ice cream parlers (was: CONtract/conTRACT)

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:54 PM -0500 10/31/01, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>Whatcha mean "No."? That's what I said. Southerners say ICE cream
>(like all the other items in my list).

Beverly was saying "no" to *me* (who had opined, based on his own
non-southern initial stress pattern on "ICE cream", that everyone in
this joint uses initial stress here, as opposed to your other exx),
not to *you*, dInIs.  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.  I guess New Yorkers are more
southerners than northerners when it comes to ice cream, according to
the diagnostics we're compiling.  Could it be the upper Midwesterners
who are the outliers on this one?

larry


>
>>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
>
>--
>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