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Today: Accents and Dialects of US English

This hour:

What is a dialect? An accent? What contributes to a listener's perception of

accented speech? From lexical to phonological atlases: American

dialectology What phonological differences may be observed

between dialects of US English?Key term:Isogloss: a graphical representation marking the distributional limits of lexical items or linguistic forms (sometimes the area associated with a linguistic form)

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What is a dialect?…an accent?

Dialect--a local form of "a language”; often associated with a particular region (regional dialect) or subsection of a larger language community (sociolect).

--regionally or socially distinctive

--vary in relatively minor aspects of their pronunciation (“accent”), vocabulary and grammar (how words are combined into sentences)

… Similar techniques for diagnosing dialects may be used for all languages

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Traditional Dialectology

Aims:1. Provide a historical record of the

language2. Show areal distribution of unique

linguistic features3. Not concerned with representing the

speech of the community

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Traditional Dialectology

Method:1. Administer a dialect survey targeting specific lexical

items, pronunciations (diagnostic forms)2. Collect data from representative community members, called

NORMs3. Typically, sampling was done by relying on population

density

Lines indicating the distributional limits of lexical items or linguistic forms are called isoglosses.

Focus:1. Lexical 2. Grammatical3. Phonological

Two recent subfields of sociolinguistics in which dialect descriptions are now accomplished:

Sociophonetics -- Instrumental phonetics supplements auditory phonetic and phonological analysis

Urban Dialectology -- Utilizes updated lexical-cartographic methods (TELSUR)

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Where are they from?

Karen Lisa Margaret Michele

Nancy Peggy Susie

u U I

´ A i

o

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Map of US Dialects

SusieMargaret

Karen

Lisa Michele

Nancy

Peggy

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Diagnosing Dialect Differences

Phonological differences. For the most part, the features that distinguish us from people in other parts of the country are our vowels!

-- Vowels (a, e, i, o, u, ai, oi, ei, au)-- Consonants (r, t, d, th)

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Diagnosing Dialect Differences

Region Phonological Lexical Morpho-syntactic

New England

(oh)

(r)-deletion

“Boston” “car”

“gumband” vs.

“rubberband”

Upper North

Northern Vowel Shift

e.g., (oh)

(ae)-tensing

“coffee”

“bad”

“pop” vs. “soda”

Lower North

Southern Vowel Shift

e.g., short-(e) short-(i)

(s)-vocalization

Diphthongiza-tion, e.g. “bed”, “bid”; ”greasy”

“I heard it whenever that I was watching

TV.”

Upper South

(ay)-monophthon

gization

“bright” “veranda” vs.

“porch”

“The car needs ø washed.”

Lower South

(ay)-monophthon

gization

“bright”

Northwest (r)-insertion “warsh”

Southwest (a~oh) merger

“cot” = “caught”

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Northern Cities and Southern Cities Vowel Shifts (Labov, 1991)

i˘

e˘

I

E

Qa

ç

√

o˘U

u˘

•key characteristics: fronting of (a), tensing and raising of (ae), backing of short (e,i), lowering of (oh) in W New England, N PA, N OH, IN, IL, MI, WI (Buffalo, Chicago)

•traditionally tense (long) vowels and /U/ are unaffected•lax subsystem is moving•ordering of elements via “push” and “drag” chains somewhat controversial

(iy) beat

(i) bit

(ey) beat

(e) bet

(ae) bat

(o) bottle, father

(uw) boot

(u) book

(ow) boat

(uh) but

(oh) ball, caught

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Northern Cities and Southern Cities Vowel Shifts (Labov, 1991)

i˘

e˘

I

E

Qa

ç

√

o˘U

u˘

•key characteristics: fronting of long back vowels (uw), (ow), upward rotation and development of inglides in short (e,i) while long (ey,iy) rotate back and downward in all of the US South

•both shifts are viewed as related (and separate from a third pattern, associated with the merger of (oh-a) ).

(iy) beat

(i) bit

(ey) beat

(e) bet

(ae) bat

(o) bottle, father

(uw) boot

(u) book

(ow) boat

(uh) but

(oh) ball, caught

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In the recent news...

Detroit vowels:http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/vowels.html

New Orleans:Dislocated family resettling in Seattle:http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kplu/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=881425“other” (th)-stopping“crying” (ay)“chicken,” “fish” short-(i)

Buffalo (Donald Herbert story):http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5227036&ft=1&f=1001“Don” (a)-fronting “father”(a)-fronting

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The new attention to phonology:Representing Dialect Speech

Method:1. International phonetic alphabet (IPA):

Traditional dialectology

2. Auditory analysis: Traditional dialectology and Sociolinguistics

3. Instrumental analysis: Sociophonetics

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Representing Dialect Speech

Method:1. International Phonetic Alphabet

1. Low-central /a/ (non-centralized)4. /å/

2. Raised /a/: /a£/ 5. Raised /å/: /å¢/

3. Lowered /å/ : /å¢/ 6.

and finally, schwa: /´/ • R-colored vowels

“purr” /p‘/ “heard” /h‘d/ “sir” /s‘/