End of ADS-L Digest - 23 Nov 1993 to 24 Nov 1993

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There are 4 messages totalling 76 lines in this issue.



Topics of the day:



 1. diversity of accents (4)



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Date:  Wed, 24 Nov 1993 22:17:22 -0700

From:  Rudy Troike <RTROIKE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ARIZVMS.BITNET>

Subject: Re: diversity of accents



More re change from above:

    In my investigation of "McDavid's Law" (|z| --> |d|/__N) several years

ago (see Journal of English Linguistcs), it was very clear that the reversal

of this change, once prevalent among the upper crust, was proceeding downward

at present. It is not clear how much the media might be affecting this, but

it clearly is a top-down process. There is always SOME movement BOTH ways,

but I don't notice much evidence of such regularlized past participles as

<have went> or unchanged preterits as <He come yesterday> making any gains on

the social scale.

    I am worried that one of my own most cherished pronunciations, in

which <pin>=<pen>, may be slipping, but I am not sure whether it is more due

to media influence or Yankee colonization of the South. In any case, the

development is not bottom-up.

    Lexicon is always most easily influenced by the media. How many people

under 30 know any other term for <cottage cheese> (unless they grew up on a

farm in Pennsylvania)? Store labeling plus advertising has made this the

uniform term.

        --Rudy Troike