Monday, June 13, 2011

Post nasal, post lateral Epenthesis

Nasal + Obstruent = Nasal + Fricative or Nasal + Stop

Between a nasal and a tautosyllabic obstruent, English introduces an "epenthetic" stop that has the place of articulation of the preceding nasal and the heavy or light order of the following obstruent; e.g., warmth (with deleted //m// by rule 12), respon[t]se, prin[t]ce, Sampson, sempstress, Thompson, contempt, bumpkin, presumption,. Although epenthesis occurs in U.S. barytonic princess, it does not occur in British prin'cess nor in tramˌcar, where the environmental consonants are heterosyllabic to begin with. They become heterosyllabic after epenthesis, one of a number of syllabic changes resulting from the rules--this suggests to some that syllabization rules are "anywhere" rules. (p.29 Charles-James Bailey Variable Syllabic Boundaries)

John Wells discusses about tautosyllabic Nasal + Fricative

Lateral + Voiceless Fricative:

eIn some dialects, fal[t}se, el[t]se,

Andrew says: In the U.S. state of Utah, where I'm currently studying, strong plosive epenthesis occurs after [l] as well as [n]: words like 'salsa' and 'Chelsea' become [sɑlʔtsə] and [tʃɛlʔtsi]. 'Also' is normally realized as [ɑlʔtsɔʊ] but is sometimes hypercorrected to something like [ɑssɔʊ]. Words like 'infinite' and 'information' normally become [ɪɱʔfɨnɪʔ] and [ɪɱfɚmeɪʃən] but in close speech (speaking at church, for example) they are clearly and deliberately pronounced as [ɪntfɨnɪʔ] and [ɪntfɚmeɪʃən].

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