# Vowel harmony in English?



## mintster

This might not be the correct terminology, but it's the only one I know.  

So there is an acronym in English - DOGSO (Denial of obvious goal-scoring opportunity).  It is a rule in football/soccer concerning fouls - if the last defender or the goalkeeper fouls an opponent to prevent a goal-scoring opportunity, he must be sent off.  So a goalkeeper taking down a forward who would otherwise face an empty net.

People don't say D.O.G.S.O, people say DOGSO (like NATO) and more and more I hear "he DOGSO'd him"  (rhymes with Dog-sawed)

In North American English, I hear the SO pronounced as saw, not as "so" - compared to NATO, YOLO and other acronyms, it does make me wonder if there is a hint of vowel harmony in English.   The NA pronunciation of the O in DOG influenced the pronunciation of O in SO, so when people use the acronym as a verb it sounds like "Dog-sawed" and not "Dog-sowed."  

Is this an actual phenomenon, where the quality of the vowel in the first syllable influences the next?  Or is pronouncing SO as "saw" some kind of hyper-North-Americanism, i.e. more and more vowels shifting?


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## Testing1234567

I don't think it is vowel harmony, just that the "O" became short because of the syllable being closed.

However, there is vowel harmony (or something similar thereto) in very Old English.

For example, the etymon of "gold" is actually guld-.

The noun-forming suffix was -a-, which caused gulda-. "Golden" was guldiyan-.

"Gulda-" became "golda-" because of the "a", and "guldiyan-" became "gildiyan-" because of the "i".

They became "gold" and "gilden" afterwards.

The technical name of the phenomenon is called "umlaut".


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## berndf

Testing1234567 said:


> I don't think it is vowel harmony, just that the "O" became short because of the syllable being closed.


I am afraid, that doesn't answer the question. The preference for "long vowels" (or rather their modern reflexes) in open syllables is understood. The question is why it is _dog-saw_ and not _dog-so _as one would expect.


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## Testing1234567

Because the (second) o in "DOGSO'd" is in a closed syllable.


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## Sobakus

I think the OP has to clarify whether the vowel is as likely to be [ɒ] in all the verbal forms ("to DOGSO", "DOGSO-ing") as well as in the noun, which I imagine it is, in which case the above explanation doesn't hold.


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## berndf

Testing1234567 said:


> Because the (second) o in "DOGSO'd" is in a closed syllable.


No, that argument would have predicted _dog-sod _and not _dog-sawed_.

The vowels of _so _and _saw _are *both *considered long. Closed syllables, as you rightly said, favour short vowels, so this cannot tell us, why one and not the other long vowel was chosen.


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## bragpipes

It's a funny thing - the use of an acronym like that is much more common in North American slang than in British English.  So this the name of a foul in the rulebook becoming a verb on its own.  

I've heard it and said it myself, but a google search shows less than a 100 hits for "Dogso'd" - it's an Americanism used on a sport that's not very popular in North America, but I think that this word is said more than it is written.

I've never heard it or said it in the present tense (He dogsoes the attacker) - it's sort of like Slavic perfective aspect, where this "crime" only exists in the past and the future.    I jest, but there's a little bit of truth in it - there is more time in the decision the defender takes to commit such a foul and more time for the referee to decide to take action on the DOGSO, but the actual act of DOGSO is a tiny slice of time.   The other part of it is that DOGSO is not the decision of the referee.  The referee decides if that first O is obvious or not, or if the GSO is a goal-scoring opportunity or not.   The referee can say it wasn't, and so that verb changes retrospectively from DOGSO to plain foul.   I digress, but that a little explanation as to why we don't hear it/say it as much in the present tense.

As for pronunciation, (I speak Canadian English) the present tense is the only one that's tricky.  I don't know which of Dogsows or Dogsaws sounds more correct.   Dogsawing sounds a tiny bit better than dogsowing.  ("That dogsawing ****!). But in the past tense, dogsowed sounds wrong to my ears.   The noun DOGSO sounds like "dogsaw" to me as does the imperative "Just ****ing dogsaw him, you stupid ****!"


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> No, that argument would have predicted _dog-sod _and not _dog-sawed_.
> 
> The vowels of _so _and _saw _are *both *considered long. Closed syllables, as you rightly said, favour short vowels, so this cannot tell us, why one and not the other long vowel was chosen.


The General American accent is subject to the cot-caught merger and thus both _sod_ and _sawed_ are pronounced the same, consequently _saw(ed)_ is treated as phonemically "short" while _sow(ed)_ as "long".


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> The General American accent is subject to the cot-caught merger and thus both _sod_ and _sawed_ are pronounced the same, consequently _saw(ed)_ is treated as phonemically "short" while _sow(ed)_ as "long".


There are cot-caught mergers in AmE, mainly in New England. General American is not one of them.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> There are cot-caught mergers in AmE, mainly in New England. General American is not one of them.


Mintster is Canadian and bragpipes speaks Canadian English, so they probably have the cot-caught merger.
Anyway I don't find it is relevant, because bragpipes said that both the noun and the imperative (open syllable) have the "aw" vowel.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> There are cot-caught mergers in AmE, mainly in New England. General American is not one of them.


In my experience this merger is rather widespread throughout the country, and while individual speakers may make a distinction between the two sounds, as an aggregate accent Gen. Am. has no phonemic contrast between them. In other words, people with the merger aren't perceived as mixing up two different sounds. Any way, this is yet another thing for the OP to clarify.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Anyway I don't find it is relevant, because bragpipes said that both the noun and the imperative (open syllable) have the "aw" vowel.


Indeed.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> Any way, this is yet another thing for the OP to clarify.


Not really. I reacted to Testing1234567's argument only because I felt it should not be left uncontradicted. I fully agree with Nice that it isn't relevant anyway.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> Not really. I reacted to Testing1234567's argument only because I felt it should not be left uncontradicted. I fully agree with Nice that it isn't relevant anyway.


I think it would be doubly odd if the two vowels of _dogso _were actually different.


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## berndf

Ignoring the effects of possible mergers in certain dialects and ignoring actual physical vowel length, which is overlaid by the effects of stress anyway, the first o will most likely have a quality that reflects a historical short vowel and the second o of a historical long vowel. This rule of thumb is a reflex of the Middle English lengthening of vowels in open syllables.


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## Nino83

I'd add that the most important difference here is not that between _cot_ and _caught_, but that between _caught_ and_ cote_. 
If I'm not wrong, the long "o" is present also in words having a closed syllable, for example _boat < bāt_ [boʊt < boːt < bɔːt < baːt] and all those words with the _oa_ spelling that come from the Old English "ā". So, the rule of the closed syllable (closed syllable = short vowel) doesn't work very well for the /oʊ/ sound.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> If I'm not wrong, the long "o" is present also in words having a closed syllable


Yes, but is usually orthographically marked, _boat, beat, food, feet_, etc.


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## Nino83

Yes. I wanted to say that in Modern English there is no such *phonetic* constraint (closed syllable = short vowel).
The pronunciation _dogsaw_ for _dogso_ is simply strange (not due to phonetic "rules").


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> Ignoring the effects of possible mergers in certain dialects and ignoring actual physical vowel length, which is overlaid by the effects of stress anyway, the first o will most likely have a quality that reflects a historical short vowel and the second o of a historical long vowel. This rule of thumb is a reflex of the Middle English lengthening of vowels in open syllables.


The very point of this thread is that the second /o/ doesn't reflect a historical long vowel (=/oʊ/) as expected, but depending on the presence of merger a) a historical diphthong b) a phonemic short vowel.

As for the relation of phonemic length and syllable openness, it's not a rule but a rather strong tendency that shouldn't be ignored.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> The very point of this thread is that the second /o/ doesn't reflect a historical long vowel (=/oʊ/) as expected, but depending on the presence of merger a) a historical diphthong b) a phonemic short vowel.


That is not correct. The vowel of _saw_ is a reflex of a historically long vowel as well.


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## Nino83

Sobakus said:


> depending on the presence of merger a) a historical diphthong b) a phonemic short vowel


Mh...the vowel of cot-caught in Canadian and West American English is long, [ɒː], [ɑː] or [ɒɑ] (the rounded ones are more common in Canada and in some parts of California, like Fernando Valley, where the Californian vowel shift is more advanced). 
Source: Canepari, "English Pronunciation & Accents", page 282 (Canadian English), 303 (North West, Seattle), 305 (the Coastal West, Los Angeles). 
If you hear the vowel of saw of  jilllandon (West Canada) and itiwat (state of Washington), it is long, [sɑː]. 
It seems the problem is not of syllable structure, because both _dogso_ (noun, imperative) and _dogso'd_ (past) are pronounced with an "aw" vowel. 
What I find curious is that it is pronounced _dog-saw_ instead of _dog-so_.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> That is not correct. The vowel of _saw_ is a reflex of a historically long vowel as well.


What do you mean? As far as I can tell, the development was [ax]->[æ̆ɑ̆x]->[aʷx]->[au(x)]->[ɔː]->[ɑ~ɒ~ɔ(ː)] of Gen. Am.


Nino83 said:


> Mh...the vowel of cot-caught in Canadian and West American English is long, [ɒː], [ɑː] or [ɒɑ] (the rounded ones are more common in Canada and in some parts of California, like Fernando Valley, where the Californian vowel shift is more advanced).
> Source: Canepari, "English Pronunciation & Accents", page 282 (Canadian English), 303 (North West, Seattle), 305 (the Coastal West, Los Angeles).
> If you hear the vowel of saw of  jilllandon (West Canada) and itiwat (state of Washington), it is long, [sɑː].


But that's _exactly_ why I said _phonemically short._ In American linguistics and among the population, the vowel of _cot~caught_ is called "short" while the vowel of _quote_ is called "long" – they're both perceived as "o": one long and one short.


> It seems the problem is not of syllable structure, because both _dogso_ (noun, imperative) and _dogso'd_ (past) are pronounced with an "aw" vowel.
> What I find curious is that it is pronounced _dog-saw_ instead of _dog-so_.


Is it unfathomable that the more frequent past tense influenced the other forms? I think that's what Testing1234567 meant.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> What do you mean? As far as I can tell, the development was [ax]->[æ̆ɑ̆x]->[aʷx]->[au(x)]->[ɔː]->[ɑ~ɒ~ɔ(ː)] of Gen. Am.


I still deny that from the fact some speakers merge _not_ an _nought_ you are allowed to construe the vowel of saw as "logically" short. But we could debate that for days without advancing. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that the vowel was long during the entire relevant period, from late Old English to early Modern English.


Sobakus said:


> Is it unfathomable that the more frequent past tense influenced the other forms? I think that's what Testing1234567 meant.


I didn't understand him like that, but fine, that sounds like a reasonable hypothesis I wouldn't want to dismiss or endorse without further facts.


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## Nino83

Sobakus said:


> Is it unfathomable that the more frequent past tense influenced the other forms?


Normally those verbs ending with /oʊ/ retain the long vowel also in the past tense, for example _veto > vetoed_. 
veto.


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## Sobakus

Nino83 said:


> Normally those verbs ending with /oʊ/ retain the long vowel also in the past tense, for example _veto > vetoed_.
> veto.





bragpipes said:


> I've never heard it or said it in the present tense (He dogsoes the attacker) - it's sort of like Slavic perfective aspect, where this "crime" only exists in the past and the future.


Hence my "more frequent past tense".


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> I still deny that from the fact some speakers merge _not_ an _nought_ you are allowed to construe the vowel of saw as "logically" short. But we could debate that for days without advancing. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that the vowel was long during the entire relevant period, from late Old English to early Modern English.


The intricacies of historical phonetics don't matter to a contemporary Am.E. speaker or the people trying to teach American English to a foreigner. Those people divide vowels into "long" and "short", and the vowel of _naught_ is either left out of most casual descriptions or is hidden somewhere in the footnotes explaining that some people merge it with the vowel of _not_ while some don't. I've just looked through some quick google results and only found one where the vowel of _naught_ is included in the vowel chart separately.

If the OP and the speakers (s)he heard the word _dogso_ from have the merger, they will call the vowel short. That's not something I decided, that is something the speakers decided.


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## hadronic

Is there any other example of_ o_ in an open syllable (especially final) pronounced as _cot_ or _caught_ in English?


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## bragpipes

hadronic said:


> Is there any other example of_ o_ in an open syllable (especially final) pronounced as _cot_ or _caught_ in English?



Can't think of anything at the moment -  the closest thing I can think of is some pronunciations of Toronto (Trawna).   Having said that, people that say Trawna are not pronouncing Toronto as such.  They're saying Trawna as one would say "wanna" instead of "want to" or "tryna" instead of "trying to."

Edit: I can't presume to know what Southern Ontarians are trying to say.  I don't know if the word Toronto has gone through a transformation similar to wanna.


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## Nino83

Sobakus said:


> But that's _exactly_ why I said _phonemically short._ In American linguistics and among the population, the vowel of _cot~caught_ is called "short" while the vowel of _quote_ is called "long" – they're both perceived as "o": one long and one short.


1) American linguists often don't use length markings, for example here, /ɛ/ dress /e/ face /i/ fleece /ʊ/ foot /o/ goat /u/ goose /ɪ/ kit /ɑ/ lot /ʌ/ strut /æ/ trap, the author told me, by mail, this: "I was interested in categorical, not close, transcription, so *length* would be a *redundant feature*, *as it is not a distinctive feature in the CA vowel space*").
This is why you'll find a simple [ɑ] in American papers. This doesn't mean that the merged vowel is short.
2) I thought you and Testing were speaking of a *phonetic* phenomenon, i.e the closed syllable tends to shorten the vowel.


Sobakus said:


> Hence my "more frequent past tense".


The question is "which is the reason why this shortening doesn't happen in _vetoed_ and happens in _dogso'd_?".
Anyway, bragpies said:


bragpipes said:


> *The noun DOGSO sounds like "dogsaw" to me as does the imperative* "Just ****ing dogsaw him, you stupid ****!"


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## berndf

bragpipes said:


> hadronic said:
> 
> 
> 
> Is there any other example of_ o_ in an open syllable (especially final) pronounced as _cot_ or *caught *in English?
> 
> 
> 
> Can't think of anything at the moment
Click to expand...

For you _c*au*ght_ and_ s*aw*_ do not have the same vowel?


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## bragpipes

berndf said:


> For you _c*au*ght_ and_ s*aw*_ do not have the same vowel?



They do, but I thought hadronic wanted an example of something ending in -o.


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## Nino83

@berndf
I think hadronic was speaking of words written with a final "o".


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## berndf

bragpipes said:


> They do, but I thought hadronic wanted an example of something ending in -o.


So, for you the domain of the merger is closed syllables only? Are you saying that speakers who merger the vowels of _cot_ and _caught _pronounce the vowel in _saw_ differently?


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## Sobakus

Nino83 said:


> 1) American linguists often don't use length markings, for example here, /ɛ/ dress /e/ face /i/ fleece /ʊ/ foot /o/ goat /u/ goose /ɪ/ kit /ɑ/ lot /ʌ/ strut /æ/ trap, the author told me, by mail, this: "I was interested in categorical, not close, transcription, so *length* would be a *redundant feature*, *as it is not a distinctive feature in the CA vowel space*").
> This is why you'll find a simple [ɑ] in American papers. This doesn't mean that the merged vowel is short.
> 2) I thought you and Testing were speaking of a *phonetic* phenomenon, i.e the closed syllable tends to shorten the vowel.


Nino, I'm telling you that American children and Am.E. speakers are taught that there's two kinds of o's – short *ŏ* [ɒ] and long *ō* [oʊ], two kinds of a's – short *ă* [æ] and long *ā* [eɪ] and so on. This has barely anything to do with phonetics. The merged vowel is not necessarily phonetically short – both [ɒ] and [æ] can very well be long – but it's phonemically short in the speaker's head.

I don't think there's a phenomenon where closed syllables would turn diphthongs into monophthongs in English, the lengthening only operates inside one phoneme.


> The question is "which is the reason why this shortening doesn't happen in _vetoed_ and happens in _dogso'd_?".


Because _veto_ is a learned word used in every tense, not a slangy acronym used by soccer fans primarily in past tense? I mean, I'm not stating anything, but it sounds like a possibility to me.


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## hadronic

berndf said:


> So, for you the domain of the merger is closed syllables only? Are you saying that speakers who merger the vowels of _cot_ and _caught _pronounce the vowel in _saw_ differently?



Nobody said or infered that. 

I'm just asking for another example of word ending in a written _-o_ pronounced like the vowel of _caught_ or _cot _(merged or unmerged).


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> Nobody said or infered that.


Well *you* didn't. Bragpipe's explanation can be read that way, i.e. that for speakers who merge the vowels of _cot_ and _caught,_ this merged vowels phonemically relevantly differ from that of _saw._ This is an important question in my mind and I would like to know, if I interpret *his* opinion correctly.


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## hadronic

hadronic said:


> Is there any other example of_ o_ in an open syllable (especially final) pronounced as _cot_ or _caught_ in English?





bragpipes said:


> Can't think of anything at the moment





berndf said:


> For you _c*au*ght_ and_ s*aw*_ do not have the same vowel?



Where is bragpipes suggesting that _caught_ and _saw_ do not have the same vowel?


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> Where is bragpipes suggesting that _caught_ and _saw_ do not have the same vowel?


He said they did. Yet he also said he couldn't think of any open syllable with that vowel. This means that for him the merger is restricted to closed syllables as in accents that don't have that merger, the vowel of _caught_ is the same as the vowel of _saw_.

And Sobakus' argument relies on the assumption that the merger also affects the vowel in _saw_.


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## hadronic

berndf said:


> Yet he also said he couldn't think of any open syllable with that vowel.



Written as final "*-o*". He never said the _caught_ or _cot_ vowel couldn't be found in open syllable.


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> Written as final "*-o*". He never said the _caught_ or _cot_ vowel couldn't be found in open syllable.


Got you.


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