Standard US English Dialect?

[Paul Johnston]

For /u/-the moon, spoon, boot, hoop, do, too group.  Possibly brewed,
dude, new etc if there's no contrast between /u/ and /Iu~ju/.
For /o/-the coat, road, cone, hope, poke, go, no, grow group.

I'm from much farther north and natively lack fronting of both of
these vowels before underlying (and often vocalized) /l/--in pool,
school, stool; coal, stole, pole, but have some fronting otherwise.
I don't know if MD has back vowels there or not.  If it does,
behavior before /l/ would be a good test of whether you have Midland
fronting or Valley Girl fronting, which is sew kewl, and fronts /u/
before /l/.  There are probably lexically-conditioned phenomena too;
I could conceive of cool having fronting and stool not having it, or
even of cool= "good, in  fashion, etc." having it and cool = "sort of
cold" not having it.

Yours,
Paul


On Apr 15, 2008, at 9:41 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Standard US English Dialect?
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> At 3:43 AM -0400 4/15/08, Paul Johnston wrote:
>> Do you get some localized features like /o/- and /u/-fronting with
>> those DC suburbanites?
>
> What sort of words are you thinking about with these features?  I can
> do some field research if I know what to look for.
>
> LH
>
>> It's quite pronounced in both MD (including
>> Balmer and ITS suburbs) and VA, and seems to go up the social scale a
>> fair bit, especially among female speakers.
>>
>> Yours,
>> Paul
>> On Apr 15, 2008, at 1:41 AM, Dennis Preston wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: Standard US English Dialect?
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> --
>>> ---------
>>>
>>> Indeed. I have three nephews who grew up right on the Bethesda
>>> border
>>> with DC. WI mother and CA father. They were distinct from both (no
>>> NCS; no low-back merger) but otherwise unremarkable. Odd I never
>>> thought much about them. Plenty of tapes of the little buggers (now
>>> full-grown); maybe I'll give an ear (well, a machine).
>>>
>>> dInIs
>>>
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>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
>>>> Subject:      Standard US English Dialect?
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> --
>>>> ----------
>>>>
>>>> DC is also such a mixing bowl that one tends to get a lot of
>>>> leveling, right?
>>>> Particularly in the suburbs. Over the years, when I couldn't place
>>>> a white
>>>> Duke student's accent, I would guess "DC suburbs" and very often
>>>> got it right.
>>>> (African American and even Asian students were generally much more
>>>> difficult to
>>>> place, for a variety of sociolinguistic reasons.) Of course, Duke
>>>> has a lot
>>>> of students from the DC suburbs, but Duke also gets a lot of
>>>> students from
>>>> suburban Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, etc.
>>>>
>>>> In a message dated 4/14/08 11:45:24 AM, preston at MSU.EDU writes:
>>>>
>>>>>  Yes, DC always does surprisingly well, but the East Coaster the
>>>>> South
>>>>>  is the better it does as well. SC higher than GA, GA higher than
>>>>> AL,
>>>>>  etc....We actually have some qualitative evidence for this;
>>>>> some of
>>>>>  the fieldworkers asked respondents why they ranked the DC area so
>>>>>  high, and many said that they figured good English was spoke
>>>>> in the
>>>>>  capital. This seemed truer of southern and south midland
>>>>> respondents
>>>>>  than of northern ones (who know they speak the best English).
>>>>>
>>>>>  dInIs
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dennis R. Preston
>>> University Distinguished Professor
>>> Department of English
>>> Morrill Hall 15-C
>>> Michigan State University
>>> East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
>>>
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>>
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>
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