Re: THEORY: free variation [was: Re: [OT] Re: Conlangea Dreaming]

Marcus Smith wrote:
> Then
> there's the famous [tometo] vs. [tomato] song, extendable to [poteto] vs.
> [potato].
Isn't it /p@teto/ vs. /p@tAto/?  And then there's always /t@peto/.  ;-)
(Jocular varient used by some people I know)

But anyway, the classic example is rhoticism in many dialects, where the
*same* speakers will say both /fO/ and /fOr/ (or is the vowel /o/?).
That's free variation.  The potato example is simply a dialectal
variation.  Most individuals use one or the other.