California research

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

How refreshing to have something dialectological to discuss on ADS-L!

I'm glad to hear of someone documenting the changes of /E/ > [ae] and /ae/ > [a]. I've heard this mentioned by people at conferences but haven't seen much in print about it. Of course, it's also known as the Canadian Shift when it appears in the mouths of our neighbors to the North. It is supposed to be a chain-shifty response to the merger of the 'cot' and 'caught' vowels. I wonder if the California data can show a direct correlation between these developments at the level of the individual speaker (i.e., is /ae/ backed only by speakers with the merger and is /E/ lowered only by speakers with /ae/ backing?). This would  be helpful in evaluating its status as a putative chain shift.

I'm also curious about the cot/caught merger. You mentioned the pair, Don/dawn. Did you examine other contexts as well? Did you get any perception data on this merger?