[hw-] v. [w]

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:19 PM -0400 8/1/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On 8/1/07, Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at ohio.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  [David A. Daniel wrote:]
>>  >
>>  > [Scott LaFaive wrote:]
>>  >
>>  > >I don't have an [h] anywhere near my [w]'s (Wisconsin dialect),
>>so I don't
>>  > >even know what this sounds like. Any good sound files for this?
>>  >
>>  >Bob Dylan, Lay Lady Lay. He could blow out a candle with his "...stay with
>>  >your man a hhhhhhhwile"
>>
>>  As Peter Trudgill pointed out in a 1983 paper ("Acts of Conflicting
>>  Identity"), Dylan tried to use a Midland/Appalachian accent in his early
>>  songs, often with hypercorrection.  Hence "a while" was [e hwail] (or maybe
>>  even [e hwal]?)

Yes, it's pretty much [e hwal], except there's (impressionistically)
a bit of a central off-glide before the -l, both here and in the
rhyming line:

Stay lady stay
Stay with your man a while [e hwa(@)l]
Until the break of day
Let me see you make him smile [sma(@)l]

Interesting syntax too--not quite illeism, but close.  The "me" and
"him" in the last line are coreferential but differ in picking out
observer ("me") and participant ("him" = "your man") roles.  Either
that or there's a threesome involved that I never picked up on.

LH

>and "the times they are [e tSendZiN]."  As a Minnesotan,
>>  Dylan would have never used [hw] in his own persona, and I wonder if he
>>  didn't drop it in his later songs too?
>
>"Lay Lady Lay" wasn't that early of a song in the Dylan oeuvre -- it's from
>1969, off the "Nashville Skyline" album (his 9th album in 8 years). I don't
>recall what Trudgill has to say on the matter, but my sense is that Dylan
>didn't lose his singing accent in the way that the Beatles and the Stones
>eventually gave up on Americanized phonology as Trudgill describes.
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org