THOUGHT set

I have a couple questions related to the THOUGHT set:

1. It's my impression that most cot-caught unmerged Americans pronounce THOUGHT with a diphthong, something like [Q@]. Is this accurate? (Of course there are regional variations, like [U@] in New York and [AO] in the South).

2. Are there any accents that merge THOUGHT with GOAT? I expect it would have to have a monophthongal GOAT for this to occur; perhaps somewhere in Northern England.

3. Are there any varieties that preserve historic /l/ in THOUGHT words (talk, walk, etc.). I've heard of spelling pronunciations adding them, but I've never heard of them being preserved. Perhaps in some Scottish varieties?

4. I've read that some areas have a conditioned cot-caught merger. Where does this occur, and in what environments?

>>1. It's my impression that most cot-caught unmerged Americans pronounce THOUGHT with a diphthong, something like [Q@]. Is this accurate? (Of course there are regional variations, like [U@] in New York and [AO] in the South).<<

I generally associate diphthongal realizations of the COUGHT vowel in North American English with the South (I really do not know enough about English in New York to say about there. Here in the Midwest the COUGHT vowel is firmly monophthongal, being generally [Q] in practice or at the highest [O_o].

>>2. Are there any accents that merge THOUGHT with GOAT? I expect it would have to have a monophthongal GOAT for this to occur; perhaps somewhere in Northern England. <<

Not that I know of, even though perceptually I often confuse a high THOUGHT vowel with the GOAT vowel, due to my own THOUGHT vowel being quite low combined with me not contrasting monophthongal and diphthongal mid vowels phonemically (with the difference between [o:d] from /od/ and [o:Ud] from /old/ only being weakly salient for me in practice). Note that this crosses over into German, as I do not perceive a very strong difference quality-wise between Standard German [O] and [o:].

>>3. Are there any varieties that preserve historic /l/ in THOUGHT words (talk, walk, etc.). I've heard of spelling pronunciations adding them, but I've never heard of them being preserved. Perhaps in some Scottish varieties?<<

I know that these are preserved in Scots proper, so I would not be surprised if some Scottish English under very strong Scots influence had such.

>>
Not that I know of, even though perceptually I often confuse a high THOUGHT vowel with the GOAT vowel, due to my own THOUGHT vowel being quite low combined with me not contrasting monophthongal and diphthongal mid vowels phonemically (with the difference between [o:d] from /od/ and [o:Ud] from /old/ only being weakly salient for me in practice). Note that this crosses over into German, as I do not perceive a very strong difference quality-wise between Standard German [O] and [o:]. <<

Interesting. Here there is no confusion between the thought vowel and the goat vowel. When I speak German, I do not perceive a very strong difference between [O] and [a], rather than [O] and [o:].

<<1. It's my impression that most cot-caught unmerged Americans pronounce THOUGHT with a diphthong, something like [Q@]. Is this accurate? (Of course there are regional variations, like [U@] in New York and [AO] in the South).>>

No, I think diphthongal pronunciations are only used in the South and in strong New York accents. I think most c-c-unmerged Americans would pronounce "thought" with a monophthongal [Q] (or in some conservative varieties [O]).

I have a unique perspective on this: although I am technically cot-caught merged, my Massachusetts dialect nonetheless preserves distinct /A/ and /Q/ phonemes, which in all respects, except lexical distribution, are identical to the phonemes used by millions of c-c-unmerged Americans. In this respect you could group me along with the c-c-unmerged speakers as basically open-back unmerged, contrasting us with the open-back-merged speakers of Canada and the Western US.

That said, my own /Q/ phoneme is definitely monophthongal. It's realized as [Q:], which is simply a backed and rounded version of my /A/ phoneme, [A:].

<<Are there any accents that merge THOUGHT with GOAT? I expect it would have to have a monophthongal GOAT for this to occur; perhaps somewhere in Northern England.>>

I actually doubt that a thought-goat merger would occur in Northern England, because from what I've read, Northern English accents compensate for their monophthongal /o/ by using an opener value for /O/. Even in Scottish English, which uses a monophthongal /o/ and merges a lot of vowel sets that are distinct everywhere else, they still distinguish "thought" (with [o]) and "goat" (with an open [O] or [Q]).

Nonetheless, I think there may be some Caribbean accents that merge "thought" and "goat". Unfortunately I can't locate the source, but I remember JC Wells wrote somewhere about going to an Anglophone Caribbean island and seeing a sign that mentioned "porker games".

Sorry, a silly error on my part:

<Even in Scottish English, which uses a monophthongal /o/ and merges a lot of vowel sets that are distinct everywhere else, they still distinguish "goat" (with [o]) and "thought" (with an open [O] or [Q]).>

<<Nonetheless, I think there may be some Caribbean accents that merge "thought" and "goat". Unfortunately I can't locate the source, but I remember JC Wells wrote somewhere about going to an Anglophone Caribbean island and seeing a sign that mentioned "porker games".>>

I expect 'porker' would fall under the FORCE set, like 'pork'. This would have to do with a FORCE-GOAT merger, which is pretty common in the Carribean. That reminds me of another question: are there any accents that merge THOUGHT with FORCE but not NORTH?