[tied] Re: Check out Origin of Ancient Languages

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 16399
Date: 2002-10-18

--- In cybalist@..., Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:
> Perhaps it's off topic

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/phoNet is perhaps the right home, but
neither you nor Torsten is a member, and unfortunately, the archives
are for members only.

> (though the limits of phonotactic typology are very
> much *on* topic), but I have just about the same impression as
Torsten
> with /ptklli/. The word can be proclitic, as in That's not
particularly
> nice of her! And my impression is that there is no vowel to speak
of in
> the first half, except for a voiceless release phase between the t
and the
> k. Is that all wrong?

An Englishman's first attempt to pronounce /ptklli/ may come up with
a good approximation of 'particularly', but it would not be a very
good rendering of [ptklli]. Conversely, my best attempt at producing
[ptklli] does not sound like <particularly>. In my 'careful' fast
tempo pronunciations, there is a lot of variation in how <ular> is
produced, but there seems to be a vowel there. Possibly my untrained
perception is at fault; I've never been able to believe in
syllabic /l/, /m/ and /n/ in normal English, and it took a faulty
voice chip to teach me how to pronounce syllabic /r/. (The chip
often said /rdi/ for /rEdi/.)

My usual pronunciation is [p&"tIklI], but I sometimes produce the
semi-syncopated [p&"tIkl&li] or [p&"tIkj&li]. (I lack tetrasyllabic
feet in normal speech; what should be tetrasyllabic feet may be
syncopated, become a pair of disyllabic feet, or simply have a
misplaced stress.)

I'm tempted to argue that there's a hint of a svarabhakti between [p]
and [t]. I'm sure there's some [I] vowel colouring between [t] and
[k], but it doesn't last long. I'm not sure why I perceive a vowel
in the '/kll/' sequence; maybe there's a pitch variation indicating a
syllable. I will agree that a rendering as [ptIkl:i] is possible,
though phonotactically its far nastier than [vess] for 'vests'.

> Surely Torsten is not claiming the word has no other
> realisations, but only that, given a special key (register), it is
> occasionally sounded very much like he wrote.

I thought he thought it sounded like that annoyingly frequently!

Richard.

An Englishman cannot open his mouth without making another Englishman
despise him - G. B. Shaw.