pre-velar /ae/ raising (was: slang/slant)

[Joseph Salmons]

> That's interesting.  But don't you get the /a/-fronting part of NCS
> (affecting the COT class) out in your area, even where you don't get
> many of the other changes?

That seems to be southeastern Wisconsin and eastward, from what I can
tell, but I don't have any original data on it. Certainly, typical
Madison speakers and those west or north of here don't have dramatic
fronting in the second  vowel of 'oh god', which in fact works pretty
well as a stereotype of Chicago speech for lots of people here and
reaching up to the Milwaukee area for some -- on the Stephanie Miller
radio show, Voice Guy Extraordinaire Jim Ward does both Denny Hastert
(northern Illinois) and James Sensenbrenner (raised in Shorewood,
Wisconsin, basically Milwaukee) with that feature. Speakers around
Madison do tend to have some /ae/ raising. (As I mentioned in the
response to Matt Gordon just now, starting a little west of here, you
start to get cot/caught merger, which is not compatible with COT
fronting.)

> That's what makes me think there are
> multiple foci of the different components of NCS, and the process
> looks unified only in retrospect, when it's completed or at least
> well on the way.  Incidentally, wearing my historical linguist hat, I
> have postulated the same thing about the English Great Vowel Shift--
> it is really two (if not more) processes, one of which, in addition,
> is multifocal, that got intertwined over then't course of the change,
> and our Great Vowel Shift scenario really describes only the end
> product.  Roger Lass and others have said similar things too.

This could be, of course, even if the particular example (COT
fronting without /ae/ raising) is not found around here. Happily, we
have enough audio that we could, with enough time and effort, see to
what extent this was/is the case for the NCS.
>
> Incidentally, the West Michigan pattern of back/bag/bang is :
>
> back-- becomes [eae] or the like, undergoing NCS.  One of the most
> salient environments too. ...

Interesting. Doesn't Labov argue that following velars are one of the
most inhibiting environments for ae raising? By the way, Tom
Purnell's getting some really interesting results on the acoustics
and articulation of /ae/ and it'd be interesting to see a direct
comparison.

Thanks,
Joe
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org