spelling pronunciation--words in -or

[Joel S. Berson]

ad-min-i-STRA-tor is pronounceable, but I would have a hard time
saying REAL-tor ("real" as a single syllable) or re-AL-tor.  My
pronunciation has primary stress on "re" and secondary on "tor" (I think!).

Joel

At 3/19/2009 09:30 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>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
>>>>>-----------------------
>>>>>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
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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