Heard on The Judges: POSS = 0; trivial

[Wilson Gray]

Thirty-ish, black male speaker (from metropolitan Chicago?):

"Who car it is?! Who car it is?! It's your *brother* car. *That's* who
car it is!"


Nothing to see here, folks. It's just that I was struck by the
speaker's getting three chances to go for _whose_ and one for [z]
after "brother," passing, each time. Yet he deletes not a single
instance of _is_. Not that I would have expected him to, except,
possibly, but not likely, after _that_, Labov having slain the
_be-drop_ dragon dekkids ago.

My WAG that the speaker is a native of Chicago is based on his
William-Peterson-like pronunciation of "car" as approx. [k&r], with
aesc. Except for "your" [yow], his speech was otherwise fully rhotic.
Back in the day, when I was accustomed only to Saint Louis English,
the [k&r]-pronunciation of visiting Chicagoans was a *striking*
feature of their speech, so much so that, when I heard the speech of
William Peterson on the first episode of CSI, I said to my wife "He's
from Chicago." In fact, he's from Evansville. But I was close enough
for government work.

-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

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