Compensatory lengthening

Josh Lalonde   Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:46 am GMT
This is mostly for Travis, since his accent has some of these features. I was wondering if consonant elision in your accent generally causes vowel lengthening. It seems to in mine, except with /n/. I even have a couple minimal pairs for vowel length:
none [nV~n]
nothing [nV:n] (Only when used in negative concord, eg. "I don't want nothing.". Also the vowel isn't nasalized)
dint [dI~?]
didn't [dI~:?]
Uriel   Sat Jun 16, 2007 5:31 am GMT
My ex used to say "dint" for didn't. And if he wanted to add emphasis, he aspirated the T -- but he never put in the other D. Always found it weird.
Travis   Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:15 am GMT
My dialect does not have compensatory lengthening; the only real case of lengthening aside from two similar vowels becoming adjacent to each other is when a vowel followed by a syllabic consonant is lengthened while the syllabic consonant is desyllabicized (or in the case of syllabic [M:] from /@l/ is turned into the offglide [M]) when an intervening consonant is lost.

As for the word "didn't", which you mention, it is somewhat weird in my dialect in that it has two reduced forms (besides whether or not there is a final [?]) alongside the unreduced forms without [4]. Either the second /d/ in /"dIdInt/ can be simply lost, resulting in ["dI~::?], ["dI~::], ["dI~::nt], or ["dI~::n], or the vowel after it can be removed and the /d/ can be assimilated with the following /n/, resulting in ["dI:n:?] or ["dI:n:]
Guest   Sat Jun 16, 2007 7:03 am GMT
What is "ex" there? ex bf or executive of a company!
Uriel   Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:43 pm GMT
Ex-bf. An executive of a company would never be called an "ex" here. A CEO, maybe, if he or she were the chief executive....
Kess   Sat Jun 16, 2007 9:45 pm GMT
shopping [SApi:n]
Guest   Sun Jun 17, 2007 3:52 pm GMT
Uriel,

how many ex-bfs are there in your life if you dont mind me asking this?