Hi Dharmendra

As I said you have good ears! In my enthusiasm for the jungle, I went too far with squeezing the non-prominent syllables ‘would have asked’. I should have stuck to the task of simply demonstrating the absence of the consonant /v/ at the end of ‘would have’, but I ended up changing the /d/ into something more tap-like [ɾ] and even then it is softened so that we end up with something close to [wʊrə]. The schwa (to my ears) is still there. But I agree it is close to inaudible. If I tell myself ‘it is there, listen for it’ and I play the soundfile, I hear it. But if I tell myself ‘it is not there, listen and you will not hear it’ then I don’t hear it. So not hearing it is an entirely reasonable thing!

Here again is the jungle version (as part of the speech unit) from the previous posting.

|| I would have asked HIM || 

in which the words ‘I’ and ‘HIM’ are prominent, and the words ‘would have asked’ are non-prominent.

And here is the ‘would have asked’ from that last version:

You said

By the way, in the last version, I don’t hear the word ‘have’.at all. It sounds like ‘would asked’.

Here is a version deliberately recorded to exclude the ‘have’ (schwa):

And here is the ‘would have asked’ from this version:

There are two very important general points to make about this. First, when we get down to the level of detail that we are now discussing, it is often not possible to be certain about what has been said, and what has not been said.

Second, native and expert speakers of English ‘hear’ an improved version of the stream of speech - we report hearing in the sound substance things that are not there! This is because as we process the sound substance, we subliminally supply extra information from our knowledge and experience of using the language, which we mistakenly believe is there - clearly to be heard - in the sound substance to begin with.

Hi Dharmendra,

Glad you liked the post. You asked:

By the way, I am not sure how ‘I woulda asked you’ be spoken. What will actually happen … between the two vowels underlined in the ‘jungle’ version?

What can happen is that there will be no consonant at all at the end of ‘have’ which will exist only as an almost inaudible schwa and which will glide into the vowel at the start of ‘asked’.

Let me demonstrate. Here is the greenhouse version of ‘Would have asked’

Here is the garden version of ‘Would have asked’ (as in the list of reduced forms)

Here is a jungle version (one of many) as part of the speech unit in which the words ‘I’ and ‘HIM’ are prominent, and the words ‘would have asked’ are non-prominent.

|| I would have asked HIM || 

And here is the ‘would have asked’ from that last version:

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Image from here

I think the list of reduced forms from Karen Bond is an example of the transition between the greenhouse and the garden. And at least in British English, the majority of them would also have (many) jungle forms, in which consonants would have close to zero realisation.

So a lot of the syllable final consonants in the multi-word, multi-syllable groups would be dropped (or would sound like as if they are dropped). There may be an articulation, but there may be no audible release. Thus ‘might have’ in the jungle can (for me) be ‘my a’ (Maia) in ‘I might have (my a) gone with him’. Remember we are talking about rapid casual speech! Not slow careful speech. So it is helpful to think of ‘might have’ as being non-prominent, between prominences on ‘I’ and ‘GONE’:

|| I might have GONE with him ||

Also, in my view, for deep in the jungle, there is no need for separate rules with the structure ‘x plus consonant’ or ‘x plus vowel’. Thus (in Karen’s garden) ‘would have + consonant’ becomes ‘woulda’ and ‘would have’ + vowel becomes ‘wouldav’ – BUT in the jungle, both could be ‘woulda’: giving ‘I woulda done the dishes’ and ‘I woulda asked you’.

But, remember, the jungle is very unruly, so it is not helpful to think of my examples of what could happen (and what does happen) as ‘rules’. There are very many intermediate forms.

Other Greenhouse/Garden/Jungle sequences:

kind of/kinda/kynuv (or even ‘kye-uv’)

did you/didja/diya