cot/caught on the street

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
wrote:
>
> vanity license plate on a car parked in downtown palo alto yesterday:
>
> RAWK AWN
>
> presumably, the cot/caught merger, in favor of open-o.  for me, it'd
> be RAHK AWN.  but maybe the open-o appears only in this expression,
> under the influence of the vowel of "on".

We had some extensive discussion of the "rawk" phenomenon in Feb. '05, starting
here:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0502D&L=ADS-L&P=R6957

As I wrote at the time, "For speakers who haven't merged 'cot' and 'caught',
'rawk' suggests an exaggerated pronunciation that might be associated with
young male fans of hard rock (possibly also evoking 'raw' or 'raucous')."

--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org