wash cloth to worsh rag

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 05:48 PM 11/30/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>#Same here in southeastern Ohio--but I've always considered British 'hot' to
>#have not the full open /o/ (which I as a Minnesotan of a certain age still
>#have in 'caught') but instead the "inverted script a" you describe.  In
>#fact, 'cot' and 'caught' do merge here in SE Ohio (as they do in western
>#PA), but at that intermediate inverted script a point.  In central Ohio
>#they merge at low back unrounded /a/ (I can't do the script /a/ on the
>#computer).
>
>"<<intermediate>> inverted script a"?
>
>As I read your post, it looks to me as if you are saying that "open /o/"
>-- by which I understand the IPA turned-c, a low-mid back rounded vowel
>-- is lower than "inverted script a" -- low back rounded vowel. And
>that's backwards. Or I've forgotten all the IPA I ever knew. And that's
>scary.
>
>Am I misunderstanding your post?
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel

Yes, you are.  I mean that the 'inverted script a' is "intermediate"
between low back unrounded 'regular script a' and low-mid back rounded open
/O/ or  'turned c'.  The merger here (and in western PA and eastern
Ontario) is slightly more rounded than that in central Ohio and westwards,
but not as high or round as the classic Northern open /O/ in
'caught'.  Kurath and McDavid described the inverted script a of this
region in 1961, as did Kenyon earlier, and several others have done so
since (see my article in LVC, vol. 12 (2000)).