Cot/Caught Revisted and All
This has probably been done before, but since we have been talking a lot about the cot/caught merger lately, I would like to ask the merged people on this form which vowel they use.
I generally say caught and cot as [kOt], but I have heard many people merge the two to [kAt].
I also have a somewhat uncommon pronunciation in the west for "all" words such as all, call, tall, mall, etc. Instead of using [A], I use something very close to [O].
>>I also have a somewhat uncommon pronunciation in the west for "all" words such as all, call, tall, mall, etc. Instead of using [A], I use something very close to [O].<<
Of course, in the eastern US it is extremely common to have the COUGHT vowel for "all" words.
>>Of course, in the eastern US it is extremely common to have the COUGHT vowel for "all" words. >>
This is very true, Travis. I suppose that's the reason many people out here find it so odd. I don't know if you can exactly draw a line where people start using [A] instead of [O], but I would imagine that it is somewhere west of Illinois and Wisconsin.
I'm cot-caught merged but father-bother unmerged (a Massachusetts characteristic), so I preserve two open back vowel phonemes.
In "cot, caught, bother", I use [Q], an open back rounded vowel; and in "father", I use [A], an open near-back unrounded vowel.
People who use [Q] sound strange to me.
>_>
<<People who use [Q] sound strange to me.
>_>>>
Indeed they do. That message you get on the phone "the number you have reached is not [nQt] in service. This is a recording" sounds odd to me.
>><<People who use [Q] sound strange to me.
>_>>>
Indeed they do. That message you get on the phone "the number you have reached is not [nQt] in service. This is a recording" sounds odd to me.<<
Mind you that very many non-cot-caught-merged North American English dialects actually use [Q] rather than [O] as the COUGHT vowel, though.
''Indeed they do. That message you get on the phone "the number you have reached is not [nQt] in service. This is a recording" sounds odd to me.''
I think telephone companies shouldn't be spreading the Canadian/Californian shift :)
not [nQt] (caught/cot [kQt]) is advanced CA shift, bringing [A] back to British-like [Q])
not [nAt] (caught/cot [kAt) is the traditional low back merged vocal; and the only merged vowel in CCmerged nonshifting areas (as Atlantic Canada or many parts of USWest)
I've been told that my merged vowel is [Q] and I've started transcribing it that way, but I don't think it's fully rounded, because I perceive a fairly significant difference between my /Q/ and RP /Q/ (I think length is probably part of it). The Canadian Shift is supposed to move /Q/ up to [O], but I'm not sure if I have this.
''The Canadian Shift is supposed to move /Q/ up to [O]''
Not true.
Canadian Shift is supposed to move /A/ to /Q/.
/A/ is the original merged vowel in Canadian English
(listen to the words DRAWING, PROVINCE here: with /A/ rather than /Q/:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DK8FB7USprM )
See here:
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Canadian/canphon2.html
''There is evidence that the merger of and had taken place at least as early as the 1850s. Chambers (1993) cites the published memoirs of Susanna Moodie, a British woman who emigrated to southern Ontario. In one passage, she mocks an Ontarian's pronunciation of the word sauce, saying it sounded like "sarce." Given what we know about r-lessness in British English of the time, Chambers reasons that Moodie's spelling of "sarce" indicates that the Ontarian pronounced it as [sAs], with a merged [A] rather than [Q] .''
<<Not true.
Canadian Shift is supposed to move /A/ to /Q/.
/A/ is the original merged vowel in Canadian English>>
That's the first stage: [A] -> [Q]. The second stage (which I haven't actually observed myself) is said to move from [Q] to [O]. I write the phoneme as /Q/ because it comes from historic /A:/, /Q/, and /O:/, and /Q/ is the sort of "middle ground" of the three, while also being closest to phonetic reality.
''I write the phoneme as /Q/ ''
So, you pronounce father and bother with /Q/...
that's pretty strange
Most CBC newscasters don't have this pronunciation (only some regional newscasters, from Manitoba and Ottawa show this)
<<In the Ottawa Valley, the accent is heavily influenced by the Irish and Scottish who settled the area (Penner & McConnell, 1980). The accent here is even more close-mouthed than it is elsewhere in Canada.>>
I don't know what "more close-mouthed" is supposed to mean, but the Ottawa Valley accent doesn't include Ottawa itself. Ottawa natives generally speak standard Canadian English, and Ottawa Valley residents are increasingly doing so as well.