/u/: merger vs. split

[Matthew Gordon]

WRT dew~do, I think you have in mind the earlier difference between the
diphthong /iu/ and the monophthong /u/. The use of the /iu/ in words like
'due' and 'tube' was found to be rare and recessive by the early linguistic
atlas researchers in the US. In some varieties the /iu/ merged with /u/, and
others you get what's usually transcribed as [ju] (where [j] = palatal glide
as in IPA). Kurath and McDavid (1961) show the [ju] forms mainly in the
South and South Midlands. Labov et al.'s Atlas of North American English
(2005) reports "the situation has changed radically in the half century
since the LAMSAS data were gathered" and the [ju] variant has more or less
disappeared in words in which it follows a coronal (e.g. Tuesday, news,
due/dew). Still Labov et al. report some areas in the South with a phonemic
distinction between e.g. 'dew' and 'do,' 'lute' and 'loot,' but they label
the former vowel /iw/. Frankly, I've always been a confused about the
phonetic differences intended with the symbols [iu], [ju], and [iw].

At the same time, the fronting of /u/ seems to be on the rise in a number of
American dialects. It's associated with the West thanks to Valley Girl and
surfer stereotypes but it's also part of the Southern Shift. Everywhere
(AFAIK) fronting is found to be more common and more extreme after coronals.
So generally you find the /u/ in 'do' fronter than in 'boot'. For those few
speakers who maintain a phonemic contrast between 'dew' and 'do', the former
is typically even fronter but they still show substantial fronting in 'do'
etc. In any case, there's not really a split on the phonemic level for the
traditional /u/ class since the fronting is allophonic and usually
continuous, but there are many speakers with great differerences in the
position of /u/ which is extremely fronted in 'do', backer in 'boot' and
backer still before liquids as in 'pool'.

So, are these changes related?  Considering the chronological and regional
differences, I don't think so, but I suppose you could argue that the
presence of the /iw/~/ju/ phoneme might somehow have set the stage for the
general /u/-fronting that we see today. But, as we all know, it is the
life's ambition of every back vowel to move to the front, where it's less
crowded, so we don't need such a model to explain the fronting.

-Matt Gordon


On 2/20/09 3:04 PM, "Mark Davies" <Mark_Davies at BYU.EDU> wrote:

> Sorry for what is probably an overly-basic and overly-discussed question --
> this isn't really my area of specialization.
>
> There has been a merger of sorts with /u/ in American English, so whereas
> "dew" (fronted /u/) and "do" (central/back) were pronounced differently
> before, they are now the same for most speakers (I know they are for me).
> Hence similar cases like "Tuesday" -- in which the vowels was more fronted
> before in some dialects: /tüzde/ -- but the vowel has now moved farther back
> -- /tuzde/ (sorry, no IPA fonts here).
>
> On the other hand, one of the features of "Valley Girl speech" is the fronting
> of /u/: /muv/ > /müv/ "move"
> (see
> http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ATC&showDate=23-Feb-2004&segN
> um=19&NPRMediaPref=WM).
>
> It seems like these two shifts -- if they are in fact happening as I've tried
> to describe them -- are going in opposite directions -- the first leading to a
> merger of sorts, the second leading to a split of some kind.
>
> My question is, are they related in any way? Seems like they're not -- either
> chronologically or in terms of dialects and social groups. But I told the
> students in my Historical Linguistics class that I'd check on this.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Mark D.
>
> ============================================
> Mark Davies
> Professor of (Corpus) Linguistics
> Brigham Young University
> (phone) 801-422-9168 / (fax) 801-422-0906
> Web: davies-linguistics.byu.edu
>
> ** Corpus design and use // Linguistic databases **
> ** Historical linguistics // Language variation **
> ** English, Spanish, and Portuguese **
> ============================================
>
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