Talk:Phonological history of English low back vowels

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Contents 1 Father-bother merger 2 Distribution of father-bother merger 3 Lot-Cloth 4 Caught in the cot-caught merger

[edit] Father-bother merger

Wow...what a confusing article. After I've cot some sleep in my caught, I'll try to wrap my head around it. In any case: I noticed there are only 98 google hits for "father-bother merger", and most of them seem to be WP mirrors or blogs referring to this WP article. I was trying to find more information (since I can't detect any difference in those two vowels), but nothing independent came up. Is there another name for this concept "in the literature"?

Not that I know of (except "bother-father merger", which gets even fewer hits). In Accents of English John C. Wells explains that it was actually a two-stage process: first "LOT unrounding" (where [ɒ] gets unrounded to [ɑ], followed by the loss of distinctive length, resulting in the merger of [ɑ] with [ɑː]]. Some accents have LOT unrounding but no loss of distinctive length, so there is no merger. Nevertheless, even though the term "father-bother merger" is rare, the literature I know of uses "father" and "bother" as example words almost exclusively, so it's a good name. —Angr 08:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Distribution of father-bother merger

I've never heard of New York making this distinction. The Wikipedia article on New York English doesn't mention it. I think this misconception might come from the fact that there is a chain shift in the low back vowels that raises the vowel of bother into the space of the vowel in caught, which means that it is rounded. However, father moves into the same space, so 'cart' and 'cot' are not distinguished (by non-rhotic speakers). Makerowner 23:59, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

According to the Atlas of North American English (p. 171), "in New York City, many speakers also retain the distinction between these two word classes, but here father is further back and higher than bother." This suggests that for non-rhotic NYC speakers, cart is [kɑ̝t] (or maybe [kɑ̝ːt] but they don't mention vowel length) while cot is [kɑ̈t]. —Angr 02:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I just read that a few days ago, and I'm a little confused. The Wikiedia article doesn't mention this, and I have to say I've never noticed it (though I do not live in New York and am by no means an expert). I've just never seen anything else that said this. Makerowner 05:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I've sort of indirectly noticed it. I remember watching Rosie O'Donnell's talk show many years ago and hearing her talk about Clark bars. Although she didn't actually use the words "Clark" and "clock" in the same sentence, I remember thinking that the way she said "Clark" ([klɑːk] or even slightly diphthongized [klɑək]) could never mistaken for "clock"; for one thing, the vowel was too long to be the "short o" before a voiceless consonant. If there's no mention of it in the article on New York City English, it should be added. —Angr 10:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lot-Cloth

>>The word gone usually has the cloth vowel in accents with the lot-cloth split, but has the lot vowel in accents of New York and New Jersey which have the split<<

Is this true? I am from New York but pronounce "gone" with LAW (not LOT). I also pronounce "on" with LAW, but other words in "on" have LOT ("don" "Agamemnon", even "upon"). Of course, my pronunciation may not be typical of the region.

>>words that end in -og like frog, hog, fog, log, bog etc. have the cloth vowel in some accents with the lot-cloth split and the lot vowel in other accents with the split.<<

I think this could be rephrased to make clearer the fact that all these words do not necessarily behave as a unit. For example, in my accent, "dog" alone has LAW, the others having LOT.

>>Lot-cloth split<< Is this even a split? It isn't the case that a new opposition was created, but rather that some words changed over from one vowel to another vowel THAT WAS ALREADY IN THE SYSTEM. The term "split" is usually used when a new opposition is created in the system.--Gheuf 05:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I too thought that gone had the THOUGHT vowel in all American accents that maintain the cot/caught distinction. On, on the other hand, is famous among American dialectologists for being split between the THOUGHT vowel in the South and Midland and the LOT vowel in the North. (I'm surprised you have the THOUGHT vowel in on if you're from NYC -- did both you and your parents grow up there?) —Angr 06:31, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Caught in the cot-caught merger

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and have live in California most of my life. The claim that "cot" and "caught" have completely merged in California is nonsense. In fact the raw data refutes the claim. That map shows nearly half of Californians pronounce them differently.

I'm not saying we talk in a Coffee Talk accent where the phonemes are very distinct; in fact they sound almost the same. In a sentence where the distinction is important, it probably would not be heard. It varies with the surrounding sounds (of course), so "tall" and "doll" are nearly perfect rhymes. However, I consistently pronounce "caught", "tall", "law", etc with a vowel that is lower and farther back than the vowel in "cot", "rock", and "mob".

The realization that "o" can be a higher fronter vowel than "a" is messing with my head.— Randall Bart 01:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The data in the map you linked to above is very different from the data the map on the page is based on. The map on the page is based on the Atlas of North American English by William Labov et al., which itself is based on telephone surveys conducted in the 1990s. These telephone surveys did not pick a random sample of the population; it targeted people who were genuinely "locals", who lived in the same city where they were born and where their parents had grown up. The map you linked to above is based on self-reporting from anyone who wanted to answer and provides no indication of where the people may have grown up. Sure there are lots of red dots in California on that map, but how many of them are from people whose families are from the city where they currently live? Is yours? —Angr 05:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)