A Linguistics Workbook, 4th Edition

Name

Section

2.4 Special Topic 1: Phonetic Variation (English /t/)

The phoneme /t/ in English has six allophones, whose conditioning environments

are summarized in the following table. (See Linguistics, pp. 90-93.) After

examining the table, answer questions A and B.

Articulatory

description

Phonetic Conditioning Example

symbol environment words

Released, aspirated [t when syllable-initial tin [thin]

Unreleased, preglottalized [It] word-final, after a kit [khr7t]

vowel

Glottal stop [?l before a syllabic n kitten [khl?n]

Flap m between vowels, when pitted [phirid]

the first vowel is

stressed (approximate

environment)

syllable-initial before r

when the above

conditions are not met

first

Alveopalatal stop

Released, unaspirated

truck [tpk]

stint [strnt]

Questions

A. Identify the variant of /t/ in each word below. For some dialects of English the

"conditioning environments" described in the table are not descriptively

adequate and require modification. Check to see if in your dialect any

adjustments need to be made in the environments.

Word Variant of It/ Conditioning environment

1. after
   -c. L
   c
   0


2. beautiful n e
   H


3. embitter^7 a a
   CU