Dinkin, Aaron J
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Publication Nasal Short-a Systems vs. the Northern Cities Shift(2011-01-01) Dinkin, Aaron J.Labov et al. (2006) discuss a taxonomy of configurations of short-a in American English, including the nasal system (in which the prenasal allophone of short-a is relatively high and discretely different from the low non-prenasal allophone), the continuous system (in which short-a is spread out over a continuous area of phonetic space, from higher prenasal tokens to lower non-prenasal tokens), and the raised system associated with the Northern Cities Shift (NCS), in which all tokens of short-a are high. This paper uses this taxonomy as a starting point for an analysis of the status of short-a in the different dialect regions of Upstate New York (Dinkin 2009). The data show that a fourth pattern needs to be added to the three listed above: a raised nasal short-a system, in which there is a sharp phonetic difference between prenasal and non-prenasal allophones, but even the non-prenasal allophone is located quite high in the vowel space. The raised nasal system is most frequent in the Inland North Fringe, the dialect region where some but not most speakers exhibit advanced NCS. In the Hudson Valley region, where nasal short-a patterns are extremely prevalent, NCS features are present at high degrees of advancement except the raising of short-a. An analysis based on the “life cycle of phonological patterns” (Bermudez-Otero 2007) suggests that the nasal system itself may be responsible for blocking the general raising of the non-prenasal allophone here.Publication An Eleméntàry Linguistic Definition of Upstate New York(2010-01-01) Dinkin, Aaron J.; Evanini, KeelanThis paper examines a hitherto undiscussed dialectological feature of Upstate New York: the pronunciation of words like elementary (documentary, complimentary, etc.) as eleméntàry, with secondary stress on the penultimate syllable. We report the results of three studies examining the geographic distribution of this feature. In the first study, data from 119 sociolinguistic interviews in communities in eastern New York establish the widespread usage of the feature in this region. In the second study, data from 59 sociolinguistic interviews in far western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania show that the geographic extent of the feature hews very close to the New York–Pennsylvania state line in that region. The third study is a rapid and anonymous telephone survey of the lexical item elementary including 188 towns across the entire state of New York and nearby parts of adjacent states. This study finds that the stressed-penultimate pattern is nearly confined to Upstate New York, bleeding only into the Northern Tier of counties in Pennsylvania and a few towns in southwestern Vermont. In addition to providing empirical evidence for the geographic extent of this dialectolgical feature, this study analyzes the relationship between the distribution of the -méntàry pronunciation and other isoglosses that serve as boundaries between major dialect regions in the area. The analysis shows that the geographic extent of the -méntàry pronunciation does not always pattern closely with dialect regions defined by phonological criteria; rather, it coincides more closely with the cultural boundary delimiting the region of Upstate New York. We argue that this type of linguistic boundary is caused primarily by communication patterns (as opposed to constraints internal to the linguistic system), and that it is more likely to be observed in variants involving analogical change, such as the -méntàry pronunciation.Publication Dialect Boundaries and Phonological Change in Upstate New York(2009-12-22) Dinkin, Aaron JThe eastern half of New York State is a dialectologically diverse region around which several dialect regions converge—the Inland North, New York City, Western New England, and Canada. These regions differ with respect to major parameters of North American English phonological variation; and therefore the interface between them is of interest because the location and structure of their boundaries can illuminate constraints on phonological changes and their geographic diffusion. In this dissertation, interviews with 119 speakers in New York State are conducted and phonetically analyzed in order to determine the dialect geography of this region in detail. The sampled area is divisible into several dialect regions. The Inland North fringe contains communities that were settled principally from southwestern New England; here the Northern Cities Shift (NCS) is present, but not as consistently as in the Inland North proper. In the core of the Hudson Valley, there is clear influence from New York City phonology. The Hudson Valley fringe, between the Hudson Valley core and the Inland North, exhibits some NCS features, but no raising of /æ/ higher than /e/; this is attributed to the effect of the nasal /æ/ system in blocking diffusion of full /æ/-raising. The North Country, in the northeastern corner of the state, is the only sampled region where the low back merger is well advanced, but the merger is in progress over the long term in the other regions except for the Hudson Valley core; this illustrates that the NCS does not effectively prevent merger. General theoretical inferences include the following: (potentially allophonic) segments, not phonemes, are the basic unit of chain shifting, and one allophone can prevent another from being moved into its phonetic space; the effect of diffusion of a phonemic merger from one region to another may merely be a slow trend in the recipient region toward merger; and isoglosses for lexically-specific features may correspond better to popular regional boundaries than do phonological isoglosses. Finally, a definition of dialect boundaries as obstacles to diffusion is introduced.Publication Weakening Resistance: Progress Toward the Low Back Merger in New York State(2010-03-21) Dinkin, Aaron JThere is a conflict between "Herzog's principle" (Labov 1994) that phonological mergers tend to expand at the expense of distinctions and the description of the Inland North as a region that, as a result of the Northern Cities Shift (NCS), exhibits "stable resistance" to the low back /o/-/oh/ merger (Labov et al. 2006). This paper examines that question in a data set containing 146 speakers from in and near Upstate New York, including communities both with and without the NCS. It is found that in both NCS and non-NCS communities of Upstate New York, /o/ is backing in apparent time: speakers born after about 1960 have F2 of /o/ about 100 Hz backer than speakers born before 1960. This backing is not found in the portion of the Inland North outside Upstate New York. On the basis of this finding, it is argued that the Inland North's apparent resistance to the low back merger is an illusion, and the phonological relationship between /o/ and /oh/ in the Inland North is no different than in communities which are thought to be more open to the merger.