Taboo replacements

[Steven A. Gustafson]

> Moderator's comment:
>   When I lived in Connecticut, I met people who made a distinction between
>   "arse" and "ass" consistently, not as a learned item but in casual speech.

Which brings to mind the other question of the effect of language
taboos, that of taboo deformations.  "Heck is a place for people who
don't believe in Gosh," &c.

You would expect "arse" to yield something like /aas/, rather than /aes/
in most varieties of non-rhotic English, since /ae/ does not seem to be
possible before /r/ for most people, and in most brands of non-rhotic
American, at least, the lingering influence of /r/ still prevents it
from appearing.  My understanding is that the /ae/ > /a/ or /aa/ that
marks southern British English only occurs before /s/, /z/, /th/, /f/,
and perhaps a couple more, but not /r/.  This might be another taboo
deformation.

Back when I was in college, it was widely held that you had to make
special exceptions to ordinary rules of phonetic development for words
like "wolf," because they were worship-words that were deliberately
changed.  I don't have Beekes in front of me, but I seem to recall being
somewhat surprised when he discussed a number of these words and made no
reference to this hypothesis.  Is it no longer needed?

Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

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