--- "T. A. McLeay" <conlang@...> wrote:
> Gary Shannon wrote:
<Snip>
> > 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.
>
> Really? The vowel referred to by the PALM lexical set is also the vowel
> in fAther.
That's odd. In my brand of English (born in W. Mich, raised in S. CA) PALM
shares a vowel sound with AWful and CALL, certainly not with fAther.
<snip>
> (I gather some Americans pronounce "palm" with an /l/, for instance, tho
> I don't know if this is done with the vowel in the PALM, THOUGHT or TRAP
> lexical sets.)
Yes, my version of English pronounces the L in PALM.
> Therefore, another (equivalent) way of asking the same question "There's
> Americans without the PALM/LOT merger?" is "There's Americans who don't
> rhyme 'father' and 'bother'?".
Yes, I rhyme those two.
> I don't mean to second-guess you, it's just that it would be very
> strange if [A] PALM merged with [O] THOUGHT but not with [Q] LOT
> considering that length is non-phonemic in American English.
If by "length" you mean duration, here's a counter example: Here in rural
Oregon the only difference in pronunciation between "pantry" and "pine tree" is
that the 'a' vowel in "pantry" is somewhat more prolonged when "pine tree" is
meant. Other than duration, the two have identical pronunciation; "pantry" and
"paaantry".
--gary
> --
> Tristan.
>