Hi,
responding to Karen's suggestion of flapped /t/ vs. /d/, the trouble with
that one is that for most Americans, even within a dialect, these aren't
distinct at all: it's a neutralization, not a distinction. There may be
incomplete neutralization, but accuracy rates on identification are maybe
around 55-60% (from memory, this is from Port's work, among others). In
some dialects (like mine), pairs with the diphthong /aJ/ before them are
pretty distinct, because of diphthong raising, so that "writer/rider" is
pretty clear to a listener of the same dialect. Maybe I misunderstood the
question--I was thinking of things that are distinct in some other
language, but difficult for English listeners to learn to perceive.
Thanks,
Natasha Warner
>
> In American English, there's the rather subtle intervocalic tapped /t/
> vs. /d/ contrast, e.g. liter (litre) vs. leader, latter vs. ladder,
> bitter vs. bidder, matter vs. madder, metal/mettle vs. medal/meddle, and
> so on, the main difference being a longer vowel before the inherently
> voiced /d/ and a somewhat longer or potentially longer intervocalic
> consonant, if you're not talking too quickly. This distinction recently
> came up in my radio English teaching in Taiwan.
>
> Karen Chung
>
> http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/
> http://lists.topica.com/lists/phonetics/
>
*******************************************************************************
Natasha Warner
Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics
University of Arizona
PO Box 210028
Tucson, AZ 85721-0028
|