Dictionary

father-bother merger en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˌfɐːðə ˈbɔðə ˈmɜːdʒə/ (Australia)
• /ˌfɑːðə ˈbɒðə ˈmɜːdʒə/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ˌfɑːðə ˈbɔðə ˈməːdʒə/ (British, Southern, Standard)
• /ˌfaðəɾ ˈbɔðəɾ ˈmɛɾdʒəɾ/ (Scotland)
• /ˌfɒðɚ ˈbɒðɚ ˈmɝdʒɚ/ (Canada)
• /ˌfɑðɚ ˈbɑðɚ ˈmɝdʒɚ/ (US)

Meanings

1. A phonemic merger in English of the vowels /ɑː/ (as in father) and /ɒ/ (as in bother).
   • The first is the father-bother merger, a loss of rounding contrast in the low back vowels by which the originally contrastive /ɒ/ has been subsumed by /ɑː/ into the fused phoneme /ɑ/. 2018, Gregory H. Bontrager, “Ambisyllabicity in an Optimal-Theoretic Model of English Stress Assignment”, in Florida Linguistics Papers, volume 5, number 2:

Relateds

cot-caught merger