Tristan wrote:
>Gary Shannon wrote:
> > --- "T. A. McLeay" <conlang@...> wrote:
> >
> >> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> >>
> >>> Right. Not all Americans have the LOT/THOUGHT merger, not even those
>who
> >>> have the PALM/LOT merger. This is why there are so dadgum many
>lexical
> >> sets
> >>> in Wells's list; i'm almost certain that no single dialect
>distinguishes
> >> all
> >>> of them.
> >> There's Americans without the PALM/LOT merger?
> >
> > I'm a native born American and I can't recall ever hearing anybody merge
> > PALM/LOT. Both PALM/LOT and LOT/THOUGHT mergers would just sound weird
>to my
> > Amuriken ears. PALM/THOUGHT on the other hand share the same vowel
>sound.
Eh???
>
>Really? The vowel referred to by the PALM lexical set is also the vowel
>in fAther.
Is that also the vowel of LOT? it would be for me. Actually Palm, calm, balm
etc. (I feel) are not quite the vowel of Father-- Palm etc. is a little more
back and a little lower, but I suspect that's due to the following l+C
cluster.
>(I gather some Americans pronounce "palm" with an /l/,
(raises hand)
>for instance, tho
>I don't know if this is done with the vowel in the PALM (probably, see
>above) , THOUGHT or TRAP
>(Definitely not.)