Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 4, 2014, at 1:18 PM, Geoffrey Steven Nathan wrote:

> 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).

Yes, and I was just re-wondering about "holler" (together with "yeller", "feller", "widder",...).  A couple of different thoughts were running around in confusion in my mind:  the use of "er" to designate schwa (as opposed to /o/) in non-rhotic varieties (including "er" for "uh", the hesitation phenomenon), hypercorrection  (as with the intrusive intrusive R of "idear"/"Cuber"), spelling pronunciation, and sound change, although this last doesn't strike me as particularly plausible--/wIdo/ > /wId@/ sure, but /wIdo/ > /wId at r/, especially in a rhotic dialect?  Doesn't seem likely to me.

LH
>
> OT: It surprised me how much of the original play was imported verbatim into the musical.
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
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> ----- 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
>
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