Yags and other onomastic peculiarities

[Richard Coates]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Sorry, I didn't mean for one moment to suggest that this was a phonetic
change. Geoff Nathan may well be near the mark, but it's of some residual
interest that both the inserted consonants /l/ and /z/ are voiced coronals.

Richard


>
> At 09:59 AM 2/5/2001 -0500, Richard Coates wrote:
> >On the age front, when is the first /r/ > /z/ that people know of? I am aware
> >of someone with the surname Harriman being called /haez@/ and another with
 the
> >surname Farrar /faez/ around 1960-4.
>
> I've been following the discussion with some interest, although I admit to
> never having heard the -za suffixes myself.  But, even though I'm a
> phonologist by profession, I don't think that /r/ > /z/ is the right way to
> think about what's going on here.  That is, I don't think the /r/ somehow
> became a /z/.  Let me engage in some idle speculation.
> I suspect that the thin edge of the wedge with this innovation was the 's'
> hypocoristic (as in Yags, probably also 'bags'--'I file a claim on').  We
> are presumably talking about an r-less dialect, which would make things
> like [haer] for Harriman unpronounceable (unlike, say, Al for Alan).  There
> are probably minimality effects here--a preference for names that are at
> least a metric foot long (not unlike hot dogs, I guess ;-) ), so there is
> felt a need for an empty schwa to make the name 'big' enough.  So probably
> the route is:
>
> laeri > *laer > laez (by suffixation) > laez@ (by insertion of an empty
> nucleus)
>
> A possible analogy might be with various hypocoristic formations based on
> Margaret.  Common ones are, of course, Maggie (again, note absence of /r/),
> but I've also heard Mags.
>
> Apologies for taking a wild, unreferenced swing here (I'm sure there's lots
> written on Margaret/Maggie/etc.), but I thought I'd toss in my tupenny
 worth...
>
> Geoff
>
>
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> Department of Linguistics
> Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
> Carbondale, IL, 62901-4517
> Phone:  (618) 453-3421 (Office) / FAX (618) 453-6527
>          (618) 549-0106 (Home)
>                                                          geoffn at siu.edu
>
>

--
Richard Coates
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK

Tel.: +44 (0)1273 678030 (secretary Jackie Gains)
Fax:  +44 (0)1273 671320
Email: richardc at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Website: www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/richardc/index.html