chard

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:12 AM -0400 7/12/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>And, by somewhat different processes, the most "standard"
>faux-frenchified pronunciation of all: "lingerie"!
>
>As for "processes," I won't even mention the falsum-latinized
>pronunciation [pro s@ siz].  Except that in a public lecture by a
>Ph.D. in comparative literature, I heard the back-formed singular
>[pro s at s].
>
>--Charlie
Yes, that's always been amusing.  Of course you only get pseudo-Greek
or pseudo-Latin reanalyses like [pro s@ siz] because of the semantic
class of the noun involved, by analogy with other abstract nominals.
One never (I venture) hears ['m& tr@ siz] as the plural of "mattress"
or ['wey tr@ siz] as the plural of "waitress", except of course
jocularly.

LH

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