ont/ahnt

[Paul Johnston]

"CON"/"KAHN" would work as [kDn]/[kAn] in the Pittsburgh area, I think, and neither would rhyme with "town", which would be [tan].  I just checked with two colleagues of mine, one from Canonsburg, PA, the other from Fairmont, WV, and they had different vowels in father and bother (a near-minimal pair) as [A] vs. [D] (rounded low vowel).  The latter is LOT/THOUGHT for them.  The former is, in Wells's terminology, PALM.

Paul Johnston
On Oct 6, 2010, at 6:17 PM, David Wake wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       David Wake <dwake at STANFORDALUMNI.ORG>
> Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Can you offer a minimal pairs for these dialects?  E.g. "con"/"Kahn",
> perhaps?  I thought that, with the exception of Eastern New England,
> these dialects would all use their LOT vowel (rounded or unrounded)
> for both lexical sets.
>
> D
>
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu> wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Most dialects where the LOT class is a low back ROUNDED vowel will pronounce ont and ahnt differently, particularly because of the /n/ after it-- Eastern New England, the area from Erie PA through Pittsburgh down into West Virginia and into Kentucky, several Upper Southern dialects, Canada--in Eastern New England, the difference should be really striking: [D] (I mean the IPA symbol for a low back rounded vowel here) vs. a front [a:].
>>
>> Paul Johnston
>>
>>
>> On Oct 6, 2010, at 10:23 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>> Subject:      Re: ont/ahnt
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> At 10/5/2010 08:49 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 5:45 PM, David Wake <dwake at stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
>>>>> "ont"
>>>>
>>>> In most dialects of AmE, "ont" = "ahnt."
>>>
>>> Can you give me some examples where it doesn't?  And please don't say
>>> you won't.
>>>
>>> Joel
>>>
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