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/wa/ -> /wO/ or /wQ/
A lot of words spelled 'wa' or 'wha' have /Q/ or /O/ depending on the dialect. I assume they come from Middle English /wa/, but when did the change happen? Did it occur in all accents? There is also some variability in its application; for example 'water' can be /wAt@`/, /wQt@`/, or /wOt@`/. What do you all have for each of these words:
water what watch swap wasp wash
The fundamental sound shift that occurred historically during the new Early New English period is [wa] -> [wQ] (or [wa] -> [wO], depending on whether one presumes [O] -> [Q] to have occurred by this point). Later on, this [wQ] became [wO:] before /r/. Finally, [wQ] did not necessarily consistently get influenced by the father-bother merger in North American English dialects, as many did not shift it to [wA] but rather to [wO:] instead (and this [wO:] later became [wQ] again in many dialects). Also, some cases of [Q], such as in "what" or "of", became [V] rather than [A] in many if not most NAE dialects across the board.
That said, what I have is: water ["wQ4R=:] what ["wV?] watch ["wQtS] swap ["swQp] or sometimes ["swAp] (possibly under GA influence) wasp ["wQsp] or sometimes ["wAsp] (possible under GA influence) wash ["wQS]
Well, they all have the same vowel for me except for "what", which is /wVt/.
Let me preface this by saying that in the class of words including "what, was, from, of, somebody, everybody, nobody, anybody", I use [V].
In all your other examples, I use [Q:]: water ["wQ:4@`] watch ["wQ:tS[ swap ["swQ:p] wash ["wQ:S] watch ["wQ:tS] So presumably, all of these words had either /Q/, or /O:/ in the case of "wall" and "water", when the cot-caught merger occurred here in Massachusetts. In my speech, the only instance of [wA:] is in the word "suave" ["swA:v], along with names like "Guatemala" [%gwA:4@"mA:l@], "Juan" ["wA:n], "Benoit" [bE"nwA:], "Swahili" [swA:"hi:li]. Anything else, like "want", "Wallace", or "Washington", will have [Q:].
they are all [A] for me, just like all [Al], Paul [pAl] or hot dog [hAt dAg]...
>>In my speech, the only instance of [wA:] is in the word "suave" ["swA:v], along with names like "Guatemala" [%gwA:4@"mA:l@], "Juan" ["wA:n], "Benoit" [bE"nwA:], "Swahili" [swA:"hi:li].<<
Words like these cause some problems for the analysis of the phonology of my dialect, as they generally alternate between [a] and [A] but never have [Q] (except "Guatemala", which rather alternates between [A] and [Q]), while then I have words like "swap", "wasp", and "Guatemala" which alternate between [A] and [Q] but never have [a], while then I have words like "water", "watch", and "wash" which always have [Q]. For the purposes of phonemic analysis, it seems almost as if my dialect has a three-way phonemic distinction of /a/, /A/, and /Q/ which solely exists after /w/.
Just to illustrate...
sweat ["swE?] swam ["swE{~:m] suave ["swa:f] or ["swA:f] swan ["swA~:n] or ["swQ~:n] swatch ["swQtS] swore ["swO:R] Can we say low and low-mid vowel quality distinctions (yes, these are not proper minimal pairs, I know)?
They all have the LOT vowel for me except for "water" which has the THOUGHT vowel.
water ["wo:.t@] what [wOt] watch [wOtS] swap [swOp] wasp [wOsp] wash [wOS]
For the following words I have:
"water" - [wAt@r] "what" - [wA?] "watch" - [wAtS] "swap" - [swAp] "wasp" - [wAsp] "wash" - [wAS] "wad" - [wOd] "wallet" - [wO5It] "sweat" - [swE?] "swam" - [swam] "suave" - [swa:v] "swan" - [swOn] "swatch" - [swAtS] "swore" - [swor]
Some others:
"warrantee" [wO4@nti] "war" - [wOr\] "wore" - [wor\] "warp" - [wOr\p] "warm" - [wOr\m] "warn" - [wOr\n] "worn" - [wor\n] "wag" - [wag] "wax" - [w{ks] "wagon" - [w{g@n] "whack" - [W{k] "wharf" - [WOrf] "swat" - [swAt] "waffle" - [wAf5=] |