"Long, Tall Texan"

[Wilson Gray]

On Dec 1, 2004, at 8:09 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Long, Tall Texan"
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> On Dec 1, 2004, at 2:46 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> ... As I've noted in reply to a question raised earlier, I've never
>> lived
>> anyplace where this sound [ [^r^] ] s not used as a pause-filler by
>> black people
>> - well, it's used by black people of my generation and older, at
>> least...
>
> both Major and Smitherman seem to have missed it (at least if i hit all
> the places where it might have been listed).
>
> arnold
>

Taking a stab in the dark, it may be the case that they don't consider
this sound to be a word sensu stricto. Well, as for as that goes, I
don't consider it to be a "real" word myself. A speech act, certainly,
but not a word. Or maybe they just forgot about it. In my case, I
thought of it only because we were doing Texas and that reminded me of
the song and, once I had remembered the song, I wondered how the sound
was rendered by transcribers, etc., etc.

-Wilson