dog, dag, daeg, dawg, doe-ug, etc.

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I'm frankly puzzled by the certainty that people have about these -og words.
I would have to go back and listen to some of my old fieldwork tapes to know
WHAT I say, but I am pretty sure there is a lot of variability in my own speech
between [o] and [a] in most of the -og words--I speak with the tongue of a
sociolinguist, a little of this, a little of that, depending on where my tongue
happens to go (and maybe sometimes on the audience).

In a message dated 2/25/05 9:11:57 AM, preston at MSU.EDU writes:


> David,
>
> I always knew there was something I really liked about you. Now I
> know what it is: your open oh/ah distribution before /g/ is exactly
> the same as mine! Maybe I am not the last living speaker of Standard
> American English (SAE 10-W-40, the norm) after all!
>
> But, I wonder if the notorious variability you mention might not be
> explained by a word frequency/early learning appeal. Every one of
> your (and my) open oh words (hog, frog, dog, log...) is a relatively
> high-frequency and early-learned word; every ah word is a relatively
> low-frequency and later-learned word (jog, cog, blog...). In my case,
> for example, since "smog" is right in the middle (middle frequency,
> learned only a little earlier than some of the ah words), I don't
> like either pronunciation.
>
> How do you deal with some of the other historical open oh producers?
> ah before /f/ is really hard for me to get, even in late learned
> words (e.g., Hoffa). I remember a "Poff" family where I grew up, and
> I think we ah-ed them, but it hits my ear funny even today.
>
> dInIs
>
>