isoglosses for hw/w

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Maybe not actual lies--we just understand variability better anymore.

Still, Central Illinois & Upstate New York were prolly more influential on Utah (in non-AAVE) than was, say, Georgia, right? (I just heard a woman in a take-out restaurant in Central Georgia complaining about her order thusly: "Sugah, y'all put me a hot dawg 'n' ah ordud uh burguh!" Not an utterance one would have heard from a local in Salt Lake City, sho nuff?)

(By the way, this was NOT an instance of the alleged "singular y'all," another putative lie your linguist may have told you (but in this case just an artifact of faulty VARIABILITY analysis. Imho.)

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-----Original Message-----
From: David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>

Date:         Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:13:39
To:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] isoglosses for hw/w


From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>

> If North Midland distinguishes between, e.g. "hem, ten" and "him,
> tin," a distinction unknown in California, then U.S. West can't
> possibly be what happened when North Midland expanded westward.

Well, like i said--lies my lx professors told me.

> BTW, has anyone besides me, who have a special reason for doing so,
> noticed how Southern (I use the term in its loosest sense, being but
> feebly learned in dialectology; once the technical terms move much
> beyond "isogloss," I need a cab in order to catch up) the speech of
> the farming areas of California sounds? I've felt a draft in towns as
> large as Fresno and even though that was the first place that I ever
> was in in which public signage, e.g. in the Greyhound station, was in
> Spanish as well as in English.

I don't have it here, but doesn't the ANAE data show an island of fairly
strongly "Southern" features clustered in and around Bakersfield,
California? I know I've heard (from linguists and non-linguists) who've
noticed the "Southern"-ness of the are that this might be a result of
the massive Okie migration to the area during the Dust Bowl, but i have
no idea if that's a reasonable explanation.

--
David Bowie                               University of Central Florida
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

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