New Jersey Dialects

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:51 PM -0700 10/20/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Oct 20, 2004, at 10:08 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
>
>>Bethany K. Dumas said:
>>>>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".
>>>
>>>What's the difference?
>>
>>/i/ vs /e/. I have the latter, and the former sounds distinctly
>>unnatural to me.
>
>the /e/ versions are what you get if you treat the day names as N-N
>compounds, with primary accent on the first element and secondary
>accent on the second.
>
>but frequent and opaque compounds are always open for accent reduction.
>  unfortunately, word-final unaccented /e/ is not something english
>does, so if you're going to have an unaccented syllable, you shift the
>vowel up to /i/.
>
>i believe that a respectable number of speakers have restored secondary
>accent to the second element while keeping the vowel /i/.
>
Just 'cause I'm curious--do the "Sundee", "Mondee", "Tuesdee"
speakers pronounce _(ice-cream) sundae_ as "sundee" too?

L