deixis

[Mark Mandel]

I haven't seen anyone mentioning the influence of German loans. "ei" is
standardly [aI] in German and in English loans from German. I would also
include surnames in the possible influences; the only class of exception
that comes to mind is the variation between [i] and [aI] in final "-stein",
e.g., some Epsteins are /'EpstaIn/s and some are /'Epstin/s.

Mark Mandel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org