2008/5/15 Daniel Prohaska <[log in to unmask]>:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benct Philip Jonsson
> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 2:27 PM
> "Now that's pretty important a distinction in meaning to place on vowel
> length and a glottal stop!"
>
>
>
> It is, and it works, because in Northern Regional (Standard) English vowel
> length is distinctive and [?] is an allophone of /t/.
>
> Dan

So I understood.  I only foresaw a confusion for myself because
in my L1 vowel length is only marginally distinctive (being a function
of consonantal structure and stress for the most part) and [?] is
at best an allophone of zero -- e.g. it kicks in to provide a
consonantal syllable coda when one is required after a short
stressed vowel.  I've known for 25+ years that [?] is an
allophone (even the most frequent allophone!) of /t/ in some
Englishes, but I can't bring myself to hear it as one!

/BP

> "I guess in accents like  Tristan's the distinction is between [kEn] and
> [kA:n], which is a bit more audible for us poor bastards without a /?/
> phoneme in our L1's! (I do have [?] in some cases -- notably when trying to
> pronounce a word-final stressed short vowel, as when pronouncing the
> 'adverb' /la/ in isolation it becomes [la?]. Another possible
> pronunciationis [la:], which is still different from _la(de)_ /lA:/ [lQ:] --
> an impossible distinction in many accents of Swedish."
>
>
>
> Daniel Prohaska skrev:
>
>  > In my North-Western English English <can't> is [ka:n?] or [ka:~?],
>
>  > definitely with a glottal stop at the end. In other contexts I've got
>
>  > similar assimilations to the one Tristan described for Australian
> English.
>
>  > "I can't always" [a"ka:~?'O:L\8z] or  [a"ka:~?'O:wEz]
>
>  > "can't you come" ["ka:~tS@'kUm]
>
>  > <can> is [kan].
>
>  > Dan
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
/ BP