The Pronunciation of 'Mrs

THE FACT that the modern English title Mrs. is subject to a good many regional and social mutations in the United States is fairly well known to students of American English.2 The evidence hitherto available, however, has hardly been sufficient to permit an accurate delimitation of either the geographical spread or the social range of the several forms known to be in use.3 The present study will be based on the newest and fullest body of data yet compiled-the field records that have been made for the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada. The recent completion of the Atlas field work for the Middle and South Atlantic states4 provides us with a fairly complete picture of the speech of the Eastern states from Maine to northern Florida, approximately as far west as Lake Erie.5 Counting the materials already published in the New England Atlas,6 there are now available something like fourteen hundred field records. Although only the New England materials have been edited, the remainder of the records are filed in a

Linguistics · Pronunciation · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Psychology · Philosophy