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A New Perspective on Vowel Variation Across the 19Th and 20Th Centuries in Columbus, OH Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfil

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A New Perspective on Vowel Variation Across the 19Th and 20Th Centuries in Columbus, OH Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfil A New Perspective on Vowel Variation across the 19th and 20th Centuries in Columbus, OH Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By David Durian, M.A., B.A. Graduate Program in Linguistics The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Donald Winford, Advisor Cynthia G. Clopper Brian D. Joseph Copyright by David Durian 2012 Abstract The research in this dissertation focuses on the documentation and analysis of vowel variation and sound change in Columbus, OH. Columbus is a Midland speech community located in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, this work documents and analyzes vowel variation among 62 native-English speaking European American informants, who are divided into 4 generation cohort groups (speakers born 1896-1913; 1924-1938, 1945-1968, and 1976-1991), 2 social class groups (middle and working), and 2 sex groups (male and female), so that patterns of vowel variation and sound change can be measured quantitatively across a number of speakers' vowel systems which are representative of the Columbus vowel system throughout the course of the 20th Century. Some vowel system data, obtained from 19th Century Central Ohioans, is also analyzed for use in establishing an "initial state" for the Columbus vowel system, from which patterns of vowel variation and sound change observed in the data diverge over time. Although vowel variation and sound change across the entire vowel system is documented and analyzed, several specific patterns of vowel variation are given extensive focus for analysis, description, and discussion. These patterns include the parallel fronting of the back diphthongs /uw/ and /ow/; the conditioned tensing and raising of /ae/, also known as split short-a system raising; and the Third Dialect Shift, a pattern of covariant vowel movement in which the low vowels /a/ and /ae/ are involved in ii a backing chain shift, and the front vowels /E/ and /I/ are involved in a backing parallel shift. Each of these patterns of vowel variation are quantitatively analyzed using linear mixed effects regression (lmer) analyses. The data analyzed are vowel formant data normalized using Lobanov's (1971) z-score technique. The influence of the social factors sex, social class, and age on the social conditioning of vowel variation is analyzed using the lmers, as are the linguistic factors of following and preceding consonant. Additional factors, such as speakers' social evaluations of vowel variations, speakers' language attitudes towards social and regional dialects spoken in Ohio and in the US more generally, and speakers' attitudes towards Columbus as a community, are also investigated. In addition, the possible influence of demographic changes, economic changes, and urban growth patterns in Columbus during the 20th Century on the patterns of vowel variation exhibited by speakers is explored. Our study is notable in being the first to document the occurrence of the split short-a system in Columbus vowel systems. It is also notable as being the first statistical analysis of vowel variation trends in a US Midland community across 4 generations of middle and working class European American speakers. In addition, it is the first to feature a systematic overall pattern analysis of the full vowel systems of 19th Century- born Central Ohioans impressionistically transcribed for the Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States [LANCS] in 1933 (and collected as McDavid & Payne, 1976-1978). iii Dedication This work is dedicated to two scholars who were significant influences on me while I conducted my research for, and completed my writing of, this dissertation: Dr. Henry Hunker (1924-2009), Professor of Geography at The Ohio State University; and Dr. Robert Stockwell (1925-2012), Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. iv Acknowledgements There are many people I wish to acknowledge as I complete the writing of this dissertation. As many readers may know, during the course of the time that I did the fieldwork and writing of this dissertation, I went through quite a life journey. As a result, the period of writing and analysis was longer than it often is, which has contributed to the list of acknowledgements becoming even longer than it would have been otherwise. First and foremost, I would like to thank my informants. Without them, this dissertation would not have been possible, because I would have nothing to study. Thanks to all of you who opened you homes to me, or took the time to meet with me at Oxley Hall, to talk about talk in Columbus. Next, I would like to thank my committee. I would like to thank my advisor, Don Winford, for all of his help and guidance during the 9 and 1/2 years I was a graduate student at Ohio State. The advice you gave me throughout my time here as a researcher and as an academic has proved invaluable to me. I would also like to thank Brian Joseph for being both a committee member and a friend throughout my time in graduate student, as well. The advice and input you gave on the historical and phonological aspects of my work are very much appreciated. In addition, I would like to thank Cynthia Clopper for serving on my committee, as well. The advice you provided on vowel analysis, normalization, and linear multiple effects regression proved to be invaluable. Finally, I v would also like to thank my undergraduate mentors Don Hardy and Lisa Ann Cairns, whose guidance and friendship led me to going to grad school, and thus, ultimately influenced the work presented here by getting me starting down this path in the first place. Beyond my committee, I would also like to thank a variety of linguists who provided me with additional advice and insights, not just during the dissertation writing process, but also more generally throughout my graduate school career. First and foremost, I wish to thank Erik Thomas for the help and advice he gave me regarding vowel analysis during the earlier years of my graduate career. I likely would not have been as excited to study the Columbus vowel system had it not been for Erik and his earlier work on Columbus vowels. In addition, I would like to thank William Labov, Dennis Preston, Charles Boberg, and Matt Gordon for comments after conference presentations on material that I ultimately wrote about here in Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. I would also like to thank Walt Wolfram, Peter Trudgill, Betty Birner, Scott Schwenter, John Lawler, Bartek Plichta, Malcah Yaeger-Dror, Ben Munson, Rob Hagiwara, Joe Salmons, Craige Roberts, Chris Brew, Julie McGory, Rich Janda, Aaron Dinkin, Daniel Erza Johnson, Josef Fruehwald, Michael Friesner, Kara Becker, Hilary Prichard, Tyler Kendall, David Bowie, Benjamin Tobert, Christine Mallinson, Doug Bigham, Kate Shaw Points, Jessica White Susaita, Jennifer Nycz, Meredith Tamminga, Laurel MacKenzie, Sonya Fix, Cara Shousterman, Brian Jose, Molly Babel, Anita Szakay, and Maeve vi Eberhardt, for their interest, support, and good conversations over the years that I worked on this. Another group of colleagues I wish to thank is my student interns--the folks who helped me complete large chunks of the analytical work. Without their help, vowel coding and formant analysis of the instrumental data would never have gotten done in any kind of timely fashion. Specifically, I thank Erica Crawford, Jenn Schumacher, Missy Reynard, Josh Roush, Val Lindak, Andrew Smith, and Emily Dorrian. Beyond these folks, I would also like to thank a number of my Ohio State colleagues for friendship, intellectual camaraderie, and general excellent times, throughout my time in graduate school. In particular, I wish to thank Grant McGuire, Na’im Tyson, Angelo Costanzo, Mike Armstrong, Stacey Bailey, Adriane Boyd, Bridget Smith, Kathleen Hall, Julia Papke, Salena Sampson, Christin Wilson, Mike Phelan, Katie Carmichael, Abby Walker, Rachel Burdin, Vedrana Mihalicek, Chris Worth, Marivic Lesho, Andy Plummer, Brice Russ, Meghan Armstrong, Robin Dodsworth, Ila Nagar, and Anouschka Bergman. In addition, I would like to thank my parents, as well as my two brothers, for their support while I dissertated. Finally, one last set of folks I would like to thank is the organizations and individuals who contributed data to me for use in this dissertation. First, I wish to thank the Ohio Historical Society for allowing me to use recordings of 7 informants, born 1898- 1913, who were tape recorded for various projects conducted by the OHS in the 1970s vii and 1980s. Second, I would like to thank Joan Hall, on behalf of The Dictionary of American Regional English [DARE] for allowing me to use the tape-recorded interview for DAREOH098, made in 1970. Third, I wish to thank Erik Thomas, of North Carolina State University, for allowing me to use his tape recorded interview with ColumbusMK, the Columbusite who also appears plotted in Thomas (2001), for analysis in my work, as well. This recording was made in 1984. Fourth, I wish to thank Bill Kretzchmar, on behalf of the Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States [LANCS], for letting me use Raven McDavid's recorded interview with LANCSOH28C, made in 1957. At the time we first analyzed this audio for formant data to use in this dissertation (2008), only a roughly 34-minute fragment of usable audio from the interview could be found. So this is all we used. As of 2011, however, a much larger portion is now available. We hope to use this larger portion in an updated version of our analysis at a later date. Fifth, and finally, I wish to thank the Department of Psychology at the Ohio State University for allowing me to use several informants, all born circa 1938-1980, who were recorded for the Buckeye Speech Corpus project, in 2000-2001.
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