Urban rejection of the vernacular: The SVS undone

Abstract

In Raleigh, North Carolina, a Southern U.S. city, five decades of in-migration of technology-sector workers from outside the South has resulted in large-scale contact between the local Southern dialect and non-Southern dialects. This paper investigates the speed and magnitude of the reversal of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) with respect to the five front vowels, using Trudgill's (1998) model of dialect contact as a framework. The data consist of conversational interviews with 59 white-collar Raleigh natives representing three generations, the first generation having reached adulthood before large-scale contact. Acoustic analysis shows that all vowels shift away from their Southern variants across apparent time. The leveling of SVS variants begins within the first generation to grow up after large-scale contact began, and contrary to predictions, this generation does not show wide inter- or intraspeaker variability. Previous studies of dialect contact and new dialect formation suggest that leveling of regional dialect features and the establishment of stable linguistic norms occurs more quickly when children have regular contact with one another. Dialect contact in Raleigh has occurred primarily within the middle and upper classes, the members of which are densely connected by virtue of schools and heavy economic segregation in neighborhood residence.

One Hundred Years of Sound Change in Philadelphia: Linear Incrementation, Reversal, and Reanalysis

“…There is strong evidence that the major sound shifts of the South are receding, especially in large urban areas (ANAE Ch. 18, Baranowski 2007, Dodsworth & Kohn 2012. We have cited parallel evidence for withdrawal of both /aeh/ and /oh/ from their high position in the New York City system of long and ingliding vowels (Becker & Wong 2009, Becker 2013).…”

Durational and spectral differences in American English vowels: Dialect variation within and across regions

“…Some areas of the South show a similar spectral trend for the high front classes, though this shift is typically not as extensive (Fridland, 1999;. While the NCS pattern shows advancement in younger speakers, SVS features appear to be receding in most urban areas (Baranowski, 2008;Dodsworth and Kohn, 2012;Feagin, 1986;Fridland, 2001;Prichard, 2010) with younger speakers showing weaker participation in the front vowel tense/lax shift. As in the North, Southern low vowels remain distinct, in part due to an upglided /O/ class, though younger speakers show evidence of greater nucleus overlap and decreasing glide differentiation (Jacewicz et al, 2011).…”

Pushes and pulls from below: Anatomical variation, articulation and sound change

“…Most of this variation involved bunched /r/ (since retroflex varieties are uncommon in clusters with coronal consonants), thus fine differences in production style can have measurably different coarticulatory effects. Jeff Mielke and colleagues (2017, this special issue), using a large sample of 175 native speakers from Raleigh, NC (Dodsworth & Kohn 2012) supplemented by original ultrasound and (external) video articulatory data from 29 demographically-matched speakers, are investigating whether the type of rhotic variant, acting as covert (i.e., not audible) articulatory variation, can produce differential coarticulatory effects. They hypothesize that people employing bunched /r/ variants will exhibit retraction of preceding /s/ and /z/ and affrication in /tr/ and /dr/ sequences (as [ʧɹ] and [ʤɹ] in 'train' and 'drain', respectively).…”