Vowels before postvocalic /l/

In many varieties of English, there are interesting vowel changes in progress in prelateral environment; with some remarks on other related phenomena in North America. In addition, the /l/ itself is often vocalized. Both are also happening in Australian English.

In Australian English, there are various regionally-differentiated vowel mergers underway before postvocalic /l/. These include a nearly-completed merger of DRESS into TRAP in Melbourne, which is shared with New Zealand (Buchanan 2001) and Brisbane, but not with Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide or Perth. Thus Ellen and Allen, pellet and pallet, telly and tally and so on become homophonous. Melbourne speakers learning phonetics have no hesitation in transcribing words which are unambiguously DRESS + lateral elsewhere, such as Melbourne, with [æ]; but there is also limited variation and hypercorrection in the other direction, with prelateral DRESS and even some TRAP words occasionally pronounced with the DRESS vowel.

There is also regionally and socially distributed variation between [æ] ~ [ɔ] before a lateral in mall, Albany, Malvern etc. In Melbourne there is variation in Bourke Street Mall, which is usually [æ] but occasionally [ɔ]; in Perth there is Hay Street Mall, which is usually [ɔ] but sometimes [æ]. All other cities in Australia have [ɔ] in their pedestrian malls: Adelaide’s Rundle Mall, Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall, Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall, Hobart’s Elizabeth Street Mall and Launceston’s Brisbane Street Mall. The [æ] pronunciation in Melbourne and Perth is perhaps influenced by spelling, or may reflect a more archaic form; the brand name of the former Malvern Star bicycle was usually pronounced with [æ], but the suburb of Melbourne where its factory was located is now mainly pronounced with [ɔ] , which is also the more prestige form, and more like modern RP. In another small word class there is variation between [ɔ] ~ [ɒ] as in off or Launceston, but this reflects mainly age and social differences rather than region.

There are two mergers in progress which tend to collapse prelateral high tense vowels into the corresponding high lax vowel: FLEECE becomes KIT, and GOOSE and CURE become FOOT; for example, deal merges on dill, fool merges on full, and fuel also merges on the FOOT vowel, but keeps its medial [j] glide. This merger is furthest advanced in Adelaide and Hobart, somewhat less so in Sydney and Brisbane, and least so in Melbourne; note also the differences between front and back vowel patterns. Table 4 shows the regional distribution for four cities; comparable Sydney data is not available. Table 5 shows the social and stylistic stratification of these variables in Melbourne.

A parallel phenomenon also variably merges GOAT into GOT before /l/, especially in words of more than one syllable, so that poll usually has the GOAT vowel, but polling very often has the GOT vowel.