/w/-/hw/ again

[Dennis Preston]

Actually my casual speech pronunciation of this is just /amoh~/
(where /oh/ equals open-o and ~ indicates nasalization of the
preceding vowel). That's all there is to my (and many others like me)
"I'm going to." The "initial  /m/" is from the prediuctable
syllabification of the string. The /g/ in Wilson's representation
does not come from 'I'm going to' but from the subsequent 'git.' If
it was, for example, "I'm going to see" (not git), there would be no
/g/.

In my even faster speech representation, the nasalization disappears
altogether and gives something that sounds like the name "Ima."

dInIs

PS: Please don't write relating this to Ima Hogg and her putative
sister Ura. No connection.


>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject:      Re: /w/-/hw/ again
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>"I moang..." got my attention. I hear it in my mind as matching a usage I
>think I hear very often, which I always have equated to "I'm going to" --
>here, with the nasal maybe assimilating in place to the /g/ of "git". Am I
>understanding it right? Whence the initial /m/?   From  "I'm (a-)going
>to..."?
>
>m a m
>
>On Dec 28, 2007 5:09 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  A blues verse:
>>
>>  I moang git me a blade
>>  One thet I kin affode
>>  Too lawng t' be ey knife
>>  Too shawt t' be ey swode
>>
>>
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA

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