US distribution map for 'caught' vs 'cot'
Bob Cunningham
At <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading2>
there's a map showing the US distribution of speakers who distinguish
in varying degrees between the pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'.
It divides the speakers into three categories: 'distinct', 'close',
and 'same'.
A map at <http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4/Map_1a.GIF>
appears to be the same map, but with isoglosses dividing the country
into regions where one or the other pronunciation is predominant.
Interesting to see, they refer to the vowels in the two pronunciations
as 'short' and 'long open', for which they use the notation /o/ and
/oh/, respectively. They don't say which is which, but from the
schematic illustration of the Northern cities vowel shift on the same
page (at
<http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading4>), it
appears that they would equate /o/ with ASCII IPA /A/ and /oh/ with
ASCII IPA /O/.
It appears that all of the data was produced by a program called
'Telsur', which is a trunconym for 'telephone survey'. The page makes
interesting reading. It includes, among other things, a discussion
and a distribution map of the merger of /I/ and /E/ before 'm' and
'n'.
(You probably won't find 'trunconym' in your dictionary; I just
invented it. It may have been invented before, but I don't find any
occurrences at Deja or Google. A trunconym is similar to an acronym,
except that it's made up entirely of truncated words rather than
initial letters or a combination of initial letters and truncated
words. A trunconym is a pronounceable word.)
Richard Fontana
>
> At <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading2>
> there's a map showing the US distribution of speakers who distinguish
> in varying degrees between the pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'.
> It divides the speakers into three categories: 'distinct', 'close',
> and 'same'.
>
> A map at <http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4/Map_1a.GIF>
> appears to be the same map, but with isoglosses dividing the country
> into regions where one or the other pronunciation is predominant.
>
> Interesting to see, they refer to the vowels in the two pronunciations
> as 'short' and 'long open', for which they use the notation /o/ and
> /oh/, respectively. They don't say which is which, but from the
> schematic illustration of the Northern cities vowel shift on the same
> page (at
> <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading4>), it
> appears that they would equate /o/ with ASCII IPA /A/ and /oh/ with
> ASCII IPA /O/.
I'm not sure you can make this close an equation, for reasons which you
pointed out to me several months ago when I brought something up about
this scheme. A good test here is how they treat the New England
"cot" vowel; I think Aaron Dinkin will confirm that it's never really [O]
but is more like [A.] or somewhat rounded [A]. I think they use /o/ even
for the vowel that has shifted in the Northern Cities, which in reality is
something like [a].
RF
Bob Cunningham
Please look at
<http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading4>, the
schematic illustration of the vowel shift. The vowels are all in
about the places you'd expect to find them on the IPA vowels chart.
Top is close, bottom is open, left is front, right is back. The vowel
they represent by /oh/ is just above the vowel /o/, their vowel in
'cod'. This is the position of /O/ in the IPA vowel chart. The
position of their /o/ corresponds approximately to the position of /A/
in the IPA vowel chart.
Note also that in the text, they say '/oh/ in 'cawed' moves down to
the position formerly occupied by cod'. On the vowel chart you go
down to get from /O/ to /A/. You don't go down to get from /A./ to
/A/. They're both fully open; the only difference between them is
that /A./ is rounded and /A/ is not.
Their word 'cad', for which they indicate the pronunciation /ae/, is
in the position of /a/ in the IPA vowel chart. For all I know,
they're using /ae/ to represent a merged /&/ and /a/.
Another thing that convinces me that their /oh/ is ASCII IPA /O/ is
that in Figure 3 they represent the pronunciation of 'cord' with
/ohr/. Now that I look at that figure, though, I see they have /ahr/
in 'card'. This suggests that their /ah/ is ASCII IPA /A/ and /o/ is
ASCII IPA /A./. This would mean that the two vowels they contrast in
'caught' and 'cot' are /O/ and /A./, respectively.
It would be nice to find a table showing the definitions of the
symbols they use, either defining them in articulatory terms or
showing the equivalencies between their notation and IPA. I would
hope to find such a table in one of William Labov's books. I haven't
found one on the Web. I found a CV for William Labov, complete with
e-mail address. I'm not able to get back to it right now because the
Web seems to be snarled up somehow.
Coming back to where you said:
>I think they use /o/ even
>for the vowel that has shifted in the Northern Cities, which in reality is
>something like [a].
I find your reference to 'the vowel that has shifted' quite puzzling.
Their diagram in Figure 1 shows that *seven* vowels have shifted,
making a clockwise rotation on the vowel chart.
Mike Oliver
>
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Bob Cunningham wrote:
> > At <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading2>
> > there's a map showing the US distribution of speakers who distinguish
> > in varying degrees between the pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'.
> > It divides the speakers into three categories: 'distinct', 'close',
> > and 'same'.
This is fascinating! I had been surprised to read Richard's tirades
against the "Western" merger of "cot" and "caught", given that
I've lived almost my whole life West of the Rockies, and I pronounce
the words quite distinctly.
Now on the map, I find the four places I've lived -- Albuquerque,
Denver, SF Bay Area, and Los Angeles -- are all little islands
where the words are distinguished, surrounded by seas where
they aren't! What were the odds?
Richard Fontana
Yes, I was reading something else recently which pointed out that the
cot/caught merger is not particularly well-established in the Los Angeles
and San Francisco metropolitan areas, at least in part because of
migration from other regions.
RF
Richard Fontana
[...]
> It would be nice to find a table showing the definitions of the
> symbols they use, either defining them in articulatory terms or
> showing the equivalencies between their notation and IPA. I would
> hope to find such a table in one of William Labov's books. I haven't
> found one on the Web. I found a CV for William Labov, complete with
> e-mail address. I'm not able to get back to it right now because the
> Web seems to be snarled up somehow.
In a bookstore not long ago I browsed through a book of his on vowel
shifts, and I think it contained a detailed explanation of this notation,
but I'm not sure. I was too cheap to buy the book, but of course it
looked quite fascinating.
> Coming back to where you said:
>
> >I think they use /o/ even
> >for the vowel that has shifted in the Northern Cities, which in reality is
> >something like [a].
>
> I find your reference to 'the vowel that has shifted' quite puzzling.
> Their diagram in Figure 1 shows that *seven* vowels have shifted,
> making a clockwise rotation on the vowel chart.
Right, it's a cyclical, systematic shifting of all the short vowels. What
I meant was that I think he continues to describe the shifted "cot" vowel
with the /o/ symbol, even though it's shifted. I think he uses language
like "/o/ has shifted to the space formerly occupied by /ae/"; something
like that. /ae/ shifts to the space occupied by /i@/, or whatever his
notation is for that sound (/I@/). Thus he points out that in the Northern
Cities /o/ and /oh/ have not merged (the "cot" and "caught" vowels
respectively). Indeed, part of his underlying thesis seems to be that
vowel shifts occur to alleviate "vowel crowding"; I interpret this to mean
that the need to preserve a distinction like cot/caught is part of what
causes a vowel chain shift.
Also, he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/, as I recall (this is all
from memory, I haven't looked at his web page in a while). The AUE FAQ
also speaks of "merger" of, say, /A/ and /A./ or /A./ and /O/, but I'm not
sure what this means. If, as you've stated, the "caught" vowel is
ordinarily /O/, and Western US speakers have merged "cot" and "caught",
that might seem to suggest that they just don't hear any difference
between /kAt/ and /kOt/. I don't think this is so (though I note that I
have trouble hearing the difference between /kAt/ and /kA.t/. But anyway,
if he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/, that doesn't seem to indicate
that /o/ and /oh/ stand for very fixed phonetic vowel sounds.
RF
Benjamin Krefetz
> At <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading2>
> there's a map showing the US distribution of speakers who distinguish
> in varying degrees between the pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'.
> It divides the speakers into three categories: 'distinct', 'close',
> and 'same'.
> A map at <http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4/Map_1a.GIF>
> appears to be the same map, but with isoglosses dividing the country
> into regions where one or the other pronunciation is predominant.
>
> Interesting to see, they refer to the vowels in the two pronunciations
> as 'short' and 'long open', for which they use the notation /o/ and
> /oh/, respectively. They don't say which is which, but from the
> schematic illustration of the Northern cities vowel shift on the same
> page (at
> <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading4>), it
> appears that they would equate /o/ with ASCII IPA /A/ and /oh/ with
> ASCII IPA /O/.
I would say (though given your earlier heated debate with Aaron, you probably
won't agree) that they're simply using /o/ to represent "short o", i.e., the
vowel in "cot", and /oh/ to represent "aw", i.e., the vowel in "caught". I
don't think they're working in absolutes here.
Ben
Bob Cunningham
<kre...@fas.harvard.edu> said:
(which they call 'long open o'.)
That doesn't disagree with what I said. Most people's vowel in 'cot'
is /A/, which I'm assuming the Telsur people are equating with /o/,
and all of the dictionaries have /O/ in 'caught', which the Telsur
people appear to be equating with /oh/. If neither of us says any
more, we're in complete agreement.
>I don't think they're working in absolutes here.
From looking at their various diagrams, I think they're using a vowel
chart that's essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart, and using
the IPA vowel chart is not working in absolutes, so again we're in
complete agreement.
The approximate one-to-one correspondence between their placement of
the vowels and that on the IPA chart is quite evident in their
illustration of the Southern vowel shift at
<http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4/Figure_3.GIF>. As I
remarked in a posting awhile ago, the assumption that their /oh/ is
ASCII IPA /O/ is strengthened by their representation of the
pronunciation of 'or' in 'cord' as /ohr/.
Benjamin Krefetz
> (which they call 'long open o'.)
> That doesn't disagree with what I said. Most people's vowel in 'cot'
> is /A/, which I'm assuming the Telsur people are equating with /o/,
> and all of the dictionaries have /O/ in 'caught', which the Telsur
> people appear to be equating with /oh/. If neither of us says any
> more, we're in complete agreement.
Problem with that analysis is, I don't know anyone from the US outside
metro-NYC who has /O/ in "caught", so I'd like to give them the benefit of the
doubt that they're not being blatantly inaccurate.
>>I don't think they're working in absolutes here.
> From looking at their various diagrams, I think they're using a vowel
> chart that's essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart, and using
> the IPA vowel chart is not working in absolutes, so again we're in
> complete agreement.
Huh? How is the IPA vowel chart not in absolutes? If I articulate a vowel,
it is theoretically possible to determine which IPA vowel it is closest to. It
is not possible to determine whether the vowel is, for example, close to my
short o without knowing my pronunciation of "cot".
Ben
Bob Cunningham
<re...@columbia.edu> said:
>On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Bob Cunningham wrote:
[In a discussion of the vowel symbols used in an article by William
Labov at <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html>.]
>[...]
>> It would be nice to find a table showing the definitions of the
>> symbols they use, either defining them in articulatory terms or
>> showing the equivalencies between their notation and IPA. I would
>> hope to find such a table in one of William Labov's books. I haven't
>> found one on the Web. I found a CV for William Labov, complete with
>> e-mail address. I'm not able to get back to it right now because the
>> Web seems to be snarled up somehow.
>In a bookstore not long ago I browsed through a book of his on vowel
>shifts, and I think it contained a detailed explanation of this notation,
>but I'm not sure. I was too cheap to buy the book, but of course it
>looked quite fascinating.
Some day soon I will probably journey to a local university library,
which is only two or three miles away from here, to see if they have
some of Labov's books. I hope to find that in at least one of them he
has a table defining his symbols in articulatory terms.
I might buy one of his books, but I have little doubt that it would
tell me a great deal more about vowel shifts than I really want to
know.
>> Coming back to where you said:
>> >I think they use /o/ even
>> >for the vowel that has shifted in the Northern Cities, which in reality is
>> >something like [a].
>> I find your reference to 'the vowel that has shifted' quite puzzling.
>> Their diagram in Figure 1 shows that *seven* vowels have shifted,
>> making a clockwise rotation on the vowel chart.
>Right, it's a cyclical, systematic shifting of all the short vowels. What
>I meant was that I think he continues to describe the shifted "cot" vowel
>with the /o/ symbol, even though it's shifted.
In that last sentence lies the great, fundamental difference between
your interpretation and mine. I would be astonished to learn that he
does not continue to describe the unshifted sound with the same symbol
as before, and I would fully expect him to say that after a sound has
shifted he will represent it by a different symbol corresponding to
its new position.
>I think he uses language
>like "/o/ has shifted to the space formerly occupied by /ae/"; something
>like that.
Yes, he says things like that at the Web site I've mentioned. But I
feel certain that what he means is that some words previously
pronounced with /o/ are now pronounced with /ae/, while some words
that were previously pronounced with /ae/ are now pronounced with a
vowel that is represented by yet another symbol. It takes fewer words
and less effort to say that /o/ has shifted to /ae/'s former space,
but it can be quite misleading, if my interpretation is correct.
>/ae/ shifts to the space occupied by /i@/, or whatever his
>notation is for that sound (/I@/).
From looking at his examples I gather that he uses /ie/ to represent
the sound of ASCII IPA /i/ and /i/ to represent the sound of ASCII IPA
/I/. (It doesn't help much when he says that /ie/ stands for the
vowel in 'idea', since 'idea' contains at least three vowels (four,
counting the two in the diphthong of 'i'), but I think he must be
referring to the *stressed* vowel in 'idea'.)
Incidentally, I question the accuracy of your implication that all of
the vowels that have moved are 'short'. Although I dislike using the
terms 'short' and 'long' in the Thistlebottomian sense, I would say
that in that sense ASCII IPA /i/ (the vowel of 'feet') is long, and
ASCII IPA /I/ (the vowel of 'fit') is short, and they are both
involved in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.
>Thus he points out that in the Northern
>Cities /o/ and /oh/ have not merged (the "cot" and "caught" vowels
>respectively). Indeed, part of his underlying thesis seems to be that
>vowel shifts occur to alleviate "vowel crowding"; I interpret this to mean
>that the need to preserve a distinction like cot/caught is part of what
>causes a vowel chain shift.
But only part. As I understand vowel shifts, including the one that
reportedly screwed up English spelling in Caxton's time, all of the
vowels involved move in order to preserve former contrasts.
>Also, he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/, as I recall (this is all
>from memory, I haven't looked at his web page in a while). The AUE FAQ
>also speaks of "merger" of, say, /A/ and /A./ or /A./ and /O/, but I'm not
>sure what this means.
I feel quite certain that when he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/
he does *not* mean that sounds formerly represented using /o/ and /oh/
can now be represented using either of them, as you seem to be
assuming. He must mean something like:
Some words that were formerly pronounced with /oh/ are now
pronounced with /o/, and some words that were formerly
pronounced with /o/ are still pronounced with /o/.
When the AUE FAQ says that /A/ and /O/ have merged, it doesn't mean
that the two *symbols* have merged, it means that some words that were
formerly pronounced with /O/ are now pronounced with /A/, while some
words that were formerly pronounced with /A/ are still pronounced with
/A/.
>If, as you've stated, the "caught" vowel is
>ordinarily /O/, and Western US speakers have merged "cot" and "caught",
>that might seem to suggest that they just don't hear any difference
>between /kAt/ and /kOt/.
No, it can't mean that. It must mean that while some other US
speakers use different vowels in 'cot' and 'caught', Western speakers
use the same vowel in 'cot' and 'caught'. While other speakers
pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' /kAt/ and /kOt/, respectively, Western
speakers pronounce them both /kAt/. But from Labov's map we now know
that this generalization is too sweeping, although it applies very
well to my speech.
Actually, the statement 'Western speakers have merged "cot" and
"caught"' is quite misleading. It suggests that Western speakers
formerly pronounced words one way and now they pronounce them another
way. I think that any actual merger probably occurred in places like
Scotland -- or in places the Scots came from -- many generations
before I was born, and that from the time I first began to speak I
learned to pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' with the same vowel.
>I don't think this is so (though I note that I
>have trouble hearing the difference between /kAt/ and /kA.t/.
I have no trouble at all hearing the difference between /kAt/ and
/kA.t/ when the speaker is fully rounding his lips to pronounce /A./.
A difference between my *speech* and that of Markus Laker is that he
pronounces many words with /A./ that I pronounce with /A/, while he
pronounces many words with /A/ that I also pronounce with /A/, and I
have no trouble hearing which vowel he's using.
>But anyway,
>if he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/, that doesn't seem to indicate
>that /o/ and /oh/ stand for very fixed phonetic vowel sounds.
I understand now why you would say something like that, but as I've
explained I don't think it's true. I think his symbols probably stand
for vowel sounds that are as fixed as are the sounds corresponding to
symbols in IPA. It's the sounds that have moved, not the symbols.
It would be great if William Labov himself or one of his disciples
could be persuaded to comment on this question. It couldn't hurt to
send him e-mail asking for a clarification. I think the worst he
could do would be to ignore us.
It's possible that his symbols do move around to correspond to
different articulatory realizations, but I would be disappointed to
learn that they do. It would make his symbols seem worthless to me.
With some uneasiness I'm going to crosspost this to sci.lang. Often
when I poke a limb into sci.lang I pull back a bloody stump, but maybe
this time will be different. It would be quite helpful if someone
over there could provide a table of definitions of Labov's symbols in
articulatory terms, or could point to a specific place where such a
table can be found. I would also hope to evoke some statements of
informed opinion about the meaning of statements like '/oh/ has
moved'.
Bob Cunningham
said:
>I had been surprised to read Richard's tirades
>against the "Western" merger of "cot" and "caught"
I've read most of Richard's discussions of that subject, but I don't
remember any tirades against any aspect of it. Maybe I missed them
somehow.
Bob Cunningham
<re...@columbia.edu> said:
[ . . . ]
>Yes, I was reading something else recently which pointed out that the
>cot/caught merger is not particularly well-established in the Los Angeles
>and San Francisco metropolitan areas, at least in part because of
>migration from other regions.
A few score years ago it used to seem quite remarkable to meet an
adult in California who had actually been born here. They were
distinguished by the epithet 'native son' or 'native daughter'.
Nearly everyone was from some other state. Now all of those babies
who were born after World War II -- and their offspring -- are most of
the adults, and you don't hear much about native sons anymore.
Note: The word 'epithet' has different connotations. I didn't use it
in a deprecatory sense.
Peter T. Daniels
It would really be best if you read one of those books of Labov's you
have access to, and *then* come back with questions about what's not
clear.
One thing to remember is that [phonetic symbols] are supposed to not
change their denotation, but /phonemic symbols/ can have different
phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
And I think the cot/caught merger is in fact pretty recent (not going
back to ancestral Scots or something like that) -- if Nixon (born in
Southern California in 1913) had the merger, we'd have noticed it in his
speech. (I can't offhand think of other celebrities we *know* were
native Californians of that generation.)
And people who stay put's regional dialects generally don't change over
time; so when the Linguistic Atlas research was done in the 1930s and
they sought out octo- and nonagenarians, they were recording speech
patters from well before the Civil War. Similarly, when the DARE
fieldwork was done in the 1960s, they were gathering turn-of-the-century
information (but they questioned younger people as well).
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Mike Oliver
The "tirade" I was thinking of was really against spelling reform
(which I also think is a silly idea). Richard seemed most upset
at the idea of "cot" and "caught" being spelled the same, and
alleged that the notion was "Western imperialism". Smiley
assumed.
Coby (Jacob) Lubliner
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>And I think the cot/caught merger is in fact pretty recent (not going
>back to ancestral Scots or something like that) -- if Nixon (born in
>Southern California in 1913) had the merger, we'd have noticed it in his
>speech. (I can't offhand think of other celebrities we *know* were
>native Californians of that generation.)
I heard Henry Cowell (who was my composition teacher at Columbia in
the 50s), John Steinbeck and Earl Warren speak. None of them "had
the merger."
Coby
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>It would really be best if you read one of those books of Labov's you
>have access to, and *then* come back with questions about what's not
>clear.
It would really be best if before responding to a posting you would
read the posting carefully, and *then* see what remarks you want to
make about it.
I didn't say I had access to any of Labov's books. I did mention the
possibility of going to a university library sometime to see if I
could find one. I have no assurance that there would be one in their
catalog, or that it would not be checked out.
>One thing to remember is that [phonetic symbols] are supposed to not
>change their denotation, but /phonemic symbols/ can have different
>phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
>And I think the cot/caught merger is in fact pretty recent (not going
>back to ancestral Scots or something like that)
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the speech patterns of the
Western United States can be attributed to, among other things, the
large number of Scottish and Irish immigrants who settled there.
> -- if Nixon (born in
>Southern California in 1913) had the merger, we'd have noticed it in his
>speech. (I can't offhand think of other celebrities we *know* were
>native Californians of that generation.)
I would have been much more likely to notice if Nixon did not
pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' alike than if he pronounced them alike.
When I hear someone pronounce 'caught' with a different vowel from
that of 'cot', I assume that they are from somewhere east of the
Rockies.
>And people who stay put's regional dialects generally don't change over
>time; so when the Linguistic Atlas research was done in the 1930s and
>they sought out octo- and nonagenarians, they were recording speech
>patters from well before the Civil War.
So, the speech patters [sic] indicated that the non-distinction
between 'cot' and 'caught' spread over half the country well before
the Civil War, as shown by Labov's map?
>Similarly, when the DARE
>fieldwork was done in the 1960s, they were gathering turn-of-the-century
>information (but they questioned younger people as well).
DARE has a map (page lxi) showing 'the general area where the
distinction between /O/ and /A/ is not maintained, that is, where
_cot_ and _caught_ sound alike'. With no other evidence than that
map, one would infer that Nixon would probably have pronounced 'cot'
and 'caught' alike.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 13:00:47 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>
> >It would really be best if you read one of those books of Labov's you
> >have access to, and *then* come back with questions about what's not
> >clear.
>
> It would really be best if before responding to a posting you would
> read the posting carefully, and *then* see what remarks you want to
> make about it.
What I was responding to was:
> > >In a bookstore not long ago I browsed through a book of his on vowel
> > >shifts, and I think it contained a detailed explanation of this notation,
> > >but I'm not sure. I was too cheap to buy the book, but of course it
> > >looked quite fascinating.
> >
> > Some day soon I will probably journey to a local university library,
> > which is only two or three miles away from here, to see if they have
> > some of Labov's books. I hope to find that in at least one of them he
> > has a table defining his symbols in articulatory terms.
> >
> > I might buy one of his books, but I have little doubt that it would
> > tell me a great deal more about vowel shifts than I really want to
> > know.
That makes it pretty clear that you know how to acquire books, whether
by borrowing or purchase.
It also makes it look like you're going out of your way to be
disagreeable and/or start another fight.
Maybe I should simply not bother ever trying to answer your questions.
> I didn't say I had access to any of Labov's books. I did mention the
> possibility of going to a university library sometime to see if I
> could find one. I have no assurance that there would be one in their
> catalog, or that it would not be checked out.
>
> >One thing to remember is that [phonetic symbols] are supposed to not
> >change their denotation, but /phonemic symbols/ can have different
> >phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
>
> >And I think the cot/caught merger is in fact pretty recent (not going
> >back to ancestral Scots or something like that)
>
> I seem to remember reading somewhere that the speech patterns of the
> Western United States can be attributed to, among other things, the
> large number of Scottish and Irish immigrants who settled there.
But how many of those Scots and Irish immigrants came directly from the
Old Country to the West? Since they'd have had to round Cape Horn,
probably very, very few. The US was settled pretty gradually from the
east (and McDavid published maps of who started from where and ended up
where).
> > -- if Nixon (born in
> >Southern California in 1913) had the merger, we'd have noticed it in his
> >speech. (I can't offhand think of other celebrities we *know* were
> >native Californians of that generation.)
>
> I would have been much more likely to notice if Nixon did not
> pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' alike than if he pronounced them alike.
> When I hear someone pronounce 'caught' with a different vowel from
> that of 'cot', I assume that they are from somewhere east of the
> Rockies.
That is correct.
> >And people who stay put's regional dialects generally don't change over
> >time; so when the Linguistic Atlas research was done in the 1930s and
> >they sought out octo- and nonagenarians, they were recording speech
> >patters from well before the Civil War.
>
> So, the speech patters [sic] indicated that the non-distinction
> between 'cot' and 'caught' spread over half the country well before
> the Civil War, as shown by Labov's map?
No; they indicate that it's a fairly recent innovation spreading from
the Southwest, probably California. I don't think the LA people worked
much west of the Mississippi; some of the North Central material is
available, I think including the Dakotas.
> >Similarly, when the DARE
> >fieldwork was done in the 1960s, they were gathering turn-of-the-century
> >information (but they questioned younger people as well).
>
> DARE has a map (page lxi) showing 'the general area where the
> distinction between /O/ and /A/ is not maintained, that is, where
> _cot_ and _caught_ sound alike'. With no other evidence than that
> map, one would infer that Nixon would probably have pronounced 'cot'
> and 'caught' alike.
Certainly enough recordings exist. We're not, of course, talking about
those two specific lexical items; if anyone has one of those "Great
Speeches" CDs that were a big item for Christmas 1998, you could check
the Checkers Speech for how he says "good Republican CLOTH coat." In my
mind's ear, it's not /klaT/.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> In article <3958A5...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Southern California in 1913) had the merger, we'd have noticed it in his
> >speech. (I can't offhand think of other celebrities we *know* were
> >native Californians of that generation.)
>
> the 50s), John Steinbeck and Earl Warren speak. None of them "had
> the merger."
Didn't we just recently do each of them's centennial? So they're almost
a generation older than RMN -- so much the better!
Richard Fontana
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2000 17:48:56 -0700, Mike Oliver <oli...@math.ucla.edu>
> said:
>
> >I had been surprised to read Richard's tirades
> >against the "Western" merger of "cot" and "caught"
>
> I've read most of Richard's discussions of that subject, but I don't
> remember any tirades against any aspect of it. Maybe I missed them
> somehow.
Sometimes I semi-facetiously lament the loss of vowel diversity in
American speech. Still, "tirade" seems like too strong a word to describe
this.
RF
benlizross
>
> Actually, the statement 'Western speakers have merged "cot" and
> "caught"' is quite misleading. It suggests that Western speakers
> formerly pronounced words one way and now they pronounce them another
> way. I think that any actual merger probably occurred in places like
> Scotland -- or in places the Scots came from -- many generations
> before I was born, and that from the time I first began to speak I
> learned to pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' with the same vowel.
Me too (but in Canada). In fact I was not even aware of the existence of
such a contrast until I started to study linguistics, where it was
mentioned in all the introductory textbooks. This does not speak highly
of my innate linguistic sensitivity, but I think it's evidence of how
ordinary people may perceive (or fail to perceive) such things.
An important point is that terms such as "merger", "shift", "loss"
"spelling pronunciation" are often used without distinguishing between
speakers who have actually made/are making such a change in their own
speech, and those who have simply inherited the results of such a change
which may have happened generations before. As it turns out, in the
present discussion, some people have been assuming that the cot/caught
merger is quite recent, but we don't have any clear evidence of this so
far. I'm quite sure that the merger is complete in my parents' speech
(born ca. First World War), but I don't remember how my grandparents
sounded that clearly. When you get back that far, it can be hard to find
clear statements about "phonemic contrast".
Ross Clark
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>Bob Cunningham wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 13:00:47 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> >It would really be best if you read one of those books of Labov's you
>> >have access to, and *then* come back with questions about what's not
>> >clear.
>> It would really be best if before responding to a posting you would
>> read the posting carefully, and *then* see what remarks you want to
>> make about it.
>What I was responding to was:
>> > [Richard Fontana said:]
>> > >In a bookstore not long ago I browsed through a book of his on vowel
>> > >shifts, and I think it contained a detailed explanation of this notation,
>> > >but I'm not sure. I was too cheap to buy the book, but of course it
>> > >looked quite fascinating.
>> > [Bob Cunningham said:]
>> > Some day soon I will probably journey to a local university library,
>> > which is only two or three miles away from here, to see if they have
>> > some of Labov's books. I hope to find that in at least one of them he
>> > has a table defining his symbols in articulatory terms.
Since writing that, it has occurred to me to look on the Web for the
local university's catalog. I find that they have one there, and they
don't list Labov's _Principles of Linguistic Change_, which I would
guess is the most likely to have the table of his phonetic symbols
that I would like to see. The Los Angeles Public Library also has an
on-line catalog, and they don't have that book either.
>> > I might buy one of his books, but I have little doubt that it would
>> > tell me a great deal more about vowel shifts than I really want to
>> > know.
>That makes it pretty clear that you know how to acquire books, whether
>by borrowing or purchase.
I also know how to give courteous answers to courteous inquiries in
Usenet. I wouldn't think I was responding courteously if I suggested
that someone go out and pay $34.95 for a book to find information that
I could give them with little effort, if I knew it. And if I didn't
have the information, I would consider it courteous to either say so
or to maintain silence.
>It also makes it look like you're going out of your way to be
>disagreeable and/or start another fight.
No. I made a courteous inquiry. You responded by superciliously
suggesting that I should read a book before bothering sci.lang. If
anyone wanted to start a fight, it was you.
>Maybe I should simply not bother ever trying to answer your questions.
Please note that no one has answered my basic question, which was
'Does anyone know of a place on the Web where I can see a table of
Labov's symbols that relates them to articulatory descriptions or to
the equivalent IPA symbols? Or can anyone tell me which of Labov's
books contains such a table?' Or words to that effect.
One easy, concise answer to that, which may have been appropriate in
your case, would have been 'I don't know.'
>> I didn't say I had access to any of Labov's books. I did mention the
>> possibility of going to a university library sometime to see if I
>> could find one. I have no assurance that there would be one in their
>> catalog, or that it would not be checked out.
>> >One thing to remember is that [phonetic symbols] are supposed to not
>> >change their denotation, but /phonemic symbols/ can have different
>> >phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
If you are saying that a phoneme that today represents all of the
allophones that are clustered around a region of the IPA vowel chart
corresponding to a given IPA symbol, and that sometime in the future
that same phoneme will represent the allophones that are clustered
around a region corresponding to a different IPA symbol, I find that
hard to believe. In fact, I don't want to believe it. It sounds too
much like chaos.
>> >And I think the cot/caught merger is in fact pretty recent (not going
>> >back to ancestral Scots or something like that)
>> I seem to remember reading somewhere that the speech patterns of the
>> Western United States can be attributed to, among other things, the
>> large number of Scottish and Irish immigrants who settled there.
>But how many of those Scots and Irish immigrants came directly from the
>Old Country to the West?
I can only say for sure how my Scottish ancestors did it. My
great-great-grandfather and his numerous adult offspring sailed to New
York and immediately headed for Utah, first by train and then with one
of Brigham Young's handcart groups. My grandfather was born in
Wyoming in 1861 during that trip.
>Since they'd have had to round Cape Horn,
>probably very, very few. The US was settled pretty gradually from the
>east (and McDavid published maps of who started from where and ended up
>where).
>> > -- if Nixon (born in
>> >Southern California in 1913) had the merger, we'd have noticed it in his
>> >speech. (I can't offhand think of other celebrities we *know* were
>> >native Californians of that generation.)
>> I would have been much more likely to notice if Nixon did not
>> pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' alike than if he pronounced them alike.
>> When I hear someone pronounce 'caught' with a different vowel from
>> that of 'cot', I assume that they are from somewhere east of the
>> Rockies.
>That is correct.
It's a good first cut, but as Labov's map shows, they could also be
from Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay area, or other scattered parts of
the West. Also, if someone pronounces 'cot' and 'caught' the same
it's not a good assumption that they are from west of the Rockies.
According to Labov's map they could be from Maine, Vermont, New
Hampshire, or from any of several states in a tier extending from New
York to Colorado.
>> >And people who stay put's regional dialects generally don't change over
>> >time; so when the Linguistic Atlas research was done in the 1930s and
>> >they sought out octo- and nonagenarians, they were recording speech
>> >patters from well before the Civil War.
>> So, the speech patters [sic] indicated that the non-distinction
>> between 'cot' and 'caught' spread over half the country well before
>> the Civil War, as shown by Labov's map?
>No; they indicate that it's a fairly recent innovation spreading from
>the Southwest, probably California.
I doubt strongly that that is true, but I suppose your guess is as
good as mine. Until I have evidence to the contrary, I will continue
to assume that the identical pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught' came
with immigrants from parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland to the
east coast of the U.S. and spread west from there, fanning out north
and south as it spread west. Note that the DARE map shows the merged
pronunciations starting at the Atlantic shore.
It seems completely unreasonable to me to suggest that pronunciations
might spread *from* California to other parts of the country. Why
would they? I hope no one will bring up the influence of the
entertainment industry. The actors and actresses in the entertainment
industry in Los Angeles are from all parts of the country, and some
are from other countries.
>I don't think the LA people worked much west of the Mississippi;
I suspect you meant to say *east* of the Mississippi. Nearly everyone
in LA works west of the Mississippi. Unless by 'LA' you mean
Louisiana. ... Oh, you probably mean 'Linguistic Atlas'. I don't know
anything about a Linguistic Atlas, but Labov's map shows that his
_Phonological Atlas of North America_ covers the entire United States.
>some of the North Central material is
>available, I think including the Dakotas.
>> >Similarly, when the DARE
>> >fieldwork was done in the 1960s, they were gathering turn-of-the-century
>> >information (but they questioned younger people as well).
>> DARE has a map (page lxi) showing 'the general area where the
>> distinction between /O/ and /A/ is not maintained, that is, where
>> _cot_ and _caught_ sound alike'. With no other evidence than that
>> map, one would infer that Nixon would probably have pronounced 'cot'
>> and 'caught' alike.
>Certainly enough recordings exist. We're not, of course, talking about
>those two specific lexical items; if anyone has one of those "Great
>Speeches" CDs that were a big item for Christmas 1998, you could check
>the Checkers Speech for how he says "good Republican CLOTH coat." In my
>mind's ear, it's not /klaT/.
That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
Pronunciation in that category doesn't vary much. You'd need to find
words in the 'caught' category, like 'saw', which dictionaries say are
pronounced with [O], the half open, back, rounded vowel, while people
in a substantial portion of the country pronounce them with [A], the
open, back, unrounded vowel. So far as I know, the merger has been
from [O] to [A].
Coming back to where you said:
>Maybe I should simply not bother ever trying to answer your questions.
If you can't offer better answers than you have this time, I would
prefer that you not respond to any of my postings.
Thanks, anyway.
Keith Calvert Ivey
>That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
>'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
Since you merge the two phonemes, it's understandable that you
find it difficult to tell whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for
those of us who don't, but you could check a dictionary.
"Cloth" (like "broth" and "moth") has the vowel of "caught",
not "cot".
--
Keith C. Ivey <kci...@cpcug.org>
Washington, DC
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
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Bob Cunningham
Ivey) said:
>Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>>That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
>>'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
>Since you merge the two phonemes, it's understandable that you
>find it difficult to tell whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for
>those of us who don't, but you could check a dictionary.
>"Cloth" (like "broth" and "moth") has the vowel of "caught",
>not "cot".
My statement was based on what I found in a dictionary.
Unfortunately, it was a British dictionary, _The New Shorter Oxford_.
It shows 'cot' and 'cloth' pronounced [kA.t] and [klA.T], while
'caught' is [kO:t].
I see now that the _Collegiate_ has [kAt] for 'cot' [klOT] for
'cloth', and either [kOt] or [kAt] for 'caught'.
So you're right about 'cloth', but you're wrong in assuming that I
would have difficulty telling whether a word was being pronounced with
[A] or [O]. I might have that difficulty if I didn't regularly hear
and pronounce [O] in words like 'sport', 'order', and 'orange'.
My mistake regarding American 'cloth' was based upon assuming that it
would have the same vowel as 'cot', as it does in the UK dictionary.
It was not based upon hearing 'cloth' pronounced.
Anyway, this is a minor side issue. It doesn't affect my point that
the merger has consisted of words with [O] shifting to [A] while words
with [A] stayed with [A].
Bob Cunningham
Ivey) said:
>Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>>That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
>>'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
>Since you merge the two phonemes, it's understandable that you
>find it difficult to tell whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for
>those of us who don't, but you could check a dictionary.
>"Cloth" (like "broth" and "moth") has the vowel of "caught",
>not "cot".
I've discussed Keith's comment and acknowledged my error in another
posting. I'd now like to add for AUE readers that a poster posting to
sci.lang only and apparently posting from Ohio has stated:
[In my speech <cloth>] goes with <cot>; both have [A], as
against [O:] in <caught>.
Bob Cunningham
said:
[ . . . ]
>An important point is that terms such as "merger", "shift", "loss"
>"spelling pronunciation" are often used without distinguishing between
>speakers who have actually made/are making such a change in their own
>speech, and those who have simply inherited the results of such a change
>which may have happened generations before. As it turns out, in the
>present discussion, some people have been assuming that the cot/caught
>merger is quite recent, but we don't have any clear evidence of this so
>far.
How true.
>I'm quite sure that the merger is complete in my parents' speech
>(born ca. First World War), but I don't remember how my grandparents
>sounded that clearly. When you get back that far, it can be hard to find
>clear statements about "phonemic contrast".
Can anyone come up with examples of old Scottish or Irish poetry in
which a word in the 'cot' category is rhymed with a word in the
'caught' category?
Are there any books available containing Scottish or Irish poetry from
earlier centuries?
Do modern speakers of Scottish and Irish English distinguish the
pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'?
Brian M. Scott
<spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
[...]
>Do modern speakers of Scottish and Irish English distinguish the
>pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'?
According to April McMahon in _Understanding Language Change_ (Ch. 3),
vowel length is not contrastive in either Scottish Standard English or
the Scots dialects; in particular, they merge RP [O:] (e.g., in
<bought>) and [A.] (e.g., in <bomb>) as [O]. It's not clear from her
brief discussion how old this merger is, however.
Brian M. Scott
R J Valentine
In alt.usage.english Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
...
] If you can't offer better answers than you have this time, I would
] prefer that you not respond to any of my postings.
That goes without saying.
What was the question again? No, wait; I've got it here. The answer is:
I don't know.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@clark.net>
benlizross
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 05:27:51 GMT, Bob Cunningham
> <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'?
>
> According to April McMahon in _Understanding Language Change_ (Ch. 3),
> vowel length is not contrastive in either Scottish Standard English or
> the Scots dialects; in particular, they merge RP [O:] (e.g., in
> <bought>) and [A.] (e.g., in <bomb>) as [O]. It's not clear from her
> brief discussion how old this merger is, however.
>
> Brian M. Scott
Well, we're getting somewhere. I looked at Trudgill & Hanna's
"International English", a handy reference for things of this kind.
According to them, the merger is recent and ongoing in the western US,
but is older and essentially complete in (i) eastern New England; (ii)
southwestern Pennsylvania-eastern Ohio; (iii) general Canadian. (I hope
I've got that right from memory.) But I forgot to check on Irish and
Scots varieties.
Ross Clark
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 21:39:48 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>
> >Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
> >> On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 13:00:47 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> <gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>
> >> >It would really be best if you read one of those books of Labov's you
> >> >have access to, and *then* come back with questions about what's not
> >> >clear.
>
> >> It would really be best if before responding to a posting you would
> >> read the posting carefully, and *then* see what remarks you want to
> >> make about it.
>
> >What I was responding to was:
>
> >> > [Richard Fontana said:]
As was perfectly clear from the number of arrowheads in front of it ...
It's very, very obvious that his particular assortment of symbols is not
the only thing you don't understand about his work or his findings. If
you will read and understand one of his books, you will appear far less
foolish on your occasional forays into sci.lang. (I don't have any
interest in how foolish you look at a.u.e.)
> >It also makes it look like you're going out of your way to be
> >disagreeable and/or start another fight.
>
> No. I made a courteous inquiry. You responded by superciliously
> suggesting that I should read a book before bothering sci.lang. If
> anyone wanted to start a fight, it was you.
>
> >Maybe I should simply not bother ever trying to answer your questions.
>
> Please note that no one has answered my basic question, which was
> 'Does anyone know of a place on the Web where I can see a table of
> Labov's symbols that relates them to articulatory descriptions or to
> the equivalent IPA symbols? Or can anyone tell me which of Labov's
> books contains such a table?' Or words to that effect.
>
> One easy, concise answer to that, which may have been appropriate in
> your case, would have been 'I don't know.'
What's the point of making an extra posting to say "I am posting this to
say I cannot respond to the posting to which I am responding?" Did you
try looking at the introductory page(s) of the website showing the maps?
> >> I didn't say I had access to any of Labov's books. I did mention the
> >> possibility of going to a university library sometime to see if I
> >> could find one. I have no assurance that there would be one in their
> >> catalog, or that it would not be checked out.
>
> >> >One thing to remember is that [phonetic symbols] are supposed to not
> >> >change their denotation, but /phonemic symbols/ can have different
> >> >phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
>
> If you are saying that a phoneme that today represents all of the
> allophones that are clustered around a region of the IPA vowel chart
> corresponding to a given IPA symbol, and that sometime in the future
> that same phoneme will represent the allophones that are clustered
> around a region corresponding to a different IPA symbol, I find that
> hard to believe. In fact, I don't want to believe it. It sounds too
> much like chaos.
I don't know how you could get that from what I said. Are you familiar
with the Great English Vowel Shift? By and large the English phonemic
system was the same after it as before it, but the sound of the language
changed considerably.
> >> >And I think the cot/caught merger is in fact pretty recent (not going
> >> >back to ancestral Scots or something like that)
>
> >> I seem to remember reading somewhere that the speech patterns of the
> >> Western United States can be attributed to, among other things, the
> >> large number of Scottish and Irish immigrants who settled there.
>
> >But how many of those Scots and Irish immigrants came directly from the
> >Old Country to the West?
>
> I can only say for sure how my Scottish ancestors did it. My
> great-great-grandfather and his numerous adult offspring sailed to New
> York and immediately headed for Utah, first by train and then with one
> of Brigham Young's handcart groups. My grandfather was born in
> Wyoming in 1861 during that trip.
You provide further information contributing to my generally unfavorable
view of Mormons.
Your particular ancestors were extremely exceptional. Perhaps some eager
missionary recruited a whole boatload of Scottish proto-Mormons, but one
boatload does not a regional dialect make, especially when they are part
of a sizeable population.
> >Since they'd have had to round Cape Horn,
> >probably very, very few. The US was settled pretty gradually from the
> >east (and McDavid published maps of who started from where and ended up
> >where).
>
> >> > -- if Nixon (born in
> >> >Southern California in 1913) had the merger, we'd have noticed it in his
> >> >speech. (I can't offhand think of other celebrities we *know* were
> >> >native Californians of that generation.)
>
> >> I would have been much more likely to notice if Nixon did not
> >> pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' alike than if he pronounced them alike.
> >> When I hear someone pronounce 'caught' with a different vowel from
> >> that of 'cot', I assume that they are from somewhere east of the
> >> Rockies.
>
> >That is correct.
>
> It's a good first cut, but as Labov's map shows, they could also be
> from Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay area, or other scattered parts of
> the West. Also, if someone pronounces 'cot' and 'caught' the same
> it's not a good assumption that they are from west of the Rockies.
> According to Labov's map they could be from Maine, Vermont, New
> Hampshire, or from any of several states in a tier extending from New
> York to Colorado.
That's *now*. That doesn't say *anything* about where the change(s)
originated and whence it/they spread.
> >> >And people who stay put's regional dialects generally don't change over
> >> >time; so when the Linguistic Atlas research was done in the 1930s and
> >> >they sought out octo- and nonagenarians, they were recording speech
> >> >patters from well before the Civil War.
>
> >> So, the speech patters [sic] indicated that the non-distinction
> >> between 'cot' and 'caught' spread over half the country well before
> >> the Civil War, as shown by Labov's map?
>
> >No; they indicate that it's a fairly recent innovation spreading from
> >the Southwest, probably California.
>
> I doubt strongly that that is true, but I suppose your guess is as
> good as mine. Until I have evidence to the contrary, I will continue
Why? What's your guess based on? Whereas mine isn't a guess (I have not
consulted what data may be available), it's what dialectologists tell
me.
> to assume that the identical pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught' came
> with immigrants from parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland to the
> east coast of the U.S. and spread west from there, fanning out north
> and south as it spread west. Note that the DARE map shows the merged
> pronunciations starting at the Atlantic shore.
No, the DARE maps are strictly synchronic.
> It seems completely unreasonable to me to suggest that pronunciations
> might spread *from* California to other parts of the country. Why
> would they? I hope no one will bring up the influence of the
> entertainment industry. The actors and actresses in the entertainment
> industry in Los Angeles are from all parts of the country, and some
> are from other countries.
Are you not aware that "Uptalk" has spread from California?
> >I don't think the LA people worked much west of the Mississippi;
>
> I suspect you meant to say *east* of the Mississippi. Nearly everyone
> in LA works west of the Mississippi. Unless by 'LA' you mean
> Louisiana. ... Oh, you probably mean 'Linguistic Atlas'. I don't know
> anything about a Linguistic Atlas, but Labov's map shows that his
> _Phonological Atlas of North America_ covers the entire United States.
Its research was done in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
(Once you managed to figure out what "LA" meant in this context, if
you'd deleted the speculations you'd have looked somewhat less foolish.)
> >some of the North Central material is
> >available, I think including the Dakotas.
>
> >> >Similarly, when the DARE
> >> >fieldwork was done in the 1960s, they were gathering turn-of-the-century
> >> >information (but they questioned younger people as well).
>
> >> DARE has a map (page lxi) showing 'the general area where the
> >> distinction between /O/ and /A/ is not maintained, that is, where
> >> _cot_ and _caught_ sound alike'. With no other evidence than that
> >> map, one would infer that Nixon would probably have pronounced 'cot'
> >> and 'caught' alike.
>
> >Certainly enough recordings exist. We're not, of course, talking about
> >those two specific lexical items; if anyone has one of those "Great
> >Speeches" CDs that were a big item for Christmas 1998, you could check
> >the Checkers Speech for how he says "good Republican CLOTH coat." In my
> >mind's ear, it's not /klaT/.
>
> That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
> 'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
Several people have already pointed out you don't know your ass from
your elbow.
> Pronunciation in that category doesn't vary much. You'd need to find
> words in the 'caught' category, like 'saw', which dictionaries say are
> pronounced with [O], the half open, back, rounded vowel, while people
> in a substantial portion of the country pronounce them with [A], the
> open, back, unrounded vowel. So far as I know, the merger has been
> from [O] to [A].
Speakers with the merged system use /a/ for both vowels.
> Coming back to where you said:
>
> >Maybe I should simply not bother ever trying to answer your questions.
>
> If you can't offer better answers than you have this time, I would
> prefer that you not respond to any of my postings.
If you can't be bothered to *learn* something in the (happily, many)
months between your appearances at sci.lang, then clearly responding to
you serves no purpose at all.
J. W. Love
<<According to them, the merger is recent and ongoing in the western US, but is
Ohio>>
Whoa! My father grew up east of Cleveland, smack-dab in the middle of the
easternmost third of Ohio, and he didn't participate in this merger. Was he an
exception? or did you (and/or Trudgill & Hanna) mean _south_eastern Ohio?
Cheers. Jacob.
Non omni tempore sensus adest.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>You provide further information contributing to my generally unfavorable
>view of Mormons.
So now we know that Peter T. Daniels, in addition to being a rude pain
in the ass, is also a bigot.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> >I don't think the LA people worked much west of the Mississippi;
>> I suspect you meant to say *east* of the Mississippi. Nearly everyone
>> in LA works west of the Mississippi. Unless by 'LA' you mean
>> Louisiana. ... Oh, you probably mean 'Linguistic Atlas'. I don't know
>> anything about a Linguistic Atlas, but Labov's map shows that his
>> _Phonological Atlas of North America_ covers the entire United States.
>Its research was done in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
>(Once you managed to figure out what "LA" meant in this context, if
>you'd deleted the speculations you'd have looked somewhat less foolish.)
It was my way of mocking your sloppy use of an abbreviation without
knowing whether or not your readership would understand it.
If you had a sense of humor, you would have understood that you were
being mocked.
Richard Fontana
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 09:20:26 +1200, benlizross <benl...@ihug.co.nz>
> said:
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> >An important point is that terms such as "merger", "shift", "loss"
> >"spelling pronunciation" are often used without distinguishing between
> >speakers who have actually made/are making such a change in their own
> >speech, and those who have simply inherited the results of such a change
> >which may have happened generations before. As it turns out, in the
> >present discussion, some people have been assuming that the cot/caught
> >merger is quite recent, but we don't have any clear evidence of this so
> >far.
>
> How true.
>
> >I'm quite sure that the merger is complete in my parents' speech
> >(born ca. First World War), but I don't remember how my grandparents
> >sounded that clearly. When you get back that far, it can be hard to find
> >clear statements about "phonemic contrast".
The contention that cot==caught began recently in the Southwest and spread
from there seems difficult to accept when you consider that the merger is
also well-established throughout Canada.
RF
Bob Cunningham
Then please refrain from responding again. If I come again to
sci.lang with a simple, courteous question, I hope that I will be met
with an equally courteous response from someone who is either willing
to take a few moments to give me an answer or is sensible enough to
say nothing.
You chose to meet my courteous posting with character assassination,
hyperbole, and bigotry, and you made no effort to answer my question.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> I also know how to give courteous answers to courteous inquiries in
>> Usenet. I wouldn't think I was responding courteously if I suggested
>> that someone go out and pay $34.95 for a book to find information that
>> I could give them with little effort, if I knew it. And if I didn't
>> have the information, I would consider it courteous to either say so
>> or to maintain silence.
>It's very, very obvious that his particular assortment of symbols is not
>the only thing you don't understand about his work or his findings. If
>you will read and understand one of his books, you will appear far less
>foolish on your occasional forays into sci.lang. (I don't have any
>interest in how foolish you look at a.u.e.)
You also don't seem to have any interest in how rude and uncivilized
you look in both newsgroups.
Note that I didn't express any wish to receive comments about my
posting beyond my desire to see a chart showing the relationship of
his symbols to those of the International Phonetic Association (IPA),
or to articulatory descriptions that parallel those of the IPA.
Note also that I have no great desire to become more knowledgeable
about Labov's work or his findings. I only want to understand better
what he means by his symbols so that I can respond to remarks in AUE
by people who I think are misinterpreting those symbols. If it turns
out that I'm the one who is misinterpreting them, then I will be able
to accept that graciously.
Richard Fontana
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
> > Pronunciation in that category doesn't vary much. You'd need to find
> > words in the 'caught' category, like 'saw', which dictionaries say are
> > pronounced with [O], the half open, back, rounded vowel, while people
> > in a substantial portion of the country pronounce them with [A], the
> > open, back, unrounded vowel. So far as I know, the merger has been
> > from [O] to [A].
>
> Speakers with the merged system use /a/ for both vowels.
Is /a/ used for any reason other than notational convenience?
Bob Cunningham pronounces "cot" and "caught" alike; the vowel he uses
seems to be [A]. Other speakers from the western US
seem to be using a vowel that is midway between [a] and [A], like the
vowel I use for the "cot" class. In eastern New England, however, speakers
who merge "cot" and "caught" are using a vowel like [A.] or [A] with some
lip-rounding. Would we say that those New England speakers use /a/?
These speakers have a distinct vowel, realized as [a], heard in "father",
"cart"; if /a/ is used for their cot/caught vowel, we'd need a different
phonemic symbol for their father/cart vowel.
RF
Richard Fontana
In contemporary Cleveland I think "cot" and "caught" are distinct, as
Cleveland is one of the cities in which the Northern Cities Shift is
well-established. The part of Ohio where the merger is very old is the
region closest to Pittsburgh, I believe.
RF
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> One easy, concise answer to that, which may have been appropriate in
>> your case, would have been 'I don't know.'
>What's the point of making an extra posting to say "I am posting this to
>say I cannot respond to the posting to which I am responding?"
The proper course would have been to refrain from responding at all
unless you were prepared to answer the question. But since you chose
to eschew that sensible approach, your rational choices -- within the
limits of civil discourse -- became to answer the question or to say
'I don't know'.
You did neither. You chose to be uncivil.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>Did you
>try looking at the introductory page(s) of the website showing the maps?
Yes. Did you?
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> >What I was responding to was:
>> >> > [Richard Fontana said:]
>As was perfectly clear from the number of arrowheads in front of it ...
As you become more familiar with Usenet you will come to know that
people are easily confused by quoted remarks in spite of obvious clues
provided by the 'arrowheads'. The confusion becomes more likely when
sloppy posters like you fail to provide attributions with their
quotations. From long experience I was aware that some people would
think I had said what Richard Fontana said. To guard against that
possibility, I restored the attributions.
Bob Cunningham
Gross exaggeration. A poster from Ohio has told us that his 'cloth'
is in the 'cot' category.
Not enough other posters have commented to justify your half-assed,
irresponsible use of 'several'. In fact, I've just reviewed the 28
postings that have appeared in this thread, and I find only one that
says that 'cloth' and 'cot' are not in the same category.
Also only one American posted that 'cloth' and 'cot' are in the same
category in his speech.
This one-to-one standoff clearly makes you look like an idiot for
using the word 'several'.
Please don't respond. I've had enough of your irresponsible blather.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
[ . . . ]
>> >> >One thing to remember is that [phonetic symbols] are supposed to not
>> >> >change their denotation, but /phonemic symbols/ can have different
>> >> >phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
[Bob Cunningham said:]
>> If you are saying that a phoneme that today represents all of the
>> allophones that are clustered around a region of the IPA vowel chart
>> corresponding to a given IPA symbol, and that sometime in the future
>> that same phoneme will represent the allophones that are clustered
>> around a region corresponding to a different IPA symbol, I find that
>> hard to believe. In fact, I don't want to believe it. It sounds too
>> much like chaos.
>I don't know how you could get that from what I said.
Note that I preceded my remark with 'If you are saying'. I allowed
for the possibility that you were not saying what it seemed you were
saying.
What you said was:
>> >> > [...] /phonemic symbols/ can have different
>> >> >phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
As I read it yet again, the most probable interpretation still seems
to be that you are saying a phonemic symbol can change to acquire the
phonetic content that a different phonemic symbol previously had, and
that it will do this without the symbol itself changing. That is what
I hope is not true.
But please don't tell me whether or not you think it's true. Given
your belligerent, supercilious attitude, and your careless handling of
fact, I have little interest in what you think about anything.
If someone else wants to state an informed, temperately worded opinion
on the subject, I will welcome it and appreciate it.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> >But how many of those Scots and Irish immigrants came directly from the
>> >Old Country to the West?
>> I can only say for sure how my Scottish ancestors did it. My
>> great-great-grandfather and his numerous adult offspring sailed to New
>> York and immediately headed for Utah, first by train and then with one
>> of Brigham Young's handcart groups. My grandfather was born in
>> Wyoming in 1861 during that trip.
[Shamefully bigoted remark omitted]
>Your particular ancestors were extremely exceptional.
I'm mildly curious to know what statistics you have to support that
statement, but please don't tell me. My impression is that many
boatloads of immigrants arrived in New York and soon after headed west
to do things like work on the railroad or look for gold in California.
But I don't have any head counts, either.
Anyway, among the adults, any delay in heading west probably wouldn't
have had much influence on their vowel sounds. I know some people who
came to Southern California from Boston thirty or forty years ago, and
they still talk like the Bostonians I associated with in Boston in the
early 1940s.
I'm saying these things in the hope that other readers will find them
worth reading. I have no desire to see a response to them by Mr Peter
T. Daniels.
Crossing to another AUE thread, I ask AUE readers to note my use of
'Mr' (without the dot, in accordance with the punctuation system that
I prefer). This is an example of the use of 'Mr' to maximize distance
from the person concerned and at the same time to express possible
contempt and loathing.
By the way, I realize that many readers would prefer not to see the
exchanges of flames that have taken place in this thread. Any reader
who wants to complain is requested to take your complaint to Mr Peter
T Daniels, who chose to try to turn a simple, courteous request for
information into a flame war.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> Note that the DARE map shows the merged
>> pronunciations starting at the Atlantic shore.
>No, the DARE maps are strictly synchronic.
It should have been obvious to Mr Peter T Daniels that I would know
that the DARE maps are synchronic. If he were a reasonable person, he
would have followed that realization by choosing the correct
interpretation of my remark from two possible interpretations.
But given his churlish, mean-spirited disposition, he may have
understood what I meant and still affected to interpret it
differently.
Bob Cunningham
said:
[ . . . ]
>I looked at Trudgill & Hanna's
>"International English", a handy reference for things of this kind.
>According to them, the merger is recent and ongoing in the western US,
>but is older and essentially complete in (i) eastern New England;
Note that this appears to be an impressive counterargument to Mr Peter
T Daniels' assertion that the merger started in California and spread
east from there.
Bob Cunningham
>Summarizing comments in Trudgill & Hanna's _International English,_ Ross wrote:
><<According to them, the merger is recent and ongoing in the western US, but is
>older and essentially complete in . . . southwestern Pennsylvania-eastern
>Ohio>>
>Whoa! My father grew up east of Cleveland, smack-dab in the middle of the
>easternmost third of Ohio, and he didn't participate in this merger. Was he an
>exception? or did you (and/or Trudgill & Hanna) mean _south_eastern Ohio?
William Labov's map at
<http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html> shows that they
found about an equal number of people with and without the merger in
the northeastern part of Ohio.
They show no samples strictly in the middle of the eastern part of
Ohio, but there are some with the merger directly across the border in
Pennsylvania.
But their sample size was quite small, apparently representing only
about 500 people in the entire United States.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 22:07:02 +1200, benlizross <benl...@ihug.co.nz>
> said:
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> >I looked at Trudgill & Hanna's
> >"International English", a handy reference for things of this kind.
>
> Note that this appears to be an impressive counterargument to Mr Peter
> T Daniels' assertion that the merger started in California and spread
> east from there.
Looks to me like a description of two separate and unrelated processes.
You'd never mistake a "Down East" (Maine) accent for a West Coast one;
the Maine vowel system is far more different from General American than
the West Coast one is.
I wonder if ten separate replies from one person to a single posting is
a record ... I'm about to start wading through them (dated 10:28 am
through 1:01 pm).
Peter T. Daniels
> sci.lang with a simple, courteous question, I hope that I will be met
> with an equally courteous response from someone who is either willing
> to take a few moments to give me an answer or is sensible enough to
> say nothing.
>
> You chose to meet my courteous posting with character assassination,
> hyperbole, and bigotry, and you made no effort to answer my question.
I ignored the question to which I had no answer and did not insult until
provoked. As always.
Bob Cunningham
<kre...@fas.harvard.edu> said:
>So Bob Cunningham was all like:
>> (which they call 'long open o'.)
>> That doesn't disagree with what I said. Most people's vowel in 'cot'
>> is /A/, which I'm assuming the Telsur people are equating with /o/,
>> and all of the dictionaries have /O/ in 'caught', which the Telsur
>> people appear to be equating with /oh/. If neither of us says any
>> more, we're in complete agreement.
>Problem with that analysis is, I don't know anyone from the US outside
>metro-NYC who has /O/ in "caught", so I'd like to give them the benefit of the
>doubt that they're not being blatantly inaccurate.
>>>I don't think they're working in absolutes here.
>> From looking at their various diagrams, I think they're using a vowel
>> chart that's essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart, and using
>> the IPA vowel chart is not working in absolutes, so again we're in
>> complete agreement.
>Huh? How is the IPA vowel chart not in absolutes? If I articulate a vowel,
>it is theoretically possible to determine which IPA vowel it is closest to. It
>is not possible to determine whether the vowel is, for example, close to my
>short o without knowing my pronunciation of "cot".
We're talking semantics here. By using the terms 'closest to' and
'close to' you're recognizing that no absolute point in the vowel
domain is referred to by a symbol.
My point was that I think the symbols used by Labov are probably
intended to be no more and no less absolute than are the IPA symbols.
I chose to interpret your meaning of 'absolute' to be the same as
mine. Apparently I may have been wrong in that interpretation.
Peter T. Daniels
> Note that I didn't express any wish to receive comments about my
> posting beyond my desire to see a chart showing the relationship of
> his symbols to those of the International Phonetic Association (IPA),
> or to articulatory descriptions that parallel those of the IPA.
>
> Note also that I have no great desire to become more knowledgeable
> about Labov's work or his findings. I only want to understand better
> what he means by his symbols so that I can respond to remarks in AUE
> by people who I think are misinterpreting those symbols. If it turns
> out that I'm the one who is misinterpreting them, then I will be able
> to accept that graciously.
Your initial posting was six screens long (about 200 lines). If you
didn't want answers to any of your other questions, why did you post
them?
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:33:59 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>
> >> One easy, concise answer to that, which may have been appropriate in
> >> your case, would have been 'I don't know.'
>
> >What's the point of making an extra posting to say "I am posting this to
> >say I cannot respond to the posting to which I am responding?"
>
> unless you were prepared to answer the question. But since you chose
> to eschew that sensible approach, your rational choices -- within the
> limits of civil discourse -- became to answer the question or to say
> 'I don't know'.
>
> You did neither. You chose to be uncivil.
I answered many of the other six screens' worth of questions.
Peter T. Daniels
> is in the 'cot' category.
>
> irresponsible use of 'several'. In fact, I've just reviewed the 28
> postings that have appeared in this thread, and I find only one that
> says that 'cloth' and 'cot' are not in the same category.
>
> Also only one American posted that 'cloth' and 'cot' are in the same
> category in his speech.
>
> This one-to-one standoff clearly makes you look like an idiot for
I don't know what postings *you* reviewed, but I saw at least three
pointing out that <cloth> is [O].
> Please don't respond. I've had enough of your irresponsible blather.
Then don't ask questions here.
Obviously, your commands have as much effect on me as mine do on you.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:33:59 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>
> >> >But how many of those Scots and Irish immigrants came directly from the
> >> >Old Country to the West?
>
> >> I can only say for sure how my Scottish ancestors did it. My
> >> great-great-grandfather and his numerous adult offspring sailed to New
> >> York and immediately headed for Utah, first by train and then with one
> >> of Brigham Young's handcart groups. My grandfather was born in
> >> Wyoming in 1861 during that trip.
>
If you're not ashamed of Orrin Hatch, Donnie and Marie Osmond, and
generations of racial exclusion from your priesthood, you should be. Not
to mention the Mormon theologian who posts wacky interpretations of
biblical passages to a relevant discussion list, which then turn out to
relate to obscure features of Mormon myth or ritual.
> >Your particular ancestors were extremely exceptional.
>
> I'm mildly curious to know what statistics you have to support that
> statement, but please don't tell me. My impression is that many
> boatloads of immigrants arrived in New York and soon after headed west
> to do things like work on the railroad or look for gold in California.
> But I don't have any head counts, either.
You really, really, really ought to learn *something* about dialectology
and the way languages change and spread. You clearly don't have enough
background to follow any discussion of the topic.
And that's what Labov has been studying for close to 40 years now.
$34.95 seems a small price to pay for the enormous amount of information
in his major book.
> Anyway, among the adults, any delay in heading west probably wouldn't
> have had much influence on their vowel sounds. I know some people who
> came to Southern California from Boston thirty or forty years ago, and
> they still talk like the Bostonians I associated with in Boston in the
> early 1940s.
>
> I'm saying these things in the hope that other readers will find them
> worth reading. I have no desire to see a response to them by Mr Peter
> T. Daniels.
>
> Crossing to another AUE thread, I ask AUE readers to note my use of
> 'Mr' (without the dot, in accordance with the punctuation system that
> I prefer). This is an example of the use of 'Mr' to maximize distance
> from the person concerned and at the same time to express possible
> contempt and loathing.
"Mr without the dot" is British usage and not American usage. It's also
a conventional form of respectful address, though in a newsgroup it does
appear rather formal.
> By the way, I realize that many readers would prefer not to see the
> exchanges of flames that have taken place in this thread. Any reader
> who wants to complain is requested to take your complaint to Mr Peter
> T Daniels, who chose to try to turn a simple, courteous request for
> information into a flame war.
Even those who omit a period after an abbreviation that ends with the
last letter of the abbreviated word do use a period after other
abbreviations, so "T" is incorrect in any stylebook.
And not a few people enjoy reading flame wars.
Apparently it's no longer possible to consult Deja Archives of
newsgroups; onlookers might have enjoyed checking out "Senile Bob"'s
previous appearances on sci.lang.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > Bob Cunningham wrote:
> >
> > > words in the 'caught' category, like 'saw', which dictionaries say are
> > > pronounced with [O], the half open, back, rounded vowel, while people
> > > in a substantial portion of the country pronounce them with [A], the
> > > open, back, unrounded vowel. So far as I know, the merger has been
> > > from [O] to [A].
> >
> > Speakers with the merged system use /a/ for both vowels.
>
> Bob Cunningham pronounces "cot" and "caught" alike; the vowel he uses
> seems to be [A]. Other speakers from the western US
> seem to be using a vowel that is midway between [a] and [A], like the
> vowel I use for the "cot" class. In eastern New England, however, speakers
> who merge "cot" and "caught" are using a vowel like [A.] or [A] with some
> lip-rounding. Would we say that those New England speakers use /a/?
> These speakers have a distinct vowel, realized as [a], heard in "father",
> "cart"; if /a/ is used for their cot/caught vowel, we'd need a different
> phonemic symbol for their father/cart vowel.
The assignment of letters in a phonemic system is fairly arbitrary.
Since the symbol <a> is generally used for non-rounded vowels, it's a
reasonable choice for a phoneme where it's rounding that's been
neutralized away. Also, it's easier to type than open o!
Perhaps the two vowels you refer to could be distinguished by a "length"
mark; it's also possible that Smith-Trager use /a/ for one and /o/ for
the other (since [o] apparently doesn't occur in American just about at
all).
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 09:20:26 +1200, benlizross <benl...@ihug.co.nz>
> > said:
> >
> > [ . . . ]
> >
> > >An important point is that terms such as "merger", "shift", "loss"
> > >"spelling pronunciation" are often used without distinguishing between
> > >speakers who have actually made/are making such a change in their own
> > >speech, and those who have simply inherited the results of such a change
> > >which may have happened generations before. As it turns out, in the
> > >present discussion, some people have been assuming that the cot/caught
> > >merger is quite recent, but we don't have any clear evidence of this so
> > >far.
> >
> > How true.
> >
> > >I'm quite sure that the merger is complete in my parents' speech
> > >(born ca. First World War), but I don't remember how my grandparents
> > >sounded that clearly. When you get back that far, it can be hard to find
> > >clear statements about "phonemic contrast".
>
> The contention that cot==caught began recently in the Southwest and spread
> from there seems difficult to accept when you consider that the merger is
> also well-established throughout Canada.
Do you know its history there? Seems much more likely to relate to the
New England merger than to the contemporary on-going one, what with all
those Tories who moved north in 1783 or so. Or even to the Scottish
settlers whom Bob invoked (anachronistically) to account for the
California one.
Brian M. Scott
<re...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> Bob Cunningham wrote:
>> > Pronunciation in that category doesn't vary much. You'd need to find
>> > words in the 'caught' category, like 'saw', which dictionaries say are
>> > pronounced with [O], the half open, back, rounded vowel, while people
>> > in a substantial portion of the country pronounce them with [A], the
>> > open, back, unrounded vowel. So far as I know, the merger has been
>> > from [O] to [A].
>> Speakers with the merged system use /a/ for both vowels.
>Is /a/ used for any reason other than notational convenience?
>Bob Cunningham pronounces "cot" and "caught" alike; the vowel he uses
>seems to be [A]. Other speakers from the western US
>seem to be using a vowel that is midway between [a] and [A], like the
>vowel I use for the "cot" class. In eastern New England, however, speakers
>who merge "cot" and "caught" are using a vowel like [A.] or [A] with some
>lip-rounding. Would we say that those New England speakers use /a/?
>These speakers have a distinct vowel, realized as [a], heard in "father",
>"cart"; if /a/ is used for their cot/caught vowel, we'd need a different
>phonemic symbol for their father/cart vowel.
I suspect that Peter would notate it /ah/, the /h/ being (more or
less) length.
Brian M. Scott
Holoholona
says...
>
>Bob Cunningham wrote:
>> [Shamefully bigoted remark omitted]
>
>If you're not ashamed of Orrin Hatch, Donnie and Marie Osmond, and
>generations of racial exclusion from your priesthood, you should be. Not
>to mention the Mormon theologian who posts wacky interpretations of
>biblical passages to a relevant discussion list, which then turn out to
>relate to obscure features of Mormon myth or ritual.
Reluctant though I am to enter this pissing contest:
There are no religions without controversial figures, practices or beliefs.
That includes Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc.
Please keep your opinions of other's religions to yourself. I've enjoyed
sci.lang for a number of years, and Peter, your postings in particular. I
would hate to see this forum awash in negative diatrabs on the reletive merits
of Mormonism or other off-topic topics such as gender inclusion in various
clergies, conservative politics, or say, homosexuality.
Everyone who protests a form of bigotry practices another form themselves.
Let's not get into inspecting each other's clay feet.
thanks,
Holoholona
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>I ignored the question to which I had no answer and did not insult until
>provoked. As always.
If you knew that you had no answer, why did you respond?
The record will clearly show who provoked first.
Bob Cunningham
>Bob Cunningham wrote:
As I've discussed in another posting, there were no other requests for
help in my long posting. Your apparent inability to grasp the meaning
of things you read seems to have led you to believe there were other
requests.
Note that your question starting with 'If you didn't want answers to
any of your other questions' directly follows quotations from me that
*you* inserted in your posting, in which I clearly showed that I
wasn't looking for answers to any questions other than ones that
directly related to what articulatory significance Labov attaches to
the symbols he uses.
How can you be so dense as to refer to other questions after quoting
me as saying I had no other questions. Do you ever make any effort at
all to understand what you're reading?
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>If you're not ashamed of Orrin Hatch, Donnie and Marie Osmond, and
>generations of racial exclusion from your priesthood, you should be.
Note that by using the expression 'your priesthood' Mr Peter T Daniels
reveals that he has made the unwarranted assumption that I am a
Mormon. As usual, he shoots from the lip with no supporting facts.
I won't say what my religious beliefs are, because this is not an
appropriate forum in which to discuss them, but since Mr Peter T
Daniels has raised the point, I will say that I don't claim to be a
Mormon. (Out of consideration for any Mormons who may be reading
this, I should add that I have a great deal of respect for the Mormons
I've known personally.)
How many people in the United States belong to the same church their
grandfather belonged to? That's a rhetorical question, so no answers
are expected.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>Bob Cunningham wrote:
>> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:33:59 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> >> One easy, concise answer to that, which may have been appropriate in
>> >> your case, would have been 'I don't know.'
>> >What's the point of making an extra posting to say "I am posting this to
>> >say I cannot respond to the posting to which I am responding?"
>> The proper course would have been to refrain from responding at all
>> unless you were prepared to answer the question. But since you chose
>> to eschew that sensible approach, your rational choices -- within the
>> limits of civil discourse -- became to answer the question or to say
>> 'I don't know'.
>> You did neither. You chose to be uncivil.
>I answered many of the other six screens' worth of questions.
You chose to find questions where there were none. My interest in the
entire discussion has had to do only with learning what Labov means by
the symbols he uses. The long posting you refer to consisted mostly
of assertions about what I believed -- and still believe -- to be
true.
I led off the long posting by saying:
[In a discussion of the vowel symbols used in an article by William
Labov at <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html>.]
This should have been enough to let anyone know that my main concern
was to obtain an understanding of William Labov's symbols.
My next statement in the long posting was:
>> It would be nice to find a table showing the definitions of the
>> symbols they use, either defining them in articulatory terms or
>> showing the equivalencies between their notation and IPA. I would
>> hope to find such a table in one of William Labov's books. I haven't
>> found one on the Web.
I summarized my only reasons for crossposting to sci.lang in the
closing paragraph:
| With some uneasiness I'm going to crosspost this to
| sci.lang. Often when I poke a limb into sci.lang I pull
| back a bloody stump, but maybe this time will be different.
(It wasn't.)
| It would be quite helpful if someone over there could provide
| a table of definitions of Labov's symbols in articulatory
| terms, or could point to a specific place where such a
| table can be found. I would also hope to evoke some
| statements of informed opinion about the meaning of
| statements like '/oh/ has moved'.
My only interest in the meaning of statements like '/oh/ has moved'
had to do with someone's impression that /oh/ was moving into the
domain previously occupied by another symbol, but it was still called
/oh/. Again, my interest in that question was no more than to find
out what Labov meant by /oh/ and whether or not he thought of it as
roaming around the vowel chart and assuming identities that previously
belonged to other phonemes. So this was still a question about what
meaning Labov attaches to his symbols.
I've just reread my long initial posting and confirmed that I neither
asked nor implied any other questions.
You've asked why I posted the entire article. I did so partly because
it was the easiest way to go, but I mentally justified doing so
because it might provide, for what it was worth, some background
material to help people understand why I wanted to know the meanings
of Labov's symbols.
Bob Cunningham
>Everyone who protests a form of bigotry practices another form themselves.
That's clearly not true. It's like saying that anyone who deplores
thievery is a thief himself, or anyone who protests immorality is
immoral himself.
If I deplore murder, am I a murderer?
It's clearly possible to protest any deplorable behavior without
engaging in that behavior.
R J Valentine
In alt.usage.english Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
Can protesting deplorable behavior be deplored?
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@clark.net>
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On 28 Jun 2000 19:30:52 GMT, holoh...@nowhere.com (Holoholona)
> said:
>
> >Everyone who protests a form of bigotry practices another form
> >themselves.
>
> That's clearly not true. It's like saying that anyone who deplores
> thievery is a thief himself, or anyone who protests immorality is
> immoral himself.
>
> If I deplore murder, am I a murderer?
>
> It's clearly possible to protest any deplorable behavior without
> engaging in that behavior.
Unless, of course, you what you deplore is protesting or expressing an
opinion.
Clearly, there are two types of thing that can be deplored--those for
which the protest of the thing is an instance of the thing and those
for which it is not. The question then arises: if you deplore the
second class, can you protest it without being guilty of it?
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Feeling good about government is like
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |looking on the bright side of any
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |catastrophe. When you quit looking
|on the bright side, the catastrophe
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |is still there.
(650)857-7572 | P.J. O'Rourke
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:05:35 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
Why did you say you had no other questions when your posting was full of
questions?
Brian M. Scott
<spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:33:59 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
><gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>>> That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
>>> 'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
>>Several people have already pointed out you don't know your ass from
>>your elbow.
>Gross exaggeration. A poster from Ohio has told us that his 'cloth'
>is in the 'cot' category.
But Peter already knows that my speech is not characteristic of any
American variety and in this respect is much closer to RP. And in
fact on further consideration I realize that I oversimplified: I have
[A] in <cot>, [A.] in <cloth>, and [O:] in <caught>. I don't at the
moment know whether the difference between the first two is phonemic
for me.
>Not enough other posters have commented to justify your half-assed,
>irresponsible use of 'several'. In fact, I've just reviewed the 28
>postings that have appeared in this thread, and I find only one that
>says that 'cloth' and 'cot' are not in the same category.
Make that three: Keith C. Ivey, Jacob Love, and Peter. And in one
sense you can add me: when I was young and still spoke my parents'
variety (Pacific NW), <cloth> went with <caught>, not with <cot>. For
what it's worth, AHD3 reports that <cloth> can go either way but gives
different vowels to -- only one each -- to <cot> and <caught>.
[...]
Brian M. Scott
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>> Crossing to another AUE thread, I ask AUE readers to note my use of
>> 'Mr' (without the dot, in accordance with the punctuation system that
>> I prefer). This is an example of the use of 'Mr' to maximize distance
>> from the person concerned and at the same time to express possible
>> contempt and loathing.
>"Mr without the dot" is British usage and not American usage.
And one version of British style is what I aspire to conform to. I
followed the idiotic rules of American punctuation during my working
years. After I retired and was freed of the dictates of copy editors,
I was happy to find that the British had a rational way to punctuate,
and I was glad to adopt it.
>It's also a conventional form of respectful address, though in a
>newsgroup it does appear rather formal.
A recent thread in AUE has brought out what some of us have long
known, that referring to people in Usenet in any way other than by
their first names can be intended and taken as an affront.
>> By the way, I realize that many readers would prefer not to see the
>> exchanges of flames that have taken place in this thread. Any reader
>> who wants to complain is requested to take your complaint to Mr Peter
>> T Daniels, who chose to try to turn a simple, courteous request for
>> information into a flame war.
>Even those who omit a period after an abbreviation that ends with the
>last letter of the abbreviated word do use a period after other
>abbreviations, so "T" is incorrect in any stylebook.
It's okay in my style. I greatly dislike the clutter produced by
unnecessary punctuation. That's one reason I prefer single quotes to
double. If a period can be omitted with no loss of clarity, I'm for
omitting it.
>And not a few people enjoy reading flame wars.
>Apparently it's no longer possible to consult Deja Archives of
>newsgroups; onlookers might have enjoyed checking out "Senile Bob"'s
>previous appearances on sci.lang.
To a person with Mr Peter T Daniels' despicable character, that must
have felt good.
I have archives of all AUE postings for the past four years or so.
Anything I posted to sci.lang was almost certainly crossposted from
AUE, so I should have it in my archives. If anyone would like to see
postings from my very few previous appearances in sci.lang, I'd be
happy and proud to provide copies.
I remember only one occasion that stirred up any of the sort of crap
I've received in this thread. It had to do with something I'd read in
one of Otto Jespersen's books about a theory that tried to explain the
great diversity of American Indian languages in the American
Northwest. I forget who in sci.lang proceeded to rudely lambaste me
for making an innocent and courteous comment about it, but now that I
better understand Mr Peter T Daniels' character, I wouldn't be
surprised if it was him.
If anyone can remember any other time I've had any significant amount
of involvement with sci.lang, I'd appreciate being reminded of it.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>Why did you say you had no other questions when your posting was full of
>questions?
Why do you still think it was when it wasn't?
Bob Cunningham
<ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> said:
>Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> writes:
>> On 28 Jun 2000 19:30:52 GMT, holoh...@nowhere.com (Holoholona)
>> said:
>> >Everyone who protests a form of bigotry practices another form
>> >themselves.
>> That's clearly not true. It's like saying that anyone who deplores
>> thievery is a thief himself, or anyone who protests immorality is
>> immoral himself.
>> If I deplore murder, am I a murderer?
>> It's clearly possible to protest any deplorable behavior without
>> engaging in that behavior.
>Unless, of course, you what you deplore is protesting or expressing an
>opinion.
Yeah, it occurred to me right after I pushed the send button that
someone would probably raise that point. I thought about canceling,
modifying, and reposting, but then I decided to let people have their
fun.
Bob Cunningham
Okay, Mr Peter T Daniels keeps imagining that there were a lot of
questions in my long posting that triggered his abusive behavior.
Let's go over it paragraph by paragraph and count the questions:
On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 09:06:47 GMT, Bob Cunningham
<spa...@alt-usage-english.org> said:
>On Mon, 26 Jun 2000 21:21:12 -0400, Richard Fontana
><re...@columbia.edu> said:
>
>>On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
>[In a discussion of the vowel symbols used in an article by William
>Labov at <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html>.]
>
>>[...]
>>> [First remark by BC:]
>>> It would be nice to find a table showing the definitions of the
>>> symbols they use, either defining them in articulatory terms or
>>> showing the equivalencies between their notation and IPA. I would
>>> hope to find such a table in one of William Labov's books. I haven't
>>> found one on the Web. I found a CV for William Labov, complete with
>>> e-mail address. I'm not able to get back to it right now because the
>>> Web seems to be snarled up somehow.
>>> [Number of questions in first remark: 0]
>>In a bookstore not long ago I browsed through a book of his on vowel
>>shifts, and I think it contained a detailed explanation of this notation,
>>but I'm not sure. I was too cheap to buy the book, but of course it
>>looked quite fascinating.
[Second remark by BC:]
>Some day soon I will probably journey to a local university library,
>which is only two or three miles away from here, to see if they have
>some of Labov's books. I hope to find that in at least one of them he
>has a table defining his symbols in articulatory terms.
[Number of questions in second remark: 0]
[Third remark by BC:]
>I might buy one of his books, but I have little doubt that it would
>tell me a great deal more about vowel shifts than I really want to
>know.
[Number of questions in third remark: 0]
>>> Coming back to where you said:
>>> >I think they use /o/ even
>>> >for the vowel that has shifted in the Northern Cities, which in reality is
>>> >something like [a].
[Fourth remark by BC:]
>>> I find your reference to 'the vowel that has shifted' quite puzzling.
>>> Their diagram in Figure 1 shows that *seven* vowels have shifted,
>>> making a clockwise rotation on the vowel chart.
[Number of questions in fourth remark: 0]
>>Right, it's a cyclical, systematic shifting of all the short vowels. What
>>I meant was that I think he continues to describe the shifted "cot" vowel
>>with the /o/ symbol, even though it's shifted.
[Fifth remark by BC:]
>In that last sentence lies the great, fundamental difference between
>your interpretation and mine. I would be astonished to learn that he
>does not continue to describe the unshifted sound with the same symbol
>as before, and I would fully expect him to say that after a sound has
>shifted he will represent it by a different symbol corresponding to
>its new position.
[Number of question in fifth remark: 0]
>>I think he uses language
>>like "/o/ has shifted to the space formerly occupied by /ae/"; something
>>like that.
[Sixth remark by BC:]
>Yes, he says things like that at the Web site I've mentioned. But I
>feel certain that what he means is that some words previously
>pronounced with /o/ are now pronounced with /ae/, while some words
>that were previously pronounced with /ae/ are now pronounced with a
>vowel that is represented by yet another symbol. It takes fewer words
>and less effort to say that /o/ has shifted to /ae/'s former space,
>but it can be quite misleading, if my interpretation is correct.
[Number of questions in sixth remark: 0]
>>/ae/ shifts to the space occupied by /i@/, or whatever his
>>notation is for that sound (/I@/).
[Seventh remark by BC:]
>From looking at his examples I gather that he uses /ie/ to represent
>the sound of ASCII IPA /i/ and /i/ to represent the sound of ASCII IPA
>/I/. (It doesn't help much when he says that /ie/ stands for the
>vowel in 'idea', since 'idea' contains at least three vowels (four,
>counting the two in the diphthong of 'i'), but I think he must be
>referring to the *stressed* vowel in 'idea'.)
[Number of questions in seventh remark: 0]
[Eighth remark by BC:]
>Incidentally, I question the accuracy of your implication that all of
>the vowels that have moved are 'short'. Although I dislike using the
>terms 'short' and 'long' in the Thistlebottomian sense, I would say
>that in that sense ASCII IPA /i/ (the vowel of 'feet') is long, and
>ASCII IPA /I/ (the vowel of 'fit') is short, and they are both
>involved in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.
[Number of questions in eighth remark: 0]
>>Thus he points out that in the Northern
>>Cities /o/ and /oh/ have not merged (the "cot" and "caught" vowels
>>respectively). Indeed, part of his underlying thesis seems to be that
>>vowel shifts occur to alleviate "vowel crowding"; I interpret this to mean
>>that the need to preserve a distinction like cot/caught is part of what
>>causes a vowel chain shift.
[Ninth remark by BC:]
>But only part. As I understand vowel shifts, including the one that
>reportedly screwed up English spelling in Caxton's time, all of the
>vowels involved move in order to preserve former contrasts.
[Number of questions in ninth remark: 0]
>>Also, he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/, as I recall (this is all
>>from memory, I haven't looked at his web page in a while). The AUE FAQ
>>also speaks of "merger" of, say, /A/ and /A./ or /A./ and /O/, but I'm not
>>sure what this means.
[Tenth remark by BC:]
>I feel quite certain that when he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/
>he does *not* mean that sounds formerly represented using /o/ and /oh/
>can now be represented using either of them, as you seem to be
>assuming. He must mean something like:
>
> Some words that were formerly pronounced with /oh/ are now
> pronounced with /o/, and some words that were formerly
> pronounced with /o/ are still pronounced with /o/.
[Number of questions in tenth remark: 0]
[Eleventh remark by BC:]
>When the AUE FAQ says that /A/ and /O/ have merged, it doesn't mean
>that the two *symbols* have merged, it means that some words that were
>formerly pronounced with /O/ are now pronounced with /A/, while some
>words that were formerly pronounced with /A/ are still pronounced with
>/A/.
[Number of questions in eleventh remark: 0]
>>If, as you've stated, the "caught" vowel is
>>ordinarily /O/, and Western US speakers have merged "cot" and "caught",
>>that might seem to suggest that they just don't hear any difference
>>between /kAt/ and /kOt/.
[Twelfth remark by BC:]
>No, it can't mean that. It must mean that while some other US
>speakers use different vowels in 'cot' and 'caught', Western speakers
>use the same vowel in 'cot' and 'caught'. While other speakers
>pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' /kAt/ and /kOt/, respectively, Western
>speakers pronounce them both /kAt/. But from Labov's map we now know
>that this generalization is too sweeping, although it applies very
>well to my speech.
[Number of questions in twelfth remark: 0]
[Thirteenth remark by BC:]
>Actually, the statement 'Western speakers have merged "cot" and
>"caught"' is quite misleading. It suggests that Western speakers
>formerly pronounced words one way and now they pronounce them another
>way. I think that any actual merger probably occurred in places like
>Scotland -- or in places the Scots came from -- many generations
>before I was born, and that from the time I first began to speak I
>learned to pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' with the same vowel.
[Number of questions in thirteenth remark: 0]
>>I don't think this is so (though I note that I
>>have trouble hearing the difference between /kAt/ and /kA.t/.
[Fourteenth remark by BC:]
>I have no trouble at all hearing the difference between /kAt/ and
>/kA.t/ when the speaker is fully rounding his lips to pronounce /A./.
>A difference between my *speech* and that of Markus Laker is that he
>pronounces many words with /A./ that I pronounce with /A/, while he
>pronounces many words with /A/ that I also pronounce with /A/, and I
>have no trouble hearing which vowel he's using.
[Number of questions in fourteenth remark: 0]
>>But anyway,
>>if he speaks of the merger of /o/ and /oh/, that doesn't seem to indicate
>>that /o/ and /oh/ stand for very fixed phonetic vowel sounds.
[Fifteenth remark by BC:]
>I understand now why you would say something like that, but as I've
>explained I don't think it's true. I think his symbols probably stand
>for vowel sounds that are as fixed as are the sounds corresponding to
>symbols in IPA. It's the sounds that have moved, not the symbols.
[Number of questions in fifteenth remark: 0]
[Sixteenth remark by BC:]
>It would be great if William Labov himself or one of his disciples
>could be persuaded to comment on this question. It couldn't hurt to
>send him e-mail asking for a clarification. I think the worst he
>could do would be to ignore us.
[Number of questions in sixteenth remark: 0]
>It's possible that his symbols do move around to correspond to
>different articulatory realizations, but I would be disappointed to
>learn that they do. It would make his symbols seem worthless to me.
[Seventeenth remark by BC:]
>With some uneasiness I'm going to crosspost this to sci.lang. Often
>when I poke a limb into sci.lang I pull back a bloody stump, but maybe
>this time will be different. It would be quite helpful if someone
>over there could provide a table of definitions of Labov's symbols in
>articulatory terms, or could point to a specific place where such a
>table can be found. I would also hope to evoke some statements of
>informed opinion about the meaning of statements like '/oh/ has
>moved'.
[Number of implied questions in seventeenth remark: 2]
[Total number of questions: 16 * 0 + 2 = 2]
Bob Cunningham
<spa...@alt-usage-english.org> said:
[BC remark 16a:]
>>It's possible that his symbols do move around to correspond to
>>different articulatory realizations, but I would be disappointed to
>>learn that they do. It would make his symbols seem worthless to me.
[Number of question in remark 16a: 0]
ba...@my-deja.com
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
<snip>
> > I seem to remember reading somewhere that the speech patterns of the
> > Western United States can be attributed to, among other things, the
> > large number of Scottish and Irish immigrants who settled there.
>
> But how many of those Scots and Irish immigrants came directly from
the
> probably very, very few. The US was settled pretty gradually from the
> east (and McDavid published maps of who started from where and ended
up> where).
Though you are no doubt largely correct, there were some major
exceptions, though I don't know how much linguistic effect they had(.
The original poster says in another post (perhaps later in this thread)
that his family were Scottish converts to Mormonism who went straight
to Utah. The Mormons sought English, Scottish, Welsh, Danish, Swedish,
Danish and Norwegian converts and many of these went straight to Utah.
The earliest large Danish settlement was out there and I read that at
the end of the 19th century the most English town in the U.S. was Salt
Lake City. There were also Germans etc. in the Texas hill country,
British farmers in Iowa, Kansas etc., British ranchers further out, and
above all the Scandinavians and Germans in the Midwest. As the last
two were tremendously numerous in some areas (the majority of the
people in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and especially North Dakota were of
Scandinavian or German extraction) and German at least was understood
and even used in the schools, I would expect some speech influence (but
I could be wrong). Another comment below.
<snip>
> > So, the speech patters [sic] indicated that the non-distinction
> > between 'cot' and 'caught' spread over half the country well before
> > the Civil War, as shown by Labov's map?
>
> No; they indicate that it's a fairly recent innovation spreading from
> the Southwest, probably California. I don't think the LA people worked
> much west of the Mississippi; some of the North Central material is
> available, I think including the Dakotas.
Okay, maybe it spread from Southern California but through what
possible mechanism?? People have usually moved to California from
points east, more rarely the other direction (except maybe to
Nevada). Certainly they haven't been moving from Los Angeles to small
towns in the Midwest. Even more puzzling, how has Uptalk (?) spread?
-------------bad24
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Aaron J Dinkin
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
>> At <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading2>
>> there's a map showing the US distribution of speakers who distinguish
>> in varying degrees between the pronunciations of 'cot' and 'caught'.
>> It divides the speakers into three categories: 'distinct', 'close',
>> and 'same'.
>>
>> A map at <http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4/Map_1a.GIF>
>> appears to be the same map, but with isoglosses dividing the country
>> into regions where one or the other pronunciation is predominant.
>>
>> Interesting to see, they refer to the vowels in the two pronunciations
>> as 'short' and 'long open', for which they use the notation /o/ and
>> /oh/, respectively. They don't say which is which, but from the
>> schematic illustration of the Northern cities vowel shift on the same
>> page (at
>> <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html#Heading4>), it
>> appears that they would equate /o/ with ASCII IPA /A/ and /oh/ with
>> ASCII IPA /O/.
>
> I'm not sure you can make this close an equation, for reasons which you
> pointed out to me several months ago when I brought something up about
> this scheme. A good test here is how they treat the New England
> "cot" vowel; I think Aaron Dinkin will confirm that it's never really [O]
> but is more like [A.] or somewhat rounded [A]. I think they use /o/ even
> for the vowel that has shifted in the Northern Cities, which in reality is
> something like [a].
Yes, that's correct as far as it goes. However, I wouldn't really say that
the makers of this map were using their notations /o/ and /oh/ to refer to
any explicit phonetic values. Rather, I'd just construe their /o/ to mean
the same as what I have referred to as "short o" and their /oh/ to be
equivalent to my "aw". The merger is described further down the page as
dealing with "word classes", which is essentially the same idea I intend
with my "short o"/"aw" notations. So I wouldn't go so far as to say that
by /o/ they mean only /A/ and by /oh/ they mean only /O/.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Aaron J Dinkin
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 01:13:08 GMT, kci...@cpcug.org (Keith Calvert
> Ivey) said:
>
>>Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>>
>>>That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
>>>'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
>>
>>Since you merge the two phonemes, it's understandable that you
>>find it difficult to tell whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for
>>those of us who don't, but you could check a dictionary.
>>"Cloth" (like "broth" and "moth") has the vowel of "caught",
>>not "cot".
>
> I see now that the _Collegiate_ has [kAt] for 'cot' [klOT] for
> 'cloth', and either [kOt] or [kAt] for 'caught'.
>
> So you're right about 'cloth', but you're wrong in assuming that I
> would have difficulty telling whether a word was being pronounced with
> [A] or [O].
That's not what he said. Keith said that you would have difficulty telling
whether speakers who distinguish "cot" from "caught" use the "cot" vowel
or the "caught" vowel in "cloth". To me, anyway, it was clear that he
meant it would be difficult for you to tell, using only your knowledge of
your own dialect and whatever miscellaneous sporadic knowledge you might
have acquired about other dialects' "cot"/"caught" distinctions. He wasn't
saying that you couldn't tell the difference between [A] and [O] if you
heard it - merely that you wouldn't know which was used by other poeple
without doing research.
Aaron J Dinkin
> What you said was:
>>> >> > [...] /phonemic symbols/ can have different
>>> >> >phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
>
> As I read it yet again, the most probable interpretation still seems
> to be that you are saying a phonemic symbol can change to acquire the
> phonetic content that a different phonemic symbol previously had, and
> that it will do this without the symbol itself changing. That is what
> I hope is not true.
>
> If someone else wants to state an informed, temperately worded opinion
> on the subject, I will welcome it and appreciate it.
Strictly speaking, one may choose whatever symbol one wants to represent
any given phoneme. It is of course a nice thing to use a symbol that bears
some relation to the phonetic value of a phoneme, but there may be good
reasons for choosing another symbol instead - say, to emphasize
similarities between the phonemic systems of different dialects. (That's
why I use /A/ for what in my dialect is [A.].) If a language changes
phonetically but not phonemically, it may well be more convenient to
continue using the old phonemic symbols.
[Sci.lang - as well as a.u.e, for that matter - is warned that I post only
my impressions as an amateur.]
Brian M. Scott
<spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 02:44:02 GMT, Bob Cunningham
><spa...@alt-usage-english.org> said:
>[BC remark 16a:]
>>>It's possible that his symbols do move around to correspond to
>>>different articulatory realizations, but I would be disappointed to
>>>learn that they do. It would make his symbols seem worthless to me.
>[Number of question in remark 16a: 0]
I couldn't care less how many questions there were, but I note that
this does contain an implied question ('Do they move aroune?').
Brian M. Scott
K1912
>[Newsgroups trimmed, of course.]
>
>In alt.usage.english Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>
>] On 28 Jun 2000 19:30:52 GMT, holoh...@nowhere.com (Holoholona) said:
>]
>]>Everyone who protests a form of bigotry practices another form themselves.
>]
>] That's clearly not true. It's like saying that anyone who deplores
>] thievery is a thief himself, or anyone who protests immorality is
>] immoral himself.
>]
>] If I deplore murder, am I a murderer?
>]
>] It's clearly possible to protest any deplorable behavior without
>] engaging in that behavior.
>
>Can protesting deplorable behavior be deplored?
>
It would be deplorable to deplore protesting deplorable behavior, and all
decent people, actuated by what they find deplorable, would themselves deplore
the deplorable behavior of those who deplore protesting deplorable behavior.
Richard Fontana
> In alt.usage.english Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>
> > What you said was:
>
> >>> >> > [...] /phonemic symbols/ can have different
> >>> >> >phonetic content over different dialects or over time.
> >
> > As I read it yet again, the most probable interpretation still seems
> > to be that you are saying a phonemic symbol can change to acquire the
> > phonetic content that a different phonemic symbol previously had, and
> > that it will do this without the symbol itself changing. That is what
> > I hope is not true.
> >
> > If someone else wants to state an informed, temperately worded opinion
> > on the subject, I will welcome it and appreciate it.
>
> Strictly speaking, one may choose whatever symbol one wants to represent
> any given phoneme. It is of course a nice thing to use a symbol that bears
> some relation to the phonetic value of a phoneme, but there may be good
> reasons for choosing another symbol instead - say, to emphasize
> similarities between the phonemic systems of different dialects. (That's
> why I use /A/ for what in my dialect is [A.].) If a language changes
> phonetically but not phonemically, it may well be more convenient to
> continue using the old phonemic symbols.
This is how I understand the conventional use of /O/ for the distinct
"caught" vowel, since it is clear that only a minority of American
speakers within the cot-isn't-caught dialect groups use [O] in "caught".
This has been a source of confusion in discussions of pronunciation on
AUE.
> [Sci.lang - as well as a.u.e, for that matter - is warned that I post only
> my impressions as an amateur.]
Ditto and then some.
RF
Bob Cunningham
said:
>In alt.usage.english Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 01:13:08 GMT, kci...@cpcug.org (Keith Calvert
>> Ivey) said:
>>>Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>>>>That wouldn't help much. The distinction is between the vowels of
>>>>'cot' and 'caught'. The word 'cloth' is in the 'cot' category.
>>>Since you merge the two phonemes, it's understandable that you
>>>find it difficult to tell whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for
>>>those of us who don't, but you could check a dictionary.
>>>"Cloth" (like "broth" and "moth") has the vowel of "caught",
>>>not "cot".
>> I see now that the _Collegiate_ has [kAt] for 'cot' [klOT] for
>> 'cloth', and either [kOt] or [kAt] for 'caught'.
>> So you're right about 'cloth', but you're wrong in assuming that I
>> would have difficulty telling whether a word was being pronounced with
>> [A] or [O].
For those who may be reading about this exchange for the first time,
let me reinstate some further remarks that I made:
| I might have that difficulty if I didn't regularly hear
| and pronounce [O] in words like 'sport', 'order', and
| 'orange'.
| My mistake regarding American 'cloth' was based upon
| assuming that it would have the same vowel as 'cot', as
| it does in the UK dictionary. It was not based upon
| hearing 'cloth' pronounced.
| Anyway, this is a minor side issue. It doesn't affect
| my point that the merger has consisted of words with [O]
| shifting to [A] while words with [A] stayed with [A].
>That's not what he said. Keith said that you would have difficulty telling
>whether speakers who distinguish "cot" from "caught" use the "cot" vowel
>or the "caught" vowel in "cloth". To me, anyway, it was clear that he
>meant it would be difficult for you to tell, using only your knowledge of
>your own dialect and whatever miscellaneous sporadic knowledge you might
>have acquired about other dialects' "cot"/"caught" distinctions. He wasn't
>saying that you couldn't tell the difference between [A] and [O] if you
>heard it - merely that you wouldn't know which was used by other poeple
>without doing research.
Sorry, I think you're wrong.
I can think of three ways that I might 'find it difficult to tell
whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for those of us who don't' merge the
two:
1. I might find it difficult to read material in an article in the
literature that states that words in the 'caught' class have /O/ and
words in the 'cot' class have /A/.
2. I might find it difficult to read a dictionary that states that
'cloth' and 'caught' have /O/ and 'cot' has /A/.
3. I might find it difficult to discern by hearing the speech of those
who don't merge the two that 'cloth' and 'caught' have /O/ and 'cot'
has /A/.
I don't acknowledge that the first two possibilities exist, and I
can't imagine Keith Ivey assuming that they exist. That leaves only
the third possibility, which is the one I assumed in my response to
his posting.
Do you have other possibilities in mind? Would the research you
mention take some form other than the ones covered by possibilities 1
and 2?
I e-mailed to Keith Ivey a copy of my response. If I completely
misunderstood his intended meaning, I would expect him to say so,
either in e-mail to me or in another posting. However, he's a busy
man with important things to do, so it's possible he disagreed with my
interpretation but hasn't yet found time or felt a desire to say so.
For what it's worth, I haven't heard from him either way since I sent
him the e-mail copy.
I'll e-mail a copy of this posting to him. He may at least find it
interesting to learn that his remarks have been interpreted in
different ways by different people.
Bob Cunningham
Scott) said:
>On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 02:52:27 GMT, Bob Cunningham
><spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>>On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 02:44:02 GMT, Bob Cunningham
>><spa...@alt-usage-english.org> said:
>>[BC remark 16a:]
>>>>It's possible that his symbols do move around to correspond to
>>>>different articulatory realizations, but I would be disappointed to
>>>>learn that they do. It would make his symbols seem worthless to me.
>>[Number of question in remark 16a: 0]
>I couldn't care less how many questions there were, but I note that
>this does contain an implied question ('Do they move aroune?').
I don't agree with that interpretation, but I suppose my opinion may
be biased due to my knowing what my intended meaning was. Come to
think of it, though, whether or not there is indeed a question there
depends *only* upon my intended meaning.
The statement that you take to be a question was intended as a flat
assertion that I don't believe Labov intends to imply that a phoneme
symbol moves from one point in the vowel domain to a point previously
occupied by a different phoneme symbol without changing its name, but
I moderated it somewhat, to ease its impact on the person with whom I
was disagreeing, by pretending to recognize the possibility that it
might.
Even with that moderation, though, I don't see how the statement can
be taken to be a question. An implied question would start with 'I
hope someone will tell me whether or not they agree that ... ', or 'I
would like to see comments on whether or not ... ', or some such words
to even hint that help was hoped for. I see no such hint in my Remark
16a.
I did, in fact, use that sort of phrasing in the concluding paragraph
of the posting:
I would also hope to evoke some statements of informed
opinion about the meaning of statements like '/oh/ has
moved'.
Now that's an implied question, and it was one of the only two
questions, implied or otherwise, in the posting that Mr Peter T
Daniels imagines to be full of questions.
By the way, sharp eyes may have noticed -- as I just have -- that in
my sixteenth remark I seem to refer to something in my fifteenth
remark as a question, and this might be taken to suggest that I
thought there were more than two questions in my posting. It doesn't
really imply a third question, though, because if anything in the
fifteenth remark were a question, it would be the same question as one
of those in the concluding paragraph of my posting (my seventeenth
remark).
The situation is somewhat peculiar, though, in that there is no
question in remark 15, and if remark 16 says there was, this only
suggests that remark 16 was in error, not that there was a question in
remark 15.
In any event, the total number of questions in my posting stands at
two, neither of which was answered in the hundreds of lines of abuse
that Mr Peter T Daniels hurled at me.
james dolan
-I can think of three ways that I might 'find it difficult to tell
-whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for those of us who don't' merge the
-two:
-
-1. I might find it difficult to read material in an article in the
-literature that states that words in the 'caught' class have /O/ and
-words in the 'cot' class have /A/.
-
-2. I might find it difficult to read a dictionary that states that
-'cloth' and 'caught' have /O/ and 'cot' has /A/.
-
-3. I might find it difficult to discern by hearing the speech of those
-who don't merge the two that 'cloth' and 'caught' have /O/ and 'cot'
-has /A/.
-
-I don't acknowledge that the first two possibilities exist, and I
-can't imagine Keith Ivey assuming that they exist. That leaves only
-the third possibility, which is the one I assumed in my response to
-his posting.
-
-Do you have other possibilities in mind?
yes, keith ivey and aaron dinkin undoubtedly had in mind possibility
#4 that you seem to have overlooked:
4. since you don't belong to the speech community in question, you
don't have the option of simply leaning back in your chair and
introspectively asking yourself "what vowel sound is it that i use
when i say the word 'cloth'?". that makes the task much more
difficult for you than it is for someone like me.
the fact that it's difficult for you is strongly supported by the fact
that you got the answer wrong, which seems humorously unimaginable to
linguistically ethnocentric members of my speech community. up to
that point we suspected you were just putting us on about not making
the distinction that seems so familiar to us. actually we still think
you're putting us on.
Brian M. Scott
>>>>Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
I don't.
>I can think of three ways that I might 'find it difficult to tell
>whether a word has /A/ or /O/ for those of us who don't' merge the
>two:
>1. I might find it difficult to read material in an article in the
>literature that states that words in the 'caught' class have /O/ and
>words in the 'cot' class have /A/.
>2. I might find it difficult to read a dictionary that states that
>'cloth' and 'caught' have /O/ and 'cot' has /A/.
>3. I might find it difficult to discern by hearing the speech of those
>who don't merge the two that 'cloth' and 'caught' have /O/ and 'cot'
>has /A/.
>I don't acknowledge that the first two possibilities exist, and I
>can't imagine Keith Ivey assuming that they exist.
He clearly assumed that you hadn't consulted a dictionary.
> That leaves only
>the third possibility, which is the one I assumed in my response to
>his posting.
>Do you have other possibilities in mind?
Yes: he has in mind the one that he just gave and that Keith clearly
intended, namely, that since you merge the vowels, you couldn't be
expected to know which way any given word goes without consulting some
suitable reference. Read Keith's comment: he clearly assumed that you
*hadn't* consulted a dictionary.
[...]
Brian M. Scott
benlizross
>
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > Bob Cunningham wrote:
> >
> > > Pronunciation in that category doesn't vary much. You'd need to find
> > > words in the 'caught' category, like 'saw', which dictionaries say are
> > > pronounced with [O], the half open, back, rounded vowel, while people
> > > in a substantial portion of the country pronounce them with [A], the
> > > open, back, unrounded vowel. So far as I know, the merger has been
> > > from [O] to [A].
> >
> > Speakers with the merged system use /a/ for both vowels.
>
> Is /a/ used for any reason other than notational convenience?
> Bob Cunningham pronounces "cot" and "caught" alike; the vowel he uses
> seems to be [A]. Other speakers from the western US
> seem to be using a vowel that is midway between [a] and [A], like the
> vowel I use for the "cot" class. In eastern New England, however, speakers
> who merge "cot" and "caught" are using a vowel like [A.] or [A] with some
> lip-rounding. Would we say that those New England speakers use /a/?
> These speakers have a distinct vowel, realized as [a], heard in "father",
> "cart"; if /a/ is used for their cot/caught vowel, we'd need a different
> phonemic symbol for their father/cart vowel.
>
> RF
In my Canadian merged dialect, the vowel is definitely [A] rather than
[a]. In fact, the vowel of "father" and "rather" also falls together
with this ("father" rhymes with "bother"), so there's no actual [a]
except before /r/.
Ross Clark
Bob Cunningham
said:
>So I wouldn't go so far as to say that
>by /o/ they mean only /A/ and by /oh/ they mean only /O/.
See the table of Labov's symbols at
<http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html#heading3>,
which shows that he uses /o/ for the vowel in the low, back positon,
and /oh/ for the vowel -- which he treats as a slight diphthong -- in
the mid, back, position.
From this I conclude -- as nearly as I can conclude, given the lower
resolution of the Labov table -- that his /o/ is ASCII IPA /A/ and his
/oh/ is ASCII IPA /O/.
Bob Cunningham
>Okay, maybe it spread from Southern California but through what
>possible mechanism?? People have usually moved to California from
>points east, more rarely the other direction (except maybe to
>Nevada). Certainly they haven't been moving from Los Angeles to small
>towns in the Midwest.
Hear! Hear!
>Even more puzzling, how has Uptalk (?) spread?
Uptalk has been attributed to efforts to avoid creating certain
impressions, such as sounding dogmatic or presumptuous. I see no
reason why it couldn't have arisen independently among young people in
diverse communities. But why in this particular younger generation?
I think it's quite reasonable to assume that the attitudes leading to
uptalk, but not the uptalk itself, may have been engendered somehow by
the entertainment media. This could account for a speech trait
springing up independently in various communities in a generation
exposed to certain particular influences by the media.
I can't believe that some Australian young people have the uptalk
feature because Los Angeles young people have gone to Australia and
taught it to them. (Do I remember correctly that uptalk has been
heard among Australian young people? If not, substitute some other
region where uptalk is heard and it's unlikely that a significant
number of Southern Californians have visited there for long enough
times to influence the local accent.)
Bob Cunningham
said:
[ . . . ]
>In my Canadian merged dialect, the vowel is definitely [A] rather than
>[a]. In fact, the vowel of "father" and "rather" also falls together
>with this ("father" rhymes with "bother"), so there's no actual [a]
>except before /r/.
It's always somewhat startling to come across statements that 'rather'
rhymes with 'father'. To me 'father' is ['fA:D@r] (the vowel of
'cot') and 'rather' is ['r&D@r] (the vowel of 'cat').
Is there any place in the US where 'rather' is not pronounced with a
vowel similar to the one in 'cat'?
Peter T. Daniels
Apparently his idea of what constitutes a question depends strictly on
the presence of a question mark?
I might change that to "Jackass Bob" in view of his bragging of
pestering Keith with e-mails duplicating the content of newsgroup
postings that Keith is apparently not interested in responding to.
Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
> Okay, Mr Peter T Daniels keeps imagining that there were a lot of
> questions in my long posting that triggered his abusive behavior.
> Let's go over it paragraph by paragraph and count the questions:
>
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 09:06:47 GMT, Bob Cunningham
> <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> said:
>
> >On Mon, 26 Jun 2000 21:21:12 -0400, Richard Fontana
> ><re...@columbia.edu> said:
> >
> >>On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Bob Cunningham wrote:
> >
> >[In a discussion of the vowel symbols used in an article by William
> >Labov at <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html>.]
> >
> >>[...]
> >>> [First remark by BC:]
> >>> It would be nice to find
> >>> [Number of questions in first remark: 0]
Number of requests for information: 1 (stated approx. three times in
that paragraph; similar wording in the next two remarks)
> >>In a bookstore not long ago I browsed through a book of his on vowel
> >>shifts, and I think it contained a detailed explanation of this notation,
> >>but I'm not sure. I was too cheap to buy the book, but of course it
> >>looked quite fascinating.
>
> [Second remark by BC:]
> > I hope to find
> [Number of questions in second remark: 0]
>
> [Third remark by BC:]
> > I have little doubt that it would
> >tell me
> [Number of questions in third remark: 0]
>
> >>> Coming back to where you said:
>
> >>> >I think they use /o/ even
> >>> >for the vowel that has shifted in the Northern Cities, which in reality is
> >>> >something like [a].
>
> [Fourth remark by BC:]
> >>> I find your reference to 'the vowel that has shifted' quite puzzling.
> [Number of questions in fourth remark: 0]
Request for clarification
> [Fifth remark by BC:]
> >In that last sentence lies the great, fundamental difference between
> >your interpretation and mine. I would be astonished to learn that he
> [Number of question in fifth remark: 0]
Request for teaching, i.e. opportunity to learn
> >>I think
Request for clarification
>
> [Sixth remark by BC:]
> > But I feel certain that what he means
Expression of doubt ("feel" rather than "am")
> [Seventh remark by BC:]
> >From looking at his examples I gather
Uncertainty as to "his" intention
> [Number of questions in seventh remark: 0]
>
> [Eighth remark by BC:]
> >Incidentally, I question the accuracy
> [Number of questions in eighth remark: 0]
Explicit!
> [Ninth remark by BC:]
> >But only part. As I understand
> [Number of questions in ninth remark: 0]
Request for clarifying his understanding
> [Tenth remark by BC:]
> >I feel quite certain that ... He must mean something like:
"What _does_ he mean by ...?"
> [Number of questions in tenth remark: 0]
>
> [Eleventh remark by BC:]
> >When the AUE FAQ says that /A/ and /O/ have merged, it doesn't mean
> >that the two *symbols* have merged, it means that some words that were
> >formerly pronounced with /O/ are now pronounced with /A/, while some
> >words that were formerly pronounced with /A/ are still pronounced with
> >/A/.
> [Number of questions in eleventh remark: 0]
Correct.
> [Twelfth remark by BC:]
> >No, it can't mean that. It must mean that
> [Number of questions in twelfth remark: 0]
Uncertainty
> [Thirteenth remark by BC:]
> >Actually, the statement 'Western speakers have merged "cot" and
> >"caught"' is quite misleading. It suggests that Western speakers
> >formerly pronounced words one way and now they pronounce them another
> >way. I think that any actual merger probably occurred in places like
> >Scotland -- or in places the Scots came from -- many generations
> >before I was born, and that from the time I first began to speak I
> >learned to pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' with the same vowel.
> [Number of questions in thirteenth remark: 0]
No questions, but misstatements of fact
> [Fourteenth remark by BC:]
> >I have no trouble at all hearing the difference between /kAt/ and
> >/kA.t/ when the speaker is fully rounding his lips to pronounce /A./.
> >A difference between my *speech* and that of Markus Laker is that he
> >pronounces many words with /A./ that I pronounce with /A/, while he
> >pronounces many words with /A/ that I also pronounce with /A/, and I
> >have no trouble hearing which vowel he's using.
> [Number of questions in fourteenth remark: 0]
No questions, but the dubious assertion that an English-speaker "fully
round[s]" his lips in any sound but [u]
> [Fifteenth remark by BC:]
> >I understand now why you would say something like that, but as I've
> >explained I don't think it's true. I think
> [Number of questions in fifteenth remark: 0]
"Have I interpreted his statement correctly?"
> [Sixteenth remark by BC:]
> >It would be great if William Labov himself or one of his disciples
> >could be persuaded to comment on this question. It couldn't hurt to
> >send him e-mail asking for a clarification. I think the worst he
> >could do would be to ignore us.
> [Number of questions in sixteenth remark: 0]
Direct request for reply from Philadelphia
> >It's possible ... but I would be disappointed to learn
Request for teaching
> [Seventeenth remark by BC:]
> >With some uneasiness I'm going to crosspost this to sci.lang. Often
> >when I poke a limb into sci.lang I pull back a bloody stump, but maybe
> >this time will be different. It would be quite helpful if someone
> >over there could provide a table of definitions of Labov's symbols in
> >articulatory terms, or could point to a specific place where such a
> >table can be found. I would also hope to evoke some statements of
> >informed opinion about the meaning of statements like '/oh/ has
> >moved'.
> [Number of implied questions in seventeenth remark: 2]
>
> [Total number of questions: 16 * 0 + 2 = 2]
Maybe about twenty questions in all. I answered some of them, but
"Senile Bob" took offense at the suggestion that he might learn more by
consulting the source.
Somewhere else he says I took 200 lines to do it, but I don't think
that's right.
Bob Cunningham
Scott) said:
>On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 07:21:40 GMT, Bob Cunningham
><spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>>On 29 Jun 2000 04:36:49 GMT, Aaron J Dinkin <din...@fas.harvard.edu>
>>said:
>>>In alt.usage.english Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>>>>>Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>I don't.
To see that I'm right and Aaron is wrong, all you have to do is
consider Keith's phrase as quoted by Aaron, 'you would have difficulty
telling'. (Actually, his phrase was 'find it difficult to tell', but
that doesn't matter.) For Aaron's interpretation to be correct, that
phrasing would be quite inappropriate. If Aaron' interpretation were
correct, Keith would not have used the word 'telling', which implies
sensory perception. He would have said 'you would be unlikely to
know' instead of 'you would have difficulty telling'.
Would you say :
'In order to *tell* whether 'cloth' is pronounced with [A]
or [O], I'm going to look in the dictionary'?
I don't think you would. I certainly wouldn't. I think you would say
'In order to learn' or 'In order to find out'.
The word 'telling' implied sensory perception -- in this case aural
perception. I think Keith clearly meant that I would have difficulty
hearing the difference between [klAT] and [klOT].
But, again, only Keith can say for sure what he meant.
Bob Cunningham
<re...@columbia.edu> said:
[Aaron Dinkin said:]
>> If a language changes
>> phonetically but not phonemically, it may well be more convenient to
>> continue using the old phonemic symbols.
If that's true, I wish that it weren't. If it's not true, I'm glad.
>This is how I understand the conventional use of /O/ for the distinct
>"caught" vowel, since it is clear that only a minority of American
>speakers within the cot-isn't-caught dialect groups use [O] in "caught".
>This has been a source of confusion in discussions of pronunciation on
>AUE.
Since the main reason for the existence of ASCII IPA is to enable
people to discuss pronunciation in a meaningful way, I would hope that
people in AUE would adhere strictly to the definitions supplied by the
Vowels Chart of The International Phonetic Association, as reflected
in ASCII IPA as defined by Evan Kirshenbaum. When we say /O/, we
should mean /O/ as it's defined, not as it may be meant by careless
linguists.
>> [Sci.lang - as well as a.u.e, for that matter - is warned that I post only
>> my impressions as an amateur.]
>Ditto and then some.
Dilettante all the way.
Bob Cunningham
said:
>bob cunningham wrote:
[ . . . ]
>yes, keith ivey and aaron dinkin undoubtedly had in mind possibility
>#4 that you seem to have overlooked:
>4. since you don't belong to the speech community in question, you
>don't have the option of simply leaning back in your chair and
>introspectively asking yourself "what vowel sound is it that i use
>when i say the word 'cloth'?". that makes the task much more
>difficult for you than it is for someone like me.
That argument, like others, is invalidated by the fact that Keith Ivey
used the word 'tell', which implies sensory perception. I wouldn't
lean back in my chair and *tell* how a word is pronounced. I might
lean back in my chair and decide, or recall, how a word is pronounced.
>the fact that it's difficult for you is strongly supported by the fact
>that you got the answer wrong,
'Wrong' is probably too strong a word. Let's not forget the man in
Ohio who does distinguish 'cot' words and 'caught' words, and who told
us that he pronounces 'cloth' with the vowel of 'cot'. I'm sure his
pronunciation is typical of many more speakers than him.
>which seems humorously unimaginable to
>linguistically ethnocentric
and evidently parochial
>members of my speech community.
After all this discussion of Labov's map, are you unaware that the
'cot' vs 'caught' distinction is not made over half the United States?
>up to
>that point we suspected you were just putting us on about not making
>the distinction that seems so familiar to us. actually we still think
>you're putting us on.
Who in the world are the 'we' of which you speak? Are you pregnant?
And why in the world do you choose to be so unconventional as to use
all lowercase, thus diverting attention from what you're saying to the
strange way you're saying it?
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>I might change that to "Jackass Bob" in view of his bragging of
>pestering Keith with e-mails duplicating the content of newsgroup
>postings that Keith is apparently not interested in responding to.
To the best of my recollection, Keith has mentioned in the past that
his Usenet service is quite unreliable, and that he appreciates
getting e-mail copies of postings that concern him. My recollection
may be faulty, because Keith has not been around AUE much in recent
years, but it was my best recollection and I acted upon it.
I might add that it's none of your business what correspondence takes
place between Keith and me, and you were completely out of line in
bringing it up.
If Keith doesn't like my sending e-mail copies to him, let him tell
me. You, see if you have some business of your own to attend to.
Incidentally, Mr Peter T Daniels, in addition to his shortcomings of
character, apparently suffers from an inability to use English
properly. Why would anyone choose 'bragging' to refer to the normal
Usenet practice of noting that an e-mail copy of a posting has been
sent?
Aaron J Dinkin
> To see that I'm right and Aaron is wrong, all you have to do is
> consider Keith's phrase as quoted by Aaron, 'you would have difficulty
> telling'. (Actually, his phrase was 'find it difficult to tell', but
> that doesn't matter.) For Aaron's interpretation to be correct, that
> phrasing would be quite inappropriate. If Aaron' interpretation were
> correct, Keith would not have used the word 'telling', which implies
> sensory perception. He would have said 'you would be unlikely to
> know' instead of 'you would have difficulty telling'.
I don't think the word "tell" is restricted to sensory perception. As I
use and understand it, "I can't tell whether..." means something like "I
am unable to determine whether...", or perhaps "I do not have enough
information to determine whether...". There's nothing about sensory
perception here; "can't tell" is equally applicable to matters of
introspection or intellectual analysis: "I can't tell whether I loathe her
or am secretly attracted to her"; "I can't tell whether 409 is prime."
My understanding of Keith's statement also has the advantage of concluding
that he made a true statement, while your understanding has him saying
something that he probably knew to be false and is vaguely insulting
besides.
Aaron J Dinkin
I believe that's the case in the traditional Boston accent. "Rather" fits
into the class with "can't", "laugh", "bath", "ask", and others, of words
that have /a/ in Boston but /&/ in other American accents.
Also, I had a teacher in high school who hailed from Baltimore who said
/'rAD@r/.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>Apparently his idea of what constitutes a question depends strictly on
>the presence of a question mark?
Pee Dirty Daniels is too addlebrained to remember that the two
questions I did ask were implied questions and had no question marks.
Bob Cunningham
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>"Senile Bob" has already confessed to idiosyncratic use of punctuation.
Pee Dirty Daniels once again reveals his inability to cope with the
lexical complexity of the English language.
Imagine using 'idiosyncratic' to describe conventions that are
accepted by a nation of 40 million people!
He could look these things up in a dictionary, but perhaps he hasn't
yet learned to use one.
If his teacher is too busy to help him avoid such grotesque blunders,
maybe he should seek help from some of the older children.
Richard Fontana
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 21:11:36 +1200, benlizross <benl...@ihug.co.nz>
> said:
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> >In my Canadian merged dialect, the vowel is definitely [A] rather than
> >[a]. In fact, the vowel of "father" and "rather" also falls together
> >with this ("father" rhymes with "bother"), so there's no actual [a]
> >except before /r/.
>
> It's always somewhat startling to come across statements that 'rather'
> rhymes with 'father'. To me 'father' is ['fA:D@r] (the vowel of
> 'cot') and 'rather' is ['r&D@r] (the vowel of 'cat').
>
> Is there any place in the US where 'rather' is not pronounced with a
> vowel similar to the one in 'cat'?
I have known a number of older US speakers who rhyme "rather" with
"father". I think at one time it was a mark of educated or refined speech,
at least in some regions.
RF
Bob Cunningham
said:
>In alt.usage.english Bob Cunningham <spa...@alt-usage-english.org> wrote:
>
>> To see that I'm right and Aaron is wrong, all you have to do is
>> consider Keith's phrase as quoted by Aaron, 'you would have difficulty
>> telling'. (Actually, his phrase was 'find it difficult to tell', but
>> that doesn't matter.) For Aaron's interpretation to be correct, that
>> phrasing would be quite inappropriate. If Aaron' interpretation were
>> correct, Keith would not have used the word 'telling', which implies
>> sensory perception. He would have said 'you would be unlikely to
>> know' instead of 'you would have difficulty telling'.
>
>I don't think the word "tell" is restricted to sensory perception.
That's true. The word 'tell' has many definitions, and many of them
have nothing to do with sensory perception, but in the context in
which Keith Ivey used it, it connoted aural perception.
Would you say "I'm going to grab the dictionary and tell how 'cloth'
is pronounced"? Or "I'm going to search the Web to tell whether there
are any mentions of ... "? No, you'd probably say 'find out' in both
cases.
>As I
>use and understand it, "I can't tell whether..." means something like "I
>am unable to determine whether...", or perhaps "I do not have enough
>information to determine whether...". There's nothing about sensory
>perception here; "can't tell" is equally applicable to matters of
>introspection or intellectual analysis: "I can't tell whether I loathe her
>or am secretly attracted to her"; "I can't tell whether 409 is prime."
That's all true, but it would simplify things if you would stick to
constructions that are somewhat parallel to Keith's use.
>My understanding of Keith's statement also has the advantage of concluding
>that he made a true statement, while your understanding has him saying
>something that he probably knew to be false and is vaguely insulting
>besides.
I'm reasonably certain that Keith's preamble was intended to soften
the impact of telling me that what I had said was untrue. I took it
that way, and appreciated his kindness.
Anyway, here again is what he said:
Since you merge the two phonemes, it's understandable that
you find it difficult to tell whether a word has /A/ or /O/
for those of us who don't, but you could check a dictionary.
"Cloth" (like "broth" and "moth") has the vowel of "caught",
not "cot".
You're suggesting that by 'tell' he meant 'do research to learn'. How
do you come to the conclusion that it would not be somewhat insulting
to suggest that I would find it difficult to use a dictionary or other
references? And why would he consider the difficulty of doing
conventional research to be increased by my not having the distinction
in my idiolect?
And how can you possibly live with the position that looking up a word
in a dictionary to find out how it's pronounced is *telling* how to
pronounce it. Even if the meaning of 'tell' can be stretched to
tenuously cover that meaning, I feel certain that Keith Ivey would
have chosen a better word if that had been his intended meaning.
I've set follow-up to alt.usage.english. I think we've lately been
posting too much stuff in sci.lang that doesn't belong there.
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz
>
> Would you say "I'm going to grab the dictionary and tell how 'cloth'
> is pronounced"? Or "I'm going to search the Web to tell whether there
> are any mentions of ... "? No, you'd probably say 'find out' in both
> cases.
It may be local, but I'd say (though probably not write) "to tell" (not
"and tell") in both cases to mean "to discover" or "to find out". This
was a common construction where I grew up (central New Jersey).
Dennis
--
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Richard Fontana
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 04:42:03 GMT, ba...@my-deja.com said:
>
> >Okay, maybe it spread from Southern California but through what
> >possible mechanism?? People have usually moved to California from
> >points east, more rarely the other direction (except maybe to
> >Nevada). Certainly they haven't been moving from Los Angeles to small
> >towns in the Midwest.
>
> Hear! Hear!
>
> >Even more puzzling, how has Uptalk (?) spread?
>
> Uptalk has been attributed to efforts to avoid creating certain
> impressions, such as sounding dogmatic or presumptuous. I see no
> reason why it couldn't have arisen independently among young people in
> diverse communities. But why in this particular younger generation?
> I think it's quite reasonable to assume that the attitudes leading to
> uptalk, but not the uptalk itself, may have been engendered somehow by
> the entertainment media. This could account for a speech trait
> springing up independently in various communities in a generation
> exposed to certain particular influences by the media.
Uptalk was being used by upper-middle-class female students in my school
(seventh/eight grade) in 1980-1982, in New York. A specific Southern
Californian origin doesn't seem to be out of the question, but I'm
skeptical; I think there's some tendency to exaggerate the cultural
importance and influence of California on other populous regions.
RF
Mikael Thompson
Bob Cunningham wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 02:22:21 -0400, Richard Fontana
> <re...@columbia.edu> said:
>
> [Aaron Dinkin said:]
>
> >> If a language changes
> >> phonetically but not phonemically, it may well be more convenient to
> >> continue using the old phonemic symbols.
>
> If that's true, I wish that it weren't. If it's not true, I'm glad.
>
> >This is how I understand the conventional use of /O/ for the distinct
> >"caught" vowel, since it is clear that only a minority of American
> >speakers within the cot-isn't-caught dialect groups use [O] in "caught".
> >This has been a source of confusion in discussions of pronunciation on
> >AUE.
>
> Since the main reason for the existence of ASCII IPA is to enable
> people to discuss pronunciation in a meaningful way, I would hope that
> people in AUE would adhere strictly to the definitions supplied by the
> Vowels Chart of The International Phonetic Association, as reflected
> in ASCII IPA as defined by Evan Kirshenbaum. When we say /O/, we
> should mean /O/ as it's defined, not as it may be meant by careless
> linguists.
That is correct. IPA is used to indicate pronunciation, which means it is
adhered to rigorously in *phonetic* transcription: [k&t]. Note the square
brackets: [ ]. That's not the case with phonemic transcription, where the
choice of the symbols is chosen for convenience of analysis, as with /kaet/.
Note the slashes: / /. Different dialects of English have pretty much the same
phonemic systems (the caught-cot merger being one exception), which is why
they're dialects of the same language; for cross-dialectal work, it is
convenient to use the same symbol for corresponding phonemes even if they are
realized differently in the two dialects. You need only state that /O/, say,
has moved from [O] to [A] in a given shift; the point is that it's phonemically
pretty much the same sound: It occurs in the same words in different dialects
and contrasts with other phonemesd in the same environments. Phonemic
transcription, in short, is an abstraction away from the actual pronunciation in
order to describe the structure of the sound system of the language.
Nor is Labov's practice at all bizarre in linguistics. We Mongolists, for
example, use the Middle Mongolian phonemic system when writing words which we
are discussing,, even though the vowels in particular have changed quite a bit
in the different dialects. Thus, /ö/ would be [Y] (that is, [ö]) in Kalmyk, [o]
in Daur, and rounded schwa ([@.], I think it is) in Khalkha and Buriat.
Mikael Thompson