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Next: Socially-conditioned Variation Up: Finding Phonemes Previous: Overall patterning and

Variation:

What about the possibility of variation, either social, geographic, or so-called ``free"?

In many speakers' speech, there will be some items that can be pronounced either one way or another: economics, either, within, envelope; garage with [j] and with [z], etc. These variable pronunciations are not just insignificant phonetic variation like strong aspiration vs. weak aspiration; they are actually different sounds that in a different environment might be association with a difference in meaning. What to do?





Harold Schiffman
Fri Jan 17 09:48:04 EST 1997