Determining an Accent Based on Very Little

Guest   Wed Apr 23, 2008 3:33 am GMT
Can you tell someone's accent based on these four?

a. Don and Dawn are the same to me
b. Cot and Caught are the same.
c. Pen and Pin are different
d. Accept and Except are different

Or is this too small a sample? How much could you eliminate?

Which of these would fit?

a. Southern California
b. West Virginia
c. Washington State
d. Arizona
e. Atlanta, Georgia
Guest   Wed Apr 23, 2008 3:54 pm GMT
Josh, you are good. Thank-you.
Lazar   Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:56 pm GMT
But they wouldn't have the caught-cot merger in Georgia or West Virginia, right?
Guest   Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:26 pm GMT
''Accept and Except are different''

This merger is not regional.
Muted Squeek Toy   Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:31 pm GMT
''But they wouldn't have the caught-cot merger in Georgia or West Virginia, right?''

WV is fully merged
but Georgia is transitional

speaking of the low back merger, a nice map (but with some mistakes: WV should be included in the merger)

http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=americanenglishdialectslf7.jpg
Guest   Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:23 pm GMT
Is "cot-caught" called the low back merger?
Guest   Wed Apr 23, 2008 10:54 pm GMT
yup
or Dawn Don merger
or hottie haughty merger
or Caulk Cock merger
(doll rhymes with tall, wall, call..)
Lazar   Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:02 pm GMT
The terms "low back merger" and "cot caught merger" are not identical, but they are practically equivalent everywhere outside of New England. That is, the cot-caught merger is simply a merger of two lexical classes, whereas the low back merger is necessarily a merger of the /A:/ and /Q:/ (or /O:/) phonemes. The issue is moot in most of the country, but in Eastern New England, "cot" and "caught" have merged with [Q:], while leaving the father-bother distinction intact with a separate vowel [a:]. So the map above is mistaken in claiming that there is a "[O]/[a] merger" in Eastern New England - that's definitely false.

Or to put it another way, low back merger = father-bother merger + cot-caught merger.
Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 12:48 am GMT
Thank-you, but can you suggest a map for the cot-caught merger? I saw one on Wiki, but it was so small, that I couldn't determine which cities were merged.
Lazar   Thu Apr 24, 2008 2:19 am GMT
You mean this one ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Cot-caught_merger.png )? I would say that the terminology on that one (and in Wikipedia in general) is flawed, but it provides a good picture of the situation.
Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 2:21 am GMT
Yes. Is it that specific?
Lazar   Thu Apr 24, 2008 2:52 am GMT
Well yeah, if you put it next to a regular US map I think you could find dot-to-city equivalencies.
MST   Thu Apr 24, 2008 12:46 pm GMT
Do you think 3 merged regions could make a continuum?
Western influence is spreading to Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus which are close to W PA. Low back merger could spread from Vermont to eastern parts of the NY state, it can go thru Albany and get to W PA (thus leaving Northern and Western Parts of the NYstate, which are NCVS infuenced alone)...
Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:16 pm GMT
''Low back merger'' is not accurate, since in some regions (like Arizona, Minnesota or Central Ohio) the vowel is low, central & unrounded, and not low back.
So, cot/caught merger is more precise.
Lazar   Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:37 pm GMT
I disagree. "Low back merger" simply refers to the historical phonemes /A:/, /Q/ and /O:/, which are in the low-back range. The phonetic quality of the merged vowel is irrelevant. "Cot-caught merger" is, in fact, too precise because it doesn't include the father-bother merger.

Eastern New England is C-C merged and F-B unmerged, with two phonemes /A:/ and /Q:/; traditional General American is F-B merged and C-C unmerged, with two basically identical phonemes /A:/ and /Q:/; there's a distinct merger found in the West which, I think, requires a distinct name.