r to l dissimilation in "infrastructure"?

[Nancy Hall]

Hello,

In a recent elicitation study, I ran into a pronunciation of
"infrastructure" in which the first [r@] was replaced with a syllabic [l].
The speaker who produced it is African-American, male, about 40, originally
from New York and has lived in Baltimore and Southern California. Has anyone
else encountered this pronunciation?

The reason that I was eliciting 'infrastructure' was to see what percentage
of speakers drop the first [r], as part of a study of r-dissimilation.
Substituting [l] for [r] could be an alternate method of r-dissimilation, so
it would be quite interesting if this is an established variant.

--Nancy Hall

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