Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 1:36 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> On Nov 16, 2012, at 6:24 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
>> I'm sure this has been analyzed somewhere at some point, but I don't know where.
>> What is the dialect that has /O/ lowering to [a] in a stressed vowel preceding
>> /r/ and an unstressed vowel? In other words, the dialect that pronounces
>> "forest" as "farrest," "Florida" as "Flarrida", "Oregon" as "Ahregun,"
>> "horrible" etc. as "harrible" etc., "authority" as "autharity", but still has
>> [O] in "fort", "lore," etc.? What is this realization called?
>>
>
> It's what I grew up with in NYC, although I've shifted over to [O] most of the time for
> these; I suspect I go back and forth (on "Florida", "orange", "forest") even though I
> think of myself as an open-o employer for these (the first group, that is; I've never
> varied on [O] for "fort" or "lore").  I think of "AH-rinj" as the locus classicus, but as I
> recall it was getting mocked for my [a] in "corridor" as a freshman in Rochester that
> led to my abandoning my native vowels in this frame.  I'm sure I never say "flarrist",
> but I probably did before the fall of 1961.

Along with NYC, the use of unrounded [A] for the "tomorrow"/"orange"
class typifies Philadelphia and the Carolinas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Historic_.22short_o.22_before_intervocalic_r

I don't think this has a shorthand label in the phonological
literature, though I'm sure Mr. Gordon or one of the other
variationists on the list can correct me if I'm wrong.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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