Kregg vs. Craig

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:53 PM -0400 7/19/02, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>Vowel conflaters (almost always laxers), having completed their work
>before /r/, and well into it before /l/, are now moving on; pre /g/
>appears to be their next stop on this road to perdition. The regional
>distribution is not exactly known, but the process seems to be more
>rampant in the urban East but productive in many other areas
>(Mountain West, South) as well; the Midwest, in my opinion, lags in
>this matter.
>
>dInIs (who, in his football days, always took the 'field,' not the 'filled')
>
This last is redolent of Pittsburgh (and maybe cheese-steak eaters to
the east, whose "Iggles" sometimes take the filled against
Pittsburgh's "Stillers"), but those "urban East"-type generalizations
are odious, even if we all sound alike to you Midwesterners.  Those
PA folks don't even reliably keep their Maries apart from their
marries and merries, so it's not too surprising that they neutralize
before /g/ and /l/.  Talk about your road to perdition.  We New
Yorkers would never fall for that.

L