ice cream parlers (was: CONtract/conTRACT)

[Billionbridges.com]

This Canadian heard "GUI-tar" (short vowel "i")
and "IN-surance" in northern Indiana in 1985  However,
the speaker was a middle-aged gentleman of
undetermined geographical upbringing, and his
daughter, when I politely inquired as to his pronunciation,
smirked at it.

I might have thought that "ICE cream" wouldn't
fall into the same category as "CE-ment" or
"UM-brella" because it's not a morpheme, but
rather a two-noun unit in which the first word
modifies the second.

Though by that reasoning we Canucks should be
saying "NIAGARA Falls" instead of the opposite,
"Niagara FALLS", which is how we say it.

Don


>  The point remains that "ICE cream", even if not
> the universal U.S. stress pattern, is a lot more general than
> "CE-ment" or "UM-brella" (or my nominee, PO-lice), all of which may
> (for all I know) be truly Southernisms.