Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 4, 2014, at 9:43 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:

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

Well, us Connecticuters mostly pronounce it the way you do (and growing up rhotic I myself never got the pun until I started taking linguistics courses).  I would suppose that the stereotypical Kennedy-type Bostonian would approach the intended donkeyesque "Ee-aw".

LH
>
>
> 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?
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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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>>> ----- 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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