English accents

1
English accents

• 13. General American (cont.)

2
r-coloured vowels
NURSE 3 first, third, occur,
serve lettER _at_ gather, standard, persist

• historically
• short vowels fell together as /?/ before /r/
• ? and r coalesced as a single rhotacized
  vowel
• (in non-rhotic accents) the rhotacization was
  lost

3
The THOUGHT vowel /?/

• Variation in quality generally opener than in
  BrE
• In the CLOTH set as well as the THOUGHT set
• Subject to an on-going merger with /?/ LOT ("the
  low back merger") dawn-don, hawk-hock
• Those who have not merged /?/ and /?/ have
  lexical variability in on, fog, sorry, wash

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5
The TRAP-BATH vowel /æ/
With regional, social-stylistic and positional
variation, subject to raising and tensing to ??
e? i?
jazz
6
The LOT vowel /?/

• Subject to fronting to a ("Northern Cities
  Shift"), which protects it from the Low Back
  Merger found west of the Mississippi, in western
  Pennsylvania, in Canada etc.

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The Northern Cities shift
?STRUT
æTRAP
? THOUGHT
?LOT
8
also, the lowering and centralization of /?/
(KIT) and /?/ (DRESS)
KIT
DRESS
STRUT
THOUGHT
TRAP
LOT
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13
http//www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarietie
s/radio/
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