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FWIW, deletion of the interdental fricative in items such as 'mother' and
'brother' is reported as a feature of Belfast vernacular speech as described
by Lesley and James Milroy.
<p>Dale Coye wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>Does anyone
know if in Southern or African-American speech there are forms</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>parallel to 'brother' rendered
as 'bre'r' (which apparently is meant to</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>represent a schwa, /br@/)
in words like 'mother' or 'other' and if not why?</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>Is the voiced dental fricative
usually /d/ between vowels (or would this be</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>word final in a non-rhotic
variety?) or lost? e.g., Either, neither. I was</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>thinking about this because
there are indications in Elizabethan verse that</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>the fricative was either
weakened or lost in this position. Metrically</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>these words are sometimes
treated as a single syllable (c.f. ne'er, o'er for</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>never, over) but in the
case of either, etc. the words are never written with</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>apostrophes (ei'er).</font></font>
<p><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>Dale Coye</font></font>
<br><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size=-1>The College of NJ</font></font></blockquote>
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