Re: [phoNet] Assimilation of English consonants

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: phoNet@egroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 9:43 PM

Subject: Re: [phoNet] Assimilation of English consonants

Should English transcriptions avoid the word-final digraph when the final s is a verb inflection or a plural? In my head, such an orthographic S would be mapped separately from the preceding orthographic T.

 

Umm. I'm asking, I think, if IPA transcription acknowledges such grammatical nicetities.

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That's what I said. The English /t+s/ sequense is biphonemic. Unfortunately the IPA ligature is confusingly difficult to distinguish from [t s]. Some phoneticians prefer a raised fricative symbol when symbolising affricates (a reasonable solution; I don't know why it hasn't been adopted by the International Phonetic Association as obligatory yet). The Polish contrast between genuine affricates and stop-plus-fricative clusters demonstrates that the need to distinguish the two is of practical importance.

 

Piotr