when "t" becomes ~d or glottalized

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Why does anyone bother to respond to this sort of thing? The "rules" that TZ is stumbling around about have been discerned and explicated for about a century by linguists (who actually know something about phonology). Surely the "rules" can be found on the internet, free, e.g. on course web sites.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>

Date:         Thu, 3 Sep 2009 18:04:25
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] when "t" becomes ~d or glottalized


On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Tom Zurinskas<truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Someone asked for rules on the letter "t" and when it changed to ~d. Is the below in the ballpark.

I don't see a question mark there, but since you do have
subject-auxiliary inversion, I'll assume it's a question.

How about an example or two for each item?

> In USA accent, the letter "t" or "tt" becomes ~d when

I don't think you're going to find people saying that /t/ becomes /d/,
but rather /t/ or /d/ becomes an alveolar flap.

> preceded and followed by a vowel sound *
>  *except "non-t sounding" words "nation" "future" etc.
> preceded by a vowel sound and followed by "l"
> preceded by a "f" and followed by a vowel sound
> preceded by a "r" and followed by a vowel sound
> Letter "t" is
> Never ~d at word end or beginning

What about in "go to hell" (word beginning), or "get away" (word end)?

> Never ~d when "t" starts a stressed syllable
> Never ~d for the ending "tude"
> Never ~d for the ending "tive"
> Never ~d for the ending "tic"
> Never ~d for the first "t" in ending "tate"
>
> ending "t" becomes glottalized if
> preceded by a vowel sound *
> *applies sometimes to "tt"
> preceded by letter n
> preceded by letter r
> preceded by letter l
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
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--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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

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