'mo = homo

[Laurence Horn]

>>in my experience, 'rents is fairly recent.  but my experience of 'za
>>goes back to the late 50s, when my college roommate used it frequently.
>
>I've heard "'za" since ca. 1966, "'rents" never (in real-life use).
>
>"Parents" > "'rents" seems odd, and it may well be that the actual
>evolution was "parental units" > "'rental units" (and/or "parentals") >
>"'rents" or so. Jonathon Green's dictionary entry suggests something like
>this. [Another conceivable origin with stress would be "in loco parentis",
>which expression was bandied about some during student unrest in the 1960's.]
>
>"'Za" remains as ostensibly reflecting a really really unstressed syllable.
>Are there any other good clear examples like this?
>
>I think it might be arguable that "'za" doesn't really reflect any spoken
>syllable, but rather is taken directly from the orthography. The stressed
>version of the last syllable of "pizza" would be /sa/ or maybe /tsa/, I
>would think. "'Za" is always /za/ AFAIK ... or are there other pronunciations?
>
I tend to agree, although I'm just speculating here.  Some other
partially unstressed remnants I've been thinking about are those used
for sports team hypocoristics, but they represent secondarily
stressed rather than truly unstressed cases:  the 'Lanche (for the
Colorado Avalanche hockey team, a.k.a. the Avs), the 'Canes (for the
Hurricanes), the 'Noles (for the Seminoles), etc.  There's also the
Wolves (for the Minnesota Timberwolves, a.k.a. T-Wolves), but that's
a bit different, since it's really a compound reducing to its head,
and "wolves" is definitely stressed to begin with, albeit
secondarily; cf. the 'Boys and the 'Skins, from Dallas and DC
respectively.   I can't think of bisyllabic team names with initial
stress where the second syllable is retained, once we eliminate
compounds and modifier-head constructions (e.g. "the Sox"); what
doesn't occur is e.g. the 'Kees of NY, the 'Kers of L.A.--even though
the latter is a nice reanalysis in the making.

larry horn