t/d deletion

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Well, for the record, I did not say that Arnold had "made up" the term. I of course know that variationists study the deletion of/t/ and /d/ for 40 years; I never intended to indicate otherwise.

What I have maintained all along was merely that he had used the term in an inappropriate and misleading way, and I stand by that, small point that it is.  If I was not clear, I apologize, especially since it appears that I have offended Arnold by indicating in passing that he had erred about a very minor use of terminology.

------Original Message------
From: Arnold M. Zwicky
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Sent: Sep 6, 2008 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] t/d deletion

On Sep 6, 2008, at 2:25 PM, Ron Butters wrote:

> But Arnold's quote is exactly what I said and merely supports my
> point: "t/d
> deletion [is] a specific case of consonant cluster reduction." That
> is, no
> isolated rule of "t/d deletion" that governs the change of FIND to
> FIN' e..

look, we got into this because i referred to "t'd deletion" and you,
ron, acted as it i'd made up the term.  there's 40 years of research
on the phenomenon under this name, and i've now pointed this out.  to
note that there's a larger collection of phenomena that t/d deletion
is a special case of does not negate the interest and value of the t
and d cases as a research area for variationists.

i will have nothing more to say about this topic.

arnold

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