ah/ awe

[David Bergdahl]

On 9/30/06, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: ah/ awe
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> To my ears it's not a merger between "ah" and "awe" it's a substitution of
> "ah" for "awe" and a dropping of the "awe" phoneme altogether.




In my experience teaching in an area with lots of low-back merger speakers,
> if you question them directly they will say the "ah" phoneme is the
> underlying one and the "aw" is the innovation (the opposite of the
> history).
>
-db

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