Back Vowel Phonemes

[TERRY IRONS]

I am currently working on a project that involves acoustic analysis of
low back vowels in a regional variety of English.  As I move toward
plotting of F1/F2 values, using a Labovian approach, I need to make some
decisions regarding how to treat a subset of my data phonemically.

All of the tokens vary, of course, but I have been able to place several
items clearly into the ) category phonemically and the a category
phonemically.

The following set also all vary (which is indicated in major
dictionaries, such as AHDE Edition 1):

dog, lost, horror, on, upon, water, wash

My query is, what vowel would you consider to be the underlying phoneme
in each case, ) or a?  (I know, I know, choice of phoneme may depend upon
idiolect, but remember that I am assuming a Labovian paradigm to
facilitate one approach to studying change.)




Virtually, Terry
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Terry Lynn Irons        t.irons at morehead-st.edu
Voice Mail:             (606) 783-5164
Snail Mail:             UPO 604 Morehead, KY 40351
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