Date:  Mon, 1 Dec 1997 08:47:54 -0500
From:  Robert Ness <ness[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DICKINSON.EDU>
Subject: Re: of(t)en

    I think your "hypercorrect" explanation is accurate. /l/ was lost
in EMnE after low back vowels and before labial and velar consonants
(talk,palm) but not after other vowels or before dental or palatal
consonants (elm,milk,bulk, salt, mulch). But spelling pronunciation is
reclaiming these sounds, as in (your kid's) calm and palm, though not yet
talk and walk (?). Try Wm. Faulkner vs the Atlanta Falcons.
    Likewise /t/ in often, though not soften or listen. On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Gregory {Greg}
Downing
wrote:

> At 04:05 PM 11/30/97 -0500, you wrote:
> >    My impression is that often (with the /t/) is increasing in use, at
> >least among college students. I've considered it a spelling pronunciation,
> >given that for several hundred years (no OED handy) the standard pronuncia-
> >tion was without the /t/. But then, I'm still trying to figure out why one
> >of my own children pronounces the /l/ in calm and palm.
> >
>
> Re "no OED handy" -- OED2 has both t-pronunication and t-less (as well as
> more than one realization of the first vowel), giving the t-less one first
> which usually indicates some kind of priority/preference. But no comments
> are made on pronunciation that I saw in looking quickly. Without endorsing
> the analysis, I can point out that I recall being taught, in a relatively
> basic linguistics class in the late 1970s, that the t-pronunciation was a
> case of hypercorrection based on spelling, common among the culturally and
> linguistically insecure lower-middle and middle classes. So the theory went,
> anyway.
>
> Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu
>