I have [l] in all those pre-/k/-environment words, and strongly enough 
that i've had no-lx-background students point it out as weird to them.

Interestingly, i may be from the same dialect region as you, according 
to Kurath and friends (Virginia Piedmont), depending on where in 
Northern Virginia you're from. (I'm from Southern Maryland.)

-- 
David Bowie

On 12/Apr/11 4:06 AM, Katie Carmichael wrote:
> Question for the l-ful palm/balm speakers: do you also pronounce the /l/
> in walk, talk, folk, etc? An l-ful palm/balm doesn't seem too odd to me
> (in fact I'm pretty sure I can pronounce those words either
> way--Northern Virginia native), but I have a colleague from North
> Carolina with l-ful walk, talk, folk (like Rebecca's) and that sounded
> really foreign to me the first time I heard it.
>
> Katie Carmichael
>
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 4:38 AM, Jeffrey Kallen <[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
>     Fascinating discussion. In Irish English, where velarised or dark
>     /l/ is quite rare and is not part of traditional dialect, words such
>     as ‘palm’, ‘calm’, ‘psalm’,  and ‘almond’ do not have /l/ in them. I
>     did a small-scale study once which involved speakers from Dublin,
>     Limerick, Co. Down, Scotland, the US, and England: relevant here was
>     a contrast between ‘bombs’  and ‘balm’ in a reading passage. The
>     four Irish speakers and the Scottish speaker used the [a] of TRAP
>     with no /l/ in ‘balm’, while the English and American speakers used
>     the back unrounded [A] of BATH or LOT respectively, followed by a
>     dark /l/. For ‘bombs’, everybody used the back unrounded [A] except
>     for the Ulster speaker, who used the open-o [O] as in THOUGHT. The
>     upshot was that ‘bomb’ and ‘balm’ would not produce homophones for
>     any speaker: for the Irish and Scottish speakers, the difference was
>     based in a vowel contrast, but for the American and English
>     speakers, the difference was signalled by the use of dark /l/. In
>     that same exercise, incidentally, the American speaker also produced
>     a dark /l/ in ‘psalms’, but none of the others did: the British
>     English speaker used the low back unrounded [A], while all the Irish
>     speakers used [a].
>
>     I had, incidentally, been alerted to the possible homophone by an
>     encounter with a retired surgeon from New Zealand, who had spent
>     many years compiling a dictionary of homophones. He had classed
>     ‘bomb’ and ‘balm’ as homophones, but I had my doubts. I don’t know
>     if the dictionary was ever published.
>
>     Of course we can also find epenthesis between liquids and following
>     nasals in words like ‘film’, ‘elm’, ‘helm’, and ‘harm’. But that’s
>     another day’s work.
>
>     Jeff Kallen
>
>
>     On 12/04/2011 07:00, "Peter Trudgill" <[log in to unmask]
>     <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
>     >  The pronunciation with /l/ is quite normal in areas of the
>     southwest of
>     >  England, where it is clearly a conservative feature and not a
>     spelling
>     >  pronunciation. John Wells writes about it in his book, I think,
>     though I dont
>     >  have it to hand. Rule number one: anyone with a query about
>     English accents
>     >  should first look in J C Wells "Accents of English"!
>     >
>     >  It is true that in N America many speakers, having one fewer vowel
>     than the
>     >  rest of us, pronounce bomb and balm the same unless the /l/ occurs
>     in balm,
>     >  wwhile we dont. But the rest of us might like to note that in the
>     relevant
>     >  area a SW England, words such as the name Palmer have the vowel of
>     LOT or
>     >  THOUGHT (Im not sure which - any native speakers out there?) and
>     not of TRAP,
>     >  or START etc.
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >  At 01:51 +0200 12/4/11, Adam Schembri wrote:
>     > > In London, I worked with a Canadian from Guelph, Ontario who
>     tended to
>     > > pronounce 'palm' and 'calm' with an 'l'. I had always assumed
>     that this
>     > > was simply a feature of his idiolect (I have never heard it in my
>     native
>     > > dialect of Australian English, nor in southern British English),
>     so I was
>     > > interested to see your message about it possibly being more
>     widespread.
>     > > --
>     > > Associate Professor Adam Schembri
>     > > Director, National Institute for Deaf Studies and Sign Language
>     > > La Trobe University | Melbourne (Bundoora) | Victoria |  3086 |
>       Australia
>     > > Tel: +61 3 9479 2887 <tel:%2B61%203%209479%202887> | Fax: +61 3
>     9479 3074 <tel:%2B61%203%209479%203074> | www.latrobe.edu.au/nids
>     <http://www.latrobe.edu.au/nids>
>     > >
>     > >
>     > >
>     > >
>     > > On 12/04/11 7:19 AM, "Aaron Dinkin" <[log in to unmask]
>     <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>     > >
>     > >> Is anyone aware of any research they could point me toward on the
>     > >> pronunciation of words like "calm" and "palm" with a /l/? (I
>     assume this
>     > >> is spelling pronunciation, but it just might be a parallel
>     preservation
>     > >> of
>     > >> an archaic form.) Geographic distribution of the /l/, whether it
>     affects
>     > >> all relevant words, anything like that?
>     > >>
>     > >> -Aaron J. Dinkin
>     > >> Dr. Whom
>     >
>
>     Dr. Jeffrey Kallen
>     Centre for Language and Communication Studies
>     Trinity College Dublin
>     Dublin 2
>     Ireland
>
>
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>
> --
> Katie Carmichael
> The Ohio State University
> Department of Linguistics
> 200 Oxley Hall
> 1712 Neil Avenue
> Columbus, Ohio 43201
>
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