Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T14:30:23.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gradience, allophony, and chain shifts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2017

Aaron J. Dinkin  and
Robin Dodsworth
Aaron J. Dinkin
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Robin Dodsworth
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The monophthongization of /ay/ in the Southern United States is disfavored by following voiceless consonants (price) relative to voiced or word-final environments (prize). If monophthongization is the trigger for the Southern Shift (Labov, 2010) and chain shifts operate as predicted by a modular feedforward phonological theory (cf. Bermúdez-Otero, 2007), this implies price and prize must be two ends of a phonetic continuum, rather than two discrete allophones. We test this hypothesis via distributional analysis of offglide targets and statistical analysis of the effect of vowel duration. As predicted, we find price and prize share a continuous distribution in the Inland South, the region where the Southern Shift probably originated (Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006). We use Raleigh, North Carolina, outside the Inland South, as a comparison point; there, the same methodologies indicate price and prize are more discretely separated. Our results thus offer empirical support for the phonological theory that motivated the hypothesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 101 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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

Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. (2007). Diachronic phonology. In de Lacy, P. (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of phonology. New York: Cambridge University Press. 497–517.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. (2015). Amphichronic explanation and the life cycle of phonological processes. In Honeybone, P. & Salmons, J. C. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 374–399.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo, & Trousdale, Graeme. (2012). Cycles and continua: On unidirectionality and gradualness in language change. In Nevalainen, T. & Traugott, E. C. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 691–720.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David. (2014). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [computer program]. Version 5.3.82. Available at: http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/. Accessed July 26, 2014.Google Scholar
Dinkin, Aaron J. (2009). Dialect boundaries and phonological change in Upstate New York. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Dinkin, Aaron J. (2011). Nasal short-a systems vs. the Northern Cities Shift. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 17.2:71–80.Google Scholar
Dinkin, Aaron J. (2013). What's really happening to short-a before l in Philadelphia? American Speech 88.1:7–13.Google Scholar
Dodsworth, Robin. (2013). Retreat from the Southern Vowel Shift in Raleigh, NC: Social factors. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 19.2:31–40.Google Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2003). “Tie, tied and tight”: The expansion of /ai/ monophthongization in African-American and European-American speech in Memphis, Tennessee. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7.3:279–298.Google Scholar
Fruehwald, Josef. (2013). The phonological influence on phonetic change. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Gordon, Matthew J. (2011). Methodological and theoretical issues in the study of chain shifting. Language and Linguistics Compass 5(11):784–794.Google Scholar
Kendall, Tyler. (2007). The North Carolina Sociolinguistic Archive and Analysis Project: Empowering the sociolinguistic archive. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 13.2:15–26.Google Scholar
Kurath, Hans. (1949). A word geography of the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kurath, Hans, & McDavid, Raven I. Jr. (1961). The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 1. Internal factors. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2007). Transmission and diffusion. Language 83.2:344–387.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2010). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 3. Cognitive and cultural factors. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, & Boberg, Charles. (2006). Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton/de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Baranowski, Maciej, & Dinkin, Aaron. (2010). The effect of outliers on the perception of sound change. Language Variation and Change 22:175–190.Google Scholar
Mellesmoen, Gloria. (2016). Allophones in the Canadian Shift: Evidence from a sub-phonemic chain shift in British Columbia English. Paper presented at Cascadia Workshop in Sociolinguistics, Seattle, April 24, 2016.Google Scholar
Moreton, Elliott, & Thomas, Erik R. (2007). Origins of Canadian Raising in voiceless-coda effects: A case study in phonologization. Laboratory Phonology 9:37–64.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (2002). Word-specific phonetics. Laboratory Phonology 7:101–139.Google Scholar
Solé, Maria-Josep. (1992). Phonetic and phonological processes: The case of nasalization. Language and Speech 35:29–43.Google Scholar
Solé, Maria-Josep. (2007). Controlled and mechanical properties in speech: A review of the literature. In Solé, M.-J., Beddor, P. S., & Ohala, M. (eds.), Experimental approaches to phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 302–321.Google Scholar
Stockwell, Robert P., & Minkova, Donka. (1988). The English Vowel Shift: Problems of coherence and explanation. In Kastovsky, D. & Bauer, G. (eds.), Luick revisited. Tübingen: Narr. 355–394.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (1989). A phylogenetic analysis of the Southern Shift. M.A. thesis, Texas A&M University.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (2000). Spectral differences in /ai/ offsets conditioned by voicing of the following consonant. Journal of Phonetics 28.1:1–25.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (2001). An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Publication of the American Dialect Society 85. NP: American Dialect Society.Google Scholar
Turton, Danielle. (2014). Variation in English /l/: Synchronic reflections of the life cycle of phonological processes. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Manchester.Google Scholar