diphthong

[Laurence Horn]

>larry,
>
>The 'dipthong' pronunciation is one of my favorite examples of
>dissimilation. 'pilgrim' is too exotic and 'libary' is too socially
>sensitive.
>

Hi, dInIs--

But it's not morphologically innocent the way you want a good illustration
of a phonological process to be, since DIP is an English morpheme and DIPH
isn't (or perhaps is just barely, as in What's the diff?).  So the
"dipthong" pronunciation may be a bit of a folk etymology/invention of
transparency as in "mushroom", "rosemary", "cockroach", etc., where no
dissimilation is involved.  Of course anymore people probably assume
"dipthong" relates to how Monica enticed Bill.

On a different topic, welcome back to town and please let me know when you
get a chance to consider my plea about 2003.

L