The Mysterious Uniformity of the Northern Cities Shift

1. The Mysterious Uniformity of the Northern Cities Shift William Labov, University of Pennsylvania Methods XIII Leeds August 8, 2008

2. William Labov Home Pagewww.ling.upenn.edu/~labov

3. Some substantial differences in dialectology New World Old World Time Depth 200 years 2000 years Spatial range 3000 mile 500 miiles Major tendency Divergence Dialect leveling Variables Phonological Phonological/Morphological, Level of awareness Low High

4. The trajectory of this inquiry into the mysterious uniformity of the Northern Cities Shift The discovery of the NCS in several Northern cities. The triggering event of the NCS in western New York state. The westward expansion to the Inland North. Differentiation of the NCS by social class and gender. The uniformity of the NCS throughout the Inland North. Ideological background from settlement history. Modern day reflections. . .

5. The Northern Cities Shift in ChicagoExperiments on Cross-Dialectal Comprehension, 1989 Word Phrase Sentence 1 . ______ _____________ ___________________ 2. ______ _____________ ___________________ 3. ______ _____________ ___________________ 4. ______ _____________ ___________________

6. The Northern Cities Shift desk busses mat head boss block socks

7. • designed to obtain a comprehensive view of the phonological changes in progress in the English of North America • a telephone survey of all cities of population 50,000 and over • names chosen from local telephone directories, concentrating on major ethnic groups of that city • first 2 subjects who were locally born and raised accepted as representative of that city (4 to 6 in the largest cities) • 762 speakers interviewed representing 325 cities, most 1992-1999 conversation on local developments elicitation of particular words perception and production of minimal pairs semantic differential: e.g., what’s the difference between a bag and a sack? • acoustic analyses of systems of 439 speakers, 130,000 vowels • provided data for the Atlas of North American English, (Berlin: Mouton/degruyter, 2006. The Telsur Project

8. Rochester, New York

9. Rochester

10. Extended sample of speech from Sharon K., 35, Rochester, TS 359 Sharon K. is an advanced speaker of the Northern Cities Shift. Listen for the raising and fronting of short a in Catholic, adding, taxes, fact fronting of short /o/ inmodeling, lot backing of short /e/ insend, went, sending fronting of /ay/ in nine backing of /i/ in tuition Yeah, well I send my kids to private school, but--across the street from me is a Catholic school, y’know I send ‘em there. I went there, in fact I live in the house that I grew up in. We’re re-modeling right now, uh adding on to the family room, and doing the work. We-we like the neighborhood, and we feel very comfortable here. We like all the neighbors, y’know, neighbors I’ve known since I was nine. Bishop Parity behind us, but I don’t know if we’re gonna be sending him there. The tuition could be very expensive. As it is now, we’re paying a lot for public. . .Y’know we pay a lot of--taxes are very high here.

11. Vowel system of Sharon K., Rochester

12. Northern Cities Shift of Sharon K., 35[1995], Rochester NY, TS 359 KIT STRUT TRAP DRESS THOUGHT LOT

13. Northern Cities Shift in the vowel system of April S., 20, Rochester NY, TS360 KIT STRUT TRAP THOUGHT DRESS LOT

14. Where did the Rochester accent come from?

15. Migration to the Rochester area Kniffen and Glassie 1966, Fig. 7

16. Community movement Mass migrations were indeed congenial to the Puritan tradition. Whole parishes, parson and all, had sometimes migrated from Old England. Lois Kimball Mathews mentioned 22 colonies in Illinois alone, all of which originated in New England or in New York, most of them planted between 1830 and 1840. --Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee in the old Northwest, 1953. P. 14.

17. Cities on the Erie Canal

18. The impact of the Erie Canal The impact on the rest of the State can be seen by looking at a modern map.  With the exception of Binghamton and Elmira, every major city in New York falls along the trade route established by the Erie Canal, from New York City to Albany, through Schenectady, Utica and Syracuse, to Rochester and Buffalo.  Nearly 80% of upstate New York's population lives within a 25 miles of the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal: A Brief History No established village had ever mushroomed so rapidly [as Rochester], growing from 1507 to 9207 within a ten year span - Blake McKelvey, A Panoramic View of Rochester History. Rochester History 11:2-24.

19. Growth of population along the Erie Canal Erie canal

20. The TRAP vowel in the speech of immigrants to western New York State

21. Nasal short-a system of Diane S., 37, Providence, RI

22. Continuous short-a system of Jesse M., 57[1996], New Britain CT, TS465

23. Broad-a system of Denise L., 21 [1995], Boston MA, TS 427

24. Split short-a system of Nina B., 62 [1996], New York City, TS 495

25. Input of short-a systems to cities on the Erie Canal, 1817-1825 nasal (WNE) broad (Boston) continuous (SWNE) split (NYC)

26. General raising of /æ/ for Sharon K., 35 [1995], Rochester, NY, TS 359

27. Westward expansion --A. Wexler. Atlas of Westward Expansion. NY: Facts on File, 1995. p. 64

28. Rochester Detroit

29. The Northern Cities Shift of Sabrina K., 37 [1994], Detroit MI, TS 176 KIT STRUT TRAP DRESS THOUGHT LOT

30. Social variation

31. Gender and social category determination of five elements of the Northern City Shift in a Detroit suburban high school æ ^ TRAP LOT THOUGHT DRESS STRUT Source: Eckert 2000

32. Further westward settlement

33. Settlement patterns shown by diffusion of building methods from seaboard nuclei --Kniffen & Glassie 1966. Fig. 27

34. The North/Midland lexical isogloss

35. Coincidence of the North/Midland lexical line and NCS isoglosses

36. Measures of the development of the Northern Cities Shift

37. Four measures of the progress of the Northern Cities Shift

38. Means of six Northern Cities Shift vowels in the speech of Sharon K., Rochester EQ: /æ/ higher and backer than /e/ AE1: /æ/ < 700 Hz UD: /^/ back of /o/ ED: F2(e) - F2(o) < 375 Hz

39. NCS vowels in the system of a Midland speaker, Mimi P., 31 45 [2000], Indianapolis IN, TS 775 EQ: /e/ higher than /æ/ F1 700 UD: /^/ front of /o/ AE1: /æ/ > 700 Hz ED: F2(e) - F2(o) > 375 (523 Hz)

40. The Northern Cities Shift AE1 measure: raising of /æ/ to F1 < 700 Hz.

41. The Northern Cities Shift EQ measure reversal of relative positions of /e/ and /æ/

42. The Northern Cities Shift ED measure: front-back alignment of /e/ and /o/

43. The Northern Cities Shift UD measure: /^/ backer than /o/

44. U.S. at Night The Inland North Grand Rapids Milwaukee Syracuse Chicago Rochester Flint Buffalo Detroit Cleveland Kenoshat Joliet Toledo

45. Do current patterns of the communication flow contribute to the uniformity of the Inland North?

46. Relationships among America’s Most Populous Metropolitan Areas North/Midland boundary

47. Fridland’s view of African-American participation in the weakening of /ay/ in Memphis Tie, tied and tIght: the expansion of /ay/ monophthongization in African-American and European-American speech in Memphis, Tennessee. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7:279-298, 2000.

48. Social correlates of four measures of the Northern Cities Shift [N=71] Age Female Years of 25 yrs Gender Education AE1 34* 8.6* EQ 34* 26* ED 112*** H.S. -68* UD 37 -16* *** P < .001, * P < .05

49. Yankee cultural imperialism and the Northern Cities Shift

50. Settlement patterns of four regional cultures Yankee Virginia Quaker Upland South Settlement Towns Plantations Farm Isolated villages clusters House location Roadside Setback Corner- Creek clusters & spring Internal Low Moderate High Very high migration Persistence 75-96% 50-75% 40-60% 25-40% David Hackett Fisher, Albion’s Seed, p. 814