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03:48
1
Q: Does the pronunciation of "is" change when we do the contraction?

TomOk, see these 2 sentences: It is over /ɪdɪzoʊ.vɚ/ but It's over /ɪtsoʊ.vɚ/. 's will be pronounced as /s/ because it stands after a voiceless consonant He's over sixty /hizoʊ.vɚsɪk.sti/. 's will be pronounced as /z/ because it stands after a voiced consonant However, I feel that seem people ...

Anonymous
@Nihilist_Frost When /t/ is realized as [ɾ], the distinction between the two may be neutralized, but it should still be phonemically represented as /t/, not /d/.
@snailboat A mishearing, maybe?
irked me too
looks like the OP needs extra perception practice.
Imagine how a Brit would perceive the flap T if he heard it
what's the easiest telltale sign of an NAmE speaker?
rhoticity?
Anonymous
Dunno. Rhoticity is one of the main ones. The vowels all sound different, too. And flapping is a big one.
@snailboat The metal vs. medal test
ask anyone if they are homophonous.
if they say yes, NAmE
Anonymous
Well, that's tricky.
Anonymous
04:01
See, they might actually be homophonous, but native speakers might not be aware of that.
Anonymous
We let spelling trick us.
Anonymous
Some native speakers think English has one "th" sound, because θ and ð aren't distinguished in spelling.
Anonymous
And some people trick themselves into thinking they pronounce metal and medal differently, even if they don't.
what about Mary-marry-merry merger?
Anonymous
I don't know if I'd trust people to be aware of whether or not they have that merger in their speech.
04:05
@snailboat Wikipedia says they merge to /ɛ/ in the merger. somehow I seem to merge them to /ɛə/
the "air" vowel
I dunno why
 
3 hours later…
07:15
The Language Learning site has entered into the commitment phase. So in case, anyone here is interested in the site, can help it by committing to it :)
 
1 hour later…
08:17
@Dawny33 Yay!
 
2 hours later…
09:51
@Dawny33 Committed!
10:08
@DamkerngT. Yayy :)

I see this site would be really useful for polyglots and learners like me!
@Dawny33 I think so! :D
11:09
@Dam @Stoney @Snail @anyone else who likes LitCrit, we have a new room named Shakespear Treasury that you can discuss his works in.
Also @Cop
11:31
@DamkerngT. -- good afternoon! And Muhammad, too!
@MaulikV Man is mortal, The Journey of Man. To Tom Lee, this post should be helpful: english.stackexchange.com/questions/26481/…. — Damkerng T. 2 mins ago
Hello!
A nice comment, but we should distinguish between the use of articles in generic noun phrases and their use in descriptive constructions. The descriptive construction of the type "I am man" is a rare animal in English. Man tends to be used similarly to the tiger in "The tiger is in danger of becoming extinct."
@CopperKettle Yes, we should. I think Rimmer (or whatever his name is) did a nice job explaining it.
Oh, I'll read it then!
"And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master's love;
As I am woman,—now alas the day!—
What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe! "
Hah!
Poetic license!
11:37
Yes. If you have an unexpired poetic license, you can use man in any way you wish.
(0:
Note that we also have construction of the kind "I am man enough to face this challenge" --- a mass-noun usage of man. No article either.
Oh, right!
Hmm... is that man a noun or an adjective?
oh. it could be an adjective.
2
Q: In the phrase "man enough", is man an adjective?

Armen ԾիրունյանI do realize that the phrase "to be man enough" is an idiom. But I wonder what is the grammatical/syntactic role that man plays in it. Is it an uncountable noun? An adjective? An adverb? Or perhaps because the phrase is an idiom, the question makes no sense?

That's fast!
11:41
You just wait 100 years. Every question's answer will be on StackExchange.
"What is the meaning of life?" - "Closed as duplicate. This question has answers on: SE Grammar, SE Programming, SE Movies, SE Japanese, SE Russian, SE Mechanical Engineering."
I asked "What is the meaning of 'life'?" once. :P
11:43
(0:
My unicorn loved your question. — medica Apr 1 '14 at 4:26
:-)
16
A: What is the meaning of 'life'?

Ronan42. According to wikipedia 42 (forty-two) is the natural number immediately following 41 and directly preceding 43.

That was easy. (0:
12:26
0
A: I am man or I am a man?

CopperKettle Can I say "I am man"? An interesting question. The answer is "in the majority of cases, no! In a poem or in a song or in other such context, yes, sometimes". 'Man' in Generic Noun Phrases When we use man as a noncount noun, we usually speak of humanity as a whole, or of a "prototypical...

I am molecule.
@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. That would fit in a poem.
(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻
Unless "Molecule" is a unique capacity or role. "I am Chief Manager at IBM. Nice to meet you! And I am Molecule at Atoms R Us"
12:45
@CopperKettle Haha! I bought it for a few seconds!
Hi, everybody! Nice to see you .@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.What are those signs of yours, any language?
@V.V. Greek.
Hullo!
Capital mu, capital lambda, and a ligature of I and R.
Y and R? I forgot.
Anyway they're Unicode chars and you can look them up.
And the meaning? Sorry, it's all Greek to me.
@V.V. MAR is my initial.
13:02
I see. Sorry, I interrupted your talk. Congrats to CopperKettle.
@V.V. You didn't!
I just visited Shakespeare for a while. It's a good idea but I can't imagine how it is supposed to work.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm not the one who created it.
Anonymous
Is the spelling on purpose?
@snailboat Dunno.
But hell, I wanna call him doesn'tshakepears
Hullo BTW!
13:17
@snailboat Ahh... must've been a misspelling.
Question: Did Shakespeare shake pear?
Maybe his pen was his spear.
 
1 hour later…
14:33
Do we say humanity or the humanity when referring to mankind?
Anonymous
Usually the former.
Good evening, @snailboat! Thanks!
911 call reveals Scott Weiland found ‘stiff’ on tour bus
Ambivalent meaning, however macabre
Anonymous
Thanks, headlinese!
I <3 garden-path sentences so much, though
not headlinese, but... gives me the same feeling.
14:40
:-)
And my favourite popular linguistics blog has a post about it: allthingslinguistic.com/post/36385656700/…
They could've written
> 911 call reveals Scott Weiland found ‘limp’ on tour bus
> The man returned to his house was happy.
hehehe
Clean and decent dancing every night except Sunday
@jimsug You can read this as if the house owned the man?
14:43
@CopperKettle The man was taken from, then returned to his house [by some other agent]...
@jimsug Yes, I understood that. I just tried to construe another meaning.
Ah! You are fast, Cop!
Oh, right... the initial meaning? Or a different on altogether?
Sort of like ... the cat returned to its owner ...
@Cop pinged both jims
Ah, I see.
14:46
Because you love both of us?
Pinged Jims Answer Cop
What are the grammatical roles of man and the rebel here, I wonder: "I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf; Fate and my fellows cheat me of my wage." (Google Books)
Anonymous
15:05
I'm guilty of writing an answer-comment.
Anonymous
I don't feel like writing a full answer and disagree with basically everyone else, so I just left a comment.
Anonymous
Yep, it's perfectly normal to have no audible /t/ whatsoever. — snailboat 1 hour ago
Anonymous
Look at that answer-comment, all answer-commenty ;-(
Anonymous
Now I have answer-commenter's guilt.
@snailboat On behalf of all phoneticians, I hereby absolve thou of thy guilt.
Anonymous
15:08
Thee
Anonymous
There might be an articulatory gesture you could see with special tools that nonetheless doesn't result in any audible /t/. Shouldn't be hard to find actual textbooks that discuss this exact case.
Anonymous
But I'm too lazy right now.
@snailboat Indeed! Thou art quick to correct an erring wight. (0:
Anonymous
15:18
Maybe some enterprising soul could take this reference and fashion an answer of some sort
I think there is a difference between "pronounced" and "audible".
Anonymous
I did half the work! :-)
I'm not into phonetics.. (0: I haven't yet dealt with articles.
People may have difference ideas when talking about "pronounce". If I place the blade of my tongue in the /t/ position but make no sound when I do that and move on to the next sound, do I pronounce my /t/?
Dear @snailboat: In future, please answer, or comment.
Or neither answer nor comment.
Or both answer and comment.
15:22
These subtleties are hard, to observe or to explain.
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Phonetics is divided broadly into three fields: articulatory phonetics, how something is physically pronounced; acoustic phonetics, the measurement and analysis of the sound waves produced in human speech; and auditory phonetics, the sounds we hear.
2
Or let it be the case that you both answer and comment AND do not answer and comment.
@DamkerngT. Of there's no discernable sound, I'd say you did not pronounce that sound.
Anonymous
It's well known that an articulation may or may not produce an acoustic difference, and even if it does it may not be consistently audible.
Anonymous
That is why I suggested that in some cases an articulatory gesture might be present but not result in an audible /t/
15:24
nods -- I think that happens very often!
Anonymous
Another example of the difference: two people might pronounce /r/ in two different ways, but they might be acoustically quite similar and auditorily indistinguishable!
Anonymous
Argh, I meant to say articulate rather than pronounce, but I can't fix it on my phone.
Anonymous
Hurricane sandy?
Anonymous
She covers the pronunciation of last night there.
15:27
@DamkerngT. the text has "last night"
Anonymous
I'm on my phone and am too lazy to do anything but chat!
> in the sentence fragment ‘last night’. Notice I didn’t say the T in the word ‘last’.
Anonymous
Oh, I'm a lousy contributor :-)
Hmm... If two speakers, one claims that she did say her T, the other claims that she did not, but both of them produced exactly the same output(!), who is right?
Maybe both of them are.
Anonymous
Most native speakers have a fairly poor awareness of their own pronunciation.
15:30
@snailboat I'm sorry. I was just thinking out loud before clicking the link!
Anonymous
Native speakers typically think of careful pronunciation when they think of how they pronounce words. It's their mental model of the words, even if it's not how they actually say them.
Anonymous
Typically native speakers can't answer questions about connected speech processes because these processes contradict their intuition and perception of their own speech.
Anonymous
For example, try saying ten pennies.
Anonymous
Odds are you'll assimilate that /n/ to the following /p/, and it'll turn into an [m]. But no one thinks of it as tem pennies.
Anonymous
That's just counterintuitive.
Anonymous
15:34
So if we take a pair of native speakers and ask them your question, odds are they'll both be wrong :-)
Anonymous
Orthography is another major bias.
Anonymous
We think we pronounce everything like it's spelled.
There is a related old ELL question (not very old) about /z/ coming out as [s].
@snailboat That's quite possible!
Anonymous
It never does.
Anonymous
It can be [s], but not /s/.
15:36
Ah, right! My bad.
Anonymous
@JimReynolds I'll have you know, Copper Kettle officially absolved me of my guilt not fifteen minutes ago! :-) So I don't have to do any of those things you said!
Verily so, by welkin!
Anonymous
Whelkin'!
welkin is a beautiful English word for sky!
OK. Then it's as if a dog barked up the wrong tree in the forest.
a forest?
Anonymous
15:40
And whelking is a beautiful English word for, um, whatever whelk means when you verb it!
Whelk is a common name that is applied to various kinds of sea snail, many of which have historically been used, or are still used, by humans and other animals for food. Although a number of whelks are relatively large and are in the family Buccinidae (the true whelks), the word whelk is also applied to some other marine gastropod mollusc species within several families of sea snails that are not very closely related. == Usage == The common name "whelk" is also spelled welk or even wilks. The word originated from the Proto-Germanic root "weluka", which may come from the Proto-Indo-European root...
Anonymous
Did I convince anyone to write the answer for me?
Noun: whelk stall ‎(plural whelk stalls)
  1. (Britain, colloquial, slang) A small enterprise which is very simple to run.
Anonymous
I left the links in a comment. Now someone's bound to write an answer!
@snailboat The OP's just got another answer!
Anonymous
15:46
Oh!!
in your comment :P
Anonymous
Nooo
(sorryyy!)
Anonymous
I'm trying to gently nudge in the right direction
Anonymous
By including the entire answer in a comment
Anonymous
15:47
Oh, I'm the worst kind of user :-)
Anonymous
I'm back to comment-answerer's guilt!
I think it's a good thing. Just my opinion, though. :-)
@snailboat I'm out of indulgencies for today! (0:
You could meat it up later, though, if you'd like.
Anonymous
I just don't feel like writing an answer post from my phone, really.
Anonymous
15:49
Typing up a quote from that book is near impossible from my phone.
I'm guilty of thinking that we can't really distinguish "las night" from "last night" in spontaneous speech.
Anonymous
Well, you could make a clearly audible /t/, but it'd be rather unnatural sounding.
(A great rendition of the song, I've never heard it.)
Anonymous
The easiest way to make it audible would be to pronounce and release the /t/, which would mean you were pronouncing the words by themselves rather than as connected speech (the normal way to speak).
15:53
nods
Anonymous
Preferably with a bit of a pause between the words.
Anonymous
But it sounds kind of silly :-)
Anonymous
People naturally connect words.
Anonymous
15:56
@DamkerngT. I think you could write an answer about what you said! :-)
Anonymous
I like your take on it.
Anonymous
Okay, I'm officially done trying to make other people answer it. I apologize :-)
Anonymous
But I do like your take on it.
Anonymous
-1
Q: Could it be correct to say "make your dream real"?

AssiduousCould it be correct to say "make your dream real" instead of "make your dream become true"?

@snailboat Hah! But it's just my idea!
Anonymous
16:02
The comment and answer here suggest make your dream real is unidiomatic.
(I have no real proof for it.)
Anonymous
I actually thought it sounded okay :-)
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. To Google Scholar!
It sounded okay to me, but as a Muggle.. I mean a non-native, I durst not answer.
Oh! Thanks! Maybe I should try to pitch in a bit.
Anonymous
16:04
I think one of the rules in Ladefoged & Johnson explains the /t/ disappearing.
But... "I'm looking for feedback from native speakers."
@DamkerngT. "If I place the blade of my tongue in the /t/ position but make no sound when I do that and move on to the next sound, do I pronounce my /t/?" I've been working on the same question, and here's what I've tentatively come up with -- does it make sense to you?
(I don't think he did anything wrong)
(This is for @snailboat, too, who raised the question).
The /t/ is pronounced, in the sense that all the features of its pronunciation are present; but in the particular context /læstnaɪt/ the /t/ cannot ordinarily be heard as a distinct phonic element.
I like that!
16:07
I then go on to look at the transitions from phone(me) to phone(me), since it is the contrast between adjacent sounds which is informative.
Anonymous
Okay, I've abandoned phoneville. It's a cold, rainy morning, but I am now at an actual computer!
In the /stn/ sequence there's no transition in articulation point--all three are apico-alveolar.
Anonymous
By the way, we discussed prince and prints already, right?
Anonymous
That's the same phonemic sequence but in reverse.
Anonymous
The distinction is neutralized since [t] can be inserted in prince and /t/ can be elided from prints, and it's hard to hear the difference anyhow.
Anonymous
But it is physically possible to produce two different sequences.
The transition from near-occlusion to full occlusion occurs between /s/ and /t/, but it's very rapid because of the homorganicity in the last point.
Anonymous
I had references for this last time we talked about it.
The transition from voiceless to voiced occurs between /t/ and /n/ -- BUT
@snailboat nods -- I remember that.
Anonymous
16:12
Let's see, it was: Stop epenthesis in English, Fourakis & Port 1986
In English, a stop assimilates to a following homorganic nasal, eg /tn/ → /dn/
Hmm... I think there's a /t/ in "Britney".
Oh, I see! /dn/
Anonymous
Fourakis & Port mainly describe epenthesis of [t], but [d] is also inserted (much less often)
Anonymous
But since both /t/ and /d/ commonly weaken or disappear entirely in that phonetic context, you can end up with a neutralization regardless of voicing.
Anonymous
Araucaria had an answer about this recently, I think, but it said something slightly different from what I remember reading elsewhere, and I haven't taken the time to track down the answer and the sources and reconcile them.
16:19
(Actually the /d/ should probably be a flap, but I'm ignoring that). Consequently, the only way a /t/ can be discerned in speech is by cancelling that assimilation, which can occur through the preglottalization TRomano mentions, or through non-standard fully audible release of the /t/.
Anonymous
In my speech, [ʔ] is the allophone of /t/ in Britney.
@StoneyB So a person trying to clearly pronounce "lasT night" will slip towards "lazDnight"?
So all the definienda of /t/ are present, and the speaker can report honestly that he "pronounces" the /t/ -- but there may be no actually discernible /t/ present at any point.
Anonymous
So your "pronounces" and "discernible" are my "articulates" and "audible" :-)
Anonymous
1 hour ago, by snailboat
There might be an articulatory gesture you could see with special tools that nonetheless doesn't result in any audible /t/. Shouldn't be hard to find actual textbooks that discuss this exact case.
16:22
@snailboat But would you put a [ʔ] into Bristney?
Anonymous
@StoneyB Nope! That's hard to say, actually.
Anonymous
I just tried pronouncing it a bunch of different ways, and I settled on eliding the /t/.
Anonymous
Too much effort to try to make a /t/ that people won't notice anyway ;-)
I've been trying to find a treatment of glottalization in that context, but nobody mentions it, even as a negative.
Anonymous
T coda glottalization in AmE requires that the preceding sound be a vowel or sonorant.
Anonymous
16:25
That rule is given in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.
Anonymous
BrE too, I think. I would have to go find the exact quote.
@snailboat Ah! That's what I needed!
Or is it? Is /s/ a sonorant? I can never remember ...
Anonymous
Sibilants are obstruents.
Bingo! then.
I found this: Cockney pronunciation of 'butter'. Is this how Britney is pronounced? Bri'ni?
16:32
I'm a non-native speaker, but I'd like to remind everyone that these followings are unnecessarily the same: what the speaker thinks they do, what they really do, what the listener hears, and what they think they hear. — Damkerng T. 15 secs ago
I commented in another direction. :P
Anonymous
that the following are not necessarily the same:
I thought it could be a little awkward.
Is following always in the singular?
Anonymous
If you say unnecessarily the same, it means that they are the same, even though it's unnecessary. Not necessarily the same means that we can't assume they are the same.
Anonymous
Think of it as ellipsis. The following things.
16:36
Fixed!
@CopperKettle Not really, because of what snail's just been helping me with. We tend to pronounce late-night either as laid-night or lay?-night; in this context X?-night is forbidden (because of the /s/), so the voicing transition regresses to the putative /t/, and all the transitions which mark the sequence /stn/ are also present in the sequence /sn/. QED
The not necessarily error is more important.
@StoneyB Thank you!
I wonder how often we pronounce it "lay?-night" and how it sounds (or should I invert here to "does it sound"? D'oh). We just make an abrubt stop there. But I've read some Wikipedia articles these minutes and learned some new terms.
@CopperKettle Me too.
Anonymous
Someone tell me if this shows up right: l̩
Anonymous
16:43
There should be a small mark below the l indicating that it's syllabic. I'm typing up some IPA and want to make sure I didn't get it wrong for the zillionth time.
@snailboat There is, even on my ancient computer.
Great joke, from Peter Roach's blog: I don't use the term "unreleased" - taken literally, an unreleased plosive would lead to the death of the speaker.
2
@snailboat Oh, and I thought my screen was dirty! :P
@snailboat It's very small and grey and a tiny bit off center on this display.
Anonymous
I'd like to type up a passage from Ladefoged & Johnson. Well, actually, I already typed it up, and now I'd like to paste it in here. So you'll all have to humor me and pretend the little thingy isn't off-center.
Anonymous
16:46
> (15) Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants.
Anonymous
> Rule (15) raises an interesting point of phonetic theory. Note that we said “alveolar stops often appear to get dropped,” and there may be “no audible [d]”. However, the tongue tip gesture for the alveolar stop in most people may be present but just not audible because it is completely overlapped by the labial stop following.
Anonymous
> More commonly, it is partially omitted; that is to say, the tongue tip moves up for the alveolar stop but does not make a complete closure. When we think in terms of phonetic symbols, we can write [ˈmoʊs ˈpipl̩] or [ˈmoʊst ˈpipl̩]. This makes it a question of whether the [t] is there or not. But that is not really the issue. Part of the tongue tip gesture may have been made, a fact that we have no way of symbolizing.
Anonymous
> [...]
Anonymous
> We must state not only where consonants get dropped, but also where they get added. Words such as something and youngster often get pronounced as [ˈsʌmpθiŋ] and [ˈjʌŋkstə˞]. In a similar way, many people do not distinguish between prince and prints, or tense and tents. All these words may be pronounced with a short voiceless stop between the nasal and the voiceless fricative. But the stop is not really an added gesture.
Anonymous
> It is simply the result of changing the timing of the nasal gesture with respect to the oral gesture. By rushing the raising of the velum for the nasal, a moment of complete closure—a stop—occurs. The apparent insertion of a stop into the middle of a word in this way is known as epenthesis. If we wanted to make a formal statement of this phenomenon, we could say:
Anonymous
16:47
> (16) A homorganic voiceless stop may occur after a nasal before a voiceless fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word.
Anonymous
> Note that it is necessary to mention that the following vowel must be unstressed. Speakers who have an epenthetic stop in the noun concert do not usually have one in verbal derivatives such as concerted, or in words such as concern. Nothing need be said about the vowel before the nasal. Epenthesis may—like the [t]-to-[ɾ] change in statement (13)—occur between unstressed vowels. It is possible to hear an inserted [t] in both agency and grievances.
Beautiful. You've now written the answer you felt guilty about not writing. Post it, Danno!
+1 on Post it. :D
Anonymous
Most books I've checked, like this one, don't describe epenthetic [d], and I think that's because epenthetic [t] is much more common.
@snailboat You read my mind!
Maybe /d/ (or [d]) is different.
"send news"
Hmm... probably not a good example.
16:51
frenzy
(16a) A homorganic voiced stop may occur after a nasal before a voiced fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word.
bronze-age. gonzo.
benzine. a fan's agony.
Anonymous
Oh, hamster is commonly misspelled hampster.
Anonymous
The Hampster [sic] Dance or Hampsterdance is a song by Hampton the Hampster. It was released in July 2000, as a single. It was produced by The Boomtang Boys, recreating the Roger Miller hook and adding additional rap-style lyrics. The single, whose commercially released version featured a sound-a-like sample (the band having failed to gain permission to use the original), along with a number of other short voice samples from classic B-movies forming an abstract vocal line in lieu of a regular lyric, peaked at number 4 on the Christmas 1999 UK singles chart. This version was named "Cognoscenti vs...
"The video was declared worst or cheesiest video of the year by MuchMusic in the one-hour special Fromage 2001."
> However, the tongue tip gesture for the alveolar stop in most people may be present but just not audible because it is completely overlapped by the labial stop following.
Oh, my guess was close!
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