LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 11.AUG.2000 (03) [E]

Fri Aug 11 15:58:01 UTC 2000

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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: "Language varieties"

John Feather

Some questions about American English.
>
> 1. The normal past tense of "fit" in AmE is "fit".
> In BE it is "fitted".
> "Knit" can give "knit" or "knitted" in BE, depending
> on the context but AmE
> seems to prefer "knit". I occasionally think I hear
> other cases where a "d"
> is lost in the past tense (or past participle) in US
> TV shows and films - eg
> "create" for "created" - but this may be due to poor
> diction or a noisy
> soundtrack. So, is this a growing phenomenon? Are
> there regional or
> social-class variations?

I've never looked into the matter, but from casual
observation:
AmE does this with many one-syllable verbs ending in
t, e.g.:
knit, fit, slit, hit,  set, bet, let,  cut,

I hear and say bat(ted) both ways.

Others I've never heard without -ed: flitted ratted,
butted, rutted.

Black English tends to drop the -ed in general. I'm
not sure of the details of how regularly or with what
exceptions.

> 2. In Standard BE we pronounce "the" differently
> before vowels and
> consonants. We pronounce "the elephant" as
> "theeyelephant" - the intensity
> of the "y" sound depending on the speaker. Americans
> tend to say "th@ elephant"

Speaking only for myself, I normally say "th@" or
"th'", and the pronunciation "theey" is emphatic (e.g.
She's not -a- boss but -the- boss).
Same thing for a/an: @/@n vs. emphatic [e:j  aen].

> 3. Has anybody ever tried to explain consonant
> shifts such as those in
> Robert Mitchum's (I think in "Wings of War")
> "Naddlies gone tiddly" - ie
> "Natalie's gone to Italy"? (The reduction of "to" to
> "t" before a vowel is
> also interesting.

Most (all?  I'm not sure) American dialects reduce
unaccented t and d between vowels to a tap, which is
pronounced identically to a single-tap trilled r (so
that AmE petal and Scots pearl come out sounding the
same).

Examples: butter, hotter, Natalie, Italy, meta-, beta,
bottle, subtle, article (the r is vocalic).

Notice the homophones: latter/ladder, writer/rider,
writing/riding (but writes and rides sound different:
[raits] vs. [rai:dz].

If the t/d start a stressed syllable, they remain
unreduced:  aTOmic, reTELL, atTAIN, iTAlian, hoTEL

t before n, on the other hand, becomes a glottal stop
(I think that's so in most varieties of AmE): button
[b@?n], kitten, latent, written/ridden,
writin'/ridin'.

Hm.  I just noticed that the t stays [t] in _REtail_,
_DEtail_ and deTAIL.  There's obviously more to it. I
think the fact that the following syllable is
unreduced is key.  Maybe it would be more accurate to
say that t reduces in syllables that reduce, and not
all unaccented syllables reduce.

I notice reduction in words like Kyoto, motto, Plato,
even tho I don't see any reduction in the second
syllable.
Thoughts, anyone?

Stefan Israel
stefansfeder at yahoo.com

----------

From: "Ian James Parsley" <parsleyij at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 10.AUG.2000 (03) [E]

John Feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk] wrote:

> eg "create" for "created" - but this may be due to poor diction or a
noisy
> soundtrack. So, is this a growing phenomenon? Are there regional or
> social-class variations? Can one see it as a semi-strengthening of
the verbs

This would not, in fact, indicate a strengthening of the verb, it
would merely be that the verb *appeared* strong. For example,
Ulster-Scots has lost the final /d/ on 'stand', whose past tense form
(there is only one in Ulster-Scots, which is used both for preterite
and past participle) is 'stuid'. In pronunciation, a dental suffix has
actually been added as part of the past tense formation, but this
remains a strong verb merely because the loss of the /d/ in the
present was phonological, not morphological. The reverse would apply
to create above - the fact the /d/ is lost in the past forms is a
phonological change, the verb itself remains weak by definition.

As I think I said before, 'strengthening' of verbs is extremely rare.
In Proto-Germanic *all* verbs were strong, before the innovation of
the dental suffix to mark the past. Since then, more and more verbs
have 'weakened'. There are very few exceptions ('dug' is one, by
analogy with forms such as 'sting-stung', and American 'dove' is
another, by analogy with 'drive-drove').

> 3. Has anybody ever tried to explain consonant shifts such as those
in
> Robert Mitchum's (I think in "Wings of War") "Naddlies gone
tiddly" - ie
> "Natalie's gone to Italy"? (The reduction of "to" to "t" before a
vowel is
> also interesting.

I'm no phonologist, but this 'devoicing', particularly of medial
consonants, is wide-ranging. I think I'm right in saying Danish has
devoiced all its medial consonants (so 'laekke' sounds like 'laegge'),
and certainly medial /tt/ has been devoiced in northern German
dialects (e.g. 'butter' pronounced as in American- rather than
British-English). This devoicing is also occurring in England at
present (Phil Sharp on the radio always says 'bedder', 'ledder',
'nudder' and so on). In most Scots dialects the equivalent medial
consonants (including /k/ and /p/) have been glottalized. Some Ulster
dialects show influence from the rest of Ireland by dentalizing them
(e.g. 'betther', 'letther', 'nutther').

Best wishes,
---------------
Ian James Parsley

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