"Blawg"

[Alice Faber]

Laurence Horn wrote:
> At 10:04 AM -0500 12/30/07, Dennis Preston wrote:
>> us open-o /a/ distinguishers have a very uneven assignment of the
>> phonemes to different words, especially before /g/.  In my case,
>> which I bet is not very different from David's, my earliest learned o
>> + /g/ words are all open-o (hog, frog, log, dog, etc...); my later
>> learned words (cog, togs, etc...) are either /a/ or variable (e.g.,
>> smog). I think I would assign /a/ to "blog," although I ain't much
>> for introspection in such matters.
>>
>> dInIs
>
> We effete easterners (or me, anyway) also distinguish two
> collections, and frequency/early acquisition are relevant variables
> for us too, but playing out in a rather imbalanced way.  I have /dOg/
> with open-o and...that's it.  The other -ogs all have /a/.  So not
> only doesn't "blog" rhyme with "dog", but nothing else does either!?
> Did I realize this?
>
> Actually there might be local Indian names in New England whose last
> syllable end in things like -paug that would rhyme with "dog".  Or if
> I were pronouncing PAUG [the acronym for the Portland Access Users
> Group, the Professional Auto-CAD Users Group, or the Philadelphia
> Auto-CAD Users Group] or PAWG [Pissed Americans With Guns] that would
> as well.  For -og words, though, "dog" stands alone, it appears.
> Anyone else share this weird idiolect?  Have we already discussed
> this?

Me, me, me! DOG is unlike any other -OG word for me. I suspect we're not
alone. When I was reading "phonetics for reading instructors"-type
texts, I found that DOG is often described as an "exception word". In
workshops, I've had to explain to reading teachers that it isn't
*always* an exception word, and that teaching it as one may confuse more
than it clarifies. The classification of DOG as an exception seems to be
familiar to them, whereas my differentiation of 10 vs 11 vowel dialects
(based on the COT/CAUGHT distinction or lack thereof) isn't. As is also
the case in basic phonetics classes, even getting a show of hands on who
does or doesn't pronounce the two classes with the same vowel doesn't
immediately convince them that there are two fundamentally different
systems here.

--
 =======================================================================
Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                            tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                               fax (203) 865-8963

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