southmore

[Wilson Gray]

I continue to fail to remember that I'm describing BE as it was a
half-century ago. I should make a point of noting that.

-Wilson

On 9/19/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: southmore
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 17, 2007, at 5:36 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> > That's funny! Over the course of my life, soufmo(r) [saufmo(r)] has
> > been the usual BE pronunciation of "sophomore." The obvious
> > (hyper)correction is "southmore." But I've never heard it. It's always
> > been either the BE pronunciation or the standard pronunciation.
>
> well, a number of the hits for "southmore" are from black speakers --
> so many that, at first, i thought it was a specifically black thing
> (an idea that turned out to be incorrect).
>
> this might be a case of what i'm currently thinking of as "demi-
> eggcorns": reshapings in which some opaque material is replaced by a
> phonologically similar existing morpheme, but without noticeable
> contribution to the semantics.  the idea is that there are two drives
> here: one to find familiar elements as much as possible, and one to
> find meaning as much as possible.  classic eggcorns show both
> effects, demi-eggcorns only the first.
>
> but for all i know, there are people out there who have invented some
> rationale for the "south" in "southmore".  remember "ol(d) factory".
>
> arnold
>
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