[Ads-l] cal-ving

[Barretts Mail]

It could be simply spelling pronunciation where the reporter thought that “calve” was a geological term unrelated to cows and legs. The -ing form lends itself to a reanalysis. BB

> On 14 Sep 2019, at 12:45, Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Right, some of them push non-initial *l* sounds toward *w*, or merged into
> the vowel: "Biw co'ectors cawin' my mobiw phone aw day." Or kind of a
> mingled *wl* sound.  Sometimes affects *r*, too. Couldn't tell you what
> British (*Brwitish*?) region[s] that's from, though. I talked
> Buckinghamshire as a kid, and recognise some well-defined English accents,
> like Hull and North Yorkshire, but there are so many.
> 
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 9:11 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Maybe it’s the law of conservation of /l/s.  I’ve noticed that British
>> speakers, at least the ones who narrate my audiobooks, avoid pronouncing
>> the (first) /l/ in “vulnerable”.  I agree with the suggestion in your last
>> sentence—“calving” is probably opaque when applied to glaciers, especially
>> for those who didn’t grow up on a farm or ranch.
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Sep 13, 2019, at 8:39 PM, Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at GMAIL.COM>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> There's at least one British accent in which the *l* in *calf* is
>>> pronounced (e.g., listen to the song "The Golden Calf" by Prefab Sprout,
>>> 1988), but I've never heard a North American say it as "callf".  Maybe
>>> someone's overcorrecting, not recognizing *calving* as derived from
>> *calf*,
>>> and thinking instead of names like *Calvin* and *Calvary*.
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 4:32 PM David Daniel <dad at coarsecourses.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> CNN reporter, about a big-ass chunk of glacier calving in Alaska,
>>>> definitely
>>>> called it cal-ving. WTF? Is that a one-off, a trend, a movement, a
>>>> rebellion, a sea change, or we don't know?
>>>> David

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