shah and shaw

[ROOD DAVID S]

I find it a little surprising that this discussion is taking place among
some very sophisticated linguists.  I thought the merger/non-merger of
these two vowels was probably the single best-known fact about American
dialectology.  It's the primary example of dialect variation in most
elementary linguistics books, and the first real hurdle to transcription
exercises in intro to linguistics classes.  In Colorado I can count on any
intro class of about 100 students having about 2/3 people who do not
distinguish "cot" from "caught", and 1/3 people who make the distinction.
Of course those students come from all over.

	But let me continue with a survey of another phenomenon that I
find much stranger.  I have two distinct sets of (generally) monosyllabic
words spelled with -og.  I use the vowel of "cot" (low central) in frog,
hog, cog, soggy, slog, bog, fog, agog, jog, toggle, but the low back (IPA
open o, more or less, the one in "caught") in auger, dog, and log.  My
family, none of whom distinguish "cot" from "caught", think my
pronunciation of "fog" or "foggy" is extremely funny, but they don't hear
any of the others as odd.  Of course, those of you who have merged those
two vowels anyway won't relate to this -- but does anyone else recognize
these as 2 sets?  Before "k" I have minimal pairs (hock/hawk), but their
spellings suggest that there's a good reason for that.  I never thought
about it before, but I also have two contrasting sets before -ng (Congo
and bongo are low central, same as "cot", but Cong, as in Viet Cong, and
bong are low back, same as "caught").  All the others I can think of have
the low back one before this consonant.

	This isn't Siouan, so maybe we shouldn't go on like this on this
list -- censor me if you think that's the case.

	Best,
	David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> > As a true-born Brit (and RP-speaker) and thus heir to the nation who gave the world English,
>
> Right.
>
> > . . . "shah" and "shaw" are different for me.Shaw is higher up on the vowel trapezoid than shah.  BUT in many (disparate) parts of England (Newcastle; Bury in Lancashire, and others) this isn't the case and the vowels merge.  I say Ahkansaw but I recognis ethat etymologhically, in Miami-Illinois (and indeed in Quapaw), the vowel is much more like the 'shah' vowel.
>
> >From what I hear (and maybe sometimes say -- I was an Army Brat and we moved a lot during WW-II) 'shah' should have the same vowel as 'cot' and Shaw the same as 'caught'?   I THINK I have something close to an open O in both, but something just slightly lower, like the [cursive A].
>
> Bob
>