Tuesday 8 February 2011

feel for English sound sequences

credit: Evelyn Gonzalez
I asked my students (with 7 to 9 years of EFL at a German secondary school) where in the phrase wet blanket they would expect assimilation to occur. The overwhelming majority correctly spotted the word boundary. Additionally I made them guess what kind of change was likely to take place. To my disappointment many of them opted for /wed blæŋkɪt/. Definitely not a native speaker's first choice, is it?
Next they had to classify the change from /wet blæŋkɪt/ to /wep blæŋkɪt/ according to the criteria I had introduced before:
  1. direction
  2. extent
  3. distance
  4. parameter
  5. obligatoriness
Congratulations to those who came up with this answer:
Optional total regressive contact assimilation of place of articulation.

3 comments:

  1. >>Definitely not a native speaker's first choice, is it?

    It depends on how...er...blau the native speaker happens to be at the time.

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  2. LOL! If the NS's first choice is being inebriated ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. On second thought: Someone's got to write a textbook on English Spoken in a State of Inebriety.

    ReplyDelete