Monday, September 30, 2019

tRump's liddl' thing...

So, here's my somewhat different take on tRump's liddl' thing. At least, I haven't seen anyone else take it this way.
First, the "dd" replacing "tt" shows phonological awareness of the American English Flapping rule, in which a voiceless alveolar stop (there's only one in "little" although it's spelled with two t's) is replaced by a voiced alveolar flap or tap when it follows a stressed syllable and begins the next syllable. The rule is:
/t/ ⇾ [ɾ] / ˈV ___ V
Second, the omission of the final "e" leaving just "l" is also a sign of phonological awareness: that "l" is functioning here as a syllable nucleus, and the "e" has no value. But then, he has used the hyphen- er, apostrophe- as many writers (e.g. Mark Twain) do to call attention to the omitted letter.
He's still a flaming asshole, though.

After a year: genocide by any other name

And the name, I learned this week, is: The Dahiya Doctrine.  Mehdi Hassan explains here .