ABSTRACT
Our informant, Kathy, is a translator from the American Midwest. General American displays a degree of variation, so many, but not all, of the features described above can be identified in this small sample of Kathy’s speech. Her pronunciation is rhotic (” marching, warming, started) with noticeable r-colouring. She has consistent t-voicing (” little, started, getting). There is no h-dropping (” high, holding). In words like ” during, Kathy has yod-dropping. She uses trap in bath words (” half ). Her thought vowel is open, rather like NRP palm (” also, ball, called). Kathy doesn’t exhibit all the American features we have mentioned; for instance, initial /l/ isn’t noticeably dark, and her trap vowel is more open than average GA. Kathy (not being an easterner) doesn’t split NRP lot words up into thought and palm sets (see above) (” the vowels in dollar and wrong are the same), nor does she have any evidence of a force-north split. Like most younger GA speakers, she doesn’t contrast words spelt with w and wh (” white, what, which are all said as /w/).
