performance/preformance

[Aaron E. Drews]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2000 Dfcoye at AOL.COM wrote:

}Also metathesis does not really apply when
}we're dealing with the hooked schwa in a word like 'performance' -
}'preformance' in rhotic speech-- the first vowel is not schwa plus /r/.


Isn't it?  Phonetically, it is clearly one sound, hence hooked schwa or
alternatively syllabic r.  But is the second syllable of 'performance'
also just one sound phonetically, a rhoticized O? At least it is for me,
and I suspect for many other rhotic north Americans.  Yet, there would be
no argument in transcribing the sequence as [Or] two sounds- or maybe even
O plus hooked schwa. So why couldn't the first syllable be schwa+r and
coalesce on the surface.  Or would you argue that hooked schwa is a single
sound throughout the whole of the phonology?  Positing 'er' as two sounds
somewhere certainly allows for the metathesis in the 'per/pre' prefixes,
as well as in 'modren' and 'southren'.


--Aaron

________________________________________________________________________
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk                  Departments of English Language and
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron       Theoretical & Applied  Linguistics

"MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
        --Death