Re: Changes in pronunciation before 'l' in English

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 07/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 00:01:52 GMT

Mxsmanic wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels writes:
>
> > talk and walk are caught, tock and wok are cot.
>
> They sound that way to me, although somehow the 'l' seems to be doing
> something weird still, but I don't know what.
>
> The vowel sounds in talk, walk, bought, sought, taut, and caught rhyme
> in my speech. The vowels in cot, rot, not, lot, and tot, all rhyme as
> well, but they are different from the one in talk et al, albeit not by
> very much. I need to know how they are transcribed.

[O] and [a] respectively.

> > Have you taken a position on cot/caught yet?
>
> See above. I've read of a merger of these two vowels but I'm not sure I
> hear a merger in my speech, although I'm a native speaker of the
> southwest U.S. Then again, in the example transcription in the IPA
> book, which was recorded by a true California Girl, her vowels sound the
> same as mine and they look the same on the spectrogram as far as I can
> tell, so maybe I'm just not recogizing them correctly yet, or perhaps
> I'm imagining distinctions that aren't necessarily there.

How can you contradict yourself in a single posting? In your first
paragraph you say you distinguish cot and caught (and the <l> in some of
the words has nothing to do with it); then in the second pargraph you
suppose you might hear a merger?? 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Changes in pronunciation before l in English
    ... They sound that way to me, although somehow the 'l' seems to be doing ... I've read of a merger of these two vowels but I'm not sure I ... in the example transcription in the IPA ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: American o
    ... What exactly is the sound you're talking about? ... To an Australian, an American saying caught and one saying cot sound the same. ...
    (alt.usage.english)