Back Vowel Phonemes

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:14 PM -0500 9/18/00, Matthew Gordon wrote:
>
>In the North, I'd expect to find the following assignments:
>dog = )
>lost=)
>horror=)
>on=a
>upon=a
>water=)
>wash=)
>
Well, for THIS northerner (more specifically, New Yorker), this is
all as claimed except for "horror", which belongs to the (OR) class
we've previously discussed (other members are "moral", "forest",
"corridor", "orange") in which the vowel is closer to the [a] of "on"
than to the [)] of "dog".  (This is the vowel that later became a
variable for me after I left the NYC area, so that I now have these
as either [a] or [)].)  Also, the vowel of "wash" is hard for me to
pin down--it appears to be between [a] and [)], but it's definitely
distinct from the clearly rounded back [)] of "water" or "lost".

larry