Herb,
I'm going to try to tease out a distinction here, although I'm not sure it's a vital one -- I'm curious about the limits on applying the term 'hypercorrection', and this has some bearing on that. The preservation of -r between vowels is one kind of phenomenon, and the "spread" of -r to intervocalic environments in which it did not originally occur might be considered another. The latter is dependent on the former, of course, but it would have been possible for -r to be preserved but not spread (so, for example, "butter an' bread" vs. "Africa 'n' Asia"). Similarly, it would be possible for the -r to spread to *all* word-final intervocalic positions (or some well-defined subset).
A generation growing up hearing -- and producing -- a "100% spread" version wouldn't be doing something I'd want to call hypercorrecting. Their production would be completely independent of any linguistic insecurity. But *if* the spread is variable (either across words, or across contexts), and if it's taking place in a context in which -r-dropping is stigmatized, some of the instances of rule inversion could also be a kind of hypercorrection.
That may be stretching the definition of hypercorrection too far, though, and it may be focusing on a stage that doesn't exist anymore in areas like Boston (which I don't know enough about). I grew up in an area in which South Midland (r-ful) abuts Coastal Southern (r-dropping), so I've heard a large amount of variation and little that approaches a "100% spread" scenerio.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Mon 8/3/2009 8:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: hypercorrection examples
Bill,
I know you're aware that there is another explanation for r-insertion, but I'm not sure everyone else is. As post-vocalic /r/ leveled to schwa, basically the same tongue position without the retroflexion, it did so utterance-finally and before consonants. In other words, the leveling was blocked between vowels, which, of course, included word final /r/ when the following word began with a vowel. The result was an inversion of the old rule so that now /r/ was inserted between schwa and a following vowel, an environment that occurs almost exclusively at word boundaries. Rule inversions are not unusual in phonological change.
Perhaps another case of change of this sort is the reassignment of the /n/ of "an" to the following noun, giving us "a napkin" or the reverse giving us "an adder.' This "n-mobile" shows up again in the reanalysis of "another" into "a nother" as in "a whole nother." This doesn't look analogical, though.
I wonder if hypercorrection might have been involved in the loss of the -nd present participle of Old and Middle English. The -ing form was a form of nominalization. It's been argued that -nd lost its final /d/ and merged into an alternation between -in and -ing, an alternation that is now socially governed and is probably the most studied sociolinguistic variable ever.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: August 3, 2009 3:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: hypercorrection examples
Dick,
If you're also accepting hypercorrection in pronunciation, here are some additional examples (although there may be other explanations for the first one):
(1) Adding an -r at the end of a word before a vowel-initial following word in dialects that typically drop -r ("Africer and Asiar are both continents). One explanation for this is that speakers know they don't say -r where a lot of others do, and then react by trying to add it - but get mixed up about which words actually have it.
(2) I think the Pyles and Algeo text on the history of English mentions Shakespeare referring to a "napking" at one point. Apparently, his dialect was one of the ones that use -in rather than -ing.
(3) Spelling pronunciations may count as hypercorrections, so people who really do pronounce the "t" in "often," or the "l" in "almond" may be hypercorrecting. On the other hand, if they *grew up* around people who say "all-mond," I'm not sure it would be a hypercorrection.
Bill Spruiell
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 5:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: hypercorrection examples
ATEGers:
I'm looking for other examples of hypercorrection in English besides "and I" (as in "between you and I")? That's the example I invariably hear. Are there others?
For those not familiar with the term, hypercorrection involves speakers overextending a legitimate correction ("Jane and me are hungry" to "Jane and I are hungry") to the point that they "correct" perfectly standard forms (like "Mom fed Jane and me") thereby making them nonstandard ("Mom fed Jane and I").
Perhaps an overuse of "whom" in a mistaken attempt to be correct might be another example, as when a student writes, "...the Russians, whom we thought were our enemies,..." Others?
Dick Veit
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