Raleigh, N.C. -- awesome or aw-dropping?

[Laurence Horn]

Not sure what qualifies a word for this list and what disqualifies it.  "Flog" but not "frog"?  And "Tagalog" is standardly pronounced with penultimate stress, /t@'gal at g/  (script-a for me on the stressed syllable, although something more like /o/ would be "correct"). And I wonder how widespread, and in which areas, this distinction between vowels in singulars and plurals like "backlog(s)" and "catalog(s)" is.

LH

On Feb 16, 2014, at 7:16 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

> I checked the Carnegie-Mellon database of 129k words for the tradstring (string of letters in traditional spelling) "log" (with hard "g").  The results gave the following root words (where ~au stands for "awe" and ~aa stands for "ah" and ~oe stands for "oh".
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> analog -   ~anulaug
> backlog -   ~baklaag,
> backlogs -   ~baklaugz
> catalog -   ~katulaug
> catalogs -   ~katulaagz
> clog -   ~klaag
> clogged -   ~klaugd
> dialog -   ~die'ulaug
> epilogue -   ~epulaug
> flog -   ~flaag
> ideologue -  ~idee'oeloeg or ~ideeyoeloeg
> Kellog -   ~Kelaug
> log -   ~laug
> logger - ~laager
> logjam - ~laagjam
> plog -   ~plaag
> prolog(ue) -   ~proelaag
> slog -  ~slag
> Tagalog -   ~Tagulaag
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> Tom Zurinskas, Conn 20 yrs, Tenn 3, NJ 33, now Fl 9.
> See how English spelling links to sounds at http://justpaste.it/ayk
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>> Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 11:07:28 -0500
>> From: paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU
>> Subject: Re: Raleigh, N.C. -- awesome or aw-dropping?
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Raleigh, N.C. -- awesome or aw-dropping?
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Laurence:
>> I do.  Dog stands alone among all -og words; the rest belong to PALM, actually, due to the O-split rule.  Does anyone with COT and PALM different have the other -og words with COT instead?
>>
>> Paul
>> On Feb 14, 2014, at 10:11 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: Raleigh, N.C. -- awesome or aw-dropping?
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> On Feb 14, 2014, at 9:45 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Cf. HOG and DOG.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> JL
>>>>>
>>>>> Right.  I think we discussed these a while back.  For me (NYC, b. 1945), nothing rhymes with "dog" but "blawg".
>>>>
>>>> On the pronunciation of "blog" vs. "blawg", see my Language Log post of 1/24/06:
>>>>
>>>> ----
>>>> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002780.html
>>>> For speakers with the cot-caught merger of low back vowels (such as
>>>> most residents of the western U.S.), the vowel in _blog_ merges with
>>>> the vowel in _law_, with the result that _blawg_ is homonymous with
>>>> _blog_. Speakers without the merger tend to use the _cot_ vowel for
>>>> most words ending in _-og_, with the exception of _dog_ and
>>>> occasionally other common words. _Blog_ is not (yet!) common enough to
>>>> be subject to this lexical diffusion and thus remains distinct from
>>>> _blawg_ for most speakers lacking the merger.
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>> I don't think "blog" has become common enough in the intervening six
>>>> years to join the "dog" class for us non-mergerers.
>>>>
>>> Is there anything else in your "dog" class?  As noted, I don't have anything in mine, however common--other than "blawg", which is quite un-, and which of course qualifies for membership in the class only as a spelling pronunciation.  It doesn't seem as though frequency really plays a role for me, except perhaps for the fact that "dog" is more frequent than any of its non-rhyming rivals. Do other NYCers share this intuition?
>>>
>>> LH
>>>
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