<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { margin-top: 0 ; margin-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Re: Bre'r</title></head><body>
<div>More than one good person ruined by spelling. My mother
pronounces every consonant in "raspberry" (except for the
two "r"s of course).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>dInIs</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>My eldest uncle was called [br@] by his
siblings. Strangely, when my eldest aunt read "Uncle Remus"
to us, she said "[brEr] Rabbit"!<br>
<br>
At 10:37 AM 8/12/01 -0400, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">Does anyone
know if in Southern or African-American speech there are forms<br>
parallel to 'brother' rendered as 'bre'r' (which apparently is
meant to<br>
represent a schwa, /br@/) in words like 'mother' or 'other' and if not
why? <br>
Is the voiced dental fricative usually /d/ between vowels (or would
this be<br>
word final in a non-rhotic variety?) or lost? e.g., Either,
neither. I was<br>
thinking about this because there are indications in Elizabethan verse
that<br>
the fricative was either weakened or lost in this position.
Metrically<br>
these words are sometimes treated as a single syllable (c.f. ne'er,
o'er for<br>
never, over) but in the case of either, etc. the words are never
written with<br>
apostrophes (ei'er).<br>
<br>
Dale Coye<br>
The College of NJ</font></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>-- <br>
Dennis R. Preston<br>
Department of Linguistics and Languages<br>
Michigan State University<br>
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA<br>
preston@pilot.msu.edu<br>
Office: (517)353-0740<br>
Fax: (517)432-2736</div>
</body>
</html>