Do New-Englanders *add* R's?

Paul Johnston paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU
Wed Mar 5 03:54:10 UTC 2014 

What's strange is that the British dialects that have - at r in window, bellow, etc, are Southwestern ones, which are rhotic.  There might be some sort of contact phenomena involved with the neighboring non-rhotic groups, which have -@ (and linking /r/ popping in if the next word begins with a vowel).  The same sort of explanation could hold in the US, particularly in the South and Northeast, where the prestige accents used to be non-rhotic.

There's also the possibility of - at l in these cases in a few British dialects, like the very rhotic Bristol dialect.  Bristol used to be Bristow.  As far as I know, despite a lot of Bristolians coming here (especially to N New England; SE New England; and the Carolinas), this never came over here.

Oh, wait a second.  According to Gick (2002), it did in the Philadelphia area, and is found in other Midland localities.  This is an area where you can get /l/-vocalization, parallel to /r/-vocalization in other dialects, but it is favored by a preceding /O/, or in the area where COT/CAUGHT are merged, /O/ or /a/.   Bristolian favors it after schwa, though the /l/ is very dark and can pull the vowel back to [O].  I think /l/-vocalization is variable there, unlike the Southeast where it's frequently categorical.  And yet, Londoners don't say "I sawl it".

Paul
On Mar 4, 2014, at 10:00 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> 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 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:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> 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
>>>> 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
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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

More information about the Ads-l mailing list