spelling pronunciation--words in -or

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:05 PM -0400 3/19/09, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>That accounts for "realtor" but not for "educa'tor" or
>"administra'tor", where the primary stress is on -tor.
>
>Herb

Maybe they all see themselves as cousins to the centaur--half
mild-mannered functionary, half...well...one can dream, can't one?

LH

>On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 8:17 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: spelling pronunciation--words in -or
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  At 6:42 PM -0400 3/19/09, Alison Murie wrote:
>>>On Mar 18, 2009, at 10:50 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>>>
>>>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
>>>>Subject:      spelling pronunciation--words in -or
>>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>We've all heard words ending in -or pronounced with stress on the
>>>>ultima and with the vowel /O/.  My sense of the distribution of this
>>>>is that it tends to come more from professional educators and
>>>>administrators than from others.  The stress sounds like the Nuclear
>>>>Stress Rule in action, where the -or suffix is treated as if it's the
>>>>head noun and the rest of the word the adjective.  I hadn't heard it
>>>>with -or/-our spellings until this evening when David Shuster,
>>>>guesting on Countdown, pronounced "candor" like a compound noun.  His
>>>>guest responded immediately to him and pronounced the word the same
>>>>way, with perhaps a little more stress on -or.  Has anyone worked on
>>>>the distribution of this pronunciation?  /k&ndOr may be different from
>>>>suffixal -or since it sounds more like the result of the Compound
>>>>Stress Rule, like "blackbird" as opposed to "black bird."
>>>>
>>>>Herb
>>>>
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>>>
>>>~~~~~~~~~
>>>Whenever I hear the National Association of Realtors identified as a
>>>sponsor on the radio it seems to be pronounced  "real'tors" , as in
>>>or, or ore, or oar!  For some reason, this always strikes me as more
>>>than just spelling-awareness; it's as if the -or ending conferred some
>>>sort of classiness on the business.
>>>AM
>>>
>>
>>  Well, maybe; I've certainly noticed that as well (as in the radio
>>  commercial that proclaims to one and all that "only real-tors are
>>  members of the National Association of Real-tors").  But then it
>>  reminds me of the final secondary stress and lack of vowel
>>  neutralization in lawyers' references to the "defend-ant".
>>
>>  LH
>>
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>
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