Hoarse, four, mourning etc.

[Joel S. Berson]

In lieu of someone to manipulate my tongue, throat, and larynx, is
there a sound sample of speech with the distinction between these
three pairs (or some of them) that I can listen to?

Joel

At 6/29/2010 09:36 AM, Geoff Nathan wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>As others have noted, the 'horse:hoarse' contrast has been
>extensively discussed on this list, and in the dialectological
>literature. It is one of a small number of similar examples
>('boar:bore, board:bored' for example) that continue to contrast in
>parts of the midwest and southern US. A competent discussion can be found here
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Horse-hoarse_merger
>
>
>unfortunately there are no sound samples for the contrast. The OED
>says that RP still distinguishes them as a contrast between long
>open-o and open-o schwa. I believe this has disappeared, however.
>
>
>The other two (for:four, morning:mourning) are identical in all
>contemporary dialects I'm aware of, and their etymologies suggest
>that they fell together long ago (the former), or were never
>different (the latter, at least from Middle English times). There is
>some dispute about this, however.
>
>
>Geoff
>
>Geoffrey S. Nathan
>Faculty Liaison, C&IT
>and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
>+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
>+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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