Contraction in comparatives

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:10 PM -0400 6/20/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>As Tony Joe White put it, iss summuh yawl ain' bin  down South too
>much. That particular pronunciation of ""barrel" is so widespread
>that, as a child, I couldn't distinguish "barrow" [bae@] from
>"barrel," since both /r/ and /l/ could be dropped before consonants
>and word-finally. Indeed, there's an old R&B tune in which
>"table" [teb@] is hypercorrected to "taber" [teb at r]. For many years, I
>thought that a wheel_barrow_ was a wheel_barrel_, invented by someone
>who had cut a barrel in half longitudinally and then attached a wheel
>and a couple of hoe handles to it.
>"Brilliant!" as they say in that Heiniken commercial.
>
>-Wilson

Yes, we discussed wheelbarrel (which my wife, born in NYC and raised
in Old Greenwich, CT, uses) vs. wheelbarrow a while ago.  Still,
neither she nor other speakers I've heard pronouncing "barrel" or
"barrow" rhyme either of them with "gal" the way Rodgers effortlessly
does.

LH

>
>On 6/20/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>Subject:      Re: Contraction in comparatives
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>At 8:27 AM -0400 6/20/06, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>>>Ed Keer <edkeer at YAHOO.COM> asks about
>>>
>>>    1. ??:  This pistol is as long as I'm tall.
>>>    2. OK:  This pistol is as long as I am tall.
>>>
>>>in puzzling over his judgement on
>>>
>>>    3. I'm gonna buy me a pistol just as long as I'm tall.
>>>
>>>from the Everly Brother's version of 'T for Texas'.
>>>
>>OK, I've checked both Jimmie Rodgers (the version on "The Best of the
>>Legendary Jimmie Rodgers", a 1965 RCA record, and Dwight Yoakum (on a
>>very nice tribute album to Jimmie Rodgers from a 1997 CD).  They
>>agree in delivering the line as indicated above, with "pistol"
>>(contra my claim yesterday, he did evidently have a very long pistol
>>in mind, or else he was very short) and with a clear contraction.
>>The shotgun I was recalling comes from a *later* verse in the same
>>song that includes a remarkable rhyme:
>>
>>I'm gonna buy me a shotgun
>>With a great long shiny barrel [approximately = /bael/]
>>I'm gonna shoot that rounder
>>That stole away my gal.
>>
>>Oh, and it was Blue Yodel #1 ("T for Texas").
>>
>>Larry
>>
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