American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift

Kelly K   Sat Aug 05, 2006 4:47 pm GMT
American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift
by Robert Siegel

All Things Considered, February 16, 2006 · Professor William Labov, a University of Pennsylvania linguist and author of the new book Atlas of North American English Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change, says there is a shift of vowel sounds in the inland northern cities. He calls it the "northern city shift."



It is very interesting. You should give it a listen:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090

Comments are welcome ;)
Travis   Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:11 pm GMT
One note is that I would not use the term "Great Vowel Shift" here, as it refers to a specific historical vowel shift in Early Modern English.

As for North American English dialects and large-scale vowel system changes, such are in no fashion limited to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS for short) but also include things like the parallel but opposite California Vowel Shift.

For more information on the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift .

However, when reading said article, note that the NCVS does not necessarily follow the exact pattern laid out in it. For example, here, the NCVS diphthongizes historical [{] as [E{] or sometimes [e{], rather than as [I@] or [e@], and in unstressed positions (esp. grammar words) will merge with [E(_")] (or only a marginal front-back distinction between this new [E] and the old [E_"] from historical [E], but this may not be very salient recognition-wise). Also, [V] does not become [O], with [O] becoming [A], but rather [V] simply falls with decreasing formality and or stress simply towards [A], bypassing [O] in the process. Also, [o] is often backed towards the actual cardinal [o] (something which is not part at all of the classical NCVS), while the [E_"] from historical [E] may be lowered in some individuals' speech (some individuals here have what almost sounds like [{] for such at times).
Kirk   Sat Aug 05, 2006 10:41 pm GMT
<<An interesting thing about William Labov is that he is not only concerned with how sounds change in language but why?

He has a theory, based on his own field work, that it is the dominant person in a community who sets the tone for linguistic change there. This person may be either a man or a woman but eventually the way he / she pronounces words is imitated by everyone else in the community.>>

Yes, William Labov's studies have contributed a great deal to sociolinguistics. I think it's definitely true that language change happens in part because spoken language is an inherently social activity and people imitate others (usually unconsciously) who they're speaking with on a daily basis. Altho maybe not so many people would admit it or realize it, language is an activity of imitation and those who you admire are going to be the people you try to be more like (again, this is almost always on a subconscious level when we're talking about language change). If someone you admire and speak with often in your community fronts their /A/ to /a/ (as happens in the NCVS), then you're much more likely to begin doing it, too.

<<American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift
by Robert Siegel

All Things Considered, February 16, 2006 · Professor William Labov, a University of Pennsylvania linguist and author of the new book Atlas of North American English Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change, says there is a shift of vowel sounds in the inland northern cities. He calls it the "northern city shift."



It is very interesting. You should give it a listen:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090

Comments are welcome ;)>>

Yes, the NCVS is fascinating and has been spreading ever since it was first noticed by linguists in the 1960s. It has given the northern Great Lakes regions of the US a very distinctive sound which had not existed on a widespread scale before WWII.
Uriel   Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:01 am GMT
Oh, I think that would just be a Minor Vowel Shift, since only a small portion of the population uses it.
Kirk   Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:27 am GMT
<<Oh, I think that would just be a Minor Vowel Shift, since only a small portion of the population uses it.>>

Well, it's very prevalent in the areas where it occurs (which includes major population centers in urban areas around the Great Lakes) but of course in the overall context of the US it's just another regional variation, not a change happening to all of American English (as you're well familiar--no signs of the NCVS are popping up in New Mexico, I presume!).
Travis   Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:48 am GMT
>><<Oh, I think that would just be a Minor Vowel Shift, since only a small portion of the population uses it.>>

Well, it's very prevalent in the areas where it occurs (which includes major population centers in urban areas around the Great Lakes) but of course in the overall context of the US it's just another regional variation, not a change happening to all of American English (as you're well familiar--no signs of the NCVS are popping up in New Mexico, I presume!).<<

The matter is that it also has a very significant impact overall on the dialects which it affects, effecting practically all the low and low-mid vowels in them (even though there may be exceptions, such as [O] escaping its impact here). It thusly reflects significant dialectization in a relatively short period of time, and the creation of strong regional variations where such did not consistently occur before. What it reflects, in the end, is the overall divergence of North American English dialects both from each other and from General American, with dialects outside of the eastern and southern US no longer being easily treated as simply variations upon General American.
Uriel   Sun Aug 06, 2006 7:44 am GMT
I've met a total of ONE person with it, in 34 years. Granted, I don't hang out in the midwest. But I've been to plenty of the rest of the country.

And I would suspect that to non-Americans most American dialects, outside of the Southern dialects and New England, sound pretty similar, Trav. You might be looking through a very small microscope, there.
Travis   Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:30 am GMT
>>I've met a total of ONE person with it, in 34 years. Granted, I don't hang out in the midwest. But I've been to plenty of the rest of the country. <<

Well, of course - the NCVS is a purely Midwestern, and mostly Upper Midwestern, thing, so if one does not live in the Midwest or have much contact with Midwesterners, it is unlikely that one would come upon it that often.

That is unlike here, where the NCVS is the rule, especially in the case of [A] -> [a], which is universal here.

>>And I would suspect that to non-Americans most American dialects, outside of the Southern dialects and New England, sound pretty similar, Trav. You might be looking through a very small microscope, there.<<

The NCVS is but one example, as there is also the California Vowel Shift, which is very similar to the NCVS except is newer and shifts the same vowels as the NCVS but in roughly the opposite direction.

As for microscopes, I do have to say that the vast majority of people I come into contact with are Midwesterners; even if they are not Wisconsinites, then they are most likely from Minnesota or Illinois, with the occasional person from Michigan or Indiana thrown in. But even out of those, most people I talk to or have talked to are from the Milwaukee area or at least southeastern Wisconsin, which does definitely skew things a good bit (like allowing me to totally ignore that apparently I speak a really weirdass dialect from the perspective of many other North Americans).
Travis   Mon Aug 07, 2006 8:25 am GMT
>>Travis,

Re: "I speak a really weirdass dialect from the perspective of many other North Americans)."

How so?

I live in the Pacific Northwest and when I think of weird American English I think of Arkansas and Tennesee, not Wisconsin. Even in Arkansas and Tennesee, native residents born after about 1965 have accents which sound less intense than those born before that time. Radio and television have probably had much to do with it. <<

Depends. Formal speech here is much closer to General American than informal speech, especially more progressive very informal speech, for starters, and thus one is unlikely really hear some of the more extreme features if one is limited to, say, just commercial interaction and media content (even though I can still always immediately tell the difference between local and national media content upon simply hearing a bit of it, without it saying anything that otherwise places it). Also note that the speech of middle-aged individuals often seems much closer to General American than that of younger individuals here, contrary to the pattern that you claim as being so in Arkansas and Tennesee.

But even still, the reactions I have gotten to some of my speech samples (in particular a rather long one that I made a bit of a ways back) have been ranging from that I apparently have a really strong accent (from the perspective of the other North Americans in question) to only partial understanding of what was being said. Note that such were intentionally in rather informal speech and were not spoken "carefully" at all, but that was to try to as faithfully represent actual everyday speech (or at least my idiolect), without extra influence from General American, as possible. Such likely decreased the understandability and increased the perceived accent, as even if such individuals had already heard speech here, such was likely limited to more formal and "careful" speech.

Of course, the likely reason for such is a number of clear phonological differences from General American that exist in informal speech, including some that I find I have to suppress to be easily understood by people not familiar with the dialect here. Note that I am much more progressive for a particular set of phonological features that I am speaking of than, say, most middle-aged individuals here, but even they generally have such to a lesser degree, but even still it cannot simply be a matter of some idiolectal idiosyncrasies on my part as I have had no problems at all with such more progressive expression of such features with people from here.
Rick Johnson   Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:10 pm GMT
Totally off the point, but why is Arkansas not pronounced like Kansas?
Kirk   Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:11 pm GMT
<<I've met a total of ONE person with it, in 34 years.>>

That's probably because you're nowhere near the upper midwest. :)

<<Granted, I don't hang out in the midwest.>>

Bingo. Head on over there and you'll hear it. It's unmistakable even to non-linguists. I've reported here before about my (non-linguist) friends who have gone to places like Michigan or Minnesota and have come back imitating the different accents or who have met people from those places.

Here in California I've had several friends who were originally from Minnesota and I believe I commented how in social settings with other Californians here the Minnesotans were pretty easily picked out as being from the midwest. In one case I could tell my other Californian friends were politely trying to refrain from snickering when the Minnesotans pronounced certain telltale vowels (such as the ones in "out" "boat" or "too"), especially. The reverse situation is also true. I remember being in Mexico one time and meeting a girl from Michigan who knew I was from California apparently by my pronunciation of "o" (this was in English of course...I think I had said "tote"). She said something like, "You're from California, right? You Californians have a weird 'o'." Of course, it's all perspective as I thought hers sounded weird (it was highly back and rounded).

Not everyone speaks like they do in the movie "Fargo." However, I've met some people who came pretty close to that. In my mind the stronger Northern Cities accents are nearly as distinctive and different from "General American" as most anything the South or East Coast can cook up.

<<I live in the Pacific Northwest and when I think of weird American English I think of Arkansas and Tennesee, not Wisconsin. Even in Arkansas and Tennesee, native residents born after about 1965 have accents which sound less intense than those born before that time.>>

You're right that Southern accents are changing but linguistic research (such as Labov's excellent work over the years, for example) has shown that certain originally Southern features (such as the "pin-pen" merger or certain idiomatic and grammatical constructions such as "fixing to") are actually spreading while some historical Southern features such as coastal nonrhotacism are fading out.

My aunt (who's originally from Seattle) just moved to Tennessee (near Nashville) and she's commented numerous times about how strong the local accent is. She said by this point she's stopped laughing at it because everyone has it. I've also been to Tennessee (to Knoxville) myself and the Tennessee accent was very alive and well there amongst people even my age.

<<Radio and television have probably had much to do with it.>>

No, that's not the case.
Kirk   Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:18 pm GMT
<<Radio and television seem to be doing much to errode traditional accents. This means that any regional accents in Wisconsin were almost certainly stronger before World War II, even before 1965 than they are today. While I still hear accents among Minnesotans who come from areas close to the Canadian border, Minnesotans I've encountered from Minneapolis sound pretty much like Americans in Seattle or Los Angeles, for that matter.>>

Over the years linguistic research has refuted both of those claims, as counterintuitive as it may seem. US English varieties are overall diverging from one another, not becoming more alike. And, the media do not bring about phonological changes. Only speaker-to-speaker contact (which is powerful and can spread across many states) can do that. PBS' excellent "Do You Speak American?" website has some great pages about the media and its relation to language change. It's very interesting and I would encourage you to take a look at it:

http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/mediapower/

http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/mediapower/dialect/index.html

Brennus, please let me know what you think after reading those as I think it's an interesting topic.
Kirk   Mon Aug 07, 2006 8:15 pm GMT
<<Totally off the point, but why is Arkansas not pronounced like Kansas?>>

I'm not sure how that came about.

In fact, speaking of Arkansas I just learned recently that "Arkansas" actually apparently ends in /O/ for those who have that vowel. I'm "cot-caught" merged to /A/ so I've naturally always pronounced it ["Ar\k_hInsA] anyway (compare to my "Kansas" which is ["k_h{nzIs]) so I just assumed that last vowel was in the "father" class with a silent "s" following. But apparently if you're "cot-caught" unmerged with /A/ and /O/, that final vowel, despite orthographic appearances, is actually in the "caught" class with /O/. Never woulda guessed, myself but I just stumbled across it somewhere a couple of months ago. I wonder if the /O/ there came about in analogy to "saw" (my [sA] but a "c-c" unmerged person's [sO], of course).

Even weirder, the Arkansas River is variably and standardly pronounced either [Ar\"k_h{nz@s] (or my [Ar\"k_h{nzIs] since I'm also "Lennon-Lenin" merged to [I] but that's beside the point) or like the state's pronunciation. It's apparently not just UK place names whose orthographical representations may have only a tangential relationship to pronunciation!
Lazar   Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:39 am GMT
<<In fact, speaking of Arkansas I just learned recently that "Arkansas" actually apparently ends in /O/ for those who have that vowel. I'm "cot-caught" merged to /A/ so I've naturally always pronounced it ["Ar\k_hInsA] anyway (compare to my "Kansas" which is ["k_h{nzIs]) so I just assumed that last vowel was in the "father" class with a silent "s" following. But apparently if you're "cot-caught" unmerged with /A/ and /O/, that final vowel, despite orthographic appearances, is actually in the "caught" class with /O/. Never woulda guessed, myself but I just stumbled across it somewhere a couple of months ago. I wonder if the /O/ there came about in analogy to "saw" (my [sA] but a "c-c" unmerged person's [sO], of course).>>

Yep, I pronounce "Arkansas" as ["Ar\kn=%sQ] rather than *["Ar\kn=%sA]. And you might also be interested to know that the same thing applies to "Utah" - despite the spelling, I pronounce "Utah" as ["ju%t_hQ] rather than *["ju%t_hA]. (And just in case you were wondering, the MW dictionary does give /O/ as the primary pronunciation for "Utah".)
Kirk   Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:53 am GMT
<<Yep, I pronounce "Arkansas" as ["Ar\kn=%sQ] rather than *["Ar\kn=%sA]. And you might also be interested to know that the same thing applies to "Utah" - despite the spelling, I pronounce "Utah" as ["ju%t_hQ] rather than *["ju%t_hA]. (And just in case you were wondering, the MW dictionary does give /O/ as the primary pronunciation for "Utah".)>>

Wow--even weirder! I didn't know that, actually. /O/ or /Q/ for 'Utah'?! That just sounds bizarre to my ears. The people from Utah themselves are also "c-c" merged to /A/ so they would pronounce it with /A/ so I'm not even used to natives pronouncing it that way.