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

[Wilson Gray]

> That would be a just/jest merger?

Jest so.

On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 10:39 PM James Eric Lawson <jel at nventure.com> wrote:

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


-- 
- 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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