OK and the OED.

[Pamela Munro]

I agree with everything Bob's said here, except that I think the h
definitely is not etymologically part of this item (maybe, as Bob says,
it is a clitic). The final vowel is not phonetically [i] (I do feel both
vowels are long, per Choctaw -- who knows how English speakers hear them).

Pam

R. Rankin wrote:

>
>> With Pam's permission, I'll send Oxford her Choctaw ho:ke:. Pam, is it,
>> as OED says, a suffix? Can it be, as OED has it, h-less?
>
>
> I'll defer to Pam on this.  The H may or may not be etymologically a
> part of oke.  It is a final consonant on many verb forms but there are
> other instances where it has been reanalysed as the initial consonant
> of a following enclitic. For example, the question particle, oN or aN
> has been reanalysed as -hoN or -haN by some speakers.  Synchronically,
> I'd guess that you could argue for either [hoke] or [oke].  The final
> vowel is definitely not [i] or [ii] in the Choctaw I've heard.  I'm
> remaining neutral on the phonemic value of it, since it doesn't matter
> to a potential English borrowing anyway (English speakers would hear
> it as [ey]).
>
> It might be worth combing literature from the deep South around the
> 1830's to see if maybe it crops up.  I have to admit I've never liked
> the "Oll Korrect" explanation.  It incorporates two
> non-characteristics of American English pronunciation and spelling.
>
> Bob
>

--
Pamela Munro,
Professor, Linguistics, UCLA
UCLA Box 951543
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/munro/munro.htm