cross-post from Linguist List

[Lal Zimman]

On Jul 15, 2005, at 10:06 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:


> 3. I have a friend who was born in Alaska, grew up in Arizona and
> Florida,
> and most recently has lived in North Carolina.  She pronounces
> ''there''
> and ''they're'' as [De:r] but ''their'' as [D3:r].  And yes, she is
> aware
> of it and thinks we're all strange for pronouncing all three the
> same.  I
> have never heard of any such phenomenon, is it a characteristic of
> some region?
>

Unfortunately I can only offer more anecdotal evidence, but I have
the same vowel distinction between these words, but it is somewhat
flexible. In a stressed position, "there" and "they're" will always
have [e] as their vowel, while "their" will always have [E]. When
unstressed, the vowels of "there" and "they're" sometimes become lax.
I was born and raised in Northern California, but I have a few minor
features of my dad's north shore Boston accent, and I always
suspected that this was one of them because I don't hear my peers
with purer California accents making this distinction. Perhaps it
isn't regional, though, considering the above speaker's geographical
background. (Hopefully someone else has more information on this.)


-Lal