Selected Papers from New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV 46)
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10/15/2018
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Publication Almost everyone in New York is raising PRICEs(2018-10-15) Newman, Michael; Haddican, Bill; Tan, Zi Zi GinaUsing the data from the new CUNY Corpus of New York City English, we explore a phonological analysis by Kaye (2012) that argues that the New York City English (NYCE) PALM shares an underlying 'stem vowel' with PRIZE. Kaye's proposal is based on two observations: (i) the phonetic similarities of PALM and the nucleus of PRIZE and (ii) the conditioning factors that have led to the historical relexicalization of many Middle English short-o words from LOT to PALM are the same as those that have led relexicalization PRICE words to PRIZE. However, it has previously been observed that PALM is merging with LOT in NYCE. Consequently, it would be likely that if that vowel shares an underlying identity with PRIZE, PRIZE too should be merging. In fact, our data show a complex pattern. First, although PRIZE is backer than PRICE, there is considerable overlap. Also, the PRIZE nucleus tends to coincide with LOT more than PALM. Second, more younger speakers, who have a merged PALM-LOT, do not show a merged PRIZE-PRICE, but a new form of distinction, in which PRICE and PRIZE are now in a Canadian Raising pattern. In this way, NYCE loses a locally distinctive vowel configuration to match a widespread northeastern US regional pattern with a two-vowel low back system and Canadian Raising involving PRICE and PRIZE. In sum, the data show the complexity of the relationship between vowels in subsystems and that reconfigurations may involve multiple elements.Publication Dialect Identification Across a Nation-State Border: Perception of Dialectal Variants in Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC(2018-10-15) Thomas Swan, Julia; Babel, MollyThe Atlas of North America English distinguishes "the West" from "Western Canada" on the basis of /æ/ retraction and Canadian Raising (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006). Since the Atlas, scholars have provided a more detailed understanding of /æɡ/ raising, /æ/retraction, and Canadian Raising throughout the Western United States and Western Canada (Boberg 2008, Fridland et al. 2016, Presnyakova, Umbal, and Pappas 2017, Roeder, Onosson, and D'Arcy 2018). In a production study, Swan (2016) found that Seattle and Vancouver, BC are differentiated primarily by Canadian Raising and pre-nasal raising of /æ/ and show minimal difference with respect to /æɡ/ raising and /æ/ retraction. Seattle and Vancouver speakers also shared different ideologies about their speech: Seattle respondents felt more confident that they could identify a Vancouver talker based on speech than vice versa. The current study builds from these observations to ask how natives of Seattle and Vancouver perceive the similarities and distinctions documented in the production literature. Can listeners differentiate a talker as being from Seattle or Vancouver? What cues are listeners relying on to judge a talker as being from Seattle or Vancouver? Do these perceptual cues align with the production differences between the cities? What does this imply for a dialectology of the West? These questions are addressed using a forced-choice dialect identification task using the variables represented by FAN, PATH, TAG, and DEVOUT. Our analysis considers signal detection theoretic measures to elucidate sensitivity and bias (Macmillan and Creelman 2005). The results suggest that differentiating Seattle and Vancouver talkers is a challenging task for listeners native to these cities. Neither Seattle nor Vancouver listeners show very accurate performance for any of the single-word stimuli or short phrase blocks of the task and are generally not able classify a talker's city of origin based on their speech. The most accurate performance emerges for Seattle listeners classifying talkers saying DEVOUT, which aligns with the production differences between the cities and is likely driven by stereotypes about Canadian English. Listeners from both cities show more own city bias for the phonetic features that are shown to be more similar across the cities (PATH and TAG) than for those shown to be more different in production (FAN and DEVOUT). A closer look at bias reveals that while Seattle listeners perform with slightly more accuracy, they also show more own-city bias. We discussion possible reasons for this pattern and implications for dialectology of the West and Western Canada.Publication The Myth of the New York City Borough Accent: Evidence from Perception(2018-10-15) Becker, Kara; Newlin-Lukowicz, LuizaA common language ideology in the United States is that New York City English (NYCE) displays reliable geographic variation across the city’s five boroughs, what we call the Borough Accent Ideology (BAI). In direct contrast, linguists argue that borough accents do not exist, but instead serve as a proxy for socioeconomic differences in NYCE (Hubbell 1950, Bronstein 1962, Labov 1966, Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006:234). This paper contributes the first empirical evidence related to the BAI, with an analysis of perceptual data from an interactive website where listeners heard short audio samples of native New Yorkers and assigned them to one of the city’s five boroughs. The results confirm that listeners cannot accurately discern a talker’s borough of provenance, but also that listeners are not guessing when they vote. Based on the descriptive patterns, we hypothesized that listeners create a binary opposition between Manhattan, which is the borough that is least-aligned with traditional NYCE, and the outer boroughs, where listeners expect to hear higher rates of NYCE features. A regression analysis confirms this hypothesis, and finds specifically that a talker’s use of variable non-rhoticity and BOUGHT-raising are significant predictors of votes, with more rhoticity and less-raised BOUGHT predictive of votes for Manhattan. In addition, there is no significant difference between native and non-native New Yorkers in voting behavior, suggesting that this binary strategy is accessible to speakers from both within and outside New York City. Overall, the results confirm that the BAI remains an ideology and not a linguistic reality, at least for the task in question.Publication Embodying Toughness: LOT-Raising, /l/-Velarization, and Retracted Articulatory Setting(2018-10-15) Pratt, TeresaIn this paper I examine the realization of two sociophonetic variables to explore the link between articulatory setting (Honikman 1964, Laver 1980) and stylistic practice. I show that raised variants of the LOT vowel and velarized variants of word-initial /l/, both characterized by retraction of the tongue dorsum, are used in tandem by adolescent speakers in the construction of an embodied style characterized by toughness. Data come from a year-long ethnography of a public arts high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, where students split their time between academic classes and one of twelve arts disciplines (e.g., dance, theatre, orchestra). One of these disciplines, technical theater or 'tech,' is distinct from the others in that students engage in manual labor, using professional-grade equipment to construct sets for school productions and events. These students self-describe and are described by peers as 'rowdy' 'assholes' who wear black clothes and work boots, producing a cumulative image of tech students as 'badass' and 'tough.' Acoustic analyses of interview data from 24 students indicate that tech speakers produce higher LOT tokens and more velarized /l/ variants than their non-tech peers. Because raised LOT and velarized /l/ are both characterized by the backing and raising of the tongue dorsum, I suggest that these students rely more generally on a retracted articulatory setting, and that this articulatory setting is in turn part of indexing toughness.Publication The Changing Sounds of Exceptionally Aspirated Diné Stops(2018-10-15) Palakurthy, KaylaThis paper presents a phonetic analysis of variation and change in the production of voiceless aspirated stops in Diné bizaad, or Navajo, a Southern Dené language spoken in the American Southwest. Diné aspirated stops are typologically famous for having exceptionally long release periods (Cho and Ladefoged 1999), and earlier studies report that the variable aspiration carries social meaning (Reichard 1945). This study revisits phonetic measures of aspiration given increasing levels of English bilingualism in the Diné speech community. Voice onset time (VOT) and spectral center of gravity (CoG) were measured in tokens of aspirated velar and alveolar stops, elicited during interviews with 51 bilingual Diné bizaad-English speakers of different ages, genders, regions, and linguistic backgrounds. Results indicate that the releases of aspirated /kh/ have shortened when compared with earlier studies, while releases of aspirated /th/ have not, likely due to the salience of their affrication rendering them perceptibly distinct from English /t/. Mixed-effects linear regression models show that region, age, and gender are significant predictors of variation and that there are ongoing changes led by women, a frequent pattern in sociolinguistics, but notable here due to its relevance in an indigenous minority language community, a rare site for variationist sociolinguistic research. Overall these findings suggest that despite encroaching language shift, Diné bizaad is not simply converging with English, and results underscore the importance of perceptual awareness in analyses of subphonemic linguistic change.Publication The FOOT-STRUT vowels in Manchester: Evidence for the diachronic precursor to the split?(2018-10-15) Baranowski, Maciej; Turton, DanielleThis study presents a large-scale investigation of sociolinguistic variation in the phonetic realisation and phonemic status of FOOT and STRUT in Manchester English. As a Northern dialect of English, Manchester speakers typically lack the distinction between the FOOT and STRUT vowels, such that 'stud' and 'stood' are homophones. The data in the present study reveal that, despite the vast majority of speakers having no difference in production and perception, there is variation both in the phonemic status and the phonetic realisation of the two vowel classes within the speech community. The study is based on the acoustic analysis of a sample of 123 speakers stratified by age, gender, socio-economic status, and ethnicity, recorded in sociolinguistic interviews, supplemented with wordlist reading and minimal-pair tests. Our approach to the analysis considers the vowel classes both as one phoneme, and as the two split lexical sets. The acoustic measurements reveal that tokens in the STRUT category show a monotonic pattern of social class stratification, with higher social classes showing higher F1 values, i.e., having a lower tongue position. The minimal-pair tests of the FOOT-STRUT distinction reveal that although for most speakers there is no phonemic distinction, for 8 speakers in the two highest socio-economic levels in the sample, the two vowels do form separate categories. This is confirmed by the acoustic measurements of their vowel tokens: there is clear phonetic separation between the two vocalic categories in phonetic space. Interestingly, even when these 8 speakers are removed from the sample, regression analysis shows that for the sample as a whole, vowel category (i.e., STRUT vs. FOOT) continues to have a significant effect, with STRUT tokens having a higher F1 mean (lower tongue position). This holds in cases where there is complete overlap between the two vowels in phonetic space. We explore the possibility that this may be due to the different phonological environment in which the two vowel classes tend to be found and that it may shed light on the underlying mechanisms of the historical split between the two vowel classes in the south of England.Publication Copycats, ja dom shouf: Using hip hop to compare lexical replications in Danish and Swedish multiethnolects(2018-10-15) Young, NathanIn the contact scenarios of late-modern urban Europe, a complex interplay of predictors determine each output in the variety. They include substrate inputs, superstrate structure, social conditions, diachrony, and more; they are elusive and hard to isolate. However, if one was to attempt to isolate them, the Nordic multiethnolects would be a befitting start point because their languages, social structures, and origins of their migrants are similar. Diachrony is where they differ most: Swedish represents a later-stage muliethnolect; Danish, earlier. In this study, I compare lexical replications in Danish and Swedish hip hop because it features multiethnolect in its most flamboyant style. Hip hop is a de facto empirical isolation of the upper limits of community-accepted replication. I analyzed a corpus of 22 Danish (13,086 words) and 34 (15,668) Swedish 'hit' rap songs and found that the Swedish artists use nearly double the number of foreign lexical replications than the Danish artists. Furthermore, a higher number of Swedish replications (32) were used by >10% of the artists than Danish replications (14). High-use Danish replications were solely nouns and exclamations/tags. High-use Swedish replications included nouns, exclamations/tags, adjectives, verbs, and the first-person pronoun 'benim.' After closer analysis, I define 'benim' as a first-person 'egohonorific' pronoun and offer an explanation on its origin and social-indexical function. I argue that Swedish multiethnolect is 'richer' than Danish multiethnolect both in terms of level of replication as well as types of replications. The study provides fresh insight on two neighboring multiethnolects that have formed under similar conditions save for diachrony.Publication Saks vs. Macys: (r-1) marches on in New York City department stores(2018-10-15) Guy, Gregory R.Labov's 1963 study of /r/ in New York City department stores had three principal findings: 1) social stratification: use of consonantal /r/ in coda position (r-1) was correlated with the status of the store, i.e. more (r-1) in Saks than Macys 2) an age distribution suggesting ongoing 'change from above' towards increased (r-1) use 3) linguistic conditioning: more (r-1) in word-final position and emphatic repetitions. These observations have subsequently been reinvestigated, in 1986 by Fowler, and in 2009 by Mather, effectively providing a real-time trend series by replicating the original methodology. In this paper we replicate Labov’s methodology. The results indicate continuing progression in the direction Labov predicted. This is a unique case in variationist studies of change in progress; no other change has been so frequently sampled with controlled methodology across so long a time frame. The present study extends the duration of this series to 54 years. The original study investigated three department stores that were socially stratified by price level and target clientele: Saks, Macys and S. Klein. Klein, the low-end store, closed in 1976, but the other two still operate in their original locations in Manhattan and were investigated for the present study using Labov's original methodology. 160 speakers were observed in each store. The results show continued advance of (r-1) in real time. The percentage of speakers using all (r-1) has increased by a factor of 2.8 in both stores since Labov’s study, but the rate of change has accelerated considerably since Mather’s 2009 data collection. Social stratification of the variable is still apparent: Saks, the high-end store, continues to show higher rates of (r-1) than Macys. In Labov’s apparent time results, (r-1) use increased among younger speakers at Saks, but was higher among older speakers at Macys, suggesting that the change originated among higher status speakers, and spread to lower status speakers by diffusion in adult life. In the current study, this pattern has shifted. The age distribution at Saks is flattening out at a high level (speaker groups under age 50 all produce over 80% (r-1) tokens), while Macys now shows a conventional apparent time pattern, with (r-1) advancing among younger speakers. The linguistic conditioning on the process is moderating as the change approaches completion: Macys speakers showed moderate increases in (r-1) of about 7% between internal ('fourth') and final position ('floor'), and between non-emphatic and emphatic productions, but Saks employees are essentially uniform across all conditions.Publication Social Predictors of Case Syncretism in New York Hasidic Yiddish(2018-10-15) Nove, Chaya R.This is a pilot study investigating synchronic variation in New York Hasidic Yiddish (HY) object pronouns. HY is a variety that has been transmitted directly by immigrants from Eastern Europe following the second world war and is presently the everyday language of thousands of Hasidic Jews in New York and other communities around the world. In Yiddish, pronominal forms in the dative case, 'mir' (1SG) 'dir' (2SG), have historically been used in four types of syntactic constructions: 1) when the pronoun referent is the recipient of an action in a double object construction; 2) with a transitive verb that inherently selects for an object in the dative form; 3) with a dative experiencer; and 4) as the object of a preposition. Anecdotal observations suggest an innovative leveled paradigm with accusative forms 'mikh' (1SG) and 'dikh' (2SG) in all four historically dative positions. Moreover, while other Yiddish dialects have dative case marking on definite articles and attributive adjectives, spoken HY has largely lost these. With 'mir' and 'dir' as the sole remaining dative forms in in the pronominal paradigm, learners of HY have less evidence for positing dative case than do learners of other dialects. The data for this study come from an online controlled judgement experiment with 113 native HY speakers from New York. Regression analysis reveals an age effect, with younger speakers tending toward innovative dative forms, and an interaction between age and gender, with younger females innovating more extensively than males. However, sex is confounded with language dominance in this community, largely because of an educational model that supports HY-English bilingualism among girls but gives primacy to HY in the education of boys. The model also selects speakers from Hasidic neighborhoods in Rockland County as the most likely innovators. Overall, the results of this study suggest an emergent reduction in the HY case system where, for some young speakers, the distinction between the accusative and dative case forms has been lost. HY offers linguists a unique opportunity to observe the development of a post-coterritorial Yiddish dialect in a new language contact environment. This investigation into HY in its unique sociocultural context contributes to Yiddish linguistics by highlighting changes that have occurred since its arrival to the US and to general theories of language change by identifying the social factors that may be playing a role in these developments.Publication Change Over Time in the Grammar of African American English(2018-10-15) Fisher, SabriyaThis paper investigates the use of 'ain't' in past tense contexts in African American English (AAE) using a corpus of recorded speech collected in Philadelphia in the early 1980s. A study of 42 speakers' rates of use of 'ain't' in past tense contexts finds increase toward 'ain't' in both real and apparent time. This increase is stronger among speakers born and raised in Philadelphia compared to those who migrated there from the South, supporting previous work linking innovation in AAE to linguistic segregation in the urban North during the Great Migration. Finally, this paper uses data from the morphological form of verbs following 'ain't' in past and perfect contexts to argue that the use of 'ain't' for 'didn't' resulted from the reanalysis of present perfect constructions containing 'ain't'.