One hundred years of sound change in Philadelphia: Linear Incrementaion, Reversal, and Reanalysis

Language

Abstract

The study of sound change in progress in Philadelphia has been facilitated by the application of forced alignment and automatic vowel measurement to a large corpus of neighborhood studies, including 379 speakers with dates of birth from 1888 to 1991. Two of the sound changes active in the 1970s show a linear pattern of incrementation in succeeding decades. The fronting of back upgliding vowels /aw/ and /ow/ shows a reversal in the direction of change, beginning with those born after 1940. The study also finds a general withdrawal from two salient features of local phonology, tense /æh/ and /oh/, led by those with higher education. Younger speakers with higher education have also reorganized the traditional Philadelphia tense/lax split of short-a to form a nasal system with tensing before all and only nasal consonants. The development of the Philadelphia vowel system can be understood in the geographic context of neighboring dialects. Features in common with North and North Midland dialects have accelerated in use while features in common with South Midland and Southern dialects have been reversed in favor of Northern patterns. The microevolution of a linguistic system can be seen here as subject to phonological generalizations but driven by social evaluation as features rise in level of salience for members of the speech community.

Citation

BibTeX citation:

@article{labov2013,
  author = {Labov, William and Rosenfelder, Ingrid and Fruehwald, Josef},
  title = {One Hundred Years of Sound Change in {Philadelphia:} {Linear}
    {Incrementaion,} {Reversal,} and {Reanalysis}},
  journal = {Language},
  volume = {89},
  number = {1},
  pages = {30-65},
  date = {2013},
  url = {https://muse.jhu.edu/article/503024},
  doi = {10.1353/lan.2013.0015},
  langid = {en},
  abstract = {The study of sound change in progress in Philadelphia has
    been facilitated by the application of forced alignment and
    automatic vowel measurement to a large corpus of neighborhood
    studies, including 379 speakers with dates of birth from 1888 to
    1991. Two of the sound changes active in the 1970s show a linear
    pattern of incrementation in succeeding decades. The fronting of
    back upgliding vowels /aw/ and /ow/ shows a reversal in the
    direction of change, beginning with those born after 1940. The study
    also finds a general withdrawal from two salient features of local
    phonology, tense /æh/ and /oh/, led by those with higher education.
    Younger speakers with higher education have also reorganized the
    traditional Philadelphia tense/lax split of short-a to form a nasal
    system with tensing before all and only nasal consonants. The
    development of the Philadelphia vowel system can be understood in
    the geographic context of neighboring dialects. Features in common
    with North and North Midland dialects have accelerated in use while
    features in common with South Midland and Southern dialects have
    been reversed in favor of Northern patterns. The microevolution of a
    linguistic system can be seen here as subject to phonological
    generalizations but driven by social evaluation as features rise in
    level of salience for members of the speech community.}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

Labov, William, Ingrid Rosenfelder, and Josef Fruehwald. 2013. “One Hundred Years of Sound Change in Philadelphia: Linear Incrementaion, Reversal, and Reanalysis.” Language 89 (1): 30–65. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0015.