Date:  Wed, 16 Apr 1997 13:37:50 -0400
<br>From:  Jules Levin  jflevin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UCRAC1.UCR.EDU 
<br>Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/
<br>
<br>At 01:11 PM 4/16/97 -0400, you wrote:
<br> I watched a fourth grade play yesterday in which the teacher had taught the
<br> children to enunciate clearly, which often means they're supposed to aspirate
<br> words spelled t wherever they occur (a practice I abhor because it doesn't
<br> sound like Am. Eng. anymore). So words like letter, better, getting all had
<br> aspirated t. I felt a certain sense of triumph when one girl also used one
<br> in "shadow."
<br> 
<br> This reminds me of a friend who pronounced Beethoven with a voiced flap, and
<br> as I think about it, it seems that in that word the normal (for me) aspirated
<br> t is really quite unique when not after a morpheme boundary (pretext,
<br> pretense). Are there any other intervocalic aspirate Ts?
<br> 
<br>
<br>
<br>I think that stresses play a critical role. For some speakers/dialects (?)
<br>/t/ is flapped only before an unstressed syllable. ('atom') At the other
<br>end, everyone aspirates between unstressed and fully stressed: ('attend')
<br>Compare the two t's in 'attitude'.  In between there are variations. With
<br>two unreduced vowels I generally do not have a flap, e.g., in 'atoll'  I
<br>venture a guess that your friend also reduces the 'o' in Beethoven to a
<br>schwa. I once had a student in a ling class transcribe 'hotdog' as [h'ad[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]g]
<br>When I checked, sure enuf that's how she pronounced it. By the way, similar
<br>variation exists when /t/ is followed by an /n/: In my original Chicago
<br>dialect I had a full aspirated [t] in 'enter' etc., but here is SoCal one
<br>hardly ever hears it. I sometimes think there is a vestigial flap after the
<br>/n/, but it is hard to hear. The minimal pair for most speakers would be
<br>'enter' and 'inner' and they seem to have merged.
<br>
<br>Jules Levin
<br>