/kw/~/k/

[Dennis R. Preston]

That's the problem with this discussion (as I tried to point out in my
longer note).
People with caught-cot merger (usually in the direction of cot) do not have
the merger before /r/. Therefore, the homophones which emerge are not
quart-cot but quart-court.

dInIs

>As someone with unmerged caught and cot and with at least a mental, if not
>necessarily always fully realized, [w] in "quarter" in all contexts--i.e.,
>/kworter/--I'm having trouble imagining the sequences you're describing.
>Do you mean you say /kwarter/ horse and /karter/ to one?!  (Or maybe you
>didn't mean to imply that the merger applies to the vowel in "quarter".)
>
>Peter Mc.
>
>--On Wed, Apr 19, 2000 11:44 AM -0500 Beth Lee Simon
><simon at HOME2.MYSOLUTION.COM> wrote:
>
>> I have caught/cot merger (I'm cIA), and, as I said, have [kw] in quarter
>> horse, but [k] in quarter to one.
>>
>> beth simon
>
>
>
>****************************************************************************
>                               Peter A. McGraw
>                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
>                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736