13. The short- a and short- o conÞgurations

[Pages:16]13. The short-a and short-o configurations

Chapter 11 established a typology of North American dialects that is based on the phonological status of the two low short vowels /o/ and /?/. The chain shifts in progress are to a large extent governed, or even triggered, by the merger and/or split of /o/ and /oh/, /?/ and /?h/. Chapter 9 traced the ongoing merger of /o/ and /oh/. This chapter will present a brief account of the phonetic realizations of short-o and then proceed to the more complex topic of short-a configurations across the continent.

13.1. Short-o configurations

The historical short-o class of words is preserved in spelling as got, God, hop, cob, hock, hod, etc. To this must be added the class of words that are spelled with a and preceded by /w/ or /wh/. If these words end with velar consonants, they are realized as /?/ along with other short-a words: whack, whacky, wack, wag, waggle, wagon, wax, waxy, etc. If the spelling shows that the syllable was closed historically with a liquid, the vowel is realized as /oh/: wall, tall, call, talk, balk, caulk, stalk, wart, warm, wharf, warp. In the case of /r/, the coda can be simply /r/, as in war. Otherwise, words spelled historically with a and preceded by /w/ join the /o/ class: wasp, wander, Watson, wad, waddle, wadding, wan, and (variably) want, watch, wallet. Some of these, like watch and wallet, appear variably with /oh/ in dialects that maintain the /o/ ~ /oh distinction. Water commonly occurs with /oh/, but the alternation with /o/ is frequent and a matter of much social comment.

The formation of the /oh/ class and the opposition of /o/ and /oh/ was discussed in Chapter 9, along with the migration of a large number of /o/ words into the /oh/ class in North America. For dialects where /o/ merged with /oh/, there is no further history of /o/ to be discussed, since it then forms a part of a long and ingliding vowel that occurs in final as well as checked position. For those that do not merge /o/ with /oh/, the most common sequence is for /o/ to merge with /ah/. The /ah/ class has a small nucleus of native words: father, pa, ma, to which are added a large and variable class of loan words, the "foreign a" class (Boberg 1997): pasta, llama, macho, taco, Mazda, teriyaki, pajamas, etc. When /o/ is unrounded it normally merges with the /ah/ class, and becomes a low central peripheral vowel. Among the dialects where /o/ and /oh/ are distinguished, it is only in the South that this combined class remains a low back rounded short vowel in opposition to the long and ingliding vowel /oh/. As Chapter 18 will show, the differentiation of these two vowels is developed further as /oh/ shifts from a long and ingliding vowel to the back upgliding subsystem as /aw/.

The realization of the short-o class

Map 13.1 displays the realization of /o/ in both phonetic and phonemic terms. As 13.1 in Chapter 11, the green-oriented isogloss defines the region in which /o/ and /oh/ are merged. The red isogloss outlines the region in which /?/ is raised as a whole, with a mean value for non-nasal environments of less than 700 Hz. These red

symbols denote speakers for whom the /o/ ~ /oh/ distinction is preserved by the fronting of /o/, with an F2 greater than 1400 Hz. The red symbols fill the /?/-raising area, but extend beyond it westward to an area of eastern South Dakota and western Iowa, and also are heavily concentrated in western New England. Very few red symbols are found outside of these areas.

The blue symbols are speakers with back (and usually rounded) /o/, with F2 values of less than 1200 Hz, while the yellow symbols are the residual, or unmarked case of F2 greater than 1200 Hz but less than 1400 Hz. It is the distribution of the blue symbols that is noteworthy here. There are none in the Inland North. The heaviest concentrations are to be found in the low back merger region, especially in western Pennsylvania and Canada, where the merger is realized in low back rounded position. Table 1 shows the extent to which the back position of /o/ is associated either with the low back merger, or the diphthongization of /oh/. Only six blue tokens are found in other regions.

Table 13.1. Distribution of low back rounded forms of /o/

Area of low back merger Area of back upglide chain shift /oh/ g /aw/ g Other

No. speakers rounded vowel

136 62 242

Low back Percent

37

27%

12

19%

6

2%

In the initial position of Chapter 2, the /ah/ class of father, spa, pa, garage, Ba- 13.2 hamas, etc. is presented as distinct from /o/, although for the great majority of speakers, these two classes are firmly merged. Map 13.2 identifies those areas in which the two classes are distinct. The data here are somewhat sparse; /ah/ is not frequent in spontaneous speech, and no minimal pairs were elicited in the Telsur interview. Such pairs are rare and marginal (e.g. bomb ~ balm for the diminishing number who do not pronounce the /l/ in balm). We therefore have data on /ah/ and its relation to /o/ for only 310 of the 439 Telsur speakers who were analyzed acoustically.1

For the great majority of the speakers ? shown as yellow symbols on Map 13.2 ? there is no evidence of a phonemic difference between /o/ and /ah/. For those within the green-oriented isogloss, /ah/ forms part of the low back merger, so that the vowels of pa, paw, pot, pod, pawed, taught, form a single phoneme. For those outside that isogloss, where /o/ is generally distinct from /oh/, /o/ is unrounded as a rule and merges with /ah/, so that pa, pot, pod is opposed to paw, pawed, taught. The distinction between /ah/ and /o/ is maintained in only two narrowly circumscribed areas on Map 13.2: the area of Eastern New England centered on Boston, and some speakers in New York City. Though these areas are small geographically, they include large populations.

1 Map 32 of Kurath and McDavid (1961) gives phonetic realizations of the word father. Though there is a considerable variety of forms, they correspond quite closely to the vowel of /o/ except for Eastern New England.

168 The short-a and short-o configurations

Anchorage

Vancouver

Edmonton Calgary

Saskatoon

St. John's

Seattle

Spokane

Portland

Walla Walla

Eugene

Missoulas

Sacramento

Reno

San Francisco Fresno

Boise

Idaho Falls

Ogden Salt Lake City

Provo

Orem

Bakersfield

Las Vegas

Los Angeles

Flagstaff

San Diego

Phoenix Tucson

F2(o)

> 1400 Hz < 1400, > 1200 Hz < 1200 Hz F1(?) < 700 /o/ = /oh/ /oh/ back upglides

Regina

Winnipeg

St. John

Great Falls

Thunder Bay

Brockway

Minot

Chisholm

Montreal

Bangor

Billings

Bismark

Bemidji

Duluth

SSMarie

Burlington

Marquette

Ottawa

Rutland

Portland

Casper

Colorado Springs

Santa Fe

Lemmon

Aberdeen

Rapid City

Redfield Sioux Falls

Scotts Bluff No.Platte

Norfolk Omaha

Denver

Lincoln

GardenCity

Topeka Hays

Wichita

Eau Claire

Toronto

Syracuse Albany

Manchester Boston

Minn/ St, Paul St.James

Rochester

Sioux City

Mason City

Madison

Green Bay

London

Milwaukee

Grand

Flint

Rapids

De-

Windsor

Chi-

troit

Cleveland

cago

Rochester Buffalo

Scranton Erie

Pitts-

Hartford

Providence New York City

Cedar Rapids

Gary

Toledo

burgh Harrisburg

Trenton Philadelphia

Des Moines St. Joseph

Peoria

Indianapolis

Columbus Dayton

Canton

Cincin-

Clarksburg

Washington

Wilmington. Baltmore

Kansas City

Sprngfield

Terre Haute

nati Lexington

Richmond

Kansas City

Columbia

Louisville

Roanoke

Norfolk

Springfield

St.Louis

Evansville

Win-Salem

Durham

Toronto

Greenville

Tulsa

Nashville

Knoxville

Charlotte

Raleigh

Amarillo

Memphis

Chattanooga

Ashville

Fayettevlle

Wilmington

Albuquerque

Lubbock

Oklahoma City

Little Rock

New Albany

Birmingham

Greenvllle

Atlanta

Columbia

Charleston

Abilene

Dallas

Shreveport

Jackson

Montgomery

Macon

Savannah

El Paso

Odessa

San Antonio

Austin

Houston

Baton Rouge New Orleans

Mobile

Tallahassee

Jacksonville

Orlando

Corpus Christi

Tampa Miami

Sydney Halifax

Map 13.1. Front?back position and phonemic status of /o/ in North American dialects

The position of the word-class /o/ on the front?back dimension is closely connected with the various chain shifts that differentiate North American dialects. The red circles are the speakers with mean values of /o/ that are clearly in central (or even front) position. Red circles are dominant inside the red isogloss, which

marks the general raising of (non-nasal) /?/; this shows the close connection between these two sound changes. The fronting of /o/ extends to the east and west of the red isogloss, but not north or south of it. It is well dissociated from the area where /o/ and /oh/ merge, within the green oriented isogloss.

Short-o configurations 169

Winnipeg

F2(ah) - F2(o) > 200 Hz, F1(o) - F1(ah) > 200 Hz,

F2(o) - F2(ah) > 200 Hz /ah/ = /o/ The North /o/ = /oh/ E.N.E. area NYC

St. John

Minot

Chisholm

Thunder Bay

Montreal

Bangor

Bismark

Bemidji

Duluth

Marquette

SSMarie

Arnprior

Ottawa

Burlington

Waterville Portland

Rutland

Concord

Aberdeen

Wilmar

Minn/ St, Paul

Eau Claire

Oconto

Toronto

Stevens Pt

Syracuse

Albany

.Platte

Redfield

Watertown Sioux Falls

St.James

Rochester

Norfolk Omaha

Sioux City Denison

Mason City

Cedar Rapids

Des Moines

Lincoln Falls City

St. Joseph

Minneapolis

Appleton

Reedsburg Madison

Green Bay Milwaukee

Saginaw

Grand Flint Rapids

Flint

London

Rochester Buffalo

Binghamton

Hartford

Monroe

Kenosha

Detroit Kalamazoo

Windsor Erie

Scranton

Scranton

Quad Cities

Lena

Rockford Elgin

Sterling

Joliet

Chicago Gary

So. Bend

Ft. Wayne

Peoria

Muncie Indianapolis

Cleveland

AA Toledo

Youngstown Akron

Wmsport State College

Harrisburg

Mansfield Columbus

Canton Massillon

Pittsburgh

Dayton

Washington

Allentown

Trenton

Reading

Philadelphia

Wilmington. Baltmore

Sprngfield

Champaign

DC

Hamilton

Clarksburg

Hays

Topeka

Kansas City

St.Louis

Decatur

Terre Ashland Haute

Cincinnati

Huntington Lexington

Charleston

Richmond

Evansville

City

Columbia

Louisville

Kansas City

St.Louis

Roanoke

Norfolk

Manchester Boston

-&.+&/

Providence

New York City

!"# %&'( )*+,

Wichita

Toronto

Springfield

Knoxville

Win-Salem

Durham

Greenville

Raleigh

Map 13.2. Relations of /o/ and /ah/ in North America

In one region of North America, /o/ in bother and /ah/ in father are kept apart by the relatively front position of /ah/: in Eastern New England. In New York City, many speakers also retain the distinction between these two word classes, but here father is further back and higher than bother. In the rest of the country, /o/ of

bother, got, rock, Don, etc. is not clearly distinct from /ah/ of father, pa, spa, etc. This merged phoneme is best noted as /o/, to retain comparability of word classes across dialects.

170 The short-a and short-o configurations

The criterion here is a simple acoustic one, based on F2 measurements. It follows that some speakers, /ah/ is front of /o/. It has been found in a number of studies that a minimum of 200 Hz is needed to maintain a stable distinction on the F2 axis (LYS; Labov 1994: Ch. 12). For /o/ and /ah/ to be phonemically distinct in Map 13.2, the difference in the mean values of F2 must be greater than 200 Hz. This condition holds for only seven of the 310 speakers. Five are concentrated in the Boston area, where only one of the Telsur speakers fails to meet the criterion. The sixth is an isolated person in Lexington, Kentucky. The seventh (not shown in Map 13.2) is in Corpus Christi. Discounting these isolated points, it appears clear that /ah/ is maintained front of /o/ only in Eastern New England.

Figure 13.1 shows the distinction between the /ah/ and /o/ classes in the vowel system of Denise L., 21, of Boston. Figure 13.1a displays the clear separation of /ah/ and /o/. The four /ah/ tokens are well to the front of the 18 /o/ tokens, with

F2

2600 400

2400

2200

2000

1800

1600

1400

1200

1000

800

500

/o/ /ah/

m1 m2

F1 814 846

F2 1182 1486

N

18

4

m1-m2 t -32 -2.36

-304 -5.45 d.f.20

P ................
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