cross-post from Linguist List

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:43 AM -0400 7/16/05, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>This is getting more and more interesting. First we get "their" split out
>from its (to most of us) homophones, then a different two-way split with
>"they're" as the odd man out (from Wilson, not surprisingly... that is, I'm
>not surprised by now that Wilson has interesting data to offer).
>
>Let's see how this matches up with the merry/marry/Mary isoglosses.
>
I have a three-way split on the latter, as do all New Yorkers
(right?), but I've never distinguished "they're"/"their"/"there", at
least not in unreduced contexts (cf. Arnold's post).

Larry