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From: wald@ford.uchicago.edu (Kevin Wald)
Subject: Re: Chain Shift (was Tendency of Inflections to Disappear)
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References: <4suk93$pob@carrera.intergate.bc.ca> <rdd-2707961804340001@dmn1-13.usa1.com> <4tg7as$gh8@news4.digex.net> <rdd-2807962049350001@dmn1-12.usa1.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 21:42:11 GMT
Lines: 42

In article <rdd-2807962049350001@dmn1-12.usa1.com>,
Aaron J. Dinkin <rdd@usa1.com> wrote:

>In article <4tg7as$gh8@news4.digex.net>, kcivey@cpcug.org 
>(Keith C. Ivey) wrote:
>
>> rdd@usa1.com (Aaron J. Dinkin) wrote:
>> 
>> >I love these discussions of phonology; they turn up such 
>> >interesting tidbits! ("Worry" rhymes with "story" for me, 
>> >does it for you?)
>> 
>> I'm curious:  Is this a one-word exception in your idiolect, or
>> do you also rhyme "word" with "sword", "worth" with "north",
>> "worm" with "dorm", and so on?
>
>Well, I never thought of it as an exception, but in the context of your
>other examples of <wor>, I suppose it must be. (I posted "'wurry' for
>'worry'" to the "Common Mispronunciations" thread and no one complained.)

As I recall, there actually was a small flurry of discussion when
you posted it. I myself responded, having never heard the /wOri/
pronunciation before; if I recall correctly, I noted how unusual 
the /wOri/ pronunciation would be, from the historical point of
view (the 'o' in 'worry' is just an orthographic convention adopted
to prevent a 'u' from following a 'w'), and I wildly speculated
that perhaps /wOri/ had its origins in a spelling pronunciation at
some point in history. (I rhyme "worry" with "hurry" but not with "furry".)

Incidentally, on the great flicewatter controversy: For me, "flyswatter"
and "icewater" do not rhyme, mainly because their first vowels are 
entirely different; my own dialect participates in the "Canadian Raising",
to a certain extent, so while "flyswatter" has an /aI/, "icewater" has an
/@I/ (either [@I] or [V"I] -- I'm not sure which).

(The /aI/-/@I/ distinction really is phonemic for me, by the way; for
me, "rider" and "spider" don't rhyme, since the former is /raIdR/ and
the latter is /sp@IdR/. As a result, "Little Miss Muffet" never quite
worked for me, poetically.)

Kevin Wald              |  Hwaet saegest thu, yrthlingc?
wald@math.uchicago.edu  |     -- AElfric, _Colloquium Martianum_
