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Structure, Chronology, and Local Social Meaning of a Supra-Local Vowel Shift: Emergence of the Low-Back-Merger Shift in New England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2021

Monica Nesbitt  and
James N. Stanford
Monica Nesbitt*
Affiliation:
Indiana [email protected]
James N. Stanford
Affiliation:
Dartmouth [email protected]
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

The Low-Back-Merger Shift (LBMS) is a major North American vowel chain shift spreading across many disparate dialect regions. In this field-based study, we examine the speech of fifty-nine White Western Massachusetts speakers, aged 18–89. Using diagnostics in Becker (2019) and Boberg (2019b), we find the LBMS emerging at the expense of the Northern Cities Shift (Labov, Yaeger, & Steiner, 1972) and traditional New England features (Boberg, 2001; Kurath, 1939; Nagy & Roberts, 2004). In Becker's LBMS model (2019:9), the low-back merger (lot-thought) triggers front-vowel shifts. Our results suggest that local social meaning can sometimes override this chronology such that the front-vowel shifts occur before the low-back merger, even as the overall configuration comes to match Becker's predictions. Sociosymbolic meaning associated with the older New England system has led to a different temporal ordering of LBMS components, thus providing new theoretical and empirical insights into the mechanisms by which supralocal patterns are adopted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , October 2021 , pp. 269 - 295
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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