zompist bboard

I think I've noticed something interesting with some American accents. I first noticed it when watching Breaking Bad, particularly with Anna Gunn.

What I hear is that she has [ɑː] in most THOUGHT words: thought, talk, law are |θɑːt, tʰɑːk, lɑː], i.e. the typical low-back merger. But I think I heard a rounded vowel in some other words, such as lost, long [lɒːst, lɒːŋ] (typically the CLOTH set).

(Note: I'm not interested in vowel length here.)

I think I've heard that pattern in regions where the cot-caught merger is relatively recent, such as parts of the West (but not California). I guess what happens is that:
- in most environments, where [ɑː] and [ɒː] used to contrast, they merged into [ɑː], so that lot and thought both have [ɑː];
- but in a few environments, due to the LOT-CLOTH split, only [ɒː] appeared (typically before voiceless fricatives and voiced velars), so presumably both lost and sauce still have [ɒː].

Have you noticed something similar? If you haven't, does that seem plausible at least? Or am I just talking out of my ass?

The dialect here in southeastern Wisconsin is not cot-caught merged, as LOT is now [a], but the realization of THOUGHT, CLOTH, and START seems to be relatively unstable, with, depending on the individual and just exactly where one is from, both [ɒ] and [ɑ] being possible realizations of THOUGHT and CLOTH and [ɑʁ] and [ɒʁ] being possible realizations of START. E.g. My father and I have [ɒ] for THOUGHT and CLOTH and [ɑʁ] for START, but my mother has [ɑ] and [ɑʁ], and my daughter has [ɒ] for THOUGHT and CLOTH and both [ɑʁ] and [ɒʁ] for START, and from hearing people from here in Waukesha county (I grew up in Milwaukee county) I hear a lot of people with pronunciations similar to my mother's.

So what you could be hearing is just an inconsistent shift of THOUGHT and CLOTH from [ɒ] to [ɑ] which is not yet complete in some people's speech.

some people in New England merge cot-caught but not father-bother