English questions

[Raphael]

Do I get this right that the statements "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], unlike certain other people" and "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], like certain other people" mean basically the same thing?

[Travis B.]

Do I get this right that the statements "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], unlike certain other people" and "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], like certain other people" mean basically the same thing?

To me the first statement sounds normal, whereas the second sounds off.

[Richard W]

Do I get this right that the statements "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], unlike certain other people" and "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], like certain other people" mean basically the same thing?

There may not be a prescriptive rule on the matter, but I feel that for identity of meaning the second sentence shouldn't have a comma. We're also also approaching the issuing of parsing negation, where I think different native speakers of standard English have subtly different grammars. (It's also conceivable that individuals aren't consistent.) The comma in the sentence with 'unlike' helps connect the comparison with 'never', and the lack helps it connect with 'done'.

[zompist]

Do I get this right that the statements "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], unlike certain other people" and "I have never done [fill in bad thing here], like certain other people" mean basically the same thing?

The logical form is different.

1. I have never killed a moose, unlike Teddy.
2. I have never killed a moose like Teddy (did).

The first could be paraphrased "I didn't kill a moose, and in this respect I am unlike Teddy, who did."
The second is more like "I didn't kill a moose; Teddy did kill a moose."

(I tend to agree with Richard W that "like" is more closely tied to "killed a moose". I'd be more comfortable with the added "did", but I think it can be colloquially left out.)

To put it another way, it's not the case that "like" and "unlike" mean the same thing. What is unlike Teddy is you. "Like Teddy" is not a contradiction of this-- i.e. a statement that you are like Teddy-- but a way of saying that killing a moose is something he did.

(Why do we use "like" this way? It makes more sense in statements like "No one can write like Balzac", that is, in the way of Balzac.)

(Also, on reflection: statement 2 is really ambiguous. It can mean that you never killed a moose at all. But it can also be used to state that you never did it in Teddy's way, you did it some other way. This is more evidence that 1 and 2 are not parallel constructions, because 1 is not ambiguous.)

[Man in Space]

(Also, on reflection: statement 2 is really ambiguous. It can mean that you never killed a moose at all. But it can also be used to state that you never did it in Teddy's way, you did it some other way. This is more evidence that 1 and 2 are not parallel constructions, because 1 is not ambiguous.)

That reading is actually how I would default to understanding 2. “I’ve killed moose but not in the manner in which Teddy is known for.”

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone!

[Travis B.]

It is normally taken as a given that /t/ before /n/ or /ən/~/ɪn/ in most NAE varieties is realized as [ʔ]. However, I just found a major exception - the present participle* of get, getting, which is commonly /ˈɡɛtən/, which I find is normally realize as [ˈɡ̥ɜɾɘ̃(ː)n] or [ɡ̥ɜnː] in the English I am familiar with. Is this due to the morpheme boundary between get and -ing inhibiting glottal-stopping of /t/ here?

* Note that this is distinct from the gerund, despite being written identically in Standard English, as in the English I am familiar with that always has /əŋ/.

[vlad]

It is normally taken as a given that /t/ before /n/ or /ən/~/ɪn/ in most NAE varieties is realized as [ʔ].

I noticed recently that this actually only applies when the preceding syllable is stressed. It does not apply to words like hesitant or militant, which undergo neither flapping nor glottalization, but retain [t].

However, I just found a major exception - the present participle* of get, getting, which is commonly /ˈɡɛtən/, which I find is normally realize as [ˈɡ̥ɜɾɘ̃(ː)n] or [ɡ̥ɜnː] in the English I am familiar with. Is this due to the morpheme boundary between get and -ing inhibiting glottal-stopping of /t/ here?

I have [geʔnͅ] but I am not American.

[Moose-tache]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_0VY17 ... offLindsey

[Travis B.]

It is normally taken as a given that /t/ before /n/ or /ən/~/ɪn/ in most NAE varieties is realized as [ʔ].

I noticed recently that this actually only applies when the preceding syllable is stressed. It does not apply to words like hesitant or militant, which undergo neither flapping nor glottalization, but retain [t].

This is more probably a matter of that these words have a bit of secondary stress on their third syllables, this does not occur when /t/ falls in the onset of a syllable with stress.

[vlad]

It is normally taken as a given that /t/ before /n/ or /ən/~/ɪn/ in most NAE varieties is realized as [ʔ].

I noticed recently that this actually only applies when the preceding syllable is stressed. It does not apply to words like hesitant or militant, which undergo neither flapping nor glottalization, but retain [t].

This is more probably a matter of that these words have a bit of secondary stress on their third syllables, this does not occur when /t/ falls in the onset of a syllable with stress.

But if they had secondary stress they wouldn't have vowel reduction.

[Travis B.]

I noticed recently that this actually only applies when the preceding syllable is stressed. It does not apply to words like hesitant or militant, which undergo neither flapping nor glottalization, but retain [t].

This is more probably a matter of that these words have a bit of secondary stress on their third syllables, this does not occur when /t/ falls in the onset of a syllable with stress.

But if they had secondary stress they wouldn't have vowel reduction.

They don't have vowel reduction for me at least - I intuitively perceive them as having /ɪn/ rather than /ən/, as my /ɪ/, which can only exist in stressed syllables, is fronter and tenser than my /ə/ in more careful speech, even though both are at least somewhat centralized and high-ish. (That is, my /ɪ/ is more like [ɪ̠] in careful speech, and /n/ following it is never syllabified, whereas my /ə/ before /n/ is [ɘ] or disappears with the /n/ being syllabified.)

[Travis B.]

On that note, I would analyze hesitant and militant as /ˈhɛzəˌtɪnt/ and /ˈmɪləˌtɪnt/, realized as [ˈhɜːzɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)] and [ˈmɪ̠ːɰɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)]; note that I realize the first and third vowels in militant as roughly the same, while the second vowel is lower and more central. (Note that the first and third vowels are still retracted and lowered relative to their counterparts in GA, but not the same degree.)

[anteallach]

On that note, I would analyze hesitant and militant as /ˈhɛzəˌtɪnt/ and /ˈmɪləˌtɪnt/, realized as [ˈhɜːzɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)] and [ˈmɪ̠ːɰɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)]; note that I realize the first and third vowels in militant as roughly the same, while the second vowel is lower and more central. (Note that the first and third vowels are still retracted and lowered relative to their counterparts in GA, but not the same degree.)

I would swap /ə/ and /ɪ/ (not the one in the first syllable of militant, obviously) in your transcriptions but I also feel that the final syllables of these two words have a bit more stress on them than the middle ones.

[Travis B.]

On that note, I would analyze hesitant and militant as /ˈhɛzəˌtɪnt/ and /ˈmɪləˌtɪnt/, realized as [ˈhɜːzɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)] and [ˈmɪ̠ːɰɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)]; note that I realize the first and third vowels in militant as roughly the same, while the second vowel is lower and more central. (Note that the first and third vowels are still retracted and lowered relative to their counterparts in GA, but not the same degree.)

I would swap /ə/ and /ɪ/ (not the one in the first syllable of militant, obviously) in your transcriptions but I also feel that the final syllables of these two words have a bit more stress on them than the middle ones.

Note that that's only notation - /ɪ/ can only exist in stressed syllables, and /ə/ can only exist in unstressed syllables, but in less careful speech their actual realizations can be quite similar, as /ɪ/ is already realized as [ɪ̠] and /ə/ is most frequently realized as [ɘ] (and is only commonly realized as [ə] in the vicinity of labials, /r/, /l/, and /w/, and morpheme-finally).

[Estav]

It is normally taken as a given that /t/ before /n/ or /ən/~/ɪn/ in most NAE varieties is realized as [ʔ]. However, I just found a major exception - the present participle* of get, getting, which is commonly /ˈɡɛtən/, which I find is normally realize as [ˈɡ̥ɜɾɘ̃(ː)n] or [ɡ̥ɜnː] in the English I am familiar with. Is this due to the morpheme boundary between get and -ing inhibiting glottal-stopping of /t/ here?

* Note that this is distinct from the gerund, despite being written identically in Standard English, as in the English I am familiar with that always has /əŋ/.

I don't think a morpheme boundary per se is relevant, unless you have the same thing going on in gotten, eaten, forgotten, beaten, threaten. I think that even if there is no surface contrast between the phonetic realizations of the endings spelled -ing and -en, there is still some underlying contrast in either the vowel or consonant. T-flapping then 'bleeds' glottal-stopping because at the level where t-flapping applies, -en is treated as a syllabic [n̩] but -ing is not. Compare the reports of accents where -ing potentially = [in] with surface [n] but also the tensing of original /ɪ/ to [i] that is found before /ŋ/.

Or if we don't want to take such an abstract approach, we could just view it as an analogical effect where the existence of the alternative pronunciation ending in /ŋ/ for -ing-words inhibits the use of a glottal-stopped pronunciation even for the variant ending in /n/.

[Travis B.]

It is normally taken as a given that /t/ before /n/ or /ən/~/ɪn/ in most NAE varieties is realized as [ʔ]. However, I just found a major exception - the present participle* of get, getting, which is commonly /ˈɡɛtən/, which I find is normally realize as [ˈɡ̥ɜɾɘ̃(ː)n] or [ɡ̥ɜnː] in the English I am familiar with. Is this due to the morpheme boundary between get and -ing inhibiting glottal-stopping of /t/ here?

* Note that this is distinct from the gerund, despite being written identically in Standard English, as in the English I am familiar with that always has /əŋ/.

I don't think a morpheme boundary per se is relevant, unless you have the same thing going on in gotten, eaten, forgotten, beaten, threaten. I think that even if there is no surface contrast between the phonetic realizations of the endings spelled -ing and -en, there is still some underlying contrast in either the vowel or consonant. T-flapping then 'bleeds' glottal-stopping because at the level where t-flapping applies, -en is treated as a syllabic [n̩] but -ing is not. Compare the reports of accents where -ing potentially = [in] with surface [n] but also the tensing of original /ɪ/ to [i] that is found before /ŋ/.

Or if we don't want to take such an abstract approach, we could just view it as an analogical effect where the existence of the alternative pronunciation ending in /ŋ/ for -ing-words inhibits the use of a glottal-stopped pronunciation even for the variant ending in /n/.

You are probably right here; I also suspect it is that the alternation between /ŋ/ and /n/ in the present participle ending is interfering with the glottalization of /t/ in this environment.

[anteallach]

On that note, I would analyze hesitant and militant as /ˈhɛzəˌtɪnt/ and /ˈmɪləˌtɪnt/, realized as [ˈhɜːzɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)] and [ˈmɪ̠ːɰɘˌtʰɪ̠̃ʔ(t)]; note that I realize the first and third vowels in militant as roughly the same, while the second vowel is lower and more central. (Note that the first and third vowels are still retracted and lowered relative to their counterparts in GA, but not the same degree.)

I would swap /ə/ and /ɪ/ (not the one in the first syllable of militant, obviously) in your transcriptions but I also feel that the final syllables of these two words have a bit more stress on them than the middle ones.

Note that that's only notation - /ɪ/ can only exist in stressed syllables, and /ə/ can only exist in unstressed syllables, but in less careful speech their actual realizations can be quite similar, as /ɪ/ is already realized as [ɪ̠] and /ə/ is most frequently realized as [ɘ] (and is only commonly realized as [ə] in the vicinity of labials, /r/, /l/, and /w/, and morpheme-finally).

So is "/ə/" really just an unstressed version of /ɪ/ in your English? It sounds a bit like that might be a reasonable analysis.

[Travis B.]

I would swap /ə/ and /ɪ/ (not the one in the first syllable of militant, obviously) in your transcriptions but I also feel that the final syllables of these two words have a bit more stress on them than the middle ones.

Note that that's only notation - /ɪ/ can only exist in stressed syllables, and /ə/ can only exist in unstressed syllables, but in less careful speech their actual realizations can be quite similar, as /ɪ/ is already realized as [ɪ̠] and /ə/ is most frequently realized as [ɘ] (and is only commonly realized as [ə] in the vicinity of labials, /r/, /l/, and /w/, and morpheme-finally).

So is "/ə/" really just an unstressed version of /ɪ/ in your English? It sounds a bit like that might be a reasonable analysis.

Well it's the result of the merger between the schwa and "schwi", i.e. the weak vowel merger. E.g. I have [ɘ] in many places that RP has [ə], and conversely also have [ɘ] in some places where RP has a closer unstressed vowel.

[Raphael]

Is it "comedy movie" or "movie comedy"?