resyllabification

[Dennis R. Preston]

arnold,

It's how you identify real cheeseheads:

Us: wis-con-sin

Them: wi-scon-sin

This is more like the "misty crivver" example (than the "bah
bedwards" one) since a cluster rather than the, I would think, more
usual creation of a single onset is involved.

dInIs (who, like you, also used to live in clumps)


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)

--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
      Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 432-3099