Gone feeshin'

[Dennis R. Preston]

Herb,

Are you sure that this unrounding is not part of the very general
back-vowel fronting going on among many younger speakers (as well as the
Southern-based back vowel fronting, which may be "ccooperating" in such
areas as yours)?

Dennis

>Tensing before /S/ is wide-spread in Central Indiana too, although
>it seems to divide along social class lines.  It may simply be
>that immigrants from Appalachia, many of whom came during the gas
>boom to work for glass companies like Ball Brothers, brought that
>pronunciation and their communities have maintained it.  We also
>have tensing of /U/ before /S/ in words like /pUS/ and /bUS at z,
>which is similarly stigmatized.  I've also heard "leash" as /leiS/
>from tensing speakers.
>
>A complementary change taking place among middle and upper middle
>class speakers over the past twenty years--that I've been watching
>it, at least--is the unrounding of /U/ before /S/ so that the
>vowels in "bush", "push", "cushion", etc. become high back
>unrounded.  I can't think of an appropriate ASCII IPA symbol for
>that just now, but I'm referring to the IPA inverted-m.
>
>Herb Stahlke
>
>Herb Stahlke
>
>>>> bergdahl at OHIO.EDU 09/29/00 07:40AM >>>
>In SE Ohio the tensing before -sh in fish, special (which
>produces the
>homophone special = spacial), and bush is widespread and
>stigmatized
>although former Gov Rhodes from jackson, Ohio didn't try to limit
>it.  I
>don't know if the much more  prevalent tensing of /E/ before -zh
>in
>measure, treasure &c. is related but that goes completely
>unnoticed and
>does not identify social class or region.
>
>____________________________________________________________________
>David Bergdahl          http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bergdahl
>     tel:
>(740) 593-2783
>366 Ellis Hall     Ohio University  Athens, Ohio 45701-2979
>fax:
>(740) 593-2818


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736