Safire on "nukular"

[Mark A. Mandel]

arnold sez
 >>>
Problem 3, also serious: getting the metathesis proposal to work.
Metathesis of the /l/ and /i/ of /nukli at r/ would give /nukil at r/, with
primary accent on the first syllable and secondary accent on the second
(as in "nuclear").  To get towards "nucular", that second syllable
would have to lose its accent (this is not particularly unlikely),
yielding /nukIl at r/ or /nuk at l@r/.  This isn't all the way home, though,
because there's still that /y/ to pick up.  It looks like Safire is
assuming a metathesis and *then* a reshaping to match other "-cular"
words, which would supply a /y/.  But direct reshaping is a more
parsimonious account of the phenomenon; the metathesis is unnecessary.
 <<<

You're treating the @ and the i as separate beads on a string. Try this
analysis instead:

Begin by treating unstressed [i@] as /?y@/, where I'm ad-hocking /?/ to
stand for unstressed central vowel. It could be schwa or I or barred-I;
they're not distinctive before /y/, and it's the /y/ that makes the
combination come out as [i].

So we have /'nukl?y at r/. Swap the l and y and hey presto!: /'nuky?l at r/ =
['nuky at l@r], by metathesis.


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