[Ads-l] intrusive R again

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 7:47 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Well, I'm not sure.  Wikipedia =
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R) limits the former
> to cases in which "words historically ending in /r/ (as evidenced by an R
> in the spelling) may be pronounced with [r] when they are closely followed
> by another morpheme beginning with a vowel sound", which is not the case
> here, and defines the latter as "an r-insertion rule that affects any word
> that ends in the non-high vowels, when such a word is closely followed by
> another word beginning in a vowel sound, an [r] is inserted between them,
> even when no final /r/ was historically present", which almost fits this
> case but not quite, since the environment "you _ and I" involves a
> non-non-high vowel, unlike the examples given in the wiki-piece, e.g.
> "Other recognizable examples are the Beatles singing: "I saw-r-a
> film today, oh boy" in the song "A Day in the Life", from their 1967
> Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album".
>

Otis Reading was an "I r-am" speaker. The use of "saw-r" is Bostonian and
probably a lot of other American-English locs, too, as well as in BE.

"A notable non-rhotic accent that does not have linking R is Southern
American English <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English>"
cites Kurath.

Did Kurath define what he meant by "Southern American English" and what
social class it was that spoke it? Did it occur to Kurath to speak to any
black people, while he was in the South? Did he work his way through the
"Uncle Remus" tales? ;) Did he simply Google "Southern English" and read a
couple of hits? ;) Did he read a couple of articles from _American Speech_?
;) If an ïntrusive R" is as W:pedia defines it - a kind of linking R - then
what is the /r/ in common BE overcorrections like "go[r]ne, alo[r]ne,
Go[r]d"? There are even some BE-speakers who add -r to any and every
*shwa*, even in the case of _a, the_, "I saw er man, that's ther man." It's
almost enough to give the impression of a speech-defect, except that it's
easy to get such speakers to something like, "Not *ey* man, but *thee* man!"



-- 
-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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