17.2349, Diss: Socioling: Roeder: 'Ethnicity and Sound Change: Mexican Ameri...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-2349. Thu Aug 17 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.2349, Diss: Socioling: Roeder: 'Ethnicity and Sound Change: Mexican Ameri...'

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1)
Date: 17-Aug-2006
From: Rebecca Roeder < r.roeder at utoronto.ca >
Subject: Ethnicity and Sound Change: Mexican American accommodation to the Northern Cities Shift in Lansing, Michigan 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 13:45:19
From: Rebecca Roeder < r.roeder at utoronto.ca >
Subject: Ethnicity and Sound Change: Mexican American accommodation to the Northern Cities Shift in Lansing, Michigan 
 


Institution: Michigan State University 
Program: Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2006 

Author: Rebecca Roeder

Dissertation Title: Ethnicity and Sound Change: Mexican American accommodation
to the Northern Cities Shift in Lansing, Michigan 

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Dennis R. Preston

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation explores issues of language and dialect contact as they
affect Mexican American speakers of English in Lansing, Michigan. Michigan
is in the middle of a region labeled the Inland North by Labov, Ash and
Boberg (2005), and the mainstream dialect in this area is characterized by
a vowel change in progress known as the Northern Cities Shift (NCS). This
thesis investigates 1) the degree to which Mexican Americans who have lived
in Lansing for all or most of their lives have acquired an NCS
pronunciation of the four vowels /æ, ?, ?, ?/ and 2) whether the effects of
adjacent phonetic environment show any previously unattested patterns for
the vowel /æ/. These topics are addressed separately, although the results
of the investigation of coarticulatory effects reflect NCS influence.

In the first portion of the analysis, which uses wordlist data from
thirty-two speakers, the focus is on the nature and extent of
sociolinguistic stratification among the members of this group, who are
examined as a unified minority group speech community. The first and second
formant values of these vowels are analyzed statistically, in addition to
duration for the vowel /æ/, for the effects of social factors such as age,
sex, generation of residence in Michigan and socioeconomic status. Results
indicate that women under 45, particularly those who have lived in Lansing
their entire lives, have acquired NCS /æ/. Pronunciations of the other
three vowels diverge somewhat from NCS norms, however, even among the
youngest women, leading to the conclusion that distinct norms of
pronunciation have developed within this minority speech community.
Evidence regarding substrate influence from Spanish on the dialect of these
speakers is inconclusive.

In the second portion of the analysis, which uses wordlist data from only
the sixteen speakers who are both lifelong residents of Michigan and native
speakers of English, focus is on coarticulatory effects in the
pronunciation of /æ/. Results are compared to findings from previous
sociophonetic and laboratory phonology studies. Findings show dramatic
raising of /æ/ pre-nasally?a feature that is prevalent in NCS speech?in
female respondents under 25, supporting the conclusion that young women in
this speech community have fully acquired NCS /æ/. T-tests show no
statistically significant raising of /æ/ before nasals in the other ten
speakers, however, providing a counterexample to Labov's hypothesis that
some raising of /æ/ in a pre-nasal environment occurs in almost every
dialect of American English (Labov 1994: 197). These results concur with
Thomas (2001), who found a lack of /æ/-raising in a pre-nasal environment
in Mexican American speakers of English in Texas. Results for other
phonetic environments agree with previous findings.

References
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. 1, Internal
Factors. Language in Society 20. Oxford: Blackwell.

Labov, William, Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg. 2005. The Atlas of North
American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Thomas, Erik. 2001. An Acoustic Analysis of Vowel Variation in New World
English. Publication of the American Dialect Society 85. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press. 




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