Ahra-lessnes in white-Southern speech (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:42 PM -0400 6/16/09, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Jonathan Lighter:
>>  >> ? My friend from rural Middle Tennessee - a distinguished
>>attorney - always
>>  >> ? says "fum."
>>  >>
>>  >> ? Other than that and maybe one or two other items, he's got all his r's.
>
>MM:
>>And even that isn't r-lessness (arrhoticity), which AFAIK refers to
>>loss of *postvocalic* /r/.
>
>Laurence Horn:
>>  Why isn't the /r/ in "farm" an instance of postvocalic /r/?
>
>I assumed that this was Jonathan's friend's pronunciation of "from";
>JL didn't say.
>
>--
>Mark Mandel
>
Oh, right.  I didn't even think of that; I automatically processed it
as < "farm" to get the post-vocalic reading.

LH

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