Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:23:02.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Boston (r): Neighbo(r)s nea(r) and fa(r)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2010

Naomi Nagy  and
Patricia Irwin
Naomi Nagy
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Patricia Irwin
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The influence of linguistic and social factors on (r) in Boston and two New Hampshire towns is described. The preceding vowel and geographic, ethnic, and age-related differences were found to have strong effects. In comparison to Bostonians, New Hampshire speakers exhibit a higher rate of rhoticity, and fewer factors constrain their variability. Younger speakers are more rhotic than older speakers, as are more educated speakers and those in higher linguistic marketplace positions. This study demonstrates that these patterns fit the transmission (within Boston) and diffusion (to New Hampshire) framework (Labov, 2007) only with the addition of accommodation theory (Niedzielski & Giles, 1996), which connects our linguistic findings to evidence that many New Hampshire residents do not identify with Boston. The effects on (r) in other studies are compared to determine which effects are particular to individual communities (nonuniversal) and which occur across all communities examined. The nonuniversal effects are therefore available as measures of contact-induced change. This study introduces a method for quantitatively comparing the amount of change between communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 241 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anttila, Arto, & Cho, Young-mee Yu. (1998). Variation and change in optimality theory. Lingua 104:31–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, Tillery, Jan, & Sand, Lori. (1991). The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3(3):241–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baugh, Albert, & Cable, Thomas. (1993). A history of the English language. 4th ed.New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baugh, Albert, & Cable, Thomas. (2001). A history of the English language. 5th ed.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baxter, Laura. (2008). Transitioning between dialects: Variable r-lessness in a Canadian border community. Paper presented at NWAV 37, Houston.Google Scholar
Becker, Kara. (2009). /r/ and the construction of place identity on New York City's Lower East Side. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13(5):634–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Alan, Brenier, Jason M., Gregory, Michelle, Girand, Cynthia, & Jurafsky, Dan. (2009). Predictability effects on durations of content and function words in conversational English. Journal of Memory and Language 60(1):92–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernard, Ellen, Andrus, Curtis, & Anttila, Arto. (2007). Linking-r in Eastern Massachusetts and optimality theory. Paper presented at NWAV 36, Philadelphia. Available at: http://www.stanford.edu/~anttila/research/papers.html.Google Scholar
Bonfiglio, Thomas. (2002). Race and the rise of standard American. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1964). Capital et marché linguistiques. Linguistische Berichte 90:3–24.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1977). Economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information 16(6):645–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2009). Localized globalization: A multi-local, multivariate investigation of quotative ‘be like’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13(3):291–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan, & Hopper, Paul (eds.) (2001). Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, Jack, & Trudgill, Peter. (1998). Dialectology. 2nd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Jacob. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2nd ed.Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Crystal, David. (2005). The stories of English. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press.Google Scholar
Feagin, Crawford. (1990). Dynamics of sound change in Southern States English: From r-less to r-ful in three generations. In Edmondson, J., Feagin, C. & Mülhäusler, P. (eds.), Development and diversity: Language variation across time and space: A festschrift for Charles-James N. Bailey. Arlington: SIL/University of Texas at Arlington. 129–146.Google Scholar
Fennell, Barbara. (2001). A history of English: A sociolinguistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ferrie, Joseph. (2006). New Hampshire quick facts, U.S. Census Bureau. Available at: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/33000.html.Google Scholar
Foulkes, Paul. (1997). English [r]-sandhi—A sociolinguistic perspective. Histoire, Epistémologie, Langage 19:73–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, Paul, & Docherty, Gerry. (2001). Variation and change in British English (r). ‘R-atics. sociolinguistic, phonetic and phonological characteristics of /r/. Etudes & Travail 4. Brussels: Free University of Brussels. 27–44.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris, & Idsardi, William. (1997). r, hypercorrection and the elsewhere condition. In Roca, I. (ed.), Derivations and constraints in phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 331–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jen, & Sudbury, Andrea. (2005). How rhoticity became /r/-sandhi. Language 8(4):799–823.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jen, & Warren, Paul. (2002). Experiments on /r/–intrusion. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics 14:47–58.Google Scholar
Hayden, Robert C. (1983). Faith, culture, and leadership: A history of the Black church in Boston. Boston: Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (Quoted at: http://www.nps.gov/boaf/historyculture/churches.htm. Accessed: December 2, 2009.)Google Scholar
Hill, Archibald. (1940). Early loss of [r] before dentals. Publications of the Modern Language Association 55(2):308–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinton, Leanne, & Pollock, Karen. (2000). Regional variation in the phonological characteristics of African American Vernacular English. World Englishes 19(1):59–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irwin, Patricia, & Nagy, Naomi. (2007). Bostonians /r/ speaking: A quantitative look at (r) in Boston. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 13: Selected papers from NWAV 35. 135–147.Google Scholar
Kurath, Hans, Bloch, Bernard, Hanley, Miles L., Hanson, Marcus, & Lowman, Guy. (1939–1941). Linguistic Atlas of New England. Providence, RI: ACLS.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2007). Transmission and diffusion. Language 83:344–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, & Boberg, Charles. (2005). Atlas of North American English (ANAE). Paris: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laferriere, Martha. (1979). Ethnicity in phonological variation and change. Language 55(3):603–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenney, Christopher. (2003). Sightseeing: Clues to the landscape history of New England. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John. (1991). Synchronic rule inversion. In Sutton, L., Johnson, C. & Shields, R. (eds.), Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, CA. 192–207.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John. (1993). A case of surface constraint violation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadians de Linguistique 38(2):169–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. (2009). Replication, transfer, and calquing: Using variation as a tool in the study of language contact. Language Variation and Change 21:297–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Corey A. (1998). R-lessness in Philadelphia. In Vera, M. K. (ed.), Sociolinguistics, language and society. New Delhi, India: Sage. 79–96.Google Scholar
Mompean, Pilar, & Mompean, Jose. (2007). Phonetic factors in /R/-liaison usage: A first report. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences XVI:1397–1400. Available at: http://www.icphs2007.de.Google Scholar
Myhill, John. (1988). Postvocalic /r/ as an index of integration into the BEV speech community. American Speech 3:203–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagy, Naomi. (2001). “Live free or die” as a linguistic principle. American Speech 76(1):30–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagy, Naomi. (2008). Perceptual frequency and formant frequency in R speech. Poster presented at Labphon 11, Wellington, NZ. Available at: http://r1.chass.utoronto.ca/ngn/pdf/LabPhon11_Nagy_poster.pdf. Accessed: July 13, 2009.Google Scholar
Niedzielski, Nancy, & Giles, Howard. (1996). Linguistic accommodation. In Goebl, H., Nelde, P., Stary, Z. & Wölck, W. (eds.), Contact linguistics: An international handbook of contemporary research. Berlin: de Gruyter. 332–342.Google Scholar
Parslow, Robert L. (1967). The pronunciation of English in Boston, Massachusetts: Vowels and consonants. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Parslow, Robert L. (1971). The pronunciation of English in Boston, Massachusetts: Vowels and consonants. In Williamson, J. & Burke, V. (eds.), A various language: Perspectives on American dialects. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. 610–624.Google Scholar
Paullin, Charles O., & Wright, John K. (1932). Atlas of the historical geography of the United States. Washington, D.C., New York: Carnegie Institution of Washington and the American Geographical Society of New York.Google Scholar
Peterson, Eric. (2007). Boston African-American national historic site. HowStuffWorks.com. Available at: http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/boston-african-american-national-historic-site.htm. Accessed: December 2, 2009.Google Scholar
Plug, Leendert, & Ogden, Richard. (2003). A parametric approach to the phonetics of postvocalic /r/ in Dutch. Phonetica 60:159–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Karen, & Bernie, Mary. (1997). A phonetic analysis of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ in African American Memphians. Paper presented at NWAV 25, Las Vegas.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana & Tagliamonte, Sali. 2001. African American English in the Diaspora. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Reppen, Randi, Ide, Nancy, & Suderman, Keith. (2005). American National Corpus (ANC). 2nd release. Linguistic Data Consortium, Philadelphia. Available at: http://www.americannationalcorpus.org/frequency.html.Google Scholar
Rooney, John, Zelinsky, Wilbur, Lauder, Dean, Vitek, John, & Pennington, Campbell. (1982). This remarkable continent. An atlas of United States and Canadian society and cultures. College Station: Texas A & M University Press.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David & Laberge, Suzanne. (1978). The linguistic market and the statistical explanation of variability. In Sankoff, D. (ed.), Linguistic variation: Models & methods. New York: Academic Press. 239–250.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, Cedergren, Henrietta, Kemp, William, Thibault, Pierrette, & Vincent, Diane. (1989). Montreal French: Language, class and ideology. In Fasold, R. & Schiffrin, D. (eds.), Language change and variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 107–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shi, Rushen, Gick, Bryan, Kanwischer, Dara, & Wilson, Ian. (2005). Frequency and category factors in the reduction of function words: EPG and acoustic measures. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 34(4):341–364.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spina, Stuart. (2005). 10 tips to survive a New England winter. Available at: http://www.bostontip.com/. Accessed: October 2005.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 3:215–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urbanek, Mary. (2003). Blizzard of ’78 letters. Available at: http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/02-03/02-02-03/f05lo210.htm. Accessed: October 2005.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau. (2006). State and county quickfacts. Available at: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/33/3345140.html. Accessed: February 2, 2009.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2007). Occupational employment statistics. Available at: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_71650.htm. Accessed: April 2, 2007.Google Scholar
van Riper, William. (1958). The loss of post-vocalic r in the Eastern United States. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Villard, Sarah. (2009). Postvocalic /r/ in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire. Paper presented at NWAV 38, Ottawa.Google Scholar
Walker, John. (1774). Pronouncing dictionary of English. London: n.p.Google Scholar
Wells, John. (1982). Accents of English, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, & Schilling-Estes, Natalie. (2005). American English. 2nd edition. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wood, Jim. (2010). Short-a in Northern New England. Journal of English Linguistics 20:1–31.Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, Malcah, Kendall, Tyler, Foulkes, Paul, Watt, Dominic, Eddie, Jillian, Harrison, Philip, & Kavenagh, Colleen. (2008). Perception of r-fulness by trained listeners. Paper presented at NWAV 37, Houston.Google Scholar
Zelinsky, Wilbur. (1992). The cultural geography of the United States. A revised edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar