the psychology of Gray/Grey

[Bob Haas]

Did [veys] preceed [va:z]?  The latter seems terribly affected, but its
widespread use has ultimately tainted the former pronunciation for me.  And
you're right, Larry, it's damned difficult to say "Ming veys," but thank god
I don't yet say "bud va:z."

bob

> From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 13:30:18 +0800
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: the psychology of Gray/Grey
>
> Well, there is the general tendency, cited by Bréal, Bolinger and
> others, to avoid full synonymy or overlap.  So if someone has seen
> "grey" and "gray" (and isn't aware of some general non-functional
> principle of differentiation operating here the way it does with the
> U.S. -or/Brit. -our spellings), one will naturally assume there's
> SOME difference, and then creativity and imagination take over.  I
> agree about theater/theatre, and there are additional variables--I
> can imagine a movie theater or theatre under either spelling, but
> burlesque must be "theatre".  A nice additional example of the
> "greasy"/"greazy" distinction (on which see Bagby Atwood's old paper)
> is "vase".  Every year I teach Dialects, at least one student and
> usually more swears that a cheap one is a [veys] but an expensive one
> is a [va:z].  (I broke your veys, but you broke my va:z.)  I tend to
> agree--a "beautiful Ming veyx" really seems wrong.  But of course
> it's not so much different lexical items as different pronunciations
> in different registers.  I can also imagine, although this is
> speculative, a child growing up with a young, maybe neo-hippie [aent]
> Jennifer and a distinguished elderly [a:nt] (or perhaps great-[a:nt]
> Gwendolyn.