Re[2]: [tied] Re: On the ordering of some PIE rules

At 3:52:52 PM on Thursday, June 7, 2007, Rick McCallister
wrote:

> Which gives rise an unrelated question

> Linguistic books tend to categorize <or> as /Or/ ("awr")
> rather than /or/, yet I have never heard anyone ever
> pronounce <or> as /Or/.

Presumably you mean that you never heard anyone pronounce it
as [Or]. I can't imagine that that's actually the case;
it's a very common pronunciation. The common non-rhotic
counterpart is [O:].

[...]

> They also distinguish <poor> from <pore> and <hoarse> from
> <horse>. I've lived in almost every region of the US and I
> last herd this distinction from very old people when I was
> a child, and their distinction was /pu@.../ vs. /por/,
> /hu@.../ vs. /hors/ Any ideas?

They're two completely different things. The <horse> -
<hoarse> merger is almost universal; I'm not sure that I've
actually noticed anyone who didn't have it, even in
Massachusetts in 1955-60. As I understand it, the
distinction is generally between <horse> [hOrs]~[hO:s] and
<hoarse> [hors]~[ho&s]. Outside the south, the <poor> -
<pore> merger is considerably less common in the U.S.

Brian