> But most Brits feel compelled to insert an R, "drawRing".
They really are compelled to insert an R there. That is one of the phonological rules of their variety of English; it's how you avoid running one vowel into another vowel.
Complaining about this is the equivalent of complaining about how Americans "feel" compelled to insert a vowel into the name Gbagbo, pronouncing it guh-bagbo. They don't just feel compelled; that is a genuine requirement of their language.
It is not at all similar to any variation on "Mel and I", which is an artificial rule that English speakers must be taught in school. The form people use naturally is "me and Mel".
> It is much like Americans saying "Mel and I", in object context, e.g. "She accused Mel and I", where "Mel and me" would have been right.
...
> It is not at all similar to any variation on "Mel and I", which is an artificial rule that English speakers must be taught in school. The form people use naturally is "me and Mel".
I think you're misunderstanding here. There's no situation where "she accused (Mel and) I" works. It's not taught in school. It happens because of people "hyper correcting" to match the inverted sentence. "(Mel and) I accused her" which they get corrected to use by the teacher when they say "(Mel and) me accused her".
> There's no situation where "she accused (Mel and) I" works.
That is true.
> It happens because of people "hyper correcting" to match the inverted sentence. "(Mel and) I accused her" which they get corrected to use by the teacher
That is also true. But your own example is telling you that there is also no situation where "Mel and I accused her" works. Sentences in that form do not naturally occur in English; they must be taught in school. The correct form would be "Me and Mel accused her".
Intrusive R isn't like that. It is a feature of the language, not something dictated to speakers by a formal education system.
> The correct form would be "Me and Mel accused her".
No it isn't. You'd never say "Me accused her". If you don't like the inversion its perfectly fine to say "I and Mel accused her", but using "me" for the subject is never correct.
If you believe otherwise, you are tragically misinformed and miseducated.
Using "me" in subject context is, besides being wrong, a social low-class marker. It does not come naturally to English speakers; it only ever occurs through exposure to the misuse.
I'm a bit skeptical of this overall, but it's obviously complicated to get data that filter out the effects of sociolectal solidarity. (Can you get people to speak "naturally" but without priming them to speak or to avoid speaking in a particular register or sociolect!?)
which can become conventionalized and eventually part of native speakers' intuitions even though they can be contrary to a more logically consistent or simpler understanding of agreement.
> Using "me" in subject context is, besides being wrong, a social low-class marker. It does not come naturally to English speakers
This is not even a theoretical possibility. There are no low-class markers that don't come naturally, because no one is going to make an effort to present themselves as low-class.
It takes obvious effort to overcome received habits from one's local idiolect, as for example underclass people did in England, last century, deliberately adopting an (imperfectly reproduced version of) the overclass rhotic affectation in an attempt at economic advancement.
You are getting really disingenuous, now. Who are you performing for?
You like saying that, but so far you've shown no evidence that you have any idea what you're talking about.
Compare the article on intrusive R I linked before:
> This is now common enough in parts of England that, by 1997, the linguist John C. Wells considered it objectively part of Received Pronunciation, though he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation, as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents. Wells writes that at least in RP, "linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ are distinct only historically and orthographically".[17]
John C. Wells has patiently explained to you that intrusive-R pronunciation, while not expected of anyone, is (mostly) not considered to require correction, or to reliably unmask a bounder.
No. If you had been correct, there would have been no reason to post what I did. But you are 100% wrong on both counts, and I did. (For amusement, see rndmio's comment above.)
There are examples in the hypercorrection article about people adding an /h-/ in a very similar situation, so what you describe clearly can happen. But are you sure that the R example falls into that category?
It seems to be a distinction about how conscious the change is, or at what layer of language it happens. Isn't that an empirical question that could be tested?
Strictly speaking, the masses adopting rhotic pronunciation was, originally, an effort at mimicking a privileged-class affectation. The extra "R" in "drawRing" did not mimic anything, though, but seemed required by the imperfectly deduced rule. Those in actual contact with the privileged class had plenty of examples to, er*, draw upon, denied to those without.
Class markers in speech are always a moving target, a sort of low-grade arms race: low stakes for the upper class, high stakes for lower.
So, pronouncing it "drawRing" is a lower-class marker, similar in a way to "aks" for "ask" in American English.
As always, all of these pronunciations are legitimate and produce no misunderstanding.
If you wish to argue that, I'd suggest you guard your absolute clauses a bit more carefully, as they now suddenly aren't absolute. You said "produce no misunderstanding", I demonstrated that they do.
There are now many, many more foreign speakers of English than native. They definitely have had and are having an effect, collectively, on how the language evolves.
They really are compelled to insert an R there. That is one of the phonological rules of their variety of English; it's how you avoid running one vowel into another vowel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R
Complaining about this is the equivalent of complaining about how Americans "feel" compelled to insert a vowel into the name Gbagbo, pronouncing it guh-bagbo. They don't just feel compelled; that is a genuine requirement of their language.
It is not at all similar to any variation on "Mel and I", which is an artificial rule that English speakers must be taught in school. The form people use naturally is "me and Mel".