The nature of AK/how to pronounce Voldemort

[Marian L. Chen]

No: HPFGUIDX 31444

>Cindy (who is convinced Marian should write her thesis on her new,
whiz-bang distributional qualities of spells theory) wrote, in reply to my
post about whether spells needed to be individually cast:

>I think this is a pretty interesting idea.  It kind of reminds me of
>the way the old Star Trek gang used to set their phasers for a wide
>field instead of a narrow beam.  (They did do this, right?).  


The phaser is exactly what I'm thinking of, rather than a gun (as you also
suggested). I would think the breaking of the gravestone denotes that the
curse has some specific energy behind it, rather than, I don't know, being
magic. :) So if two people get hit by enough of this energy, they go zap.

Of course, I also find Grey Wolf's theory that no soul comes out because
there was no soul to come out very plausible.

I wish my advisor would let me write on Harry Potter instead! I think we'd
both have a lot more fun.


But, Elena, on a lovely linguistics note, provided me with an opportunity
to bring Harry Potter closer to my research:

>  What this means is that in normal speech, the ps, ts, and
>ks at the ends of words are pronounced as glottal stops.


Now, it's been a few years since I took phonology (and maybe if we have a
bona fide phonologist around they can settle this), but I had thought that
this glottal stop assimilation was only in the middle of a word, when
p,t,k are followed by a vowel and another consonant (button being a
good example). Personally, the way I pronounce Voldemort is a partial
assimilation (because of co-articulation, as you pointed out - you just
can't say "mor" and then make it back up to the front to voice the 
"t") from dental alveolar to alveopalatal as well as unaspirating
the "t". That is to say, my tongue ends up behind the ridge in my mouth.

Long story short, there is assimilation, but at least for me, it's not to
a glottal stop. I'm sorry, I'm picky without being particularly
well-informed. I'll probably be embarrassed by someone saying that this is
not what happens at all and you were right. 


Marian (hoping not to get herself confused with Marina)