended across word boundary
in phonological phrases, even when the following syllable is accented,
as in "at_ every time".  there's some literature on this flapping in
"unexpected" contexts.  (this is the other of my favored variants.)

there is obviously variation across speakers and quite a bit of
variation within speakers.

presumably, spellings like "a-t'all" are representations of #2, by
people who take notice of the variant.

arnold

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