Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242221095118
Minna Palander-Collin
{"title":"Book Review","authors":"Minna Palander-Collin","doi":"10.1177/00754242221095118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242221095118","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47742627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242221087244
Catherine Laliberté
Although Indian English is the best-documented South Asian English, its diachronic development has not been described to a great extent. The present study begins to address this gap by offering a real-time perspective on the evolution of modals and semi-modals in Indian English. It sketches the changes in the frequency of modals and semi-modals in three corpora of Indian newspaper texts from 1939, 1968, and the early 2000s. Changes in the frequency of eleven modals and eleven semi-modals are found to be similar to the trends previously observed for written American and British English: semi-modals, as well as the modals can, could, and would, rise greatly in frequency. An analysis of the types of modality expressed by individual modal verbs provides in-depth insights into shifts in Indian English during the period. The study’s findings raise methodological and theoretical considerations for the diachronic study of modality in corpora in English generally: the increasing amount of direct quotation in news reportage partly accounts for a rise in modal frequency in this subgenre, which constitutes a confounding aspect seldom articulated in the study of newspaper language. Individual modal verbs exhibit different directions and speeds of change that are not reflected in the trajectory of modals as a category, demonstrating that an aggregate measure is not a suitable point of comparison between varieties to determine their degree of similarity or difference in terms of modal verb usage.
{"title":"A Diachronic Study of Modals and Semi-modals in Indian English Newspapers","authors":"Catherine Laliberté","doi":"10.1177/00754242221087244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242221087244","url":null,"abstract":"Although Indian English is the best-documented South Asian English, its diachronic development has not been described to a great extent. The present study begins to address this gap by offering a real-time perspective on the evolution of modals and semi-modals in Indian English. It sketches the changes in the frequency of modals and semi-modals in three corpora of Indian newspaper texts from 1939, 1968, and the early 2000s. Changes in the frequency of eleven modals and eleven semi-modals are found to be similar to the trends previously observed for written American and British English: semi-modals, as well as the modals can, could, and would, rise greatly in frequency. An analysis of the types of modality expressed by individual modal verbs provides in-depth insights into shifts in Indian English during the period. The study’s findings raise methodological and theoretical considerations for the diachronic study of modality in corpora in English generally: the increasing amount of direct quotation in news reportage partly accounts for a rise in modal frequency in this subgenre, which constitutes a confounding aspect seldom articulated in the study of newspaper language. Individual modal verbs exhibit different directions and speeds of change that are not reflected in the trajectory of modals as a category, demonstrating that an aggregate measure is not a suitable point of comparison between varieties to determine their degree of similarity or difference in terms of modal verb usage.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46507853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211055760
Jessica A. Grieser
{"title":"Book Review: Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy","authors":"Jessica A. Grieser","doi":"10.1177/00754242211055760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211055760","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49128285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211066971
Christopher Strelluf
This paper examines constructions formed by the verb need taking a passivized complement. While previous dialectological, sociolinguistic, and micro-syntactic analyses have focused primarily on the past-participle complement (need+ED) as a regional syntactic variable, this study expands the purview of need-passives to examine gerund-participle (need+ING) and infinitival (need+TO) complements. It also looks beyond purported need+ED regions to examine need-passive variation in Englishes spoken around the world. Data from Twitter confirm previous findings that need+ED is a productive feature of the US Midland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Tyneside, England. However, tweets also show that need+ING is produced disproportionately frequently in England and Wales. These results reveal a more complex pattern of need-passive variation in global Englishes than has previously been reported. Additionally, a transitive construction formed with need as a matrix verb is examined and found to co-vary regionally with need+ING. Syntactic analyses of tweets reveal similarities in the ways that need+ED and need+ING vary with need+TO. These findings lead to a proposed syntactic analysis that need+ED and need+ING share the same derivational structure. More generally, the work argues for greater attention in linguistic research to low-frequency features.
{"title":"Regional Variation and Syntactic Derivation of Low-frequency need -passives on Twitter","authors":"Christopher Strelluf","doi":"10.1177/00754242211066971","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211066971","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines constructions formed by the verb need taking a passivized complement. While previous dialectological, sociolinguistic, and micro-syntactic analyses have focused primarily on the past-participle complement (need+ED) as a regional syntactic variable, this study expands the purview of need-passives to examine gerund-participle (need+ING) and infinitival (need+TO) complements. It also looks beyond purported need+ED regions to examine need-passive variation in Englishes spoken around the world. Data from Twitter confirm previous findings that need+ED is a productive feature of the US Midland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Tyneside, England. However, tweets also show that need+ING is produced disproportionately frequently in England and Wales. These results reveal a more complex pattern of need-passive variation in global Englishes than has previously been reported. Additionally, a transitive construction formed with need as a matrix verb is examined and found to co-vary regionally with need+ING. Syntactic analyses of tweets reveal similarities in the ways that need+ED and need+ING vary with need+TO. These findings lead to a proposed syntactic analysis that need+ED and need+ING share the same derivational structure. More generally, the work argues for greater attention in linguistic research to low-frequency features.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42726033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211052490
Stephanie Hackert, Diana Wengler
This paper presents a diachronic analysis of genitive variation in five varieties of English. Based on a set of matching newspaper corpora from the 1960s and the early 2000s from the Bahamas, Jamaica, India, Great Britain, and the U.S., we look into variation and change in the underlying grammar of the genitive alternation, as defined by patterns of constraints affecting the variable. We employ random forests and Multifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis to analyze a richly annotated set of over 22,000 genitive tokens. Our analysis corroborates findings with regard to postcolonial Englishes, particularly in the Caribbean, that suggest that these varieties are partaking in American-led global trends in grammar toward, e.g., densification, without actually approximating American norms. We also notice that production-related constraints on genitive variation, such as syntactic weight or givenness, have increased their effects. While metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes share a core grammar of genitive variation, there is noticeable variation particularly with regard to semantic and socioculturally determined predictors such as text type. Overall, we see a widening gap between metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes. The case of Bahamian English is especially interesting as it appears fairly American-oriented during colonial times but has aligned with other postcolonial Englishes since independence.
{"title":"Recent Grammatical Change in Postcolonial Englishes: A Real-time Study of Genitive Variation in Caribbean and Indian News Writing","authors":"Stephanie Hackert, Diana Wengler","doi":"10.1177/00754242211052490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211052490","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a diachronic analysis of genitive variation in five varieties of English. Based on a set of matching newspaper corpora from the 1960s and the early 2000s from the Bahamas, Jamaica, India, Great Britain, and the U.S., we look into variation and change in the underlying grammar of the genitive alternation, as defined by patterns of constraints affecting the variable. We employ random forests and Multifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis to analyze a richly annotated set of over 22,000 genitive tokens. Our analysis corroborates findings with regard to postcolonial Englishes, particularly in the Caribbean, that suggest that these varieties are partaking in American-led global trends in grammar toward, e.g., densification, without actually approximating American norms. We also notice that production-related constraints on genitive variation, such as syntactic weight or givenness, have increased their effects. While metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes share a core grammar of genitive variation, there is noticeable variation particularly with regard to semantic and socioculturally determined predictors such as text type. Overall, we see a widening gap between metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes. The case of Bahamian English is especially interesting as it appears fairly American-oriented during colonial times but has aligned with other postcolonial Englishes since independence.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42262349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242221083648
D. Duncan
While examples have been clearly attested in the literature, the reversal of a merger is an uncommon occurrence that apparently contradicts principles underlying sound change. Understanding the implications of merger reversal therefore requires understanding of their implementation: whether there was a full merger in the first place, what the phonetic path taken to separate the merger was, and whether there was a social motivation behind the reversal. I take this approach in a case study of the traditional start-north merger of St. Louis English, which has reversed in recent decades. I show that the merger was most likely a near merger, that the reversal was achieved by raising north and fronting start, and that the reversal, at least the raising of north, was socially motivated. I argue that the data highlights the role of perceptual salience in reversing mergers and illustrates that merger reversal can at times be chain shift-like in appearance, if not execution.
虽然文献中有明确的例子，但合并的逆转是一种罕见的现象，显然与健全变革的基本原则相矛盾。因此，理解合并逆转的含义需要理解其实施:首先是否存在完全合并，采取何种语音路径将合并分开，以及逆转背后是否存在社会动机。我在圣路易斯英语公司(St. Louis English)传统的自北向合并的案例研究中采用了这种方法，这种合并在最近几十年发生了逆转。我证明了合并很可能是一种接近合并，这种逆转是通过向北抬升和前沿开始实现的，这种逆转，至少是向北抬升，是有社会动机的。我认为，这些数据强调了感知显著性在扭转合并中的作用，并说明合并逆转有时在外观上可能是连锁转移，如果不是执行的话。
{"title":"Merger Reversal in St. Louis: Implementation and Implications","authors":"D. Duncan","doi":"10.1177/00754242221083648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242221083648","url":null,"abstract":"While examples have been clearly attested in the literature, the reversal of a merger is an uncommon occurrence that apparently contradicts principles underlying sound change. Understanding the implications of merger reversal therefore requires understanding of their implementation: whether there was a full merger in the first place, what the phonetic path taken to separate the merger was, and whether there was a social motivation behind the reversal. I take this approach in a case study of the traditional start-north merger of St. Louis English, which has reversed in recent decades. I show that the merger was most likely a near merger, that the reversal was achieved by raising north and fronting start, and that the reversal, at least the raising of north, was socially motivated. I argue that the data highlights the role of perceptual salience in reversing mergers and illustrates that merger reversal can at times be chain shift-like in appearance, if not execution.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48322136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211047891
Tracy Conner
The following interview was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2021. By that time, I had known John Baugh for about eighteen years after having taken my first class on Black English with him at Stanford. I have always been fascinated by John’s ability to merge innovative and culturally relevant, justice-focused research with liberatory outcomes for Black people and Black language. It was a rare treat for me to talk with my long-time mentor now as a faculty member. In the wake of finally having a critical mass of Black scholars in linguistics and after George Floyd’s murder and a new push to decolonize linguistics, it only seemed fitting to hear the experiences that shaped John’s life, the life of a Black man in linguistics, and how that life has given rise to his groundbreaking scholarship. There is nothing linear about his path. And as the field pushes to admit more Black graduate students and hire more Black faculty, it dawned on me that many in the field might not recognize the exceptional journey of navigating academia as a Black person. Please enjoy this candid snapshot of the life that birthed such a storied career from the upcoming president of the Linguistic Society of America: a unique opportunity to learn how to do better. Consider this a one-time invitation to the cookout.
{"title":"Interview with John Baugh","authors":"Tracy Conner","doi":"10.1177/00754242211047891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211047891","url":null,"abstract":"The following interview was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2021. By that time, I had known John Baugh for about eighteen years after having taken my first class on Black English with him at Stanford. I have always been fascinated by John’s ability to merge innovative and culturally relevant, justice-focused research with liberatory outcomes for Black people and Black language. It was a rare treat for me to talk with my long-time mentor now as a faculty member. In the wake of finally having a critical mass of Black scholars in linguistics and after George Floyd’s murder and a new push to decolonize linguistics, it only seemed fitting to hear the experiences that shaped John’s life, the life of a Black man in linguistics, and how that life has given rise to his groundbreaking scholarship. There is nothing linear about his path. And as the field pushes to admit more Black graduate students and hire more Black faculty, it dawned on me that many in the field might not recognize the exceptional journey of navigating academia as a Black person. Please enjoy this candid snapshot of the life that birthed such a storied career from the upcoming president of the Linguistic Society of America: a unique opportunity to learn how to do better. Consider this a one-time invitation to the cookout.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44704871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211044837
Claire Childs
This paper presents an investigation of the extent to which Heine’s (2003) mechanisms of grammaticalization—erosion (phonetic reduction), decategorialization (loss of morpho-syntactic properties), desemanticization (semantic bleaching) and extension (context expansion)—are evident in the variation of negative question tags in three varieties of British English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside, and Salford. The study considers the variation in terms of three types of variant—full (e.g., isn’t it), reduced (e.g., int it), and coalesced (e.g., innit)—which each represent a stage in the erosion process. Quantitative variationist analysis of informal conversational data shows that erosion of negative tags occurs to different degrees in each of the three communities. The locality with the least tag erosion—Tyneside—displays particularly strong social stratification in the variation that suggests a change in progress led by younger men. However, there is little to no evidence of decategorialization in the negative tags, nor does variation in tag meaning correlate with phonetic form in a consistent manner. The results therefore suggest that erosion and desemanticization/extension do not occur in lockstep as these constructions grammaticalize, while decategorialization occurs at a later stage in the change.
{"title":"Mechanisms of Grammaticalization in the Variation of Negative Question Tags","authors":"Claire Childs","doi":"10.1177/00754242211044837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211044837","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents an investigation of the extent to which Heine’s (2003) mechanisms of grammaticalization—erosion (phonetic reduction), decategorialization (loss of morpho-syntactic properties), desemanticization (semantic bleaching) and extension (context expansion)—are evident in the variation of negative question tags in three varieties of British English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside, and Salford. The study considers the variation in terms of three types of variant—full (e.g., isn’t it), reduced (e.g., int it), and coalesced (e.g., innit)—which each represent a stage in the erosion process. Quantitative variationist analysis of informal conversational data shows that erosion of negative tags occurs to different degrees in each of the three communities. The locality with the least tag erosion—Tyneside—displays particularly strong social stratification in the variation that suggests a change in progress led by younger men. However, there is little to no evidence of decategorialization in the negative tags, nor does variation in tag meaning correlate with phonetic form in a consistent manner. The results therefore suggest that erosion and desemanticization/extension do not occur in lockstep as these constructions grammaticalize, while decategorialization occurs at a later stage in the change.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42301529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211046316
E. Levon, D. Sharma, Dominic J. L. Watt, Amanda Cardoso, Yang Ye
Unequal outcomes in professional hiring for individuals from less privileged backgrounds have been widely reported in England. Although accent is one of the most salient signals of such a background, its role in unequal professional outcomes remains underexamined. This paper reports on a large-scale study of contemporary attitudes to accents in England. A large representative sample (N = 848) of the population in England judged the interview performance and perceived hirability of “candidates” for a trainee solicitor position at a corporate law firm. Candidates were native speakers of one of five English accents stratified by region, ethnicity, and class. The results suggest persistent patterns of bias against certain accents in England, particularly Southern working-class varieties, though moderated by factors such as listener age, content of speech, and listeners’ psychological predispositions. We discuss the role that the observed bias may play in perpetuating social inequality in England and encourage further research on the relationship between accent and social mobility.
{"title":"Accent Bias and Perceptions of Professional Competence in England","authors":"E. Levon, D. Sharma, Dominic J. L. Watt, Amanda Cardoso, Yang Ye","doi":"10.1177/00754242211046316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211046316","url":null,"abstract":"Unequal outcomes in professional hiring for individuals from less privileged backgrounds have been widely reported in England. Although accent is one of the most salient signals of such a background, its role in unequal professional outcomes remains underexamined. This paper reports on a large-scale study of contemporary attitudes to accents in England. A large representative sample (N = 848) of the population in England judged the interview performance and perceived hirability of “candidates” for a trainee solicitor position at a corporate law firm. Candidates were native speakers of one of five English accents stratified by region, ethnicity, and class. The results suggest persistent patterns of bias against certain accents in England, particularly Southern working-class varieties, though moderated by factors such as listener age, content of speech, and listeners’ psychological predispositions. We discuss the role that the observed bias may play in perpetuating social inequality in England and encourage further research on the relationship between accent and social mobility.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44221798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211043163
J. A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick, K. Kuiper, Rachel M. Olsen
Southern American English is spoken in a large geographic region in the United States. Its characteristics include back-vowel fronting (e.g., in goose, foot, and goat), which has been ongoing since the mid-nineteenth century; meanwhile, the low back vowels (in lot and thought) have recently merged in some areas. We investigate these five vowels in the Digital Archive of Southern Speech, a legacy corpus of linguistic interviews with sixty-four speakers born 1886-1956. We extracted 89,367 vowel tokens and used generalized additive mixed-effects models to test for socially-driven changes to both their relative phonetic placements and the shapes of their formant trajectories. Our results reinforce previous descriptions of Southern vowels while contributing additional phonetic detail about their trajectories. Goose-fronting is a change in progress, with greatest fronting after coronal consonants. Goat is quite dynamic; it lowers and fronts in apparent time. Generally, women have more fronted realizations than men. Foot is largely monophthongal, and stable across time. Lot and thought are distinct and unmerged, occupying different regions of the vowel space. While their relative positions change across generations, all five vowels show a remarkable consistency in formant trajectory shapes across time. This study’s results reveal social and phonetic details about the back vowels of Southerners born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: goose-fronting was well underway, goat-fronting was beginning, but foot remained backed, and the low back vowels were unmerged.
{"title":"Back Vowel Dynamics and Distinctions in Southern American English","authors":"J. A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick, K. Kuiper, Rachel M. Olsen","doi":"10.1177/00754242211043163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211043163","url":null,"abstract":"Southern American English is spoken in a large geographic region in the United States. Its characteristics include back-vowel fronting (e.g., in goose, foot, and goat), which has been ongoing since the mid-nineteenth century; meanwhile, the low back vowels (in lot and thought) have recently merged in some areas. We investigate these five vowels in the Digital Archive of Southern Speech, a legacy corpus of linguistic interviews with sixty-four speakers born 1886-1956. We extracted 89,367 vowel tokens and used generalized additive mixed-effects models to test for socially-driven changes to both their relative phonetic placements and the shapes of their formant trajectories. Our results reinforce previous descriptions of Southern vowels while contributing additional phonetic detail about their trajectories. Goose-fronting is a change in progress, with greatest fronting after coronal consonants. Goat is quite dynamic; it lowers and fronts in apparent time. Generally, women have more fronted realizations than men. Foot is largely monophthongal, and stable across time. Lot and thought are distinct and unmerged, occupying different regions of the vowel space. While their relative positions change across generations, all five vowels show a remarkable consistency in formant trajectory shapes across time. This study’s results reveal social and phonetic details about the back vowels of Southerners born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: goose-fronting was well underway, goat-fronting was beginning, but foot remained backed, and the low back vowels were unmerged.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49357814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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