Hallucinating distinctions (was New Jersey Dialects)

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 20, 2004, at 4:27 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Hallucinating distinctions (was New Jersey Dialects)
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> At 03:36 PM 10/20/2004, you wrote:
>> My students in Ohio did a field project and found "davenport," at
>> least
>> in their sample (which admittedly was small), to very age graded
>> (sorry,
>> Wilson!)  That is, mainly people over about 50 used it at all.  I
>> suspect the same is true here, though I don't think my students have
>> done that project here yet.
>>
>> And I also believe it was a brand name first.
>>
>> FWIW my grandmother used it all the time-- she was in her 60's at the
>> time, in the 1960's in western PA
>>
>> But for me, it's a couch (with the appropriate Pittsburgh twang of
>> course : )
>>
>> Patti Kurtz
>
> My parents said 'davenport' too, as did I as a child.  Now I have a
> 'sofa',
> but mainly because it's a sofa bed (I've never heard of a couch
> bed).

That's precisely the case at my domicile. We have a sofa bed and
neither of us has ever heard the expression "couch bed."

>   Otherwise, I don't think I'd prefer one over the other--though our
> own intuitions about such things are notoriously flawed.

Yes. That's what I was trying to get at when I said that my mind
preferred "couch," whereas my (typing) fingers preferred "sofa."

-Wilson

>
> Out of curiosity though, what's a "Pittsburgh twang"?  Can you put it
> in
> IPA (or our listserv substitute system for IPA)?  I think I know what
> you
> mean, but I want a native speaker's take on this!
>