pre-velar /ae/ raising (was: slang/slant)

[Joseph Salmons]

> 1. Welcome back to ADS-L.

Thanks, Matt. Lots of interesting stuff on the list, of course.
>
> 2. There are lots of interesting points in your post. I just wanted to
> question your suggestion that the Northern Cities Shift is not
> found in
> Minnesota. I remember hearing it some ten years ago when I passed
> through
> "the cities." More importantly, Labov et al.'s Atlas of North American
> English documents several NCS features in MN and even into North
> Dakota.
>
Sorry, was trying to be brief and simple ...  I was figuring Labov et
al.'s blue line for the NCS area (map 11.9 and others) as the basic
boundary. The most westward point there is not much beyond Madison.
Of course he does have a few dark blue dots (for an NCS pattern) in
South Dakota and eastern Nebraska, though they don't look like they
form any kind of obvious part of the NCS area. A lot of Upper
Midwesterners sound to me like they have raised /ae/; I don't hear a
full and consistent package of NCS features really beyond about
Labov's line, if that far. But that's impressionistic and my ear
isn't the best.

Still, pre-velar raising seems to be found well beyond any of those
dots ... a colleague reports that relatives from International Falls
(and now in their 70s or so, I imagine) have it in a very salient
way. And I've heard it in the Dakotas too, though without clear
indication of where the folks were from, etc. If there are NCS type
effects there, they surely aren't as widespread or deep rooted as
they within the blue line.

Also, once we get to far western Wisconsin, we find some cot/caught
merger and it's really widespread in Minnesota from what I can tell.
Aren't such speakers by definition not NCS speakers? (That's a real
question -- I'm still pretty new to a lot of angles on this topic.)

Anyway, NCS and pre-velar raising show some overlap but each is found
in areas where the other isn't, from what I've seen. Does that make
more sense?
Joe

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