Back Vowel Dynamics and Distinctions in Southern American English

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-418
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Stanley ◽  
Margaret E. L. Renwick ◽  
Katherine Ireland Kuiper ◽  
Rachel M. Olsen
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Geographic Region ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Mixed Effects Models ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Southern American English ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
Late Nineteenth

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.

Vowel Production in Winnipeg

2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 127-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hagiwara
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
Similar Data ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Precise Characterization

AbstractGeneral properties of the Canadian English vowel space are derived from an experimental-acoustic study of vowel production underway in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Comparing the preliminary Winnipeg results with similar data from General American English confirms previously described generalizations for Canadian English: the merger of low-back vowels, the relative retraction of /æ/, and the relative advancement of /u/ and /Ʊ/. However, a similar comparison of the Winnipeg sample with comparable Southern California data disputes the accuracy of the claim that Canadian Shift (Clarke et al. 1995) is a feature of ‘general’ Canadian and Californian English. An acoustic analysis uncovers subtle phonetic distinctions that make possible a more precise characterization of Canadian Raising: rather than only adjusting the height of the nucleus, Winnipeg speakers produce a directional shift in both the nucleus and offglide of the diphthongs /aɪ, aƱ/; this process applies to all three diphthongs (including /oɪ/).

scholarly journals Preposition omission in English ellipsis

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Joanna Nykiel
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Mixed Effects Models ◽  
Gradient Constraints ◽  
Preposition Stranding ◽  
Interrogative Clauses

The availability of preposition omission in ellipsis is assumed to follow from the possibility of preposition stranding in corresponding non-elliptical clauses (Merchant 2001). To test this assumption I sampled 409 ellipsis remnants from three corpora of American English, and developed generalized mixed-effects models of preposition omission in ellipsis. The results show that preposition omission is, among others, sensitive to gradient constraints independently found to influence preposition placement in interrogative clauses, without being correlated with the possibility of preposition stranding. This finding challenges evidence for syntactic parallels between elliptical constructions and their nonelliptical counterparts, and hence, for deletion-based approaches to ellipsis.

Acquisition and Acoustic Patterns of Southern American English /l/ in Young Children

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (8) ◽  
pp. 2609-2624
Author(s):  
Hyunju Chung
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Apparent Effect ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Word Position ◽  
Southern American English

Purpose The aim of the current study was to examine /l/ developmental patterns in young learners of Southern American English, especially in relation to the effect of word position and phonetic contexts. Method Eighteen children with typically developing speech, aged between 2 and 5 years, produced monosyllabic single words containing singleton /l/ in different word positions (pre- vs. postvocalic /l/) across different vowel contexts (high front vs. low back) and cluster /l/ in different consonant contexts (/pl, bl/ vs. /kl, gl/). Each production was analyzed for its accuracy and acoustic patterns as measured by the first two formant frequencies and their difference (F1, F2, and F2-F1). Results There was great individual variability in /l/ acquisition patterns, with some 2- and 3-year-olds reaching 100% accuracy for prevocalic /l/, while others were below 70%. Overall, accuracy of prevocalic /l/ was higher than that of postvocalic /l/. Acoustic patterns of pre- and postvocalic /l/ showed greater differences in younger children and less apparent differences in 5-year-olds. There were no statistically significant differences between the acoustic patterns of /l/ coded as perceptually acceptable and those coded as misarticulated. There was also no apparent effect of vowel and consonant contexts on /l/ patterns. Conclusion The accuracy patterns of this study suggest an earlier development of /l/, especially prevocalic /l/, than has been reported in previous studies. The differences in acoustic patterns between pre- and postvocalic /l/, which become less apparent with age, may suggest that children alter the way they articulate /l/ with age. No significant acoustic differences between acceptable and misarticulated /l/, especially postvocalic /l/, suggest a gradient nature of /l/ that is dialect specific. This suggests the need for careful consideration of a child's dialect/language background when studying /l/.

Pivots of the Caribbean? Low-back vowels in eastern Caribbean English

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-130
Author(s):  
James A. Walker ◽  
Miriam Meyerhoff
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
American English ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Caribbean Island ◽  
Pivot Point ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Eastern Caribbean ◽  
And Diffusion

AbstractResolving the convergence of low-back vowels in English constitutes a pivot with repercussions for the rest of the vowel system. We consider how speakers on an eastern Caribbean island co-opt the inherent variability of vowel systems to differentiate themselves. Examining the vowels of Bequia English (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) shows the main source of variation to lie in the position and duration of four low back vowels (cloth, lot, palm, thought), which do not act as the same pivot point for realignment of the vowel space as in North American English. The crucial distinction between transmission and diffusion lies at the heart of our findings: principles of language change derived from varieties characterized by transmission may differ from principles associated with histories of diffusion central to many contact and creole varieties.

Regional relationships among the low vowels of U.S. English: Evidence from production and perception

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Kendall ◽  
Valerie Fridland
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Identification Task ◽  
Vowel Identification ◽  
Regional Dialects ◽  
Back Vowel

AbstractThe unconditioned merger of the low back vowels and the variety of realizations found for the low front vowel have been noted as leading to greater distinctiveness across U.S. English regional dialects. The extent to which the movements of these vowels are related has repeatedly been of interest to dialectology as well as phonological theory. Here, examining production and perception data from speaker-listeners across three major regions of the United States, the relationships among these low vowels within and across regions are investigated. Participants provided speech samples and took part in a vowel identification task, judging vowels along a continuum from /æ/ to /ɑ/. Results of acoustic analysis and statistical analysis of the perception results indicate that a structural relationship between /æ/ and /ɑ/ is maintained across regions and that listeners’ own degree of low back vowel merger predicts their perception of the boundary between /æ/ and /ɑ/.

scholarly journals Is There Really a Sex Recession? Period and Cohort Effects on Sexual Inactivity Among American Men, 2006–2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 155798832110577
Author(s):  
Robert Bozick
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Mixed Effects Models ◽  
Sexually Active ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Male Population ◽  
Family Growth ◽  
Previous Birth ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Recession Period

There has been a growing concern among researchers and media commentators that men in the United States may be increasingly less sexually active, creating a form of a “sex recession.” Using 14 years of survey data from men in the National Survey of Family Growth (2006–2019), this study assesses whether such concerns are warranted. Cross-classified mixed-effects models are estimated to ascertain whether there is evidence of a population-wide sex recession among men due to secular conditions specific to different time periods, or if birth cohorts that comprise the male population at any given point in time are exhibiting distinct patterns of sexual behavior. The analysis finds no evidence of a population-wide sex recession among men. Rates of sexual inactivity among men have been constant across the time series, but those born between 2000 and 2004 had significantly higher rates of sexual inactivity than previous birth cohorts did at the same age. Additionally, men who are unemployed and/or living at home with their parents are more likely to refrain from sexual intercourse than their peers who are employed and/or living independently of their parents.

Intelligibility of American English Vowels and Consonants Spoken by International Students in the United States

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 583-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su-Hyun Jin ◽  
Chang Liu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Students ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Training Methods ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Nonnative Speakers Of English

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the intelligibility of English consonants and vowels produced by Chinese-native (CN), and Korean-native (KN) students enrolled in American universities. Method 16 English-native (EN), 32 CN, and 32 KN speakers participated in this study. The intelligibility of 16 American English consonants and 16 vowels spoken by native and nonnative speakers of English was evaluated by EN listeners. All nonnative speakers also completed a survey of their language backgrounds. Results Although the intelligibility of consonants and diphthongs for nonnative speakers was comparable to that of native speakers, the intelligibility of monophthongs was significantly lower for CN and KN speakers than for EN speakers. Sociolinguistic factors such as the age of arrival in the United States and daily use of English, as well as a linguistic factor, difference in vowel space between native (L1) and nonnative (L2) language, partially contributed to vowel intelligibility for CN and KN groups. There was no significant correlation between the length of U.S. residency and phoneme intelligibility. Conclusion Results indicated that the major difficulty in phonemic production in English for Chinese and Korean speakers is with vowels rather than consonants. This might be useful for developing training methods to improve English intelligibility for foreign students in the United States.

The Southern Shift in Memphis, Tennessee

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Fridland
Keyword(s):  
Low Back ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Southern Vowel Shift ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
Vowel Shift ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article investigates the Southern Vowel Shift—a possibly interrelated series of rotations in vowel space currently affecting the dialects of southern speakers—in terms of examining its classification as a chain-shift process and, more generally, providing a descriptive account of the phonetic character of the changes in each individual vowel class. Based on the work of Labov (1991, 1994) and Feagin (1986), it has been suggested that the Southern Shift involves changes in both the front vowels and the back vowels, with the tense and lax front vowel nuclei essentially switching places and the back vowels moving forward. The relationship of these changes in the front vowels and those in the back vowels has not been firmly established, but they appear to be driven by different social and linguistic forces. What is happening to the low front, the mid, and the low back vowel classes in the Southern Shift has only been superficially explored. A detailed instrumental analysis of the vowel systems of 25 native Memphians of selected ages, socioeconomic classes, and genders is presented, revealing the movement of vowel classes which seem to be playing an important role in the instigation or perpetuation of the Southern Shift. This analysis points out discrepancies about how previously cited vocalic changes are embedded in mid-southern speech and provides a picture of how these changes are affecting other changes in the system. The results suggest that, while many of the changes cited in the literature are indeed present in the sample, the interrelatedness of these changes and their prognosis to move to completion are not so clear.

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