Raising of unstressed vowels in Eng from schwa to /I/

[Rankin, Robert L]

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>As for the final vowel of <umbrelly>, note that in some more traditional
"rural" varieties of American English and I believe still in Southern
American English the suffix <-y> was pronounced [I].  I've wondered if
[I] for schwa doesn't involve morphologizing in some cases.  Of course,
[i] in "General American" pronunciation (a convenient fiction, I know)
has traditionally been realized as [I]/schwa in "Missouri" or "Cincinnati"
in "folk speech."  The "proper" pronunciation of <Missouri>, i.e.,
whether final schwa, [I], or [i] was once the subject of furious debate.
There is a well-known article on the matter by the late Allan Walker
Read in the 1933 volume of _American Speech_.

The schwa > [I] change is also discussed by Edgar Sturtevant in his book
_Linguistic Change_ from before 1920.  He recognizes two kinds of sound
change, what he calls "primary sound change", i.e., regular Lautgesetz, and
what he calls "secondary sound change", his way of talking about borrowing
and analogy ("lexical diffusion" for some).  Our schwa to [I] change is one
of his examples of secondary sound change.  His split treatment of sound
change is well worth reading since he presages developments that didn't
recur until the '60's.

Bob Rankin