Low Back /a/ to Low Central /a/

[Dennis R. Preston]

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.

More importantly, it also make you wonder what the motivation for the
massive vowel rotations in the Northern Cities and the South is. The
raising and tensing of the low-front vowel is the usual culprit, but, to
the extent, especially in Northern Cities, that the vowel of "hot" is a
good deal more front than it is usually reported in texts, the falling and
fronting of so-called open-o into its space seems to be just as likely. In
acoustic work on older tapes (e.,g., DARE speakers from Michigan and
Wisconsin) we often find that fronting of the "hot" vowel is earlier (and
more dramatic) than the raising and tensing of the low-front vowel. I
believe some other people (Matt Gordon, Erick Thomas) are coming to similar
conclusions.

dInIs

>Let add to that.  Why does he list "open-o" as the vowel in words like
>"caught" which in those American dialects that still have a rounded vowel
>there is a low back rounded, not mid lax back rounded.  Also, why does he
>use schwa for both schwa and tent?  "above" has both of them, and while
>schwa is in complementary distribution with tent, it's also in
>complementary distribution with every other vowel in the language.  When I
>teach that text, which I do nearly every semester, that is the one thing I
>consistently have to work around.
>
>Herb Stahlke
>Ball State University
>
><<< MAVINSON5 at AOL.COM  5/27  3:42p >>>
>Does anyone know why Algeo made the change of low back /a/ to central back
>/a/ in the latest edition of the Origins text?  It seems that in Southern
>English /a/ as in mama/papa [mam/pap] is more low/back as in "aw"--the one
>Algeo used to call rounded (another term deleted as is spread))--than
>low/central as in mahmuh?
>
>Mark


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