/hy/

[Damien Hall]

dInIs,

You said:

"I like the stress argument. So, all things being equalo, you might
not do /h/ before vowel "earlier" that /h/ before /j/ since the /hy/
clusters are more likely to be more heavily stressed, right?"

Right.

So I suppose the way that relates to your original question about low-status
London accents deleting the /h/ in /hy-/ is that maybe all non-high-status
London accents can delete the /h/ before either vowels or /y/, but, for those
of us who like to think of our accents as not low-status, the fact that words
with /hy-/ are often stressed for effect stops us from deleting the /h/ there
much of the time.  Of course, I can't speak for others, but that seems like a
reasonable analysis to me.

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania