Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

[Laurence Horn]

Isn't this the "idear" and "Cuber" stereotype?  The usual diagnosis, I think, is along the lines that the intrusive R comes from a reanalysis/hypercorrection influenced by alternation between non-rhotic final R in "the car" /ka:/ vs. rhotic linking R in intervocalic contexts like "the car is out of gas" /karIz/.  So if you have "Cuba" as /kju:b@/ the way JFK did, then you might get "Cuber is just 90 miles off the coast of Florida" as /kju:b at riZ/, and it's a short step from that to the reconstruction of "Cuba" and "Billerica" as having an underlying -r that would get restored via hypercorrection.

LH

On Mar 1, 2014, at 6:03 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> Heard on a Boston-area radio local news program:
>
> bill-RICK-er
>
> A town north of Boston, spelled Billerica, and in my experience (and
> Wikipedia's) mostly pronounced bill-RICK-uh.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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