Re: [tied] Vowel Lengthening from V + Voiced Stop (was Vowel Lengt

On 2006-10-02 23:43, Brian M. Scott wrote:

> Patrick said 'not stressed', so I assume that he's using one
> of the U.S. pronunciations of <bitumen>, with stress on the
> second syllable. Given the comparison with <ligament>, I
> suspect that you're using the British pronunciation
> ['bItjUmIn].
>
> I don't think that <bitumen> with stress on the second
> syllable is a very good example, because the first syllable
> is [b&-] for some speakers.

Oops, I overlooked the "not stressed" part. Of course, this is one of
the well-known accentual differences between UK and US English (only the
latter is faithful to the stress pattern of Lat. bitú:men). Yes, I'd
pronounce it ['bItjUmIn] or ['bItSUmIn] myself.

I think pretonic [baI-'] is also possible in American English, and
[b&-'] is probably more widespread than [bI-']. Anyway, a metrically
weak position can hardly be regarded as the "normal" environment for
vowels, since most vowel phonemes are simply banned from it.

Piotr