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EspañolPHONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF ENGLISH LOW BACK VOWELS
| Contents |
| Father-bother merger |
| Lot-cloth split |
| Cot-caught merger |
| Psalm-sum merger |
| Bud-bird merger |
| See also |
| References |
| External links |
Father-bother merger
The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels and that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English (exceptions are accents in northeastern New England, such as the Boston accent, and New York-New Jersey English).[1] Accents of English, Wells, John C., , , Cambridge University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3) , pp. 136–37, 203–6, 234, 245–47, 339–40, 400, 419, 443, 576 The Atlas of North American English, Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg, , , Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, ISBN 3-11-016746-8 In those accents with the merger ''father'' and ''bother'' rhyme, and ''Kahn'' and ''con'' are homophonous as . Unrounding of EME is found also in Norwich, the West Country, the West Midlands and in Hiberno-English, but apparently with no phonemic merger.
Lot-cloth split
The lot-cloth split is the result of a late seventeenth-century sound change that lengthened to before voiceless fricatives, and also before in the word ''gone''. In some accents, the lengthened was raised, merging with the of words like ''thought''. Words that entered the language later, or words that were used more in writing than speech, were often exempt from the lengthening, so that ''joss'' and ''Goth'' still have the short vowel.
As a result of the lengthening and raising, in the above-mentioned accents ''cross'' rhymes with ''sauce'', and ''soft'' and ''cloth'' also have the vowel . Accents affected by this change include American English and, originally, RP, although today words of this group almost always have short in RP.
The lengthening and raising generally happened before the fricatives , and . In American English the raising was extended to the environment before and in a few words to the environment before as well, giving pronunciations like for ''long'', for ''chocolate'', and for ''dog''. Obviously, in accents of American English that are subject to the cot-caught merger, there is no difference between words that did and those that did not undergo the change.
In the varieties of American English that have the lot-cloth split, many words vary as to whether or not they have the ''cloth'' vowel. For example, 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.
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.
The word ''on'' is usually pronounced with the ''lot'' vowel, but has the ''cloth'' vowel in the Midland, Mid-Atlantic and South.
Cot-caught merger
On this map of North America, the green dots represent speakers who have completely merged the vowels of ''cot'' and ''caught''. The dark blue dots represent speakers who have completely resisted the merger. The pale blue dots represent speakers with a partial merger (either production or perception but not both), and the yellow dots represent speakers with the merger in transition. Based on the work of Labov, Ash and Boberg.
The cot-caught merger (also known as the ''low back merger'') is a phonemic merger, a sound change, that occurs in some varieties of English. The merger occurs in some accents of Scottish English and to some extent in Mid Ulster English but is best known as a phenomenon of many varieties of North American English.
The sound change causes the vowel in words like ''cot'', ''rock'', and ''doll'' to be pronounced the same as the vowel in the words ''caught'', ''talk'', ''law'', and ''small'', so that for example ''cot'' and ''caught'' become homophones, and the two vowel classes become merged as a single phoneme. This sound change appears to have begun at some time in the nineteenth century. The expression ''O.K.'' originated in the 1830s as the initials of ''oll korrect'', a joke misspelling of ''all correct.'' This suggests that the merger may have begun to take root in North America by that time. The presence of the merger and its absence are both found in many different regions of the continent, and in both urban and rural environments.
The symbols traditionally used to transcribe the vowels in the words "cot" and "caught" as spoken in American English are open back unrounded vowel and open-mid back rounded vowel, respectively, but recent sociolinguistic phonetics research has shown that for many American English speakers, the vowels are actually closer to the cardinal vowels open ''central'' unrounded vowel and open back rounded vowel. The precise phonetic value of the merged vowel varies from region to region, as do the phonetic values of the unmerged vowel in regions where the merger has not occurred.
According to Labov, Ash, and Boberg, the merger does not generally occur in the southern United States, along the American side of the Great Lakes region, or in the "Northeast Corridor" extended metropolitan region from New York City to Baltimore. It occurs in most forms of Canadian English, in the Boston, Massachusetts area (see Boston accent) and northeastern New England , and in the eastern Ohio River valley. From the Great Plains westward, except San Francisco, the merger is usual. The distribution of the merger is complex, even without taking into account the mobility of the American population; there are pockets of speakers with the merger in areas that lack it, and vice versa. There are areas where the merger has only partially occurred, or is in a state of transition. Labov et al.'s research is based on telephone surveys with subjects who grew up in the city where they lived at the time of the interview. The 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey,[2] in which subjects did not necessarily grow up in the place they identified as the source of their dialect features, indicates that there are speakers of both merging and contrast-preserving accents throughout the country, though the basic isoglosses are almost identical to those revealed by Labov's 1996 telephone survey. Both surveys indicate that approximately 60% of American English speakers preserve the contrast, while approximately 40% make the merger.
For merged speakers in Canada and most of the United States, the two sounds and are allophones; they often do not perceive differences in their usage, hear neither of them as a separate phoneme, and hear the distinct vowels used by speakers whose dialects do distinguish them as variations on the same vowel. They hear the broad A of British Received Pronunciation as the same, single vowel sound. But in Received Pronunciation, there are three sounds distinguished: the long of ''cart'', the long of ''caught'', and the short rounded of ''cot''.
It should be noted that cot-caught merged speakers in northeastern New England still maintain a phonemic distinction between unrounded and rounded , because in northeastern New England (unlike in Canada and the Western United States), the cot-caught merger occurred without the father-bother merger. Thus, although northeastern New Englanders pronounce both ''cot'' and ''caught'' as , they pronounce ''cart'' as .
Labov et al. also reveal that about 15% of respondents have the merger before but not before , so that ''Don'' and ''Dawn'' are homophonous, but ''cot'' and ''caught'' are not. A much smaller group (about 4%) has the reverse situation: ''cot'' and ''caught'' are homophonous but ''Don'' and ''Dawn'' are distinct.
Psalm-sum merger
The psalm-sum merger is a phenomenon occurring in Singaporean English where the phonemes // and are both pronounced //. As a result, pairs like "psalm" and "sum" are homophones.[3]
Bud-bird merger
The bud-bird merger is a merger of // and // occurring for some speakers of Jamaican English making bud and bird homonyms as /bd/.
The conversion of // to [] or [] is also found in places scattered around England. Some speakers, mostly rural, in the area from London to Norfolk exhibit this conversion, mainly before voiceless fricatives. This gives pronunciation like first [fst] and worse [ws]. The word cuss appears to derive from the application of this sound change to the word curse.
The word work is often heard with pronunciations like [wk] in Lancashire, Derbyshire and South Yorkshire.
See also
★ Phonological history of the English language
★ Phonological history of English vowels
References
1. Merriam Webster Pronunciation Guide
2. The 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey
3.
External links
★ Map of the cot-caught merger from the 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey
★ Map of the cot-caught merger from Labov's 1996 telephone survey
★ Description of the cot-caught merger in the Phonological Atlas
★ Map of the cot-caught merger before /n/ and /t/
★ Chapter 13 of the ''Atlas of North American English'', which discusses the "short-o" configuration of various American accents
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