This 52nd collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-
The word ten can be pronounced as transcribed* below, in these utterances:
ten dots [ten] ten bins [tem] tens [ten] ten cots [teŋ] tenpins [tem]
Describe the pattern that you observe in the data.
The pronunciation of [te] is the same with the final pronunciation ending with a nasal sound coming from [n], [m] or [ŋ].
When followed by plosives or fricatives, /n/ becomes nasal in the same place of articulation.
[ten] and [tem] when the final syllable of the phrase/
Voiceless plosives and mid front vowels (in this order) are always followed by nasal sounds and nasal sounds can replace one another if followed by a plosive.
All consonants following the peak of the first syllable are nasal sounds. Nasal sounds [m, n, ŋ] replace each other in the context [te-] at the end of the words given above.
Consonants appearing in sequence (i.e. [m] and [b] or [ŋ] and [k]) adapt to each other by having the first consonant changed into a nasal consonant that has a similar place of articulation with that of the latter consonant.
Nasal consonants follow minimal pairs in the data.
The pattern shows examples of alteration.
A word can either be nasal or plosive depending on how it is pronounced.
If the second syllable is an unvoiced alveolar fricative sound, the coda of ‘ten’ will not be pronounced. If the next consonant uses the same place of articulation or there is only one word, then the ‘n’ in ten is pronounced as it is.
The transcription [tem] can occur in different places, e.g. ten bins are probably for rubbish. Although the last sound is different, all of them have related meanings, made up of ten pieces or containing rubbish or babies.
The consonants before the vowel /e/ are voiceless plosives. The consonants after the vowel /e/ are either [+labial], [+coronal] or [+high]. The vowel /e/ is [+voice].
The consonant ‘n’ is an allophone sharing several articulatory features.
When ten occurs in a word that contains two morphemes and not two words by itself, its pronunciation preempts the pronunciation of the morpheme that follows after it.
When faced with plosives, the coda of the pronunciation of ‘ten’ follows the first consonant after it.
Plosives can affect ‘ten’. Fricatives cannot.
More to come...
* The interested and/or confused reader may note that, as becomes apparent through the various scholarly works published from time to time in an outfit attracting international attention such as ours, our linguistic brethren across the big pond are not only separated from us by a common language, but also by a common transcription system. Thus, caveat lector
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