First of all, many apologies for not participating much lately and more
generally for being a flake. As some of you know, my oldest brother,
Patrick, had been very ill and passed away at the beginning of summer.
It was all a bit depressing to say the least, not to mention the many other
problems that have ensued. The problems (mostly economic) are still
there, but look to be resolving themselves.

In any event, Life goes on. So, here are my two-cents worth:

Richard Hudson wrote:

>  Dear WG, I'm working on a paper for Language about our old friend the
>  word /wanna/, and I'm short of some data on a tiny point of
>  pronunciation. If you're a native speaker of English, I'd be most
>  grateful if you could answer a very short list of questions.
>
>  1. Do you ever use /wanna/ in your own speech (as in /I wanna go
>  home/, not /I wanna banana/)?

Yes!

>  2. Do you use a different vowel in /to/ according to whether the next
>  word begins with a consonant or a vowel (e.g. /I want to drink
>  /versus /I want to eat/)?

Depends on one's consciousness of the formality of the situation, I think:

want to: /tu/ = very formal
want to: /t@/ = between formal and colloquial
wanna /@/: colloquial

Perhaps /tu/ would go more often with EAT and /t@/ with DRINK,
but I'm not sure.

>  3. If you answered Yes to both 1 and 2, does the last vowel of
>  /wanna/ vary in the same way as that of /to/ in /want to/?

I don't think so.


One thing: when using DO + PRO-dropped questions, only WANNA
seems okay to me:

(1) Wanna go to the movies?
(2) ?? Want to go to the movies?

Sentence (2) sounds really stilted.

Joe