Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

[Geoffrey Steven Nathan]

I don't have access to the script for Oklahoma at the moment (a number of years ago I was in a summer stock production of it) but my memory is that many of the words with schwa (particularly unstressed 'to', for example) were spelled 'ter'.

The online versions of the song lyrics don't show this, but I think the original score and book did. Since it was written by Americans based on an American book (Green Grow the Lilacs) I just looked that up (you can find absolutely anything online) and found Aunt Eller saying 'skeered a womern to death' in Act 1, Scene 1, as well as 'hollers' (='hollows', which I think has been discussed earlier on this list).

OT: It surprised me how much of the original play was imported verbatim into the musical.

Geoff

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 1:29:57 AM
> Subject: Re: Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: Do New-Englanders *add* R's?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 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

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

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