Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 7:10 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> 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.
>

I don't know whether this is true of (m)any other varieties of Southern
English, but this linking ahra is not unknown in BE:

"Tend to your business and leave my r-affairs alone."
"I got tears all in my r-eyes."
"Mama r-isn't home."
"A pedal-pushing papa r-is he."

With usual monophthongized pronunciation of [aj], of course.

For some people, including a cousin of mine or two, hypercorrection, as
distinct from linking ahra, extends even to the article, _a_, and to any
other monosyllabic shwa. (I use this transliteration and not the standard
"schwa" just because I want to.)

"Jesus is a friend of mine" > "Jesus is er friend er mine."
"I hadn' hoid-tale er that, befo' I spent that week in Cuber."

--
-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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