horse/hoarse

Dennis R. Preston preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU
Thu Apr 20 11:44:12 UTC 2000


Nope. Not in US English. The long-a of "father" and the short-o of "hot" do
not a phonemic difference make.

dInIs

>on 20/4/00 12:16 AM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>
>> I'm calling it short-o. That's the traditional name for the vowel in "hot."
>> If you're into spelling (as I am not) that may confuse you. Go with the
>> philological flow. Short-a is the vowel in "hat" and long-a is the vowel in
>> "father."
>>
>> dInIs
>
>
>So, are you saying that there is a three-way distinction between
>caught-cot/hot-father (on the left bank, anyway)???  Or is it just spelling
>conventions here?
>
>--Aa
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Now I'm confused all over again, unless there was a typo in your message.
>>> I presume you meant to write "...hot (short-a)" --right?
>>>
>>> Peter Mc.
>>>
>>> --On Wed, Apr 19, 2000 3:51 PM -0400 "Dennis R. Preston"
>>> <preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> hoarse has the same vowel as coat (long-o)
>>>> horse has the same vowel as caught (open-o)
>>>> parse has the same vowel as hot (short-o)
>>>>
>
>________________________________________________________________________
>Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
>http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron      Departments of English Language and
>aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk                    Theoretical & Applied Linguistics
>
> "MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
>  --Death


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



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