28.4420, Diss: English; Sociolinguistics; Phonetics: Elizabeth Coggshell: ''Short-a in the Sixth Borough: A Sociophonetic Analysis of a Complex Phonological System in Jersey City''

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4420. Wed Oct 25 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4420, Diss: English; Sociolinguistics; Phonetics: Elizabeth Coggshell: ''Short-a in the Sixth Borough: A Sociophonetic Analysis of a Complex Phonological System in Jersey City''

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Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 11:50:07
From: Elizabeth Coggshall [ecoggshall at gmail.com]
Subject: Short-a in the Sixth Borough: A Sociophonetic Analysis of a Complex Phonological System in Jersey City

 
Institution: New York University 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2017 

Author: Elizabeth Coggshall

Dissertation Title: Short-a in the Sixth Borough: A Sociophonetic Analysis of a 
Complex Phonological System in Jersey City 

Dissertation URL:  https://search.proquest.com/openview/60f1c9ed3d7efe0e9ea6fd8a2c9a4c72/1?pq-

Linguistic Field(s): Phonetics
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Greg Guy
Renee Blake
John Singler
Carmen Fought
Susannah Levi

Dissertation Abstract:

The study of short-a (e.g., the vowel in words such as bat, bad, bang, ban) in
New York City English (NYCE) has a long history, and with many different
descriptions of this complex system (e.g., Babbitt 1896; Trager 1930; Labov
1966/2006; Cohen 1970; Labov 2007). It is complex due to the fact that it is
not just a matter of following environment but instead includes a number of
phonological, grammatical, and lexical conditions that determine which tokens
of short-a are tense (fronter and higher) and which are lax (backer and
lower). There are several other short-a systems in varieties of North American
English.

While older work found the complex NYCE short-a system to be used only by
white speakers, recent work has shown that some people of color also use this
system (e.g., Becker 2010; Newman 2014). Work in Manhattan suggests the
complex NYCE short-a system is being lost (e.g., Becker and Wong 2009), but
work done in other boroughs suggests that language change is taking a
different or at least a slower path (Newman 2014). More work in parts of the
NYCE dialect area outside of Manhattan is needed to understand the breadth of
variation. To this end, I interviewed twenty English speakers from Jersey
City.

While recent research assumed a single, invariable system for the NYCE
short-a, the body of work that first described the system showed immense
amounts of variation. Assuming that there is a single, unerring version of the
NYCE short-a system gives improper results in regards to how much the NYCE
short-a system may have changed. For instance, Labov (2007) says that short-a
before velar nasals is always lax, but Labov, Yeager, and Steiner (1972) said
that this environment varied so much that they could not put it in the tense
or lax category with full certainty. Recent work has used variability before
/ŋ/ as evidence of loss of the system, but past work shows this variation to
have been there all along.

In order to study the complex short-a system of NYCE fully, I composed a
paradigm of 33 word classes of short-a words based on environments that past
research had found to be important. These included following environment,
lexical status (lexical versus function word), syllable status (open versus
closed syllable), position in the word (word-initial versus not), morphemic
status, and lexical exceptions. In creating this word class paradigm, I
noticed a pattern: Environments described as invariable, like those before
voiced stops or voiceless fricatives in closed syllables, are the environments
where short-a occurs frequently; in contrast, environments that had been
described as variable, such as those before voiced fricatives or voiced
affricates, are ones where short-a is much less common. This finding suggests
frequency may play a role in determining which word classes are invariable and
which are variable.

The type of short-a system used by the speakers in Jersey City fell along
ethnic lines. White speakers used a complex NYCE short-a system while the
speakers of color used a nasal system. Variation was found within both
systems. My research shows the need to take a detailed, historically informed
approach when studying the NYCE short-a system. If we fail to take into
account past variability, we risk misinterpreting variation within our data.
If we fail to account for all present variability, we risk overlooking
important differences between and among speakers.




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