"Shev-uh-lay"

[Dennis R. Preston]

Don't metathesis mean noting no more. cehv- at r-lay was common in
rhotic areas; take that to a nonrhotic one and see what you get.

dInIs

>I wrote:
>>  In Jim Croce's "Rapid Roy", there is a line which refers to "a dirt-track
>>  demon in a '57 Chevrolet". Croce quite clearly pronounces the last
>>  word without an 'r': "shev-uh-lay". (I'm not up on asciified IPA; sorry.)
>>  I don't recall hearing that pronunciation anywhere else. Has anyone
>>  on-list? If so, where (geographically or socially) does it occur, and are
>>  there other examples of dropped syllable-initial 'r'?
>
>Laurence Horn replied:
>>  But is the /r/ really syllable-initial?  I think it's not so much the
>>  dropping of a syllable-initial /r/ but the simplification (natural
>>  enough, especially in fast/colloquial style) of a /vr/ cluster, which
>>  facilitates resyllabification as [SE.v at .'le] (Or maybe the /v/ ends
>>  up phonetically as ambisyllabic?  My phonetician colleagues are out
>>  of town.)  I can imagine "everybody" undergoing the same
>>  simplification, resulting in "ev'ybody" or "ev'abody", despite the
>>  fact that we might regard the underlying form as involving a
>>  syllable-initial /r/ there as well.  And how about "average" as
>>  ['aev at j]?
>
>Hmm. You may be right; I wasn't focusing as much on "syllable-initial"
>as on "not syllable-final". In any case, yes, I can certainly "hear"
>(although I'm not sure I've ever actually heard) "ev'abody". I think that
>part of what bothered me is that the second syllable, as Croce
>pronounces it, is relatively strong, but that may be an artifact of the
>phonetic constraints of singing.
>
>Jim Parish


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu