Can phonemic mergers reverse?

[Ryusenshi]

The stereotypical one--the non-rhotic accent that merges COT-CAUGHT as COT. No one I've known or heard from Boston has actually had that accent, though.

It seems to me that this stereotype may come from New York specifically. The Boston accent is famous for merging LOT into THOUGHT, as a rounded vowel [ɒː ~ ɔː], while keeping PALM separate. But New Yorkers have a very distinctive diphthong [ɔə ~ oə] in THOUGHT, and some have a very back LOT, almost [ɒ(ː)]. So they may perceive Boston THOUGHT as identical to their LOT (while GenAm speakers would instead hear Boston LOT as THOUGHT).

[Zaarin]

The stereotypical one--the non-rhotic accent that merges COT-CAUGHT as COT. No one I've known or heard from Boston has actually had that accent, though.

It seems to me that this stereotype may come from New York specifically. The Boston accent is famous for merging LOT into THOUGHT, as a rounded vowel [ɒː ~ ɔː], while keeping PALM separate. But New Yorkers have a very distinctive diphthong [ɔə ~ oə] in THOUGHT, and some have a very back LOT, almost [ɒ(ː)]. So they may perceive Boston THOUGHT as identical to their LOT (while GenAm speakers would instead hear Boston LOT as THOUGHT).

Very possible. It would also explain why I've never heard a "stereotypical Boston accent" in real life while I have heard stereotypical Chicago, Brooklyn, Bronx, etc. accents in real life. (I suspect some dialect leveling among younger Bostonians is also involved: most people I know from Boston are 30 or younger and sound pretty GenAm compared to other New Englanders.)

[Travis B.]

F[æ]va beans and a nice Chi[æ]nti.

"T[ɑː]co" sounds ridiculously pretentious to me, and as TRAP is generally [a] round here also sounds less authentic...

It has [a] in Spanish though, so why would that be less authentic?

Conversely PALM is [a] here while TRAP is [ɛ]~[ɛə]~[eɛ]~[eə]~[iɛ]~[iə] here.

[Pabappa]

I've heard the true Boston accent, but its declining and often misidentified as something else. I grew up thinking of it as uneducated ..... e.g. ".....lahg ahn ta hahtbaht daht cahm!" ... But I'm not sure if other people thought that. If so, it could explain the decline among children. But I think tv&internet are homoegenixingall dialects anyway.

[Zaarin]

I've heard the true Boston accent, but its declining and often misidentified as something else. I grew up thinking of it as uneducated

There's definitely been a stigma attached to the Boston accent, albeit not quite so strong as the one attached to Southern accents.

[Tropylium]

So did RP spontaneously reverse this sound change - without, so far as I'm aware, any hypercorrection - or is SSBE not actually descended from RP at all, but from a very similar and unrecorded 'vulgar English', as it were, that never underwent these shifts?

I think the CLOTH-THOUGHT merger only affected the upper classes, while middle-class London accents continued to have CLOTH=LOT: as anteallach said, CLOTH=THOUGHT was more of a "U-RP" thing. Besides, RP and middle-class London (or "Estuary") have never been completely separated from one another. Isn't SSBE more or less a mixture of the two? AIUI, several innovations of SSBE, like the wholly/holy split or the poor/pour merger, originated in Estuary English then moved "upwards". A conservative trait can certainly do the same, especially if the alternative gets stigmatized as "too posh".

The question I have, then, is why did CLOTH=THOUGHT become completely dominant in North America then if it was at most affected in England?

Seems obvious to me: AmEng generally collapses original vowel length (e.g. the /ɑː/ of FATHER > /ɑ/ of BOTHER) in favor of quality differences (so /iː/ > /i/ in FLEECE but still ≠ /ɪ/ in KIT) and allophonic length according to the consonant environment. /ɔ/ in CLOTH and /ɔː/ in THOUGHT would be hence fated to merge: they have nowhere else to go!

L2 datapoint, but I've ended up picking up indeed /ɔ/ in e.g. dog and chocolate — which is however distinct from /ɔː/. hockey /hɔki/ and hawky /hɔːki/ would be a minimal pair. This /ɔ/ is then also distinct from /ɑ/, but perhaps only because I've merged STRUT into the latter. (Well, kinda vice versa to be exact — I was originally taught "Continental BrEng" with /ɑ/ for STRUT, /ɒ/ for LOT, and it was the rounding in the latter that didn't stick, except where reinforced by AmEng /ɔ/.)

[Space60]

If I heard someone say "ch[ɑ]colate," I'd assume they were from B[ɑ]ston. Otherwise I've never heard "chocolate" with LOT.

What Boston are you thinking of? The dialect there - the one I hear when I'm up there, at least, and from the people I know who grew up there (aside from the Anglos and Swedes, who speak GA) - has [ɔ] for LOT.

The stereotypical one--the non-rhotic accent that merges COT-CAUGHT as COT. No one I've known or heard from Boston has actually had that accent, though.

Wait, what? Seriously? I say that.

Yeah and apparently this pronunciation of "chocolate" with the LOT vowel is common enough in America that they have "Choco Tacos" as a brand of ice cream bar. Merriam Webster online lists "chocolate" with the LOT vowel first, THOUGHT second. Of course for many Americans there is no difference between the vowel in LOT and THOUGHT.

Maybe I've heard LOT in chocolate and my brain parsed it as unremarkable, but I can't consciously remember hearing LOT in chocolate from anyone who didn't have LOT for both COT/CAUGHT. I have heard chocolate as three syllables, which my brain found remarkable enough to note...

I would have LOT in Choco Taco simply because it's obviously supposed to rhyme.

Choco Tacos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choco_Taco

[Salmoneus]

I think the CLOTH-THOUGHT merger only affected the upper classes, while middle-class London accents continued to have CLOTH=LOT: as anteallach said, CLOTH=THOUGHT was more of a "U-RP" thing. Besides, RP and middle-class London (or "Estuary") have never been completely separated from one another. Isn't SSBE more or less a mixture of the two? AIUI, several innovations of SSBE, like the wholly/holy split or the poor/pour merger, originated in Estuary English then moved "upwards". A conservative trait can certainly do the same, especially if the alternative gets stigmatized as "too posh".

The question I have, then, is why did CLOTH=THOUGHT become completely dominant in North America then if it was at most affected in England?

Seems obvious to me: AmEng generally collapses original vowel length (e.g. the /ɑː/ of FATHER > /ɑ/ of BOTHER) in favor of quality differences (so /iː/ > /i/ in FLEECE but still ≠ /ɪ/ in KIT) and allophonic length according to the consonant environment. /ɔ/ in CLOTH and /ɔː/ in THOUGHT would be hence fated to merge: they have nowhere else to go!

L2 datapoint, but I've ended up picking up indeed /ɔ/ in e.g. dog and chocolate — which is however distinct from /ɔː/. hockey /hɔki/ and hawky /hɔːki/ would be a minimal pair. This /ɔ/ is then also distinct from /ɑ/, but perhaps only because I've merged STRUT into the latter. (Well, kinda vice versa to be exact — I was originally taught "Continental BrEng" with /ɑ/ for STRUT, /ɒ/ for LOT, and it was the rounding in the latter that didn't stick, except where reinforced by AmEng /ɔ/.)

That's possible, although it doesn't explain why CLOTH would have /O/ to begin with.

The fact that CLOTH and THOUGHT have merged doesn't need much explanation - has any dialect with a distinct CLOTH class failed to do this? The key is having the CLOTH-LOT split in the first place.

Given that CLOTH has always merged with THOUGHT even in dialects that don't otherwise merge lengths suggests your explanation is the wrong way round, and that seems to be backed up by the broader picture.


The broader picture is that old long vowels drifted upward, particularly and initially in the south. This left an asymmetry, with the low front and back vowels lacking long equivalents. Southern British dialects responded by lengthening both vowels in certain (extremely similar!) circumstances (primarily before coda voiceless fricatives). The long back rounded low vowel in CLOTH was therefore extremely close to the long back rounded low vowel in THOUGHT, and rather rare, so the two merged.

[mèþru]

"Curl" and "coil" were never actually merged though, were they? I thought the vowel in "curl" in that dialect was actually more like the one in "light" with Canadian raising.

No, it's totally a thing. I've heard many a teacher from the NYC area say it, as well as Bugs Bunny.

[Linguoboy]

"Curl" and "coil" were never actually merged though, were they? I thought the vowel in "curl" in that dialect was actually more like the one in "light" with Canadian raising.

No, it's totally a thing. I've heard many a teacher from the NYC area say it, as well as Bugs Bunny.

Not a single one of the half dozen voice actors who have voiced Bugs is a native-speaker of the dialect and only one (Alaskey) lived in NYC at a time when its use was still widespread, so I wouldn't consider that evidence of much beyond what individuals' perceptions of the dialect are.

[mèþru]

Well I've definitely heard it among people actually from there. Definitely most people I've heard with a strong NYC dialect don't have it though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_ ... url_merger

[Space60]

From what I've read "coil" and "curl" did merge in the traditional NY dialect. In Southern accents that had a diphthong in "curl", the words didn't merge because the second element of the diphthong in "coil" was lower.

[k1234567890y]

1. if there are certain phonological conditions that could make the originally merged phonemes split again
2. if they borrow words from dialects or the learned variant where the phonemes are still distinct, but borrowing is not a phonological process