trawf (was Re: southmore)

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:19 PM -0700 10/23/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Sep 20, 2007, at 9:15 AM, i wrote:
>
>>i've now found a possible
>>intermediate stage between "soph(o)more" and "southmore", namely "soth
>>(o)more" (presumably with [T] rather than [f]).  modest number of
>>hits, e.g.:
>>
>>and i've heard the Promo For Craig David's Sothomore LP, "Slicker
>>than your Average", and its totally Brilliant
>>http://macosx.com/forums/archive/t-23712.html
>>
>>Most of our family is being supportive of our homeschooling
>>adventure. WE also have a 19 sothmore in college. We would like to
>>hear from others .
>>http://forums.about.com/dir-app/acx/ACDispatch.aspx?
>>action=message&webtag=ab-homeschool&msg=11079
>
>now a Language Log reader tells me that
>
>   ... the [television] weather reporters seem to say "trawth"
>instead of trough   ("trawf ")
>
>another [T] for standard [f].  i see that dictionary.com lists
>pronunciations with [T] for "trough" "sometimes".  has the
>distribution of this pronunciation for this item been studied?  has
>the variant been reported for any roughly similar words: tough,
>enough, rough, cough?
>
>[f] for [T] is, of course, a lenition/simplification.  can/should [T]
>for [f] be seen as a kind of strengthening?
>
Maybe these speakers have heard about couples plighting their troth
without knowing exactly to what this referred, and just assumed that
the "troth" on the weather map is just another kind of whatever that
is.  (Thus representing a hypercorrection of the obviously sloppy
pronunciation /trOf/ one hears all too often--and not just from those
cockney-influenced weatherpeople who are always /f/ing their /T/s.)

LH

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