CHAD,SHARD&CHARRED in NYC speech?

[Laurence Horn]

>In a message dated 11/21/2000 1:27:40 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>
><< >gee, I always thought that a CHAD was just a little SHARD of paper with
>the
>>vowel+R pronounced in the New York way
>
>Boston would be a bit closer... >>
>
>True, though in 1947 NYC was even more of an r-dropping region than it is
>now. But wouldn't SHARD even today bew pronounced (variably) as r-less and
>with a fronted and raised vowel in working-class white neighborhoods in NYC?
>So that CHARRED and SHARD would be virtually the same, and the same as CHAD
>except for the absence of the initial brief [t] in SHARD?

Actually, I was alluding not to the degree of non-rhoticity, but to
its consequences.  The vowel of "shard" or "chard" or "card" in New
York is nowhere near that of "chad", regardless of whether the
pronunciation is or isn't rhotic.  The non-rhotic version of "chard"
is essentially [chA:d], where A is the script a, relatively back; it
more or less rhymes with "odd" or "cod", but the vowel is a bit
longer.  The non-rhotic version of one Bostonian pronunciation of
"chard" would be much closer to "chad", with a slightly elongated
diagraph.

Larry