Does syllabic /n/ and /l/ in English undergo post-alveolarsation before /r/? If yes, how can I mark it on my allophonic transcription? Ex. “Didn’t try”
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A transcription is a conversion (by a trained linguist) of actual utterances into a standard alphabet. That means that there have to be be actual utterances that are the input to the transcriber. There are billions of speakers of English and vastly more utterances of English. The short answer is "We have no idea, and have no basis for having an idea", until you provide us with some basis. Modern transcription exercises usually provide a fixed set of recordings to transcribe, so that the answer is at least narrowed down to "in this set of utterances".
We know that there is a retraction of /t/ before /r/ in some dialects of English – in Toronto ("Chrana"), it approaches [tʃ]. I don't do much retraction, but probably do some in e.g. "true". The typical description is that this happens in syllable onset clusters so there is a difference between "address" and "bad reputation" due to syllabification differences.
Neither /n/ not /l/ appear before /r/ in syllable onsets, and syllabic /n̩, l̩/ by definition are not in the onset. So the easy answer at least based on conjecture from known dialects is "No". However, your instructor may have a special dialects.
In "didn't try" the phonetic transcription would be approximately [dɪdn̩ʔ tɹʷɑɪ], where /t/ might be retracted before /t/. If it is retracted, then it is likely (not guaranteed) that that tongue position adjustment will be anticipated to partially overlap /n/ and maybe /d/. In that case, you might reify that physical adjustment with a transcriptional distinction. There is a "retracted" diacritic ◌̠ that could be placed under any letter to indicate "retracted" (compared to other values in the language).
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Thank you for your answer, it did clarify me this aspect.I’m just a linguistics student, so I am not an expert in this matter, but my professor instructed us that in the given example (didn’t try) tongue position adjustment overlap both /n/ and /d/. But my main concern is how to mark both syllabicity and tongue retraction, in my head it looks like ◌̠ + ◌̩= ◌̞. She told me that I clearly don’t understand those processes and I should ask her about them after the spring break, but my curiosity and patience have led me here. – Marta Jarmoluk May 03 '23 at 18:24
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2I don’t see the logic in the third paragraph. Anticipatory retraction occurs across syllable, morpheme and word boundaries, so there’s no need for /n̩ l̩/ or /nr lr/ to appear in the onset for it to take place. // In general American, a phrase like didn’t really is very likely to drop the /t/ entirely in casual speech, and – at least when I say it to myself in a natural manner – the [n̩] definitely gets retracted to anticipate the /r/; something like [dɪdn̠̩ˈɹʷɵɫi] would be a decent transcription. The retraction of the /n/ is less obvious in didn’t try, but that too is partly retracted. – Janus Bahs Jacquet May 03 '23 at 22:18