Attitudes toward either, envelope (was free variation)

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:44 PM -0400 4/4/01, Dale Coye wrote:
>I don't know if there's such a thing as free variation either, and I also
>acknowledge the inaccuracy of self-observation, nonetheless, I did collect
>some evidence on attitudes toward /i:/-ther vs. /aI/-ther and EN-velope vs.
>ON-velope (AS 69.3, 1994).   In a survey of Princeton freshmen through a
>questionnaire I found both pronunciations of both words from all corners of
>the North America, and of the respondents 10-30% (depending on region) said
>they used both.  Of those using exclusively /i:/, 1/3 to 1/2 (again depending
>on region) rejected /ai/ as 'snobby, pretentious' etc.  Of those using /ai/,
>only 18% rejected /i:/.   So in other words, many more people say they find
>/ai/ objectionable than find /i:/ objectionable.
>   I found EN and ON in envelope in all regions of the country, but the
>percentages varied widely from region to region.   40-60% of EN- users
>rejected ON as pretentious.  But ON users were equally intolerant of  EN.
>
We seem to have similar splits and evaluations, although no doubt
with different percentages, for the aforementioned ee-ther and
ay-ther, as well as for the much earlier discussed (but not yet on
this thread) veys and va:z (for "vase").  In each case the latter is
typically seen as pretentious, snobby, and/or British by those who
use the former.

larry
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/attachments/20010404/5ef548df/attachment.htm>