Bre'r

[Dale Coye]

Does anyone know if in Southern or African-American speech there are forms
parallel to 'brother' rendered as 'bre'r'  (which apparently is meant to
represent a schwa, /br@/) in words like 'mother' or 'other' and if not why?
Is the voiced dental fricative usually /d/ between vowels (or would this be
word final in a non-rhotic variety?) or lost?  e.g., Either, neither.   I was
thinking about this because there are indications in Elizabethan verse that
the fricative was either weakened or lost in this position.   Metrically
these words are sometimes treated as a single syllable (c.f. ne'er, o'er for
never, over) but in the case of either, etc. the words are never written with
apostrophes (ei'er).

Dale Coye
The College of NJ
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