Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 4, 2014, at 1:29 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> 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.

...or "a pistol-packin mama-r-is she".  I hadn't thought about the monophthongization/ungliding > linking /r/, but that sounds right.  Or even raht (at least if you're whaat; according to the literature, the extension of southron monophthongization from voiced contexts like "rahd" to voiceless ones like "raht" is more of a white thang).
>
> 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."
>
Is this what's going on in "yeller", "feller", and "holler" (= 'hollow') as well?

LH

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