Re: "I'm coffee and he's espresso." -- facially nonsensical

From: Brian M. Scott (b.scott_at_csuohio.edu)
Date: 06/18/04 

Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 00:53:44 -0400

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 04:21:03 GMT "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
<news:40D26DAE.34BE@worldnet.att.net> in
uk.culture.language.english,sci.lang,alt.usage.english:

> Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:

>> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 12:27:23 GMT, Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

[...]

>>> Mergerers, of course, have comp/eh/rative and expl/eh/natory.

>> Not necessarily. They may have comp/eh/rative and expl/&/natory.

> No, by definition. If they've merged /eh/ and /&/, they have only one of
> them, and the one they have is [eh] (or however you want to represent
> that sound), not [&].

I suspect that Aaron, like me, understood 'Mergerers' here
to refer simply to those who have the same vowel in <Mary>,
<marry>, and <merry>. It's entirely possible to have [E] in
all three of those and <comparative> while still having [&]
in <explanatory>; that's what I grew up hearing, in fact.

Brian

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