Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

[Herb Stahlke]

So how do New Englanders pronounce the name of Pooh's friend Eeyore?


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 7:52 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Do New-Englanders *add* R's?
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> 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
> > Faculty Liaison, C&IT
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> >
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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?
> >
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> >> 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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