Re: Why "aren't I"?

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:21:54 -0400, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:4gighjF1o1iidU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

Brian M. Scott wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:25:25 GMT, Thomas Carter
<T.Carter@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:pan.2006.06.29.15.25.24.849326@xxxxxxxxxxxx> in
sci.lang:

Anybody know why and how the usage of "aren't I" became common place,
rather than the expected "am I not"?

<http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001061.php>

Any comment about the evidence for Dr. Language's "English
doesn't like two nasal consonants like 'm' and 'n'
together" as a generalization? The sequence "amn't"
doesn't sound particularly different from the sequence
in "comment", "common", "phenomenal", "amnesty",
"autumnal", etc.

'Phenomenal' and 'comment' don't have adjacent nasals, and
'common' is borderline. In 'amnesty' and 'autumnal' there's
a syllable break between them, which makes a considerable
difference. The objection is surely to having adjacent
nasals in the same syllable. I suspect that isn't actually
that they're both nasal, but rather that they're not
homorganic: ['hædn.t] is a lot easier than ['æmn.t] and
*['kæbn.].

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/voices/atilazed/a.shtml>
says that in Ireland the contraction has pronunciations of
<amn't I> informally spelled <ampta> and <aminta>, showing
two obvious ways to break up such a sequence: in the first
the /n/ has been either dropped or assimilated to the /m/,
and in the second an epenthetic vowel has been inserted
between the nasals.

Brian
.