Low Back /a/ to Low Central /a/

[Dennis R. Preston]

Alice is right, of course; the New York Citry area (broadly defined) has a
raised onset for open-o. No doubt some Peterson and Barney respondents
reflected this. The problem is that this regionally limited feature is
often taken as a "norm" for AE.

(Interesting that a "newer" Peterson and Barney-style investigation done in
Western Michigan finds a raised low-front vowel for the "norm." No kidding!)

dInIs

PS: A close reading reveals that some (N=?) of the Peterson and Barney
respondents were not native speakers of English! Norm schnorm.



>At 8:47 AM -0400 5/28/2000, Dennis R. Preston wrote, ostensibly about
>Re: Low Back /a/ to Low Central /a/:
>>Herb's remark is right on. Here at MSU we have been looking at so-called
>>"open-o" in lots of US dialects (which have the "cot-caught" distinction),
>>and we find that absolutely none of them have a mid-back position. All of
>>them are low-back. Kind of makes you wonder who Peterson and Barney
>>recorded.
>
>Well, given that they recorded in New Jersey and the women and
>children were mostly Middle Atlantic speakers (the men were more
>diverse), they might have had some NY-ish multithongal open-o tokens,
>and since they made a single measurement from each vowel (as I
>recall), they could easily gotten mid-back position for open-o. In
>the NY and CT younger speakers I have measurements for, it's not
>unusual for open-o to have a high back onset (as in GOOD), with
>movement down to the traditional low back position.
>--
>Alice Faber                                       tel. (203) 865-6163
>Haskins Laboratories                              fax  (203) 865-8963
>270 Crown St           new improved email: faber at pop.haskins.yale.edu
>New Haven, CT 06511    old email, if you must: faber at haskins.yale.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