[Ads-l] /d/ for flapped /t/

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Nov 16 01:23:46 UTC 2014


The truth is out there and I want to believe! I even have a vague memory of
an article by Labov pointing out that a subset of New Yorkers thought that
"source" and "sauce" fell together in their variety of New York speech,
though, in fact, the two words were kept  distinct.

"He became obsessed with betting/bedding the woman for high stakes."

For me, the distinction is "b[E]ting" v. "b[E:]ting," resp.


I'd have to get the instruments out on that one.

'Nough said.


Many of us will remember entire classrooms of students of whom only two or
three could hear the difference between /a/ and /C/ (e.g., "pa" and "paw,"
"hottie" and "haughty").

Yet, to me, the difference between these two sounds is so glaringly obvious
that I can't understand how it isn't also clear to any other
hearer, regardless of dialect.

Youneverknow.

"A difference that makes no difference is no difference," I reckon. If I
take the trouble to listen, I can hear the difference between "pen" and
"pin" - I think, since the two hardly ever occur in the same context - and
even reproduce it.

"But," in the words of my favorite William-Shatner-featuring commercial,
"why?" :-)


On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: /d/ for flapped /t/
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 11/15/2014 04:07 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >One might try to find pairs of words that have the same grammatical
> >function and semantically could be interchangeable in some (single)
> utterance.
>
> "He became obsessed with betting/bedding the woman for high stakes."
>
> (Prompted by a cable TV provider's channel guide review of the movie
> "The Woman in Red.")
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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