Kregg vs. Craig

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:55 PM -0400 7/21/02, Mark A Mandel wrote:
>Is that "furry"*
>         with rhotic schwa (or rhotic turned-epsilon)
>  or
>         with /^/ (wedge)?
>
>I have the latter vowel in "hurry", the former in "furry".
>
>* none of those should be in slashes, since they're plainly not phonemic
>representations
>
I have the same distinction and I think for me it has to do with
morpheme and/or syllable boundaries (something like the different
vowel rules for "hammer" and "hamster").  So for instance I used to
distinguish "curry" (with the wedge) from "cur-y" ('pertaining to a
cur'), with the "furry" vowel.  Others in the former group:  Murray,
scurry, surrey, worry.  Another minimal pair:  worry vs. whirry.  And
I suppose "hurry" vs. "Ben-Hur-y" or "Murray" vs. "myrrhy".  But
again, this ended up unstable and I now vacillate on those old wedge
vowels.

larry