Re: English /h/ and /N/.

--- In phoNet@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@n...> wrote:

>
> Don't agree. I think 'Singing' is [sIN.IN]. This may be
> because it alternates in my speech with [sIN.gIN], especially
> when humming 'Singing in the Rain'!

That is strange to me. For although I think I'm coming
around to what you say about the syllabification of the
diphthongs, I definitely sing [sIIIII.NI.NIn.D&.reeeeIIIn],
and now have been singing it for the last few days. Thanks
alot! I did try intentionally saying [sIN.IN] and [sIN.gIN],
but the first one I can hardly get out without a glottal
stop [sIN.?IN] and the second one sounds really strange,
something like you would here in deaf people's speech.

> However one test is that one ought to be able to pronounce
> syllables in isolation.
> (I've a feeling this criterion
> has been used to predict foreign language acquisition problems
> by Norwegians as well as by Englishmen. I've seen the English
> ability to pronounce initial /Z/ attributed to words such as
> 'vision' /vI.Z&n/ and the like.) Can you pronounce words
> beginning with [N]?

I've been able to pronounce N- for many years. I had a
teacher from S. Africa in high school named Ms. Ngungu
[NuNu].

> If so, how easy was it in the beginning?

Fairly easy. I just took words like 'singing' and got
rid of the first syllable. (-:

> I've been trying on and off (sometimes by necessity) to
> pronounce it in Thai for five years, and I still have no
> confidence in what I produce. (I suspect my efforts are
> frequently heard as [k] or [n], Thai lacking [g].)
>
> There may be a problem with this test. Is 'city' ['si.ti] or

['sit.i]? I did a

> quick scan of the hyphenation in the 'Sunday Times', and noticed

that

> short, stressed vowels do not get separated from the following
> consonants. Perhaps the answer is to declare the [t] here as
> being 'ambisyllabic'. Certainly the nearest I come to ['si] is

['si?]. (That

> happens to be exactly what is wanted in Standard Thai - it has the
> same rule about short stressed vowels having to be followed by a
> consonant, if only a glottal stop. However, there the preferred

analysis

> is to have underlying [?] after apparently short open syllables and

apply

> a deletion rule in non-final word/phrase position for normal

tempo. I

> cite Fangkuei Li.'s sketch of Siamese.)

O.K. now you've really unsettled me and convinced me once
and for all that I don't what I'm talking about. I had no
idea that such things were normal. I always thought that
the natural syllabification of a sequence like CVCVCV was
CV.CV.CV in all languages. I would never have thought that
'city' could be [sIt.i]!

> Even if you ignore syllabification, . . .

I don't want to ignore syllabification. That's the point
that I understand best. That's why the affricates are
seperate phonemes and not sequences.

David