Linguistic boundaries [was: A novel notion of "balance"]

[Alice Faber]

Back in the day (before TV and bridges), the rhotic boundary was,
approximately, the Connecticut River. And I recall reading, when I first
moved to CT, some 25 years ago, that the Yankee-Red Sox boundary was,
approximately, the Connecticut River. But post-vocalic /r/ has been
moving east (Connecticut is pretty much fully rhotic) as Y-RS line has
been moving WEST (got it right, this time!).

Alice

On 1/13/14 11:38 AM, Paul Johnston wrote:
> How do the Red Sox/Yankees divisions correlate with variables such as whether the vowel in cart (rhotic or not) is front or back, and whether cot is rounded or unrounded?
>
> On Jan 13, 2014, at 11:28 AM, "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Linguistic boundaries [was: A novel notion of "balance"]
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> No, actually townies.  There are people of all types who just like rooting for wealthy winners.
>>
>> Fred Shapiro
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
>> Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 11:20 AM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: Linguistic boundaries [was: A novel notion of "balance"]
>>
>> At 1/13/2014 06:55 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>>> Based on my own subjective experience living in the New Haven area,
>>> there are a distressingly large number of Yankees fans here.
>>
>> Gownies?
>>
>> Joel
>>
>>
>>> Fred Shapiro
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>>> Ben Zimmer [bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM]
>>> Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 3:30 AM
>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>> Subject: Re: Linguistic boundaries [was: A novel notion of "balance"]
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Alice Faber wrote:
>>>> On 1/12/14 9:54 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>>> On Jan 12, 2014, at 8:07 PM, Alice Faber wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As for the Red Sox-Yankees boundary, I would say it's shifted east in
>>>>>> the past decade. This isn't just due to the Red Sox' recent success
>>>>>> (though that contributed); the addition of Red Sox broadcasts to cable
>>>>>> systems in the New Haven area makes it much easier to follow the Sox
>>>>>> these days.
>>>>>
>>>>> Alice--you do mean the boundary has shifted west, right?  Or maybe New
>>>>> Haven County has shifted east?  Either way I agree, and I think
>>> both radio
>>>>> (especially for baseball) and football (especially for TV) has
>>> played a major
>>>>> role in establishing the relevant isofans.
>>>>
>>>> Yep...the other east. Towards the Pacific.
>>>
>>> For some big-data analysis of the Red Sox-Yankees boundary through CT, see:
>>>
>>> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443324404577593533930872376
>>> http://harvardsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/finding-the-true-border-between-yankee-and-red-sox-nation-using-facebook-data/
>>>
>>> That's based on professed allegiance on Facebook, providing a much
>>> bigger dataset than the "driving around and asking strangers" method
>>> employed a few years before that by the Times:
>>>
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/sports/baseball/18fans.html
>>>
>>> --bgz
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ben Zimmer

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