New Jersey Dialects

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:56 AM -0700 10/20/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>>I was on a business trip to Ft. Monmouth a few years ago, and the
>>>local
>>>"morning crew" deejays were making fun of south Jersey speech.  The
>>>particular feature they were picking at was a tendency (which I have
>>>no
>>>knowledge if it's so or not) to pronounce the names of the days of
>>>the week
>>>as "Mondee, Tuesdee" etc instead of "Monday, Tuesday".
>
>these pronunciations are all over the place in the u.s. (i don't know
>about the rest of the english-speaking world).  they're in AHD4, and
>probably in other dictionaries as well. (i'm away from my dictionary
>hoard.)
>
>so what we have here is another instance of PITS (People in the Street)
>perceiving some extremely widespread colloquial usage, pronunciation,
>or lexical item as being a localism. (it's the flip side of PITS not
>realizing that some item they use routinely is in fact a localism.)  it
>would be nice to have a name for this phenomenon.  i suppose it's too
>much to hope for that there is one already.  if not, does anyone want
>to suggest a label?

Well, I don't know a specific label, but it would seem to be a branch
of parochialism (mistaking the facts of one's parish for those of the
wider world or vice versa), no?   Or is it more properly
anti-parochialism?

>
>while i'm asking about labels for common phenomena, how about what
>happens when people (often, linguists as well as normals) compare two
>items side by side and go on laboring to tease out some difference
>(phonetic, semantic, social, contextual, whatever) between them, to the
>point of inventing -- i'm sometimes inclined to say "hallucinating" --
>such differences.  (i'm soon going to post about this phenomenon in
>more detail.)  ask people about  the words "sofa" and "couch", and soon
>they'll be all over the map with subtle distinctions.  let usageists
>fix on "partly" and "partially", and they'll tease out all sorts of
>distinctions, different ones for different analysts, many of which have
>no basis in actual usage.  get people focused on small phonetic details
>distinguishing dialects, and let them think about their pronunciations
>of homophones (especially those with different spellings, like
>"read"/"reed" or "sea"/"see"), and they're likely to start hearing
>differences.  or, from our recent ADS discussions: compare "sort of"
>and "kind of"; or compare the noticeable (to you) idiom "in harm's way"
>with "in danger".
>
>the side-by-side comparison invites people to seek out differences.
>is there a name for this effect?
>
Bolingeritis?  Bolingering?

larry