Introductory Seminar Linguistics (204)

Phonetics and Phonology

WS

2006/07

A COMPARISON OF

THE NORTHERN CITIES SHIFT AND

THE SOUTHERN SHIFT

IN VOWEL PRONUNCIATION

BY AMERICAN ENGLISH SPEAKERS

Olivia Frey

Table of contents

1.

INTRODUCTION 1

2.

THE BASIC CHAIN-SHIFTING PRINCIPLE 1

3.

THE NORTHERN CITIES SHIFT 3

3.1. PATTERNS AND EFFECTS ON THE VOWEL SYSTEM 3

3.2. REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION 5

4.

THE SOUTHERN SHIFT 6

4.1. PATTERNS AND EFFECTS ON THE VOWEL SYSTEM 6

4.2. REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION 7

5.

SYNOPSIS 9

6.

CONCLUSION 10

REFERENCES 11

1. Introduction

Like all living languages, English is continually changing as new words,

pronunciations, grammatical structures and word meanings arise and eventually

supplement or replace old ones. This means that every linguistic branch, from

morphology and phonology to syntax and semantics is subject to change. In North

American English, pronunciation is the most active arena for language change. In the

last few decades, researchers have identified various pronunciation changes that are

in progress in different parts of the United States (Gordon 2001: 2-3).

Towards the end of the 20th century, William Labov, an American linguist,

overruled the methods of traditional dialectology depending on lexical variation and

claimed that "regional diversity is increasing as a result of opposing movements

within vowel systems" (Labov, Ash & Boberg 2005: 18). In other words, the divergent

developments in American English dialects are attributable to the operation of chain

shifts moving the phonetic values of vowels in radically different directions. In these

complex rotations, whole sets or subsystems of vowels reverse their relative

positions to each other, whereby phones representing one phoneme in one dialect

represent an entirely different phoneme in another (Labov 1991: 3).

2. The basic chain-shifting principle

Vowels can primarily be differentiated and classified according to the position of the

tongue during the production of a particular vowel. Furthermore, the respective

position of the tongue in the mouth can be represented in a four-sided diagram.

Within this vowel chart, each vowel has its own position, or "phonetic space",

determined by the position of the tongue (Roach 2000: 14-15). The concept of

phonetic space is of great importance in the context of chain shifting, because the

shift of one vowel from one position to another usually sets off a change in the

phonetic space of a neighboring vowel (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 2006: 75).

As regards the general patterns of chain shifting, Labov (1994: 118-119)

distinguishes between "minimal chain shifts" and "extended chain shifts". Minimal

chain shifts only consist of a change in the position of two phonemes: the first, or the

"leaving element", changes its position, thereby leaving behind an empty space.

Consequently, a neighboring member, the "entering element", also changes its

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