Etcetera

[Beverly Flanigan]

Apropos of the Atkins example, a town in Minnesota spelled Aitkin is almost
always pronounced [ek at n].  I suppose it was named after someone, but no one
remembers that now.

BTW, someone just said [EksEtr@] over the phone to me.  But I also just
heard someone on NPR pronounce 'excerpt' as [Eks at rt].  I've heard this
cluster reduction before, but I would have predicted deletion of /t/ rather
than /p/.  Explain, please?

At 03:59 PM 7/30/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>I think there is a much more likely phonological explanation. In
>English (perhaps universally) coronal stops (like /t/) do not like
>being placed before other consonants. In English, for example, only a
>few names (Atkins, Edsel), borrowed words (pizza) show such an
>ordering. When this happens, the historical result is almost always
>assimilation, since "et cetera" is a loan (and assimilation seems
>unlikely), the coronal is simply done away with and replaced by a
>velar (a much more frequent, non-assimilated sequence, e.g., actor,
>acme).
>
>dInIs
>
>Peter's first pronunciation is indeed common everywhere; for the second, I
>hear a repeat of [I/Ek].  I suspect it's a reanalysis of a word whose Latin
>origin few now understand: the 'et' is not thought of as a separate word
>with its own pron.; instead, the phrase is reinterpreted as one word--a
>"funny" foreignism that is simply passed on through time (in fact, note the
>"one word" spelling in the subject line, with no space).  And I suspect the
>Montreal French teacher just passed on the same pron. she'd heard; the
>phrase is just as foreign to French speakers as it is to English, after all.
>Interestingly, the abbreviation is also often respelled to reflect, in
>part, the new pron.:  ect.
>
>I'll admit I don't like it (sorry), but it's another example of the kind of
>reanalysis we've talked about often on this list--though another example
>doesn't come to me right now.
>
>At 09:57 AM 7/30/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>>I don't think it's regional--I seem to have heard it everywhere, and from
>>people being interviewed in various parts of the country.  It's often
>>[Ik'sEtr@] or, for emphasis, [Ik'sEtrIk'sEtr@].
>>
>>Peter Mc.
>>
>>--On Wednesday, July 30, 2003 10:59 AM -0400 sagehen
>><sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
>>
>>>Is the commonly-heard pronunciation of "etcetera" as "exetera" or "ek
>>>setera" a regional or dialectal thing (like "axe" for "ask") or simply a
>>>misapprehension of the letter order?  Could it be related to the Italian
>>>/eccetera/?
>>>A. Murie
>>
>>
>>
>>*****************************************************************
>>Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
>>******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************
>
>--
>Dennis R. Preston
>Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
>      Asian & African Languages
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
>e-mail: preston at msu.edu
>phone: (517) 353-9290