Mark J. Reed/Larry Sulky et al. wrote:

> On 6/14/06, Mark J. Reed <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > On 6/14/06, Larry Sulky <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > > I think I must have totally missed everybody's points.  I didn't
> > > realise that the existence of [V], [U], or [@] in at least some
> > > American English dialects was in question. I'm from the American west
> > > coast, with influences from the American midwest and Toronto, Ontario.
> > >
> > > I pronounce "but" and the "a" in "about" as [V].
> >
> > My question is: how sure are you about that?

Some of the problem may stem from the fact that "unstressed @" may rise 
toward [1] [i\]?(barred i), (esp. in the monosyllabic particles a, the, but) 
in anything faster than quite careful speech.  But in ordinary speech, I at 
least don't have the same vowel in "but" and "butt, cup, rough" etc. In fact 
in normal speech, I seem have three distinct sounds in "but the/a cup..." 
probably [bi\t D@/@ 'k_hVp]. And it sounds quite artificial to use the vowel 
of "cup" in "but, the, a", and flat-out wrong to use the "but,the" vowel in 
"cup".  What we call these sounds phonemically is somewhat arbitrary, but 
since they are in complementary distribution they are definitely a single 
phoneme (under the usual definition of phoneme, at least).
>
MJR:
> > Do you have [O] in your 'lect, perhaps as the pronunciation of "law"
> > or the pre-rhotic part of the first syllable in "order"?  The IPA [V]
> > is that same vowel, just unrounded.  It doesn't exist in my 'lect, for
> > sure...

Nor mine; and I don't agree with IPA here--- [V] is a central, not back, 
vowel, probably to be located between mid-ish [3] and low [6]. (For that 
matter, I feel that [O] is often only slightly rounded in standard American 
Engl.  It would be interesting to see a spectrogram of my [O] vs. the same 
with more noticeable rounding.)