Hoarse, four, mourning etc.

[David Wake]

FWIW, I (grew up speaking near-RP) have always had a distinction
between "mourning" and "morning", with the CURE vowel in the former
and the NORTH vowel in the latter.  Wells mentions that his father had
this as well.  It's quite possible that this is some kind of spelling
pronunciation, and I don't know how widespread it is.

I thought that Wells distinguished between "for" and "four",
listing"for" in the NORTH set and "four" in the FORCE set, but my
brain could be playing tricks on me.

David

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 6:36 AM, Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU>
> Subject:      Hoarse, four, mourning etc.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
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