resyllabification

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

two-word expressions are sometimes resyllabified as single words,
especially by people who have reason to say them a lot.  for many
people, "last night" (with the pronunciation "las' night"), "this
morning", and "this evening" are usually pronounced with the final s of
the first syllable moved to begin the (accented) second syllable.  and
some people do this with their own names; Bob Edwards, host of NPR's
Morning Edition, regularly does this  to the final b of "Bob", and i
just heard Sandip Roy do it to the final p of "Sandip" (in both cases,
again moving a consonant into the syllable with primary accent).

last week, i heard (from another room) the tv repeat what i at first
took to be "Mister Crivver", but then when i got closer it was more
like "Misty Crivver".  then i *saw* the commercial, an ad for the movie
"Mystic River".  presumably the guy doing the voice-over had said the
name so many times that he was treating it like a single word, so the k
moved into the third syllable (once again the syllable with primary
accent).

undoubtedly there are more examples to be found.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)