endangered phonemes

[David Dowty]

Although it's been many years since my last contact with my West Texas
roots, my hunch is that the which/witch dialect is alive and well (and
being acquired by the younger generations) in many parts of rural West
Texas today.

I can however offer one real datum as to how early the distinction was
present there. (I tell this story to my intro linguistics classes, not
just because many are incredulous that a /hw/ vs. /w/ distinction ever
existed at all, but to illustrate a point of comparative linguistic
methodology).

In the late 19th century, a rancher in a rural part of my home county
(Coleman County, Texas) founded a small community, and local records
indicate that he named it after his trusted, long-time farm hand of
Mexican origin.  The rancher was apparently not literate in Spanish,
and the farmhand was no doubt literate in neither Spanish nor English.
So what did the rancher name the town?

          Whon, Texas

I.e. not "Wan" but "Whon" and of course always pronounced /hwan/ by
the locals.  The town of Whon, which had a population of less than 50
when I was a small kid, has probably long since dried up and blown
away, but you can still find the name on some Texas maps, in the
south-east corner of Coleman country.

But there's question I've always wanted to ask: for me, and for all
other which/witch-ers I've ever asked, the interrogative "why" and the
interjection "why" are a minimal pair  -- i.e. we have /hway/ in "Why
did you do it?", but /way/ in "Why, that's impossible!"

Does anybody know the origin and distribution of this ?  The OED and
other dictionaries I've checked don't give distinct etymologies for
the interrogative vs. interjection `why' (but the latter is only
documented back to 1500, the interrogative much earlier).  Webster's
3rd lists pronunciations in the order "hway, way" for the
interrogative but "way, hway" for the interjection, without comment.


David Dowty