Talk:Phonological history of English open back vowels/Archive 1
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Is this really mainly just a North American thing? I'm from northern England and I'm fairly certain that I pronounce cot /kɑt/ and caught /kɑːt/. Any comments? GCarty
- I take it from your description that you do have two different phonemes, and that you can tell them apart, but you believe that they differ only in length, not in point of articulation. By phonemes, you mean you have pairs of words that you can tell apart, by the fact that one has a long vowel and the other a short one.
- For North Americans with the merger, the two words are indistinguishable. Moreover, the phonemic distinction in the speech of others is lost. There is a raft of British "a" and "o" and "aw" vowel sounds that are apparently distinct to most British ears, but which all fall into the generous space left by the merger as they are heard by North Americans. American attempts at describing or imitating what they hear on the lips of British speakers often wander far astray, because what they hear maps into a different system.
- Your remark does raise a number of interesting issues. Obviously, North American English relates somehow to the English of the British Isles. There were several different waves of British colonial emigration to the Americas, and these settlers settled in different places. To overgeneralize a great deal, the religious fanatics tended to come from London, Norfolk, and urban areas on the eastern coast of England, and the slavemaster planters from all over southeastern England; they settled on the coasts. The criminals and paupers tended to come from the north or from Scotland, and they came later, and settled inland.
- Getting from history to American dialectology is a complicated and rather vague business. There are a number of Scotticisms, like Canadian raising, that are preserved in some varieties of North American English. I know also that the vowel system of Scots differs strongly from that of southern English with far fewer vowel phonemes. Moreover, various varieties of northern English gradually approach Scots (again, a vast oversimplification). I am wondering whether the cot-caught merger might be another Scots or northern English feature that has gotten into NAm English. -- Smerdis of Tlön 01:14, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
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I am from (and live in) the geographic center of the coterminous USA, and I (and almost everyone else I know here) pronounces "cot" as "kaht," and "caught" as "kawt." Any comments as well?
The following statement is outright wrong:
- only a few areas, most of which are along the east coast of the continent, continue to observe the distinction.
Throughout the midwest, everyone I've spoken to observes the distinction, and my friends from the south do as well. As far as my experience goes, the only dialect I've heard where there is no distintion is from the Boston area. CyborgTosser 01:34, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I've added a link to a dialect map that shows the area where the merger occurs. Apparently the Midwest is divided, and on the American side of the Great Lakes region the merger does not occur. Smerdis of Tlön 17:48, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks, Steve (aka Ihcoyc/Smerdis of Tlön) for the addition. We can all get this article tweaked a little to further facilitate it. BTW, I have spent my evening hours tonight reading your excellent articles; keep up the good work. —Catdude
What factual accuracy is disputed? The existence of the merger, or its geographic distribution? -Branddobbe 03:00, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
- Its geographic distribution. The merger surely exists in some English-speaking areas. Thanks for the question. —Catdude
I've lived in California almost my entire life, and I differentiate between the two words. And definitely, Southern speakers have a difference. This article is a little suspect. RickK 04:58, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
- I've lived in California my entire life, and I definitely DON'T differentiate between them, and furthermore pretty much everyone I've heard who does is from other parts of the country (or world), usually the East Coast. /O/ doesn't even exist in my idiolect. The cot-caught merger is alive and well. -Branddobbe 05:06, May 6, 2004 (UTC)
- The map suggests that the San Francisco or Oakland area may contain a partial exception to the merger. Resistance to the merger apparently is linked to two other phenomena; either the Northern Cities Shift, or the Southern conversion of the sound of /æ/ into a complex diphthong. Some areas of California may have been settled by South Midland speakers with complex /æ/. -- Smerdis of Tlön 14:14, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
I have added yet more wafflements about the geographic distribution of the merger. The people at the Phonological Atlas site believe that resistance to the merger relates to other NAmE features like the northern cities vowel shift (that article needs work also) and the Southern diphthongization of /æ/, so I made reference to those findings as well. Smerdis of Tlön 17:20, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks for the additions, Steve (aka Smerdis of Tlön). BTW, I think that, at this point, the "factual accuracy dispute" message I appended to the associated article can be removed, which I went ahead and did. I especially appreciate the distribution map you added. —Catdude
Some varieties of North American English still have both the vowels [ɑː] and [ɔː], but [ɔː] is a conditioned variant that only occurs before certain sounds, particularly /r/ or /l/, and does not count as a separate phoneme.
I don't think this is true — my English (I'm from Tennessee) is merged, and in it as well as all the merged English I'm familiar with, [ɑː] and [ɔː] do contrast before r (but not l): far and for, star and store, car and core, etc., are not homophones, but use [ɑː] and [ɔː] respectively. The choice of the [ɔː] or [ɑː] vowel here is neither conditioned nor allophonic, though the vowels are merged to [ɑː] in all other contexts. —Muke Tever 04:45, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- This would appear to be a different vowel entirely; historically, the vowel in core, store, and so forth is /o:/, the same vowel in "stone" and "boat," not /ɔː/ or /ɑː/. Apparently some southern US speech does in fact raise /o:/ to /ɔː/ before /r/. Smerdis of Tlön 13:59, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Interesting — but that doesn't make the statements as they stand on the page any more true, as they still have both [ɑː] and [ɔː]. In the examples given most may have had /oː/ originally, but not the case of far/for, nor other [ɑː]/[ɔː] pairs such as barn/born, tart/tort. —Muke Tever 16:54, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- But in this case, [ɔː] is not a phoneme, it's merely an allophone of /oː/. So while that accent or dialect may have [ɔ], it's not as its own phoneme, so the article still stands. I'll put the necessary distinction in the article. -Branddobbe 17:09, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC) [[ I put in the missing semicolon in 'may have [ɔ]' Kesuari]
- That makes more sense, thanks. —Muke Tever 14:33, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)