free variation in pronunciation

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:02 AM -0600 4/3/01, Victoria Neufeldt wrote:
>How free is free anyway?  I don't know of any studies of this.  But I was
>thinking of my own prons, and I too vary between /ai/ and /e/ for 'either'
>and 'neither', but usually using /ai/ as the pron I grew up with.  (There's
>nothing pretentious about it, as far as I'm concerned.)  However, in
>thinking about contexts, I see that it isn't a free variation, but seems to
>be determined by context.  E.g. I don't think I use /ai/ in the phrase "me
>neither".  It wouldn't sound right, perhaps because I've only heard the
>phrase with the /e/ pron, or perhaps because the /e/ pron echoes the /e/ in
>'me'.

agreed; me n[ay]ther sounds impossible.  On the other hand

"She hasn't given back your homework--or mine either"  --either [iy]
or [ay] possible.

>Other examples of variation for me are 'proved' and 'proven' for past
>participle.  Here it's syntax or rhythm that determines the choice, I think.
>At the end of a clause, 'proven' seems to fit better ("It hasn't been
>proven" vs. "You haven't proved it").  But I'm sure there are instances
>where I've used 'proved' in the first construction and 'proven' in the
>second, without thinking twice about it.

for me, and i suspect others, the more adjectival, the better
"proven" sounds and the worse "proved":

a proven liar
innocent until proven guilty
a proven remedy for...
unproven allegations (see below)

I think that's why "proved" sounds better than "proven" as a
participle with a following object ("You haven't proved it").

I argued in my "spitten image" ADS paper in January that this is true
for a number of -ed/-en variants, including these:

                 graven image (vs. They engraved this image)
        (new-)mown lawn (vs. I've mowed that lawn)
        (un)proven allegation (vs. You haven't proved that allegation)
        (store-)boughten clothes (vs. Have you bought any new clothes?)
        (clean-)shaven face (vs. Have you shaved your face?)

larry
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