Language change in real time

[Travis B.]

I am used to [aːːːːːːː] here.

[Travis B.]

I have noticed that my daughter often has [ɑ] for THOUGHT (like my mother, who is from Kenosha) rather than the [ɒ] I have. (Note that both my daughter and mother are not cot-caught merged.)

[Moose-tache]

I, too, have quite a bit of interchange between the Cot and Caught sets, despite not merging them. Another word where I can't seem to make up my mind is "jaw." But the sets are still distinct. /Q/ for "coffee" and /A/ for "awe" sound dead wrong to me.

Note: although I'm not from Wisconsin, I have noticed that recordings of Wisconsinites from 60~70 years ago speak roughly the same form of GA that I do.

[Travis B.]

I, too, have quite a bit of interchange between the Cot and Caught sets, despite not merging them. Another word where I can't seem to make up my mind is "jaw." But the sets are still distinct. /Q/ for "coffee" and /A/ for "awe" sound dead wrong to me.

I tend to be rather conservative in this department, as I keep THOUGHT rounded, and hence distinct from LOT even when LOT is backed due to being adjacent to /r w h kw gw/.

Note: although I'm not from Wisconsin, I have noticed that recordings of Wisconsinites from 60~70 years ago speak roughly the same form of GA that I do.

My father in particular, who is from the Milwaukee area, is definitely more conservative overall, and has some notable pronunciations such as [ɛ] in leisure that stand out from my perspective. Conversely, my mother has pronunciations like [ɕtɕ] in sister that seem decidedly non-conservative.

[Space60]

The pin-pen merger once marked someone as being from the Southern United States except for AAVE speakers. However it is not so uncommon these days for people from various parts of the Western and Midwestern United States to have the pin-pen merger these days. It no longer definitely can tell you that someone is from the South, though the South is still where the merger is most common.

[vlad]

I, too, have quite a bit of interchange between the Cot and Caught sets, despite not merging them. Another word where I can't seem to make up my mind is "jaw."

In conservative accents the cot vowel cannot occur without a following consonant, so "jaw" has to have the caught vowel.

[kodé]

The pin-pen merger once marked someone as being from the Southern United States except for AAVE speakers. However it is not so uncommon these days for people from various parts of the Western and Midwestern to have the pin-pen merger these days. It no longer definitely can tell you that someone is from the South, though the South is still where the merger is most common.

FWIW, it’s also common in areas that have a white Southern diaspora population (for lack of a better term). Here in California’s Central Valley, a lot of speakers have the pin-pen merger, whether or not they’re descended from people who migrated here from Oklahoma or Arkansas 90 (!!!) years ago.

[Nortaneous]

Do people who have the cot-caught merger merge them to a vowel more like GenAm LOT or more like GenAm THOUGHT? For the longest time I thought (having heard a few people who merge them to something like [a], even more fronted than my LOT) that this merger wasn't as common as it's said to be, with occasional confusion of distinct sets like [ɔ] in "God", but now that I pay more attention I hear a lot of people who merge them to a very clear [ɔ].

[Space60]

Do people who have the cot-caught merger merge them to a vowel more like GenAm LOT or more like GenAm THOUGHT? For the longest time I thought (having heard a few people who merge them to something like [a], even more fronted than my LOT) that this merger wasn't as common as it's said to be, with occasional confusion of distinct sets like [ɔ] in "God", but now that I pay more attention I hear a lot of people who merge them to a very clear [ɔ].

The cot-caught merger varies. I am cot-caught merged and I can't really tell the vowels apart unless one is using a Northern Cities front LOT vowel or a New York City THOUGHT vowel.

[Travis B.]

Do people who have the cot-caught merger merge them to a vowel more like GenAm LOT or more like GenAm THOUGHT? For the longest time I thought (having heard a few people who merge them to something like [a], even more fronted than my LOT) that this merger wasn't as common as it's said to be, with occasional confusion of distinct sets like [ɔ] in "God", but now that I pay more attention I hear a lot of people who merge them to a very clear [ɔ].

I don't have the cot-caught merger, but to me [ɑ] is "acceptable" as both LOT and THOUGHT (and indeed [ɑ] is the normal realization of LOT adjacent to /r w h kw gw/ for me), whereas THOUGHT cannot become [a] except in a very small number of words (astronaut, the placename Okauchee if it ever had it in the first place), and [ɒ] is not typical of LOT coming out of the mouth of an American, God forbid [ɔ], unless they're from eastern New England...

[Travis B.]

The pin-pen merger once marked someone as being from the Southern United States except for AAVE speakers. However it is not so uncommon these days for people from various parts of the Western and Midwestern United States to have the pin-pen merger these days. It no longer definitely can tell you that someone is from the South, though the South is still where the merger is most common.

The dialect here in the Milwaukee area has decidedly resisted any kind of pin-pen merger; I did not even know that people did merge it until I was an adult.

[Travis B.]

I, too, have quite a bit of interchange between the Cot and Caught sets, despite not merging them. Another word where I can't seem to make up my mind is "jaw."

In conservative accents the cot vowel cannot occur without a following consonant, so "jaw" has to have the caught vowel.

The only words that COT shows up without a following consonant here are a few interjections like yah (a loanword from German ja), and nah or where intervocalic elision applies (but note, however, that oftentimes it forms a diphthong with the following vowel).

[Space60]

The pin-pen merger once marked someone as being from the Southern United States except for AAVE speakers. However it is not so uncommon these days for people from various parts of the Western and Midwestern United States to have the pin-pen merger these days. It no longer definitely can tell you that someone is from the South, though the South is still where the merger is most common.

The dialect here in the Milwaukee area has decidedly resisted any kind of pin-pen merger; I did not even know that people did merge it until I was an adult.

Well, yeah, the pin-pen merger hasn't gotten that far north at least as of yet.

[Space60]

Do people who have the cot-caught merger merge them to a vowel more like GenAm LOT or more like GenAm THOUGHT? For the longest time I thought (having heard a few people who merge them to something like [a], even more fronted than my LOT) that this merger wasn't as common as it's said to be, with occasional confusion of distinct sets like [ɔ] in "God", but now that I pay more attention I hear a lot of people who merge them to a very clear [ɔ].

I don't have the cot-caught merger, but to me [ɑ] is "acceptable" as both LOT and THOUGHT (and indeed [ɑ] is the normal realization of LOT adjacent to /r w h kw gw/ for me), whereas THOUGHT cannot become [a] except in a very small number of words (astronaut, the placename Okauchee if it ever had it in the first place), and [ɒ] is not typical of LOT coming out of the mouth of an American, God forbid [ɔ], unless they're from eastern New England...

I have read that there are people without the cot-caught merger who have the LOT vowel in "astronaut". An explanation I have seen for that is that "astronaut" is a word that is often learned on TV and people may have heard someone on TV with the cot-caught merger say it and picked up that pronunciation.

[Travis B.]

Do people who have the cot-caught merger merge them to a vowel more like GenAm LOT or more like GenAm THOUGHT? For the longest time I thought (having heard a few people who merge them to something like [a], even more fronted than my LOT) that this merger wasn't as common as it's said to be, with occasional confusion of distinct sets like [ɔ] in "God", but now that I pay more attention I hear a lot of people who merge them to a very clear [ɔ].

I don't have the cot-caught merger, but to me [ɑ] is "acceptable" as both LOT and THOUGHT (and indeed [ɑ] is the normal realization of LOT adjacent to /r w h kw gw/ for me), whereas THOUGHT cannot become [a] except in a very small number of words (astronaut, the placename Okauchee if it ever had it in the first place), and [ɒ] is not typical of LOT coming out of the mouth of an American, God forbid [ɔ], unless they're from eastern New England...

I have read that there are people without the cot-caught merger who have the LOT vowel in "astronaut". An explanation I have seen for that is that "astronaut" is a word that is often learned on TV and people may have heard someone on TV with the cot-caught merger say it and picked up that pronunciation.

I must say that THOUGHT, which for me is [ɒ], sounds plain wrong in the case of astronaut, which I only have LOT (as [a]) for.