Fronted high back vowel /u/

Herb Stahlke hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
Tue Dec 22 02:40:41 UTC 2009 

I suspect "fronted" /u/ covers a range of sounds.  In Central Indiana,
the most common variant I hear is a diphthong with a barred-i onset
and a barred-u nucleus, little or no change in tongue position but
increased rounding.  However, I haven't done instrumental work on
this, so my description must be taken as anecdotal.

Herb

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 2:06 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/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I think that usually some rounding is retained when fronted so it might be close to a /y/ or the barred-u (= u with the line through it).
>
>
> On 12/21/09 12:32 PM, "Tom Zurinskas" <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> To hear these sounds in three different voices go to the vowel sound chart at  http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/wells/wells.html
> But "high" back is not given - just "back".
>
> What symbol does a "fronted /u/ when saying "food" take from the diagram above so I can hear it?  Or just give me a word in thefreedictionary.com that has that vowel sound.
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>
>
>
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Tony Au
>> Subject: Re: Fronted high back vowel /u/
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Just an anecdote, but I've always noticed a friend of mine (Inland Northern
>> speaker) has a very fronted /u/ in "food"
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 11:41 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote=
>> :
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Herb Stahlke
>>> Subject: Re: Fronted high back vowel /u/
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>> ------
>>>
>>> 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
>>> wrote:
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>> Poster: Randall Gess
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> The information in this message, including any attachments, is
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>>>> recipient or have received this message in error, please notify
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 20-Dec-09, at 9:20 PM, Gordon, Matthew J. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>> -----------------------
>>>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>>> Poster: "Gordon, Matthew J."
>>>>> 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.
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>>> -----------------------
>>>>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>>>> Poster: "Gordon, Matthew J."
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> -Wilson
>>>>> =E2=80=93=E2=80=93=E2=80=93
>>>>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"=E2=80=93=E2=80=93a stra=
>> nge complaint to
>>>>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>>>> =E2=80=93Mark Twain
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
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>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>
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>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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