Fronted high back vowel /u/

Mon Dec 21 04:41:33 UTC 2009

I sing in a community choir in Anderson, IN, and direct a church choir
nearby, and /u/-fronting is very widespread in this area.  It causes
problems for choral conductors, who end up spending valuable rehearsal
time fixing choral diction problems like this.

Herb

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 10:16 PM, Randall Gess <randall_gess at carleton.ca> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Randall Gess <randall_gess at CARLETON.CA>
> Subject:      Re: Fronted high back vowel /u/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I wonder if there is any data on fronting after non-coronals. The word
> I heard it in was "movie".
>
>
> Language: Defining dreams for millennia.
>
> Randall Gess
> Professor and Director
> School of Linguistics and Language Studies
> 215 Paterson Hall, Carleton University
> 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa ON K1S 5B6
> Tel: (613) 520-6612  Fax: (613) 520-6641
> Email: randall_gess at carleton.ca
>
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> On 20-Dec-09, at 9:20 PM, Gordon, Matthew J. wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Fronted high back vowel /u/
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> My statement was based on my recollection of what Labov and
>> colleagues reported in the Atlas of North America English. Notice
>> that I didn't claim that every person in every part of the country
>> outside of the Inland North has fronting of these vowels. I said
>> that this pattern was found (i.e. could be heard from some speakers)
>> there.
>>
>> To check my recollection, I took a look at the ANAE's findings (map
>> 10.24, p. 101) on fronting of /u/ following coronals (the
>> environment most conducive to fronting). They report fronting in at
>> least one speaker from the following states:
>> Alaska, Washington, California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, So. Dakota,
>> Nebraska, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma,
>> Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Penn.,
>> Michigan, Kentucky, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Conn., No.
>> Carolina, So. Carolina, Tenn., Arkansas, Louisiana, Miss., Alabama,
>> Georgia, Florida.
>>
>> That's just the speakers with the most extreme fronting (normalized
>> F2 > 1950 Hz). If you include those with moderate fronting (F2 >
>> 1800 Hz), you pick up speakers in Oregon, Nevada, West Virginia, as
>> well as several New England states.
>>
>> -Matt Gordon
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>> Wilson Gray [hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
>> Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 6:23 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: Fronted high back vowel /u/
>>
>> "Fronting of /u/ (and /o/) is found pretty much everywhere in the US
>> except for the Inland North (e.g. the Great Lakes region)."
>>
>> "*Pretty much everywhere* in the US except for the Inland North"? A
>> claim hard to support, unless you've been pretty much everywhere.
>>
>> When I first read of the existence of this sound shift in the intro to
>> linguistics by the late Fr. Dineen, SJ, of Georgetown, I was totally
>> shocked, since his statement, like yours, gives the impression that
>> this is a feature of al dialects of US English. One of D's examples
>> was "newn" [niun] for "noon." This and pronunciations like "skewl" for
>> "school" are certainly common, if not standard, among white
>> Southerners at least as far west as Abilene, TX. But, till I had
>> occasion to live in the Northeast, I had no idea that this oddity
>> existed anywhere else. But then, you have in mind only white speakers,
>> right? And, even among white speakers, such speakers along the Left
>> Coast are not being included, no doubt.
>>
>> However, I'm still waiting to hear it used generally from coast to
>> coast, as, e.g. [nu:] for "new" is. (Not that [nIu] has become
>> obsolete. *Many* people still use it.)
>>
>> Of course, I may have run completely off the rails, here, in
>> attempting to take you to task about this. Sound-change is pretty
>> unpredictable. In my lost youth, the pronunciation of, e.g. "now" as
>> "naow" [n&u] and not as [nau] was *absolutely* not used by BE
>> speakers, except *very* rarely in mockery of SE speakers. (E.g. there
>> was once a popular version of the song, Temptation, recorded by one
>> "Cinderella G. Stump," which was done in a mockery of white, mountain
>> speech. It was also popular 'mongst us cullud chirren, though we had
>> no idea that it was supposed to be a put-down, Saint Louis being such
>> a speech-island, back in the day, that we didn't know that there
>> existed people who really did speak more-or-less that way. Nowadays,
>> I'd be hard put to find a BE speaker younger than fifty or so who
>> still uses [nau] and not [n&u]. If it wasn't for being able to listen
>> to my old blues and R&B records, I might even begin to doubt my own
>> memory that [nau] was ever used by anyone outside of my own family.
>>
>> Once upon a time, the glo?al stop was so rare that I knew only a
>> single individual who used it in his ordinary speech, whether
>> monitored or unmonitored. I occasionally wondered whether he might
>> have a speech defect. Nowadays, the glo?al stop is virtually a marker
>> of hiphop/rap speech, and is slowly creeping into other forms of
>> speech, based on what I hear on The Judges.
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Gordon, Matthew J.
>> <GordonMJ at missouri.edu> wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: Fronted high back vowel /u/
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> This sounds like pretty classic Southern Shift: back vowel fronting
>>> + raising of /E/ and /I/. The only thing odd would be the direction
>>> of the glide. When diphthongal, the lax vowels in the SoShift
>>> usually have central/schwa offglides if I recall correctly.
>>>
>>> Fronting of /u/ (and /o/) is found pretty much everywhere in the US
>>> except for the Inland North (e.g. the Great Lakes region).
>>>
>>> -Matt Gordon
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
>>> Of Randall Gess [randall_gess at CARLETON.CA]
>>> Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 8:38 AM
>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>> Subject: Fronted high back vowel /u/
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I'm new to the list. I've just started doing volunteer work on
>>> occasion for a victim identification unit of law enforcement. I
>>> have a
>>> recording with a male North American speaker that has a rather
>>> fronted /u/ sound (F1 395, F2 1816), in the word 'movie'. I've heard
>>> this kind of fronting before, but does anyone know how widespread it
>>> is geographically? The /E/  in leg is also a bit raised at F1 550, F2
>>> 1942 and slightly diphthongized toward /ei/, but this is not as
>>> pronounced as I've heard in some accents. Does anyone know where
>>> these
>>> features might co-occur?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Randall
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Language: Defining dreams for millennia.
>>>
>>> Randall Gess
>>> Professor and Director
>>> School of Linguistics and Language Studies
>>> 215 Paterson Hall, Carleton University
>>> 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa ON K1S 5B6
>>> Tel: (613) 520-6612  Fax: (613) 520-6641
>>> Email: randall_gess at carleton.ca
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> The information in this message, including any attachments, is
>>> privileged and may contain confidential information intended only for
>>> the person(s) named above. Any other distribution, copying or
>>> disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended
>>> recipient or have received this message in error, please notify
>>> Carleton University immediately by reply email at the contact listed
>>> above and permanently delete the original transmission from us,
>>> including any attachments, without making a copy. Carleton University
>>> is fully compliant with the Freedom of Information and Protection of
>>> Privacy Act and appreciates your cooperation in this matter.
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> –––
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> –Mark Twain
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