From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 44565
Date: 2006-05-13
> On 2006-05-12 03:24, Patrick Ryan wrote:I expect that the merger of /hw/ with /w/ (making, e.g.,
>> Prove it! Give us one example of _one_ change in _any_
>> language present in this generation that was brought
>> about imperfect transmission from the previous generation
>> if you can.
> Most change is of this kind, at least during its initial
> stages (what happens at the propagation stage is the
> imitation of a successful innovation by new speakers).
> Take, for example, the vocalisation of preconsonantal and
> final /r/ in British English (the focal area was in and
> round London). It was actually condemned by late
> 18th-century grammarians and elocutionists as a "sloppy",
> "lazy" or "vulgar" modern corruption -- in other words, as
> a failure by the London youth to continue the normative
> pronunciation of their sires. Actually, the pronunciation
> of /r/ had been getting gradually and imperceptibly weaker
> for decades, and it was only the final stage of the change
> -- the complete loss of the consonantal component of what
> used to be /r/ -- that alarmed the purists. Not unlike
> /l/-vocalisation in modern London English.