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To: <vocalist>
Subject: Pronunciation of -ed
Date sent: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 12:39:19 -0200
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Dennis wrote:
In Dowland's songs, at least in the Stainer & Bell edition, the "-ed" of a
past participle, which normally isn't pronounced as a syllable in modern
English, has its own note, sometimes rather long. For example, the last
(whole) note of "Flow my tears" is written on the "ed" of "deprived"
(preceded by two 16ths for "de" and one 8th for "priv"). How is one
supposed to sing this? What do the experts do?

Dennis , I'm not a expert, not even a native speaker of English, but, applying what is known of Phonetics nowadays, it should be pronounced as /Id/. the /I/ here is the same as in 'is", so it should sound like the -ed in wanted. The logical explanation for it that it is preceded by the phoneme
/v/, which is voiced ( it means it requires the usage of the vocal cords to be produced, as opposed to the phoneme /f/, which is its voiceless counterpart ). I may be wrong only if, at Purcell's time, this phonetic rule was not present yet in the English language.

Best regards,
Caio