[fIysh] (was: Elm)

[Peter A. McGraw]

[fIysh] is the pronunciation I remember hearing from the locals in SW Ohio
in the early 60s.  (When I returned to live in Yellow Springs in the late
'70s, this dialect seemed to have disappeared from the area.  I didn't
encounter it during the six years I lived there.  Maybe I would have if I
had actually gone looking for it in rural areas.  But it wasn't restricted
to rural areas in the 60s--I remember hearing it over the loudspeaker at
the Dayton airport.  In a conversation about the local speech that took
place during the later period, a local resident [who hailed originally from
New York] insisted that the local pronunciation was [fiysh]).

Come to think of it, I remember a high school teacher in Oregon using
[fIysh]. I don't know where he was from, but probably not Oregon.

Peter Mc.

--On Wednesday, May 30, 2001 6:48 PM -0400 "Dennis R. Preston"
<preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> wrote:

> Rudy,
>
> Now here's the next question for ordering. Can an /I/ derived from an
> /E/ participate in (i.e., serve as a "feeder" for) the raising and
> tensing of the Southern Shift? That is, can such an /I/ be realized
> as something like [iy@]? There are other such wonderfful ordering
> curiosities to examine. In some South Midland areas influenced by the
> Southern Shift, mid and high lax vowels tense before palatal
> continuants (especially /sh/) so that [fIsh] becomes [fiysh]. Now if
> this is a feeder to the Southern Shift, we would expect a lowering
> (at least of the onset) to [fIysh]. I'ma look at this too.
>
> dInIs
>
>>> dInIs:
>>>
>>>         Your pronunciation is half-way on the way to a wonderful one my
>>> cousin from East Texas used, which gave validity to ordered phonological
>>> rules: she pronounced it /Im/.
>>>
>>>         Obviously [Elm] --> [E at m]  --> [Em]  --> [Im]
>>>
>>> I've always assumed that she must have heard it originally as [Em] and
>>> her internal vowel neutralization rule changed that to [Im].
>>>
>>>         Rudy
>>
>> --
>> Dennis R. Preston
>> Department of Linguistics and Languages
>> Michigan State University
>> East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
>> preston at pilot.msu.edu
>> Office: (517)353-0740
>> Fax: (517)432-2736
>
> --
> Dennis R. Preston
> Department of Linguistics and Languages
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
> preston at pilot.msu.edu
> Office: (517)353-0740
> Fax: (517)432-2736



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu