Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 00:35:23 -0500
From: TERRY IRONS t.irons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MOREHEAD-ST.EDU
Subject: Great Northern Vowel Shi**
On Mon, 4 Dec 1995, Larry Horn wrote:
FWIW, My wife's name is Holly and she complains that Minnesotans call her
[haeli]. A bit of an exageration, but not too far off. This fronted,
nasalised pronunciation seems to be age graded (with younger people
seeming to have the more fronted/nasalised version) and, I believe,
urban, altho I have not made enough tapes (I did a small study of this
feature in the summer of '94) of ruralites to make any conclusive
statement.
Ah yes, the Great Northern Vowel Shift. I've heard Bill Labov talk about it
for years, but my most memorable encounter was still my first, back in the
early 1960's in my undergraduate days at the University of
RIAAAENNN-ch'ster (that's supposed to be a highish front very nasalized
vowel)--the university/city east of Buffalo, where I spent one puzzling but
ultimately enlightening hour on a blind date with a young woman from the area
who seemed to be talking about salads and couldn't figure out what \I/ was
saying, since she meant SALads, you know, as opposed to liquids...
--Larry
Now we have returned to a significant topic for consideration, pinheads
and bubbleheads to be forgiven. What is it with all of this vowel
shift shit? I think this list needs to engage itself in a serious
discussion of Labov's hypothesis, rather than bowing down to that
name as some god or something. He was simply somebody's student who
lucked into a good situation, and so forth.
I was sitting in the airport in Lexington, waiting for a plane and I
eavesdropped on the perfect illustration of Mister Bill's famed
NVS (read Northern Vowel Shift), when i heard this yankee guy say to some
other guy, I lost my wallet in the bar last night. The concept of
shift notwithstanding, the sentence is perfectly diagnostic for the
crucial low vowels under consideration. Guess what went where. Perhaps
I'll save it for some revelatory paper at some important conference.
All of this rot and nonsense about vowel shifting buys into some major
and yet unstated assumptions about the phonoloogy/phonetics of spoken
Americn English. To say that a shift has occurred assumed that all
speakers at some point participated in some basic system. I would
suggest that some pronunciation patterns reflect not a change from this
system but a persistence of some variety historically that the generative
agenda, into which Mr. Bill buys wholsale, is not willing to acknowledge.
I would include your friends, Larry, in this group.
Terry
(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)
Terry Lynn Irons t.irons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]morehead-st.edu
Voice Mail: (606) 783-5164
Snail Mail: UPO 604 Morehead, KY 40351
(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)