"bone marror"

[Damien Hall]

Wilson said:

>This is only my opinion, based only on my personal experience, but I
>think that the modulo is unnecessary. R-less folk don't say marrow
>borrow  Storrow  tomorow  Morrow or any other words of this type with
>final [ou]

Many speakers of British English do. Not in all environments, granted, and
not in fast speech sometimes, but I think I would still say [bOrou stOrou
(t@)mOrou] more often than [bOr@ stOr@ (t@)mOr@]. I'm especially sure of
this for proper names, like Storrow, which I can't imagine pronouncing
[stOr@] in 'citation form'. All of this comes with the caveat that
introspection is very unreliable, of course, but I'm still saying it!

[...]

>Words in -ow are
>pronounced with [-@]

I think this is more categorical in AmE than in other Englishes. My
father-in-law (Chestertown, MD, on Chesapeake Bay, late '20s), for example,
says _window_ /wInd@/ (NB the slashes this time, not square brackets), and
so this representation and pronunciation is now part of my wife's lexicon
(Berkeley Heights, NJ, 1960s) for this lexical item, even though she
otherwise has _-ow_ > /ou/ as far as I know.

Damien

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
UK

Tel. (office) +44 (0)1904 432665
     (mobile) +44 (0)771 853 5634
Fax  +44 (0)1904 432673

BORDERS AND IDENTITIES CONFERENCE, JAN 2010:
http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb/bic2010/

http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/people/pages/hall.htm

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