Merger of /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ before /n/ and /t/ in American English

Description


Comparative progress of the merger of /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ before /n/ and /t/ in American English

Source: Labov, William and Sharon Ash, Charles Boburg, 2006. "The Atlas of North American English: phonetics, phonology, and sound change : a multimedia reference tool." Mouton de Gruyter.
Data Source: The Telsur Project

Date Digitized: July 2011

Map Description:
This map shows the regions affected by the merger between the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ in American English. Members of the Telsur project interviewed native English speakers across the country and recorded their pronunciations of words such as "Don," "Dawn," and "Fawn," as well as the contrasting pair "Caught" vs. 'Cot." The study concluded that the merger is occurring more rapidly before nasals.

Note that the original image does not use correct IPA transcriptions, and that the digitized version has been modified to reflect current IPA standards.


Other LL-MAP resources related to this project
Other maps from this project can be found in the following project folder: Language Locations/North America/Modern/American English

Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process. View original image(s) to see the unaltered map(s).

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