Small-Town Values and Big-City Vowels: A Study of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan

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ISBN: 9780822364788 | 0822364786
Cover: Hardcover
Copyright: 6/1/2001

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This book presents a sociolinguistic study of the Northern Cities Shift, a complex pattern of vowel changes heard across the traditional Inland North dialect region of the United States. The study reports on how residents of small towns are reacting to these changes, which are associated with urban speech. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative evidence, the author offers a richly detailed account of the sociolinguistic distribution of the changes in the communities investigated. This work sheds new light on this important pattern of change as well as on the processes involved in the diffusion of language change in general. Matthew J. Gordon is Assistant Professor of English at Purdue University Calumet.

Acknowledgments	p. xi
The Northern Cities Shift	p. 1
The Study of Language Change in Progress	p. 2
The Diffusion of Linguistic Innovations	p. 5
Chain Shifting	p. 7
Previous Research on the Northern Cities Shift	p. 13
Phonetic and Phonological Issues	p. 15
Geography of the NCS	p. 19
Social Distribution of the NCS	p. 20
Historical Evidence of the NCS	p. 24
The Time Depth of the NCS	p. 24
Chronology of the Changes	p. 33
Conclusions	p. 36
Methodology	p. 40
Sample	p. 40
Data Collection	p. 44
Data Analysis	p. 46
Coding Procedures	p. 46
Quantitative Analysis	p. 49
Acoustic Analysis	p. 50
Results: ([varepsilon]), (I), and ([Lambda])	p. 53
The Variable ([varepsilon])	p. 53
Phonetic Description of the Variation	p. 53
Phonological Conditioning of ([varepsilon])	p. 57
General Conditioning of ([varepsilon])	p. 57
Phonological Conditioning of Variant Trajectories of ([varepsilon])	p. 66
Social Distribution of ([varepsilon])	p. 75
Social Aspects of General ([varepsilon])-Shifting	p. 75
Social Distribution of Variant Trajectories of ([varepsilon])	p. 80
The Variable (I)	p. 83
Phonetic Description of the Variation	p. 83
Phonological Conditioning of (I)	p. 85
General Conditioning of (I)	p. 85
Phonological Conditioning of Variant Trajectories of (I)	p. 90
Social Distribution of (I)	p. 97
Social Aspects of General (I)-Shifting	p. 97
Social Distribution of Variant Trajectories of (I)	p. 100
The Variable ([Lambda])	p. 102
Phonetic Description of the Variation	p. 102
Phonological Conditioning of ([Lambda])	p. 104
General Conditioning of ([Lambda])	p. 104
Phonological Conditioning of Variant Trajectories of ([Lambda])	p. 108
Social Distribution of ([Lambda])	p. 117
Social Aspects of General ([Lambda])-Shifting	p. 117
Social Distribution of Variant Trajectories of ([Lambda])	p. 119
Results: (ae), (a), and ([characters not reproducible])	p. 124
The Variable (ae)	p. 124
Phonetic Description of the Variation	p. 124
Phonological Conditioning of (ae)	p. 126
Social Distribution of (ae)	p. 130
The Variable (a)	p. 133
Phonetic Description of the Variation	p. 133
Phonological Conditioning of (a)	p. 134
Social Distribution of (a)	p. 137
The Variable ([characters not reproducible])	p. 140
Phonetic Description of the Variation	p. 140
Phonological Conditioning of ([characters not reproducible])	p. 143
Social Distribution of ([characters not reproducible])	p. 147
Discussion	p. 151
Issues Related to Phonological Conditioning	p. 151
Comparisons to Previous Research Results	p. 152
Types of Explanations	p. 156
Lexical Bias	p. 156
Coincidental Effects	p. 160
Phonetic Motivations	p. 162
Peculiarities of English	p. 168
Summary of Discussion on Phonological Findings	p. 171
The Social Distribution of the NCS	p. 172
The Factor of Town	p. 173
The Factor of Sex of Speaker	p. 179
The Factor of Speaker Age	p. 187
Summary	p. 191
Is the Northern Cities Shift a Chain Shift?	p. 194
Are the NCS Changes Interrelated?	p. 195
General Spatial Connections	p. 195
Impact of Individual Speakers	p. 199
Temporal Relatedness	p. 205
Are Contrasts Preserved by the NCS Changes?	p. 210
Conclusions	p. 215
Word List	p. 221
Items Omitted from Coding	p. 223
References	p. 225
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Small-Town Values and Big-City Vowels: A Study of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan

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