query on "boid"s and "terlet"s

[Paul Johnston]

Not me.  Though I work a lot with British dialects and so on, I'd be
interested in the phenomenon whatever speech community has it.  Again, from
very impressionistic and very transitory first-hand contact with Southern
speech of any kind, I'd be interested why it seems that the feature occurs
in white speech in a given area only if it also occurs in black speech.
I.e. it seems more widely distributed areally in BE in the South, esp. among
older speakers.  Perhaps it is a BE innovation, which spreads--in the South
at least.  But then that gets us into all the debate of where given BE
features came from.  It doesn't seem substratal (though does it not occur in
Bahamian and Gullah, at least, in the Caribbean creoles?), and if it isn't,
we're back looking at British dialects again, or just a new sort of sound
change of BE origin.

Paul Johnston
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: query on "boid"s and "terlet"s


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: query on "boid"s and "terlet"s
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
> I realize that this may be a waste of time. Perhaps what we have here
> is a failure to communicate. IAC, this a common feature of BE. The
> first documentation of this phenomenon among blacks that I know of -
> I've never researched it, but Ann Fairbairn found the phenomenon
> interesting enough that she makes it a point to draw her reader's
> attention to it in her novel, _Five Smooth Stones_, published by Crown
> Publishers in 1966. However, I've personally been accustomed to
> hearing it fall trippingly from the tongues of BE speakers ever since
> I was a child in Texas. In the old TV show, _Sanford & Son_, "terlet"
> is the favored pronunciation of Fred Sanford's ace boon coon. It can
> be heard on pretty much any blues record.
>
> Is it the case that people are interested in the phenomenon only as it
> is manifested among white people? Is that what I'm missing? In that
> case, I regret the error, to coin a phrase. ;-)
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 1/29/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Fwd: query on "boid"s and "terlet"s
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
> >
> > This is from a student (not the same one who's looking at acquisition
> > of AAVE) who is considering a project on American dialects for her
> > senior essay.  This is another take on the question we batted around
> > a month or so ago about Bill Labov and the NYC/New Orleans
> > connection, but looking at the wider picture as well...
> >
> > ============
> > I'm looking into the relationship between /r/ (the approximant as in
> > American English) and "oy" or "uhy." I know that in some New Orleans
> > and (old) New York varieties, SAE syllabic /r/s are replaced with
> > some a rising diphthong, as in "woiking" ('working')  As I understand
> > it there are also some communities (the same ones?) where the
> > opposite process also occurs, as in "terlet" ('toilet').  Are there
> > other dialects of English (American or otherwise) with similar
> > alternations (in relation to SAE or another variety)?  I'm looking
> > particularly for independent arisals, though spreading from New York
> > or New Orleans would also be interesting.  Are there theories of how
> > the New York and New Orleans pronunciations arose in the first place?
> > (Do they stem from something similar in a British dialect?)
> > ============
> >
> > Thanks for any pointers anyone can provide.
> >
> > Larry
> >
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> >
>
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