Dictionary

cot-caught merger en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• [ˈkɔt koːt ˌməːd͡ʒə] (British, Southern, Standard)
• /ˈkɑt kɔt ˌmɝd͡ʒɚ/ (US) without the merger
• (US) audio cot-caught
• /ˈkɑt kɑt ˌmɝd͡ʒɚ/ (cot-caught-merger)
• ʹkŏt kôt mûrjər (US) without the merger
• /ˈkɒt kɔːt ˌmɜːd͡ʒə/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• (US) audio non-cot-caught
• /ˈkɔt koːt ˌmɜːd͡ʒə/ (Australia)
• /ˈkɔt kɔt ˌmɛɾdʒəɾ/ (Scotland)
• /ˈkɔt koːt ˌmøːd͡ʒɘ/ (New-Zealand)

Meanings

1. A phonemic merger in some varieties of English (especially American, Canadian and Scottish English) in which the vowels in words such as hot and doll (/ɒ/) and in words such as law and talk (/ɔː/) are pronounced identically, making the words cot and caught homophones.
   • One was /au/-monophthongisation, described earlier in Chapter 2, while the second was the so-called low-back merger (LBM), also referred to as the cot–caught merger because words in these two classes are pronounced the same and speakers cannot hear any small differences in their pronunciation, even when they are present. 2011, Scott F Kiesling, Linguistic Variation and Change, page 81:

Forms

Relateds

father-bother merger

Synonyms

low back merger