A nice Southernism . . .

[Wilson Gray]

"A nice clo" is better than the legendary, "I *am* being have."

-Wilson

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: A nice Southernism . . .
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:12 AM -0400 9/4/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Randy, Charlie is right WRT East-Texas English. If I were talking to
>>you, I'd say [wasp] and [b^lb], because I wouldn't want to sound
>>"colored," as it were. But, talking to Charlie, who's accustomed to
>>the various Southern styles of speech, I'd say [wOs, wOsiz] 'n' [b^:b,
>>bu^:bz]]. In the second case, both the loss of the /l/ and the
>>following voiced consonant cause lengthening of the /^/.
>>
>>As fate would have it, I didn't hear [b^:b] used for the female breast
>>until I was a senior in high school. Since the speaker was also black,
>>I naturally assumed that he was saying "bulb," obviously a reasonable
>>slang term for a woman's breast.
>>
>>Not until some forty years later, as I was browsing through HDAS, did
>>I discover that the term actually is "bub"! Nevertheless, I'd bet
>>money that, for a whole lot of people who live where the Spanish moss
>>hangs from the live-oak trees, the word is spelled "bulb."
>>
>>As for the noun, "clothes," IMO, the correct pronunciation is [klowz],
>>falling together with the verb, "close." The pronunciation, [klowDz],
>>is that of the verb, "clothes," as in "a harlequin clothes himself in
>>motley."
>
> It may be worth noting that Wilson's last minimal pair, the reduced
> [klowz] for the (frequent) plural noun vs. the unreduced [klowDz] for
> the (rare) verb form, is extremely widespread in U. S. English,
> unlike the other, more regionally restricted reductions we've been
> discussing.  It's so general that it forms the background for one of
> my favorite examples of children's eggcorny back-formations, "a
> (nice,...) clo" (for 'an article of clothing').
>
> LH
>
>>On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 11:16 PM, LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>  Poster:       LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
>>>  Subject:      Re: A nice Southernism . . .
>>>
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>  On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 12:11 AM,  <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
>>>>  However, CONSONANT CLUSTER is a well known term in linguistics.
>>>>And FINAL CONSONANT CLUSTER SIMPLIFICATION is the usual term
>>>>employed to name the rule that describes the phenomenon in English
>>>>whereby a word-final consonant is variably deleted iff it is alike
>>>>in voicing with the consonant that immediately precedes it (i.e.,
>>>>both must be either voiced or not voiced) .
>>>
>>>  You're saying that anytime you have this situation at the end of a word:
>>>
>>>  {unvoiced consonant} + {unvoiced consonant}
>>>
>>>  or
>>>
>>>  {voiced consonant} + {voiced consonant}
>>>
>>>  that the second consonant can be deleted?
>>>
>>>  So (according to your rule) for the word "wasp", you can just say
>>>  [was]?  And for "bulb", you can just say [b^l]?
>>>
>>>  I'm pretty sure I've never heard anybody in any English dialect say
>>>  either of those, or anything similar.  The final consonant cluster
>>>  reduction rule that I'm aware of only affects [t] and [d], and it
>>>  doesn't have much to do with voicing, but rather what kinds of
>>>  consonants are next to the [t] or [d] in question.  It's not simple
>>>  enough to make a one-sentence rule about; and the processes involved
>>>  form a "process continuum" that ranges from speaking in citation forms
>>>  to slurred and unintelligible speech.
>>>
>>>  --
>>>  Randy Alexander
>>>  Jilin City, China
>>>  My Manchu studies blog:
>>>  http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>-----
>>-Mark Twain
>>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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