Great Scott! Hosts Phil & Eric think awfully hard on the sounds of the lexical sets lot, cloth, thought. A set up for the trifecta (tetrafecta?) of our next few shows, in this episode we talk through the sounds typically associated with these lexical sets, particularly in “standard” accents like Received Pronunciation, so-called General American, Canadian, and the tendency for cloth to merge with either lot or thought.

Typical Sounds encountered in these lexical sets range from

a    type a

ɑ   script a

ɒ    turned script a

ɔ    open o

Diacritics discussed:

o̞   lowered

o̝   raised

o̘    Advanced Tongue Root (forward)

o̙   Retracted Tongue Root (back)

o̟   Advanced

o̠    retracted

o̽    mid-centralized

ö    centralized

o̹    rounded

o̜    unrounded