[Ads-l] Pronunciation of "(anti)semitic"

[James Eric Lawson]

On 12/3/22 14:36, Wilson Gray wrote:
> Surely, you jest!

That would be a just/jest merger?

No. The influence of the pin/pen (or rather mitt/met, however you want
to canonize it, supposing that merger exists at all) merger is stronger
and more likely than the influence of adjectives in -etic (other than a
hopeful pathetic). The -ular adjective influence on nucular I'm more
ready to accept. Roughly, there are more adjectives in -etic than -itic
(400/300), which of course says nothing about the relative frequency in
contemporary speech. The -etic of genetic, for example, might influence
antisemetic use, but making a case for a strong influence seems difficult.

The rough count of -ular vs. -lear is 400/58, and the relative frequency
of what I hope are representative examples seems to heavily favor -ular
over -lear, completely unlike -etic/-itic.

-- 
James Eric Lawson

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