Unstressed aspirants in Texas English

[Chagen]

So what, you say [bæx] for "back"? Anyway, now I definitely want a recording. Do a recording of yourself saying the "Please Call Stella" text or something.

It's very muddy. I have only my own self-analyzation to go on. What halpens is that my tongue touches my velum, and then I release an aspirated /k/. This aspiration is so strong, though, that I can confuse it for /x/. Not to mention, the contact time is very small. Not as small to be a tap, but close. However, this lowering is "loud" and clear when I am whispering.

In addition, when I am speaking softly/whispering, my voicing distinction gives way to an aspiration one. "Gag" when I am whispering is [kæk^h.

[Wattmann]

So what, you say [bæx] for "back"? Anyway, now I definitely want a recording. Do a recording of yourself saying the "Please Call Stella" text or something.

It's very muddy. I have only my own self-analyzation to go on. What halpens is that my tongue touches my velum, and then I release an aspirated /k/. This aspiration is so strong, though, that I can confuse it for /x/. Not to mention, the contact time is very small. Not as small to be a tap, but close. However, this lowering is "loud" and clear when I am whispering.

In addition, when I am speaking softly/whispering, my voicing distinction gives way to an aspiration one. "Gag" when I am whispering is [kæk^h.

As Whimemsz said, do a recording.

[Chagen]

That will have to wait a while, until I can get to my house.

However, I will only be able to record with a crappy laptop mic (unless I can plug my Xbox 360 headset into my laptop), which may be too distorted to hear. I'll make a recording anyway.

[Travis B.]

Seriously, dude, you cannot aspirate voiced consonants.

My assumption is he means he devoices them (so, [ɾ] vs [ɾ̥]). But if so, I'd like a recording. I suppose it's possible, but I find it hard to believe anyone from Texas would say, for example, [bəɾ̥ɚ] and not [bəɾɚ] for "butter". It sounds very unnatural (or alternately, very British) to me.

This is something I do do, in that there is an interruption in voicing in my intervocalic unstressed /t/.

Chagen, are you sure you're not over-analyzing your own speech here, like, hearing things that aren't there because you're being influenced by spelling? Or perhaps that's influencing you into mishearing a tonal change or vowel length distinction as a distinction in the following consonant?

This is also a possibility as well.

[Ducane]

So what, you say [bæx] for "back"? Anyway, now I definitely want a recording. Do a recording of yourself saying the "Please Call Stella" text or something.

It's very muddy. I have only my own self-analyzation to go on. What halpens is that my tongue touches my velum, and then I release an aspirated /k/. This aspiration is so strong, though, that I can confuse it for /x/. Not to mention, the contact time is very small. Not as small to be a tap, but close. However, this lowering is "loud" and clear when I am whispering.

So it's not that it's a fricative [x] but an affricate [k_x], right? If so, I would say this is a relatively common phenomenon in certain situations. I have definitely heard [k_x] for /k/ before, but I have never noticed it at the end of a word.

In addition, when I am speaking softly/whispering, my voicing distinction gives way to an aspiration one. "Gag" when I am whispering is [kæk^h.

Isn't this universal in English (assuming you didn't mean for that final /g/ to be aspirated, which would be extremely weird)? I have often used this as an easy means of introducing/explaining aspiration to other English-speakers. I could be wrong, but I think once you actually voice something, you can no longer be whispering.

[Chagen]

The Please Call Stella speech, crappily recorded by me.

[Whimemsz]

Well as you say it's not a great quality recording, but looking at it in Praat, it looks like you do voice your tap in "...ask'er to bring...", and of course in "...also need a...". You genuinely seem to have some sort of voicelessness going on in "...meet'er Wednesday...". Specifically, it seems like you have a voiced and somewhat fricativized tap, with a following period of voicelessness. But my best guess is that this is just the "h" from the following "her", so there's no real conclusion I can draw from that.

Summary: "Please Call Stella" was in retrospect a shitty text to tell you to record. Sorry about that. Man...

Finlay, Rory, help me out here, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

[AnTeallach]

I may be over-analyzing.

My accent is wierd. I also lower coda /k g/ to fricatives.

So what, you say [bæx] for "back"? Anyway, now I definitely want a recording. Do a recording of yourself saying the "Please Call Stella" text or something.

A long way from Texas, but Scouse can have [x] for coda /k/.

[finlay]

Well as you say it's not a great quality recording, but looking at it in Praat, it looks like you do voice your tap in "...ask'er to bring...", and of course in "...also need a...". You genuinely seem to have some sort of voicelessness going on in "...meet'er Wednesday...". Specifically, it seems like you have a voiced and somewhat fricativized tap, with a following period of voicelessness. But my best guess is that this is just the "h" from the following "her", so there's no real conclusion I can draw from that.

Summary: "Please Call Stella" was in retrospect a shitty text to tell you to record. Sorry about that. Man...

Finlay, Rory, help me out here, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

*shrug* Can't really add much, I guess. Can't be bothered to load it in Praat if you've done it already. I don't think that's a tap in 'meet her', more like [t̚ h].

He hasn't done any k-fricativization ([snækʼ] has a nice ejective, [θɪkslæbz] is pretty much as expected), and it sounds like he's taking time over his words – each [h] that I would expect to be dropped (eg: meet her, ask her, with her; you've noted these as meet'er and ask'er, but I'd encourage you to listen again) in the ordinary speech of most English speakers has been enunciated, for one thing.

There's some slight retroflexion in 'please', although this sounds as if it's a slip of the tongue.

Perhaps another text would be a good idea. I don't know of any, however; sorry!

[Whimemsz]

So what, you say [bæx] for "back"? Anyway, now I definitely want a recording. Do a recording of yourself saying the "Please Call Stella" text or something.

A long way from Texas, but Scouse can have [x] for coda /k/.

I know it exists in some English dialects, but Texan (or GA) isn't one of them, which is why I was surprised and/or suspicious. Of course it turns out he meant more like that he has a velar fricative release, which I'm still doubtful about, but anyway it isn't the same as having a fricative realization of final /k/.

each [h] that I would expect to be dropped (eg: meet her, ask her, with her; you've noted these as meet'er and ask'er, but I'd encourage you to listen again)

Listening to and looking at it again, I think you're right. In "ask her" there doesn't seem to be any stop closure at all (which is as should be expected in normal speech), so it's something like [æ̝shɪ̆˞] or possibly [æ̝sxɪ̆˞]. I still don't think the "t" in "meet her" is a plosive [t], though. Both from listening to it repeatedly and from looking at the spectrograph (which admittedly at this point isn't very clear), I'd lean toward calling it a fricativized or assibilated or whateverthetermis tap. While it sounds to me like there's a brief period of following voicelessness, the spectrogram doesn't show any. Anyway, I'd probably transcribe it as something like [miɾ̝(h)ɪ̆˞].

((NB I transcribed the rhotic vowel as [ɪ̆˞] mainly because it looks clearer in the font I use than any of the other options, not because I'm making any claims about its actual nature, which I don't really care too much about for our purposes))

[finlay]

Not plosive, unreleased I said.

[Whimemsz]

Oh, in the font I'm using the unreleased diacritic basically got swallowed up in the "t" so it looks to me like "[t h]". (I still think it's released though)