Herb et al.,
 
I'm just chiming in with three short, unrelated notes. Apologies for the
rather Andy Rooney-esque organization:
 
As perhaps another example of analogy at work, my pronunciation (and I'm
almost positive it's that of my family, and people where I grew up) of
"grocer" is roughly 'grosher' (haven't figured out IPA in email yet). A
'groser' sounds like s/he would be someone who grosses other people out.
 
When we discuss whether a particular dialect distinguishes vowels, in,
for example, the cot/caught pair, it's important also to keep in mind
that two dialects that distinguish those words may distinguish them
differently. I grew up pronouncing those two differently, the first one
being "kaht" and the second being "kawt.' This caused me no end of
trouble when I took my first phonology course, the textbook for which
also exemplified one vowel distinction with "pen vs. pin" (to a
Southerner, those sound exactly the same). I thought at first that my
dialect simply did not have the tense lower back rounded vowel that some
dialects have in "caught," until I noticed that I did indeed have it -
in "boil" (and not as part of a diphthong). My phonology textbook, like
all the textbooks I had had before, assumed that the reader was either
from the North or from the Midwest, and presented examples accordingly. 
 
Finally, three medical mondegreens. These are from a colleague whose
boyfriend, a doctor, collected them in the Houston Medical Center,
although my aunt (who worked in a pharmacy) heard the first one as well:
 
            precious pills                 =          blood pressure
pills.
 
            Texas cyclone               =          tetracycline

 
            spiral mini-Jesus            =          spinal meningitis
 
That last one is simply a wonder. What processes (other than simply
phonetic similarity) could have led to its creation, and what it says
about the speaker's religious worldview, I can't begin to fathom.
 
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
 
 
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