Heard on The Judges: " -nim" in possessive

[Wilson Gray]

–––
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



On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 6:50 PM, William Salmon <william.salmon at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       William Salmon <william.salmon at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: " -nim" in possessive
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>> Larry, you know that "th(em)" is pronounced "th([i}m}"! What are you
>> doing, allowing yourself to be seduced by spelling? And since -nim
>> always has secondary stress - amongst the colored at least - you're
>> not going to hear anyone saying "mama-n[@]m."
>
> I've heard it produced -nIm. But, it's also frequently drawn out much
> more with a diphthong, like this: nee-um. This latter is how my
> relatives in Dallas and East Texas would say it:
>
> He's over atcher mamanee-ums house...

Mine, too! And also most BE - or AA, as some prefer - speakers,
wherever located. That "nee-um" kind of pronunciation is precisely
what Sledd, himself a Texan, had in mind when he used the term,
"breaking." I agree that, both behind the sun and even in the North,
"nim" is most often pronounced [ni@] and not [nI at m].

Although I really haven't had occasion to pay a lot of attention to
this, it seems to me that Northern speakers that have breaking
pronounce, e.g. "head" as "hay-ud" [hej at d], instead of as "hay-id"
[hejId], the Southern pronunciation usually eye-dialected as "haid"
and pronounced as [hejd] by Northerners relying on the spelling.

Gleason's assertion works for me. It depends upon the fact that there
are two kinds of people: those who make the distinction and those who
don't. Everyone is familiar with the saying that goes something like,
"Man is the measure of all things." It should be changed to, "Self is
the measure of all things." Gleason had the distinction and wrote as
though it was typical of all speakers of English, to? / for? whom it
would be obvious, once it had been pointed out to them.
As Larry's comment shows, that's not hardly the case.

A Jesuit linguist from Georgetown, whose name escapes me - he gave me
the ass at the Michigan Summer 1973 LSA, when he asked me what I was
doing there[sic!], adding that he was curious, given that he had also
seen me in other academic linguistic venues; unfortunately, this is an
all-too-common response by white people to the presence of black
people in such circumstances without a pushbroom or a mop and bucket
in their hands: What's that nigger doing in here? - published a
textbook in which he discussed cases such as those in which speakers
pronounce "noon" [nu:n] as though it were spelled "newn" [niwn].

Huh?! Say what?! Don't nobody talk like that!

Since I've been living in the Northeast, I've found out that somebody
*do* talk like that!

It's strange that such highly-trained academic linguists could
overlook the existence of local dialects for which their
generalizations do not hold.

The first time that I heard Russian _jery_, I interpreted it as being
the same as a fronted /u/. With practice, I was able to hear it as
what it is: a backed /i/.

Speaking of "atcher," I'm always surprised by the r-fulness of
Southern-white speakers, even when they otherwise use speech-patterns
(stereo)typical of the *really* Deep South. On the other hand, I've
never heard *any* colloquial variety of BE / AA that wasn't
ah-ruh-liss - at least, in cases when there were no Northern white
people around - except in exclamations and such - "dern!" - and a
sometimes-strange, very few hiatus-breaking, linking-r environments,
such as, e.g., after "my":

Tend to your business and leave my [r-]affairs alone. [R&B song]

Oh, baby, I got tears all in my [r-]eyes. [Blues song]

-Wilson

>
>
> Rather, you may hear
>> "mama-n[I@]," with shwa (I use the spelling, "shwa," because I want
>> to, and not in error) being a mere off-glide as the speaker "holds his
>> mouth" [cf. the expression, "hold one's mouth right" display the
>> proper, respectful demeanor] to pronounce the /m/.
>>
>> Sledd, James. 1966. "Breaking, Umlaut, and the Southern Drawl."
>> Language 42: 18 –41.
>>
>> -Wilson
>> –––
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Laurence Horn
>> <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: " -nim" in possessive
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> At 2:33 PM -0500 1/29/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>> Larry, if you catch an AA speaker saying [nEm] instead of [nIm], kill
>>>> him, for he is a traitor to his dialect, a disgrace to his race. :-)
>>>>
>>>> -Wilson
>>>
>>> But I think either AA or EA speakers might use a schwa, [I], or
>>> barred-I in the final syllable and it could still be transcribed as
>>> mom(m)anem or mam(m)anem rather than as -nim, given the psychological
>>> link to "(th)em".  I suspect EA Pittsburghers would not, however,
>>> refer to "yo mamanem house", with any spelling.
>>>
>>> LH
>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Laurence Horn
>>>> <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>>>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>> -----------------------
>>>>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>>>  Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: " -nim" in possessive
>>>>>
>>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>>  At 9:30 AM -0500 1/29/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>>>> Judge Penny (late-forty-ish black woman from Atlanta):
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "How you gon' have five girlfriends and be so broke that you still
>>>>>> livin' in _yo' mama-nim house_?!"
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I've never heard it expressed this way, before. I would have expected:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "... still livin' in the house _wit' cho' mama-nim_?!"
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>  also rendered (for varieties of EA (and AA?) speakers in Pittsburgh
>>>>>  and environs as well as southerners of all ethnicities) as "mamanem"
>>>>>  and "mommanem", which are slightly more transparent (< 'n' (th)'em)
>>>>>
>>>>>  LH
>>>>>
>>>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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