----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 9:14 AM
Subject: [phoNet] Re: Northern Cities Vowel
Shift.
To those interested in the Northern Cities Vowel
Shift:
The following book by William Labov has several
chapters devoted to the phenomenon, as well as other sound changes in progress
(with special emphasis on American English accents).
Labov, William 1994. Principles of
Linguistic Change. Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
Collecting the stuff has taken a lot of work and
decades of research, but I wouldn't call the data "limited". I've had several
opportunities to listen to Sharon Ash's recordings of Northern Cities English
and I'm impressed by the wealth of material amassed by Labov's
team.
The pre-R environment is special and /ar/, /or/,
/@r/ don't really participate in the Shift. The most conspicuous individual
stages making up the chain are the following:
- The raising, tensing and diphthongisation of the
vowel of CLASS and BAD, so that it becomes confusible with "ea" in
IDEA
- The fronting of the LOT vowel, which moves
towards the position vacated by BAD (speakers of other varieties of American
English have been reported to mishear COD as CAD)
- The retraction of the BED vowel so that strangers
may mishear it as BUD
- The pronunciation of BUD with a fully back vowel,
so that it doesn't really merge with BED
Piotr
> --- In phoNet@egroups.com, "Mark Odegard" <markodegard@h...> wrote:
>
<....>
> > A useful URL
> >
href="http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html">http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html
>
>
> <....>
> Interesting. But I'm having trouble following
some of it.
> What happened to /(y)i-w/? And why did they leave /ar/,
/or/, etc.
> out
> of consideration for the shifts? I suppose
getting the limited data
> they did get required a lot of work.
>
Jeff
>
>
>
>
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