cot-caught and father-bother merger

But isn't "cot-caught merger" an even worse term? I see three interrelated problems. First, it presents the merger in orthographic terms, and of course there are no dialects in which the two words are orthographically merged. Granted, when discussing the merger in writing, it's difficult to avoid presenting issues in an orthographic context.

Second, it suggests that there is a "correct" vowel to use in "cot", and a "correct" vowel to use in "caught", and that people in the merged dialects have merged those two vowels. I'm not quite clear on what the "unmerged" vowels are supposed to be. "Cot" in some dialects sounds halfway between "cot" and "cat" to me. "Caught" in some dialects sounds a bit like "coat", in other dialects it has a different vowel.

Third, the issue of just what is "merged" is rather ambiguous. I pronounce the words the same, so presumably I am considered "merged", but the idea that I can't tell the difference between how I say "caught" and how other people say it is absurd. Of course I can tell the difference between /ɔ/ to /ɑ/. So it's not so much that I've "merged" the two vowels, but rather that one of them I don't use.

A question on "talk": in the stereotypical New York accent, is the vowel /ɔ/ ? Because to me, the weird thing about New Yorkers is that they have a vowel that isn't in my dialect. For people in other dialects, is this a perfectly normal vowel, just in the "wrong" word?

The IPA symbols come out as boxes for me, so I'm not 100 percent sure which vowels you said you could distinguish, but if you said /A/ and /O/ then I can understand that, but can you distinguish between /A/ and /Q/? I find it hard to hear the differnece between the two.

Another Guest: The conventions may be less than ideal, but this is the way that we talk about phonemic mergers.

<<But isn't "cot-caught merger" an even worse term? I see three interrelated problems. First, it presents the merger in orthographic terms, and of course there are no dialects in which the two words are orthographically merged. Granted, when discussing the merger in writing, it's difficult to avoid presenting issues in an orthographic context.>>

A term like "cot-caught merger" is a phonological term to be used in phonological contexts. It's basically a shorthand for "a merger of the words cot and caught", or more precisely "a merger of the vowel phonemes found in cot and caught".

<<Second, it suggests that there is a "correct" vowel to use in "cot", and a "correct" vowel to use in "caught", and that people in the merged dialects have merged those two vowels.>>

No it doesn't. By "merger", it's merely saying that there is now one phoneme where in the past there was more than one. Nearly all English dialects have, for example, the pane-pain merger ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_diphthongs#Pane-pain_merger ), and no one is trying to suggest that "pane" and "pain" should correctly be pronounced with different vowels.

<<Third, the issue of just what is "merged" is rather ambiguous. I pronounce the words the same, so presumably I am considered "merged", but the idea that I can't tell the difference between how I say "caught" and how other people say it is absurd. Of course I can tell the difference between /ɔ/ to /ɑ/. So it's not so much that I've "merged" the two vowels, but rather that one of them I don't use.>>

No one's suggesting that you can't tell the difference. You are merged because you use one vowel phoneme where in the past there were two; your abilities to produce or recognize different sounds are irrelevant. Again, things like splits and mergers are basic phonological concepts, and I think the existing terminology serves its purpose adequately.

My only further note would be that JC Wells has created a list of standard lexical sets, denoted by a representative word in all caps ( http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/Classes/Winter96/Dialects/dialects/node30.html ), which can enable us to speak about phonemic splits and mergers in a less haphazard way. Thus, rather than "father-bother merger" or "cot-caught merger", you could optionally call them the PALM-LOT merger and the LOT-THOUGHT merger.

<<A question on "talk": in the stereotypical New York accent, is the vowel /ɔ/ ? Because to me, the weird thing about New Yorkers is that they have a vowel that isn't in my dialect. For people in other dialects, is this a perfectly normal vowel, just in the "wrong" word?>>

Yes, in a New York accent, the vowel in "caught" is tenser than what's found in unmerged GA. Unmerged GA tends to use something like [ɒ:], an open back rounded vowel; whereas NY tends to use something like [ɔ:], a mid back rounded vowel; or [ɔə], a diphthong of comparable height, or in the most extreme (and stereotypical) versions, a very tense diphthong [ʊə].

The mid central rounded vowel is quite similar in quality to the rhotic vowel that GA speakers use in words like "force" (minus the rhotic component of course). It's also similar in quality to the "caught" vowel that's found in modern RP and other British dialects.