Can a have an A, men?

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Feb 5, 2009, at 8:26 AM, Jocelyn Limpert wrote:

> ... once I was aware of the
> use of "a" and "an" by our president, I listened very carefully. And
> in
> virtually all instances, he used the "a" for "an" only after a pause.

only *after* a pause?  did you mean *before*?

pauses come at planning points in production -- that is, right before
the choice is made.  so pauses are especially common following
articles, conjunctions, and the like.

a further complication: listening for pauses can be a tricky
business.  people who study pausing and related phenomena don't rely
on their ears, but look at traces (like spectrograms) that can be
measured.

in the case at hand, if a speaker has word-final schwa (in "a")
followed by a word-initial vowel, a glottal stop will intervene, and
that glottal stop might well be interpreted by hearers as a brief pause.

so there's a lot further to find out.

arnold

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