Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?

[Charles C Doyle]

Could be!

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of David A. Daniel [dad at POKERWIZ.COM]
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2012 8:26 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Isn't that "Orange you glad I didn't say banana?"
DAD


Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---

I'm reminded of the "knock-knock" joke that culminates in the punch line
"Aren't you glad I didn't say 'orange'?"

--Charlie

Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2012 11:17 AM

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---

On Nov 17, 2012, at 6:38 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 1:36 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>> On Nov 16, 2012, at 6:24 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>>
>>> I'm sure this has been analyzed somewhere at some point, but I don't
know where.
>>> What is the dialect that has /O/ lowering to [a] in a stressed vowel
preceding
>>> /r/ and an unstressed vowel? In other words, the dialect that pronounces
>>> "forest" as "farrest," "Florida" as "Flarrida", "Oregon" as "Ahregun,"
>>> "horrible" etc. as "harrible" etc., "authority" as "autharity", but
still has
>>> [O] in "fort", "lore," etc.? What is this realization called?
>>>
>>
>> It's what I grew up with in NYC, although I've shifted over to [O] most
of the time for
>> these; I suspect I go back and forth (on "Florida", "orange", "forest")
even though I
>> think of myself as an open-o employer for these (the first group, that
is; I've never
>> varied on [O] for "fort" or "lore").  I think of "AH-rinj" as the locus
classicus, but as I
>> recall it was getting mocked for my [a] in "corridor" as a freshman in
Rochester that
>> led to my abandoning my native vowels in this frame.  I'm sure I never
say "flarrist",
>> but I probably did before the fall of 1961.
>
> Along with NYC, the use of unrounded [A] for the "tomorrow"/"orange"
> class typifies Philadelphia and the Carolinas:
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_
r#Historic_.22short_o.22_before_intervocalic_r
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org