Speech and hypercorrection

[conuly]

Evangeline has one really cute grammatical quirk, and I'll see if I can describe it.

When she means to say things like "Give it to me" she always, invariably, says "Give me it!"

This isn't wrong exactly - "Give me the book" or "Give me Baby Jill" sound just fine - but it's certainly not the way any of us would normally say it.

BREAKING NEWS: There are two small birds outside my window. Can't get a good picture. They're about the size of my fist, gray-brown all over but fading into an orangey-red on their heads. Beaks are not any bright color. What are they?

END NEWS.

She uses this format for other sentences other than "Give me it!" but for the life of me I can't think of any specific examples. The whined "Give me it!" is too much a part of my life right now!

Ana also has a quirk at the moment. Sometimes, as we all do, she carefully will e nun ciate to make sure she is heard. For example, she'll say things like "That is BET TER!" making sure that you cannot possibly confuse it for "bedder". However, she can't spell (well, not well, anyway) so in her quest to Speak Correctly she'll often replace actual ds with ts when doing so - "She is LOU TER THAN ME!" No, Ana, she's not.

Oh well, she'll get there too.

Comments

[steorra]

That reminds me of when one of my younger siblings, speaking emphatically, used to call "DA-TY".

[steorra]

On the bird, my guess would be a finch of some sort, perhaps a house finch. Pictures from Google.

There may well be other birds that fit that description, but what comes to my mind when I hear 'grey turning red at the head' is a finch (well, after female cardinal, which would be bigger and distinctively crested.)

[conuly]

That *might* be it, but I have the impression that the bird I saw was a solid gray, and these have stripey feathers. But then, I wasn't that close.

[pne.livejournal.com]

So do "writer" and "rider" sound completely identical in her speech, then?

[conuly]

Probably, but I'll see if I can get her to say them both on Monday to confirm this.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I'm particularly curious whether the vowel changes to compensate for the lack of distinction of the consonant (if indeed the two consonants merge completely for her in that environment).

[conuly]

I'll pay close attention, but I suspect not. I don't think it does when I speak, though of course now I'll never know.

Writer and rider don't often have a chance to get confused, and rider isn't a word we say often anyway.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Writer/rider is the example pair I've usually seen in the discussion of the phenomenon, but you may be able to come up with a better pair.

(There's also latter/ladder, but "latter" is probably even rarer than "rider". Or bitter/bidder - you probably don't talk much about bidders at auctions. Betting/bedding? IDK.)

[ihcoyc.livejournal.com]

I draw the "rider / writer" distinction and also the "crowd / kraut" distinction, but if the vowel of the word is a simple vowel rather than an /ai/ or /au/ diphthong, the merger is complete and I do not distinguish them.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Kira likes to stress words "for clarification" as well. Noodles are NOO-TULLS, for example. So I totally get the d/t thing. So funny!

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

My mother always used to say "Give it me!" The preposition went missing somewhere.