oxen / dachshund

[Mai Kuha]

on 2/12/03 1:29 PM, Beverly Flanigan at flanigan at OHIOU.EDU wrote:

> (...)But rather than the Southern Shift, what Mai probably heard was
> the Northern Shift, with /a/ moving forward to /ae/, as in Detroit,
> Chicago, etc.  Labov's classic example is "locks" on a dam sounding like
> "lax" in Chicago, and I elicited a perfect "White Sax" from a Chicago taxi
> driver on a recent trip there.   So "oxen" would become [aeks at n], more or
> less.

The non-linguistic elements in the ad (hats, hay, bug belt buckles, horses
snorting and high noon-type music in the background) kept me from thinking
about the NCVS! If only Sprint had consulted a linguist, they could have
gone with the alternate neutralization method that Larry suggested.

-Mai