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caught and cot
I have merged cot and caught and I pronounce both of them like "kawt", but I have heard others pronouncing them like "kaht".
My question is this: have I lost the original "cot" vowel or the original "caught" vowel? So to somebody who is unmerged, do both words sound like "caught" or like "cot"? Based on what I wrote, could you put those pronunciations in IPA and SAMPA.
I'm sorry, but kawt and kaht are the only ways that I can write them. I hope you understand what I mean.
Things are not quite so simple. Originally in early North American English, there were three distinct phonemes /ɑ(ː)/, /ɒ/, and /ɔ(ː)/, corresponding to "father", "cot", and "caught" respectively.
In most NAE dialects outside of parts of the northeastern US, the vowels in "father" and "cot", /ɑ(ː)/ and /ɒ/, were merged as /ɑ(ː)/. In very many these dialects, there likely was a subsequent shift in the "cought" vowel, so that it became /ɒ(ː)/
Subsequently, in the western US and most of Canada, /ɑ(ː)/ merged with said resulting /ɒ(ː)/ as /ɑ(ː)/. However, in California and Canada, there has been shifting of such towards /ɒ(ː)/, even though that is not consistent and nowhere near universal, especially in middle aged and older people, being completely absent in very many dialects to date.
A different pattern has occurred in many parts of eastern New England, where /ɑ(ː)/ and /ɒ/ never merged, but instead /ɒ/ and /ɔ(ː)/ merged as what could be described as /ɒ(ː)/. This has resulted in a situation where "cot" and "caught" are merged, but have a distinct vowel from "father".
Consequently, if you have both the father-bother merger and the cot-caught merger, even if you have [ɒ] today such most likely does not evidence actual continuity with the historical rounded phonemes /ɒ/ and /ɔ(ː)/ but rather a recent general rounding of the merged phoneme /ɑ(ː)/. One would only likely preserve historical rounding if one lacked the father-bother merger and only had the cot-caught merger, which would have been a single merger between rounded phonemes rather than two different mergers which each had unrounded merged phonemes.
Well, originally there were three low back vowel phonemes, which can be seen in RP (standard Anglo-English):
/ɑ:/~/A:/ as in "father"
/ɒ/~/Q/ as in "bother, cot"
/ɔ:/~/O:/ as in "caught"
In General American, the phoneme /ɒ/ merged into /ɑ:/ (although some /ɒ/ words merged into /ɔ:/ in what's known as the lot-cloth split) and the phoneme /ɔ:/ acquired a more open realization, to the extent that it could now be written /ɒ:/ (which is what you're probably thinking of as "aw"). So General American has:
[ɑ:] "ah", "father", "bother", "cot"
[ɒ:] "aw", "caught"
Many dialects, like Canadian and Western US and Southwestern Pennsylvania, have merged these two phonemes into one (in what's often called the cot-caught merger, although it's more accurately known as the low-back merger), which is realized as [ɑ:] or [ɒ:]. Most merged Americans realize it as [ɑ:] "ah"; Canada is more mixed, with many speakers using [ɒ:].
But then there's the issue of my dialect, Eastern New England. Here, we have the same two phonemes as General American, /ɑ:/ "ah" and /ɒ:/ "aw", but they're distributed differently, giving us a merger of "cot" and "caught". Rather than merging the old historical /ɒ/ phoneme into /ɑ:/, we've merged it into /ɒ:/, so we have:
[ɑ:] "ah", "father"
[ɒ:] "aw", "bother', "cot", "caught"
So where are you from?
I am from Southwestern PA. I am father-bother mergerd and they use the same vowel as cot/caught.
In an article on Wikipedia, it says that my area has the less-present vowel in the merger than other areas with the merger. It says that here it is pronounced as [kɔt] rather than [kɑt], like in most other merged areas. I'm kind of confused. If it was pronounced like [kɔt], wouldn't "father" have a different vowel? I'm lost...
<<It says that here it is pronounced as [kɔt] rather than [kɑt], like in most other merged areas. I'm kind of confused. If it was pronounced like [kɔt], wouldn't "father" have a different vowel? I'm lost...>>
No, some speakers (like you, presumably) use [ɒ:] in all those words: "father, bother, cot, caught". The main thing is the merger of all these three historical vowel phonemes into one, which you seem to have: the quality of this merged vowel can be [ɑ:] (for most Westerners and some Canadians) or [ɒ:] (for SW PA speakers, some Canadians, and some Westerners). Or in other words, we've got:
General American
father [ɑ:]
bother [ɑ:]
cot [ɑ:]
caught [ɒ:]
Eastern New England
father [ɑ:]
bother [ɒ:]
cot [ɒ:]
caught [ɒ:]
most Westerners, some Canadians
father [ɑ:]
bother [ɑ:]
cot [ɑ:]
caught [ɑ:]
SW PA, some Canadians, some Westerners
father [ɒ:]
bother [ɒ:]
cot [ɒ:]
caught [ɒ:]
(There's some debate over the use of the length marks [:], and some transcriptions will use [ɔ] instead of [ɒ] for North American English.)
When I say the words don and dawn, my lips are pushed forward a bit and sort of rounded, does that mean I am pronouncing it as [dɒn]?
>>There's some debate over the use of the length marks [:]<<
I for one have been putting length marks in parentheses because there are both NAE dialects with historical English-type phonemic vowel length and NAE dialects with pure allophonic vowel length, and to strictly mark vowel length or not mark vowel length would be to apply one or the other to all NAE dialects, past and present. Furthermore, the point at which the historical English vowel length system was finally lost in English dialects with allophonic vowel length today seems rather unclear, so it is hard to really even imply any transition from phonemic vowel length to allophonic vowel length in talking about vowels in NAE dialects in the past.
''SW PA, some Canadians, some Westerners
father [ɒ:]
bother [ɒ:]
cot [ɒ:]
caught [ɒ:] ''
This is not true for the city of Erie (PE).
The merged vowel is unrounded there: [ɑ:]
( http://www.ling.upenn.edu/nwav/abstracts/nwav36_evanini.pdf )
In the cities of Columbus (OH) and Minneapolis (MN), and in Vermont the merged vowel is [ɑ:] too.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English_regional_differences#Vermont)
PS
One thing I've noticed, in regions which shift the merged vowel [ɑ:] to [ɒ:]:
#1.
In the beginning, [ɑ:] to [ɒ:] occurs only in front of the -L(L) and/or -NG:
so, the speakers pronounce long, song, wrong, call, caller, collar, doll, involve, dollar with
[ɒ:] , but they continue pronouncing Don/Dawn, cot/Caught with [ɑ:]
(I don't know what they would answer if you ask them: ''Do you use the same vowel in DON, DAWN, CALL, SONG'' - Californian would answer: Yes, I do)...
#2. As the shift continues, all [ɑ:]s are shifted to [ɒ:], so
words like FATHER, ON, DON all have [ɑ:]
In Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada), [ɑ:] is preferred in all conditions ''father, call, song, long''.
In Toronto and Windsor (Ontario), they have the shift #1.
In Manitoba and Ottawa (Ontario), [ɒ:] is preferred in all conditions (fAther, On, dOn, dAWn), so to a General American ear, the name Donna pronounced by these Canadians would sound like ''Dawna'' (with a rounded back vowel). The Oxford Canadian dictionary chose this pronunciation as the pronunciation norm, so technically, at least according to this Canadian dictionary, father is pronounced with a rounded vowel [ɒ:] in Canada, which is so different from RP or GeneralAmerican.
''SW PA, some Canadians, some Westerners
father [ɒ:]
bother [ɒ:]
cot [ɒ:]
caught [ɒ:] ''
This is not true for the city of Erie (PE).
The merged vowel is unrounded there: [ɑ:]
( http://www.ling.upenn.edu/nwav/abstracts/nwav36_evanini.pdf )
In the cities of Columbus (OH) and Minneapolis (Minnesota) , and in Vermont the merged vowel is [ɑ:] too.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English_regional_differences#Vermont)
PS
One thing I've noticed, in regions which shift the merged vowel [ɑ:] to [ɒ:]:
#1.
In the beginning, [ɑ:] to [ɒ:] occurs only in front of the -L(L) and/or -NG:
so, the speakers pronounce long, song, wrong, call, caller, collar, doll, involve, dollar with
[ɒ:] , but they continue pronouncing Don/Dawn, cot/Caught with [ɑ:]
(I don't know what they would answer if you ask them: ''Do you use the same vowel in DON, DAWN, CALL, SONG'' - Californian would answer: Yes, I do)...
#2. As the shift continues, all [ɑ:]s are shifted to [ɒ:], so
words like FATHER, ON, DON all have [ɒ:]
In Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada), [ɑ:] is preferred in all conditions ''father, call, song, long''.
In Toronto and Windsor (Ontario), they have the shift #1.
In Manitoba and Ottawa (Ontario), [ɒ:] is preferred in all conditions (fAther, On, dOn, dAWn), shift #2, so to a General American ear, the name Donna pronounced by these Canadians would sound like ''Dawna'' (with a rounded back vowel). The Oxford Canadian dictionary chose this pronunciation as the pronunciation norm, so technically, at least according to this Canadian dictionary, father is pronounced with a rounded vowel [ɒ:] in Canada, which is so different from RP or Genera lAmerican.
Could somebody explain to me how [ɒ:] is articulated? When it is pronounced, what is done with your lips?
When I say the words caught/cot, my lips are pushed forward slightly, but not really rounded. Is it [ɒ:] that I am pronouncing?
[ɒ] is a back ROUNDED vowel. [ɑ] is a back UNROUNDED vowel.
/ɒ/ in some dialects is pronounced closer to [ɔ].
/ɑ/ in some dialects is pronounced closer to [a].
One of the IPA ''failures'' is the lack of fine distinctions:
front a - semifront a - central a - semiback a - back a
and/or
[ɑ] ~ slightly rounded [ɑ] ~ slightly unrounded [ɒ] ~ [ɒ]
and/or
[ɒ] ~ slightly raised [ɒ] / slightly lowered [ɔ] ~ [ɔ]
There are too many realizations/phones for too few symbols.
And putting a dot below the symbol or on the top of it can be confusing.
That sounds like [ɒ] to me - a rounded vowel, or "aw" from a General American perspective.
And do most other cot-caught merged people use [ɑ] instead? Would my pronunciation of those words help to give away where I'm from at all?
What does [ɑ] sound like in those words? Can I find a recording of it somewhere?
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