resyllabification

[Herbert Stahlke]

For me (born in SE Michigan but spent my teen years in mUwOki), this is not
a matter of initial syllable deletion.  The initial [s] of "sconsin" is
syllabic.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Laurence Horn
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 12:37 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: resyllabification


At 8:44 AM -0400 10/27/03, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>arnold,
>
>It's how you identify real cheeseheads:
>
>Us: wis-con-sin
>
>Them: wi-scon-sin

There was an article in the Times a few years back suggesting this as
a shibboleth for Wisconsinites, and at least one of the hosts on
ESPN's SportsCenter talks about players from "Sconsin", where the
first (reanalyzed) syllable has been clipped off.  I was just doing
the reanalysis of "mistake" in class today (the match doesn't go out
for muh-stake but it does for the transparent mis-took, arguing for
the resyllabification yielding the st- onset), and it should work for
Wis-con-sin vs. Wuh-scahn-sin as well (or, obviously, "Sconsin") as
well.



>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)