Yod-coalescence

>>Josh Lalonde [Moderator] Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:02 pm GMT
I'm curious about word-final yod-coalescence. For me, it only occurs before 'you' and its variants. In some American accents though, it seems to occur in all sequences of /t/ and /j/ across word boundaries. On the other hand, it seems that many English English accents don't have yod-coalescence at all in these situations. What is the pattern in your accents?
but you... [bV"t_Sj}u]
let you [lEt_Sj}u]
that year [Da? ji@`]
not yet [nQ? jE?]<<

I have:

but you ["bV?ju:], ["bV?tSju:], or ["bV?tSu:]
let you ["L\E?ju:], ["L\E?tSju:], or ["L\E?tSu:]
that year ["DE{?"jI:R] (note that I may actually have [d], [d_d], or [Dd_d] here rather than [D])
not yet ["na?jE?], ["na?tSjE?], or ["na?tSE?]

"that year" is weird, because I do normally have:
last year ["L\E{StS"jI:R] or ["L\E{StS"I:R]

(Note that I am transcribing some glottal stops I do not normally transcribe here.)

That should be [d_dD] rather than [Dd_d] above.

Yod-coalescence seems to only occur across word boundaries in my dialect with /t/, /d/, and /st/ (for those who assimilate /s/ to /tS/ as /S/). However, it does occur word-internally with /s/ and /z/, from intermediate sj and zj. Note that I say intermediate, as such is often from /si/ and /zi/ followed by another vowel, where said /i/ undergoes a regular shift to intermediate j before another vowel, even when stressed (where then the stress is transferred to the following vowel). Said intermediate j may or may not be lost in the process, rather than actually becoming surface [j].