CONtract/conTRACT

[Beverly Flanigan]

No, Northerners (like us Minnesotans) usually say ice-CREAM, except in the
rhyme "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream."  BTW, my
diphthongs would all be centralized (or "Canadianized," if you prefer)--to
/wedge y/--in the stressed pronoun and 'ice'.

At 02:28 PM 10/31/01 +0800, you wrote:
>At 1:51 PM -0500 10/31/01, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>Many of us Southerners eschew fancy-pants Romance stress rules and go
>>for a root (or even misunderstood as root) earlier syllable. I bet
>>them good ol- CON-tract speakers are also
>>
>>CE-ment
>>ICE-cream
>>UM-brella
>>and even
>>TEN-nessee
>>
>>speakers.
>Isn't everyone (at least in this country) an ICE-cream speaker?  To
>join CE-ment and UM-brella, you could trade in your ICE-cream for
>PO-lice.
>
>larry


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm