Flapping before a stressed vowel: The case of whatever

Abstract

In English, word-internal intervocalic alveolar stops are predominantly flapped when preceding an unstressed vowel (water, charity) and optionally flapped at word boundaries preceding unstressed and stressed vowels (that is, private airplane). In this study, we show that /t/ is flapped in whatever although it is word-internal and precedes a stressed vowel. The data were elicited in a sentence reading task, with four speakers of Appalachian English. The duration of /t/ and the acoustic correlates of stress were examined. A comparison of vowel duration and amplitude patterns in whatever versus everwhat (both words are relative pronouns in free relative clauses in this dialect, N = 699) showed that the second syllable is stressed in whatever. A comparison of /t/ durations showed no significant differences among whatever, watermelons, waterlilies, water buffalo (N = 533, M = 30.1 ms). These results may be interpreted as: (a) whatever is an exception to the word-internal flapping environment, or (b) the word-internal flapping environment must be modified to include preceding stressed vowels at morpheme boundaries, or (c) whatever consists of two phonological words and falls within the word-final flapping environment. Prosodic and syntactic analyses of free relative clauses consistent with the last interpretation are discussed.