A Longitudinal Analysis of the Durability of the Northern-Midland Dialect Boundary in Ohio

Abstract

The boundary between the North and midland dialects in ohio represents an unusually clear opportunity to test how well dialect boundaries can persist. For part of this boundary, the original settlement by European Americans was strongly segregated: the area north of the line was heavily dominated by settlers from a hearth running from western New England through upstate New York, while the area south of it was dominated by settlers from a hearth comprising southern Pennsylvania, western maryland, and northern Virginia and West Virginia. recordings of Dictionary of American Regional English survey subjects, born 1880-1908, were compared with subjects, born 1970-94, from a new survey. A number of variables involving vowel quality or vowel mergers that are known or suspected to differentiate the North and midland were analyzed in these subjects' speech. Eight variables showed statistically significant differences according to dialect region. When these variables were combined quantitatively, the patterns that emerged are that the North and midland remain robustly differentiated but that a transition zone has developed along the boundary.

needs+PAST PARTICIPLE in regional Englishes on Twitter

“…Cleveland, which is only 140 miles from Columbus, but assigned to the Inland North on the basis of phonetic and phonological data in Labov et al. (; Thomas, ), also shows a relatively high index of 17.5. St. Louis, which Labov et al.…”

“…Indexes then drop as the Midland stretches west to 20.1 in Indianapolis, and 11.0 in Kansas City. Cleveland, which is only 140 miles from Columbus, but assigned to the Inland North on the basis of phonetic and phonological data inLabov et al (2006;Thomas, 2010), also shows a relatively high index of 17.5. St. Louis, whichLabov et al (2006, pp.…”

THE BAG THAT SCOTT Bought: THE LOW VOWELS IN NORTHWEST WISCONSIN

“…Unfortunately, few studies, with the exception of a project like labov, Ash, and boberg (2006) and recent work by Purnell (2005Purnell ( , 2010 and Thomas (2010), have sought to examine more than one of these sound changes, the Northern Cities Shift (e.g., eckert 1989;Gordon 2001;evans 2004), prevelar /á/-raising (e.g., Zeller 1997;bauer and Parker 2008;Purnell 2008;Purnell and Salmons forthcoming), or the low back vowel merger (e.g., majors 2005; irons 2007). in Wisconsin, prevelar /á/-raising has received the most attention (Zeller 1997;bauer and Parker 2008;Purnell 2008).…”

Hearing the American Language Change: The State of Dare Recordings

“…This approach is still current. For instance, Thomas (2001) used recordings in this way for his acoustic analysis of New World English. Many others have published this kind of work.…”

“…Wolfram and Thomas (2002) compare a speaker from Raleigh with other speakers. More recently, Thomas (2010) uses DARE speakers from Ohio to show time depth. Using the WELS and DARE recordings, linguists can compare speakers born at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries with contemporary speakers to better examine change in progress.…”