PEG Morphology Algorithm
Very interesting though hardly evidence that most
people or even most westerners or youths lack
"aw." In fact, it seems that most have it, even
if only paralinguistically. Oddly — from the
point of view of the claims given — the only
place where I have heard the collapse regularly
is in the extreme Northeast, Maine, where for
example, "John" (general American "jahn") is
"jawn" or even "jawuhn" (the latter to give
length to a normally short vowel, I suspect). Of
course, here the collapse goes the opposite way
from the American norm, presumably influenced by
the Canadian pattern — which does seem to be
pretty general in Ontario and the Maritimes
(though not in BC and the flyover provinces).
None of this seems to me a good case for ignoring
"aw" as a preferred pronunciation for Lojban {o},
which was the point here.
> John E Clifford scripsit:
> > I know that Lojbab has this feature but I
> can't
> > find anyone else with it, including a fairly
> > large array of youngsters — from 3 up — and
> > Arizonians of all ages, ditto New Mexicans,
> > Californians and Oregonians. What is the
> source
> > of your claim?
>
> It's a well-known fact.
> http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba/phon/ipafaq.html
> is one source picked at random;
>
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000836.html
> is another.
>
> —
> Ambassador Trentino: I've said enough. I'm a
> man of few words.
> Rufus T. Firefly: I'm a man of one word: scram!
> --Duck Soup John
> Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
>
>
>