"Hyperrhoticism"

[Damien Hall]

FWIW, a related phenomenon to Wilson's cousin's "hyperrhoticism" could be the
same phenomenon that I've noticed in the English of an acquaintance of mine who
I'd guess is a native speaker of Mandarin (from the fact that he graduated from
Peking [sic] University).  He's been in the States several years and his
English is pretty good, but he seems to have "hyperrhoticism" / 'intrusive r'
at the end of all vowel-final words, as far as I can tell, no matter what the
following context.  I know almost nothing of Mandarin, but what little I do
know would lead me to think that this isn't a native-language-interference
effect.

In this connection as well, I suppose we should also think about British
'intrusive r', as in

'India, Australia and Canada' > [Indiy@ rostrayliy@ r at n kaen at d@].

I haven't thought seriously about how all these things could be related, as you
can tell.  But is my acquaintance's "hyperrhoticism" is likely to be a literal
hypercorrection based on observation of 'intrusive r' in some contexts?

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

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