New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?

[Ran]

I found this:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/di ... id=6686396

The basic thesis is that, for recent borrowings with "foreign a", where other English dialects either go with the "father" vowel or the "trap" vowel (however they are realized), in Canadian English the "father" vowel is too far back (having merged with cot ~ caught) and the "trap" vowel is too far front (the Canadian shift is shifting it back, but not far enough, and in any case it is fronted before a nasal). What's more, many of these words are showing a shift from the "trap" vowel (British influence) to the "father" vowel (American influence). Perhaps, in the middle of all this, a new vowel phoneme is emerging in the space between the "father" and "trap" vowels.

The examples given are words that seem to have high incidences of neither-trap-nor-father pronunciations, i.e. "plaza, facade, lava, Slavic, avocado, lasagna, Colorado." However, in no case is the intermediate pronunciation a majority, and in only one case (plaza) is it a plurality over the "father" and "trap" pronunciations.

What do native speakers of Canadian English think? Is there a three way distinction in sad - facade - sod? spaz - plaza - cause? candy - Gandhi - blondie? gravel - lava - poverty? dally - Dali - dolly? stab - Saab - sob? or is this just an effect of the shift from "trap" to "father" with no new phoneme being created?

[Nortaneous]

There was a thing a while back here in one of those idiolect threads about this happening in... New England or something?

[clawgrip]

I'm a native speaker of Canadian English (Southern Ontario). I can't tell to be honest. I wonder if perhaps I'm simply being conditioned to distinguish them after having read about it, but, but I feel like there may be a very subtle difference between several of them (but not Saab for some reason).

[spats]

There was a thing a while back here in one of those idiolect threads about this happening in... New England or something?

New England already has three low vowels:

/æ/ in cat, bag, etc.
/a/ in father, car, hard, etc.
/ɒ/ in cot, caught, saw, etc.

The middle vowel is about where the Southern American English "long i" sound is.

There really isn't room for another one.

[Sevly]

Self analysis of speech is ever so hard, but I'd say that the pairs in bold rhyme when I say them, and that the syllables in italics have the same vowel.

sad - facade - sod
spaz - plaza - cause
candy - Gandhi - blondie
gravel - lava - poverty
dally - Dali - dolly
stab - Saab - sob

Overall judgement: I only find two vowels. But maybe that's because it's what I'm expecting, so I may be interpreting something that's really closer to [a] as [ɑ].

[Ziz]

I have [a] in all of those words, but I'm American.

[Bob Johnson]

phoneme

*twitch*
may i see some minimal triplets please

[Soap]

Are you saying that general Canadian English dialects have /O/ in father?

Regarding New England, spats is right; there are three vowels, but that's nothing new. As far as I know they have been inherited that way since the 1600s at least ... most of the /a/ words are loans, but not "father". That is to say, New England never did the father/bother merger that most of the rest of the USA did. It would appear Canada has the same system as New England except that "father", confusingly, is in the /O/ group. So they had the father/bother merger for at least the one word "father" but still retained the old vowel in many other /a/ words, most of which were loans.

[Hakaku]

Here are my pronunciations in Ottawa English. What I note is not an intermediary vowel, but rather an acceptable vowel alternation between [a] and [ɑ] for these middle words.

sad ☹
facade [fasad]~[fəsad]~[fəsɑd]
sod [sɑd]

spaz [spaz]
plaza [plazə]~[plɑzə]
cause [kʰɑz]

candy [kʰandi]
Gandhi [gandi]~[gɑndi]
blondie [blɑndi]

gravel [gɹavl̩]
lava [lavə]~[lɑvə]
poverty [pʰɑvɚɾi]

dally [dali]
Dali ?[dali]~[dɑli]
dolly [dɑli]

stab [stab]
Saab ?[sab]~[sɑb]
sob [sɑb]

[Ran]

phoneme

*twitch*
may i see some minimal triplets please

dally - Dali - dolly
(*if* the foreign /a/ is a new phoneme)

Are you saying that general Canadian English dialects have /O/ in father?

Regarding New England, spats is right; there are three vowels, but that's nothing new. As far as I know they have been inherited that way since the 1600s at least ... most of the /a/ words are loans, but not "father". That is to say, New England never did the father/bother merger that most of the rest of the USA did. It would appear Canada has the same system as New England except that "father", confusingly, is in the /O/ group. So they had the father/bother merger for at least the one word "father" but still retained the old vowel in many other /a/ words, most of which were loans.

Disregarding the "new foreign /a/ phoneme" (which, judging from the paper I linked to and from the responses here so far, is a minority phenomenon at best), Canadian English IIRC has the same system as the Western U.S. -- father is merged with cot ~ caught, bath has not split from trap, while "foreign a" words are distributed among the two. The difference appear to be that Canadian English has some words in trap, or varying between the two, that American English has in father (e.g. plaza, lava).

[Ran]

candy [kʰandi]
Gandhi [gandi]~[gɑndi]
blondie [blɑndi]

As a follow up question, do you raise /a/ before nasals? If you do, is Gandhi raised as much as candy?

[Hakaku]

candy [kʰandi]
Gandhi [gandi]~[gɑndi]
blondie [blɑndi]

As a follow up question, do you raise /a/ before nasals? If you do, is Gandhi raised as much as candy?

Well, I can't recognize much of a difference, but after repeating 'bad' and 'ban' a hundred times, it would seem that /a/ is primarily nasalized before a nasal stop. It might also tense forward as [æ̃], but considering that /a/ already varies between [a] and [æ], I'd opt to say that it's not a case of vowel raising. And so, ignoring the initial consonant, both Gandhi and candy sound exactly the same to me, assuming I'm not pronouncing his name with /ɑ/ (note that /ɑ/, while acceptable, adds a certain foreign nuance to the word).

[communistplot]

I have [a] in all of those words, but I'm American.

Oh? I'm American but I have [ɑ] for most of them.

[Kereb]

What do native speakers of Canadian English think? Is there a three way distinction in sad - facade - sod? spaz - plaza - cause? candy - Gandhi - blondie? gravel - lava - poverty? dally - Dali - dolly? stab - Saab - sob? or is this just an effect of the shift from "trap" to "father" with no new phoneme being created?

Believe it or not I have thought that I noticed this this before! But I wrote it off as an artifact of "thinking about it too hard" and decided I couldn't be objective about my own accent here. My /æ/ is somewhat like [a] anyway -- see here -- which confuses things even further. But yes, I can see there being a three-way distinction in some or most of those examples. I will try and pick it out among my compatriots.

Further bulletins as findings warrant.

[----]

For sad-facade-sod, I have
[sæːd] [fə̥saːd] [saːd]
To me, the /a/ in my speech actually sounds like [aə̯], but I don't think that's particularly relevant. The point is, I merge the a's in facade and sod as a more central /a/ sound.

[spats]

I have [a] in all of those words, but I'm American.

Oh? I'm American but I have [ɑ] for most of them.

I think for a lot of Americans, especially those without the cot-caught merger, the "short o" vowel is a sort of indeterminate low vowel. A lot of people transcribe it [a] even though it's probably closer to [ä] or [ɑ] for most speakers. It's only really [a] for people with the Northern Cities Shift.

I've got [ä] because I inherited a fairly low [æ] and [ɒ] from my Boston upbringing, but never got the cot-caught merger because my mother was from New York. The "short o" has to squeeze into whatever space is left between them.

[clawgrip]

As a follow up question, do you raise /a/ before nasals? If you do, is Gandhi raised as much as candy?

I raise /a/ slightly and nasalize it. something along the lines of [kæ̞t] 'cat' [kæ̃n] 'can'

The nasalization symbol looks to me like it's on top of the n even though it is placed before it. Oh well.

[Shm Jay]

To tell you the truth, I think I've been down here too long and my speech has been contaminated, because for some of these words I think I have a three-way distinction. However, I still have /æ/ in plaza, lava, Slavic, and pasta, and maybe Gandhi. Dali and Saab are too foreign for /æ/, and perhaps I have learned too many languages not to use /a/. I may have /ɒ/ for the last three words.

[TaylorS]

To tell you the truth, I think I've been down here too long and my speech has been contaminated, because for some of these words I think I have a three-way distinction. However, I still have /æ/ in plaza, lava, Slavic, and pasta, and maybe Gandhi. Dali and Saab are too foreign for /æ/, and perhaps I have learned too many languages not to use /a/. I may have /ɒ/ for the last three words.

I have /ɒ/ for all of those.

[Ran]

To tell you the truth, I think I've been down here too long and my speech has been contaminated, because for some of these words I think I have a three-way distinction. However, I still have /æ/ in plaza, lava, Slavic, and pasta, and maybe Gandhi. Dali and Saab are too foreign for /æ/, and perhaps I have learned too many languages not to use /a/. I may have /ɒ/ for the last three words.

I think I may have /æ/ or something close to it in plaza, lava and pasta (pl/ɒ/za, l/ɒ/va and p/ɒ/sta sound unremarkable when I hear them, but it's a little strange to say them that way), and free variation between /ɒ/ and raised /æ/ in drama, but when I see taco, facade, Dali, etc. I think in terms of the original language, in which case the vowel is somehow neither /æ/ nor /ɒ/.

In any case, I polled a friend and he has no three-way distinction:
/æ/ = plaza, Dali, pasta, taco
/ɒ/ = Gandhi, drama
variation = lava

I suppose the three-way distinction thing is a minority / transient phenomenon?

I have /ɒ/ for all of those.

I wonder if it is generally true that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɒ/ in the U.S. or if there's some regional variation on this as well.

[Bob Johnson]

I have /ɒ/ for all of those.

I wonder if it is generally true that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɒ/ in the U.S. or if there's some regional variation on this as well.

I imagine it's regional; this is a huge country. I have /ɑ/ (LOT) for all those words except <plaza> which can also be /æ/ (TRAP/BATH). I've only heard [pæstə] from Gordon Ramsay, but except for <Dali> I wouldn't be surprised to hear ash in the others. ([dæli] sounds hilarious, even though or perhaps because of <dally>)

Nobody can agree on the <a> in <Iraq>, and I've heard /æ/ in <Vietnam> enough times not to find it unusual.

[spats]

I wonder if it is generally true that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɒ/ in the U.S. or if there's some regional variation on this as well.

Only if you write the "cot" vowel as /ɒ/, which you shouldn't when analyzing U.S. English.

[Travis B.]

I wonder if it is generally true that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɒ/ in the U.S. or if there's some regional variation on this as well.

Only if you write the "cot" vowel as /ɒ/, which you shouldn't when analyzing U.S. English.

There is the potential for the result of the cot-caught merger to be rounded, and you forget about Eastern New England English, which maintains a separate /ɒ/ for the COT (and THOUGHT) vowels and /a/ for the PALM vowel.

[spats]

I wonder if it is generally true that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɒ/ in the U.S. or if there's some regional variation on this as well.

Only if you write the "cot" vowel as /ɒ/, which you shouldn't when analyzing U.S. English.

There is the potential for the result of the cot-caught merger to be rounded, and you forget about Eastern New England English, which maintains a separate /ɒ/ for the COT (and THOUGHT) vowels and /a/ for the PALM vowel.

Grew up in ENE, so yeah, but that's an exception rather than the rule.

I should amend what I said before: Americans tend to use the FATHER vowel for /a/ in loanwords, wherever that happens to be. This is consistent with both areas which merge COT and CAUGHT (the West), areas which don't (Northern Cities, New York), and areas which distinguish FATHER and BOTHER (ENE).

But when analyzing General American, the FATHER-COT vowel phoneme is typically analyzed as low-back unrounded.

[Ran]

Well, alright then, is it generally the case that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɑ/ (the FATHER vowel) in the U.S.? The answer to which appears to be, generally, yes.