vowels...

[Aaron E. Drews]

on 2/5/00 6:00 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> Actually, no, this isn't an example of the Southern Vowel Shift; rather,
> it's one of many mergers going on in the Midland, the West (as David Bowie
> said) and, to some extent, in the South.  Thus, hail and hell merge to hell
> (vs. the Southern Shift diphthongizing of hell to hail), fill and feel
> merge to fill, still and steel merge to still, pool and pull merge to pull,
> etc.

I'm curious.  Does anybody merge _bull_ and _bowl_, _pull_ and _pole_ (I
forget if I've asked this before some years ago)?  I know I make such a
merger, and I attributed it to the /l/).  But I seem to have a different
merger than the rest of the West.... and I had this merger *before* I moved
to Scotland (where they don't distinguish _look_ from _Luke_ regardless of a
following /l/).

--Aaron

________________________________________________________________________
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