|
|
On 30 Dec 2006 18:48:04 -0800, <benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote
in
<news:1167533284.123258.324000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:
[...]
> It reminds me of the fact I think I mentioned here a few years ago,
> that I have geminate /t/ in "thirteen" and "fourteen". I doubt if the
> two cases are related, except insofar as they show how phonemic
> differences in the shape of common words can persist for years
> unnoticed.
> Of course geminates are common in English when two of the same
> consonant come together at a morpheme boundary, as in "hot-tub" or
> "sackcloth". But I don't see any such explanation for these cases. I
> don't even have my pronouncing dictionaries here at the moment, so I
> don't know whether these pronunciations are recognized variants.
> Anybody know?
M-W OnLine recognizes the possibility, giving these
pronunciations for 'thirteen':
"th&r(t)-'tEn, 'th&r(t)-
That's /,T@r(t)'tin/, /'T@r(t)tin/. AHD4 gives only the
equivalent of /T@r'tin/. The OED (1989) gives [T3:'ti:n],
['T3:ti:n].
I'm pretty sure that I usually have [?tt] in 'thirteen',
occasionally reduced to [?t]. In 'fourteen' I seem to have
both [O?tt] and [O:t], but I've no idea what the proportions
are. At least some of the time I have [?kst] in 'sixteen'.
In 'eighteen' I seem as a rule to have distinctly less
glottal closure than in 'thirteen'.
Brian
|
|