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]" target="_blank">[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 | Fax: +61 3 9479 3074 | www.latrobe.edu.au/nids
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/04/11 7:19 AM, "Aaron Dinkin" <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[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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