Gone feeshin'

[Herb Stahlke]

Dennis,

I'm not sure what that back-vowel fronting sounds like.  Is it
simply /u,U/ shifting to /i,I/?  If so, what I'm hearing is
different.  The resulting vowel is definitely not front, although
I don't think it's as far back as /u/.  It sounds like an
unrounded /U/, a little farther forward than /u/.  BTW, as a
central Indiana choir director I continually grapple with the CIn
diphthong /@U/ for Northern /u/.  I wonder if the high back
unrounded vowel I'm hearing is simply that diphthong before /S/
and the roundedness of /u/ shifts to the /S/, which is rounded
anyway.

Herb

>>> preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU 09/29/00 09:07AM >>>
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