oxen / dachshund

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Oh, I see.
I think the trend in many parts of the Southern Shift areas is just the reverse. That is, the merger of 'cot' and 'caught' is spreading so that /a/ is staying back.
 
-----Original Message-----
From:   Mai Kuha [mailto:mkuha at BSU.EDU]
Sent:   Wed 2/12/2003 4:36 PM
To:     ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Cc:	
Subject:             Re: oxen / dachshund

On 2/12/03 2:50 PM, Matthew Gordon opined:

> (...) I'm not sure what you're thinking about in your comments on the /ay/ and
> the Southern Shift. There is no /ay/ in 'oxen' or 'dachshund' - maybe
> you're thinking about "Ay, chihuahua!"

Right, definitely no /ay/ there. The connection I was aiming for was that
Labov wrote on the Southern Vowel Shift: "[t]he shift begins when /ay/
becomes monophthongized and shifts slightly to the front" ("The Organization
of Dialect Diversity in North America",
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html )... so when the farmer
says "I ordered 200 axen" I got to wondering whether this slight fronting
might happen also to /a/s that are not part of /ay/.

BTW, googling "oxen dachshund sprint" turns up a few places where the ad can
be downloaded, this one among them:
http://www.jaycross.com/blog/archives/000621.html

[and not that it matters at all, but my earlier "bug belt buckles" was meant
to be "big belt buckles".]

-Mai