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The State of California Vowels

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The State of California Vowels Background Methods The CVS: (1) the lowering of the front lax vowels Cory Holland University of California, Davis Data Collection: Because the goal of this study was to collect data from as wide a (2) the fronting of TRAP before nasals Shifting or Shifted? The state of California vowels geographical distribution as possible, data were collected using several recruitment methods: (1) (3) the fronting of GOOSE and FOOT and the centralization of GOAT in person from a diverse pool of undergraduate and graduate students and department staff at (4) the merger of back vowels before /l/ the university (2) by email from academic, professional and social networks. Those participants (5) the merger of LOT and THOUGHT and the backing of the resulting vowel not contacted in person were instructed to record the reading passage in their home in .wav (6) fronting of STRUT format, if possible, and to make the recording in a place with minimal background noise, and F2 (Hz) F2 (Hz) 2400 2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 2200 2100 2000 1900 1800 1700 1600 1500 1400 1300 1200 1100 read the passage with natural feeling speed and intonation. (1) Front lax vowel lowering: Reports are somewhat mixed, but recent reports have KIT and DRESS 300 350 1. Retracting of front lax vowels 3. Fronting of back vowels 4. Merger of back vowels before /l/ Reading Passages: A total of 6872 tokens from “The Boy who cried wolf” (Deterding, 2006) lowering, when not pre-/n/ to the point that KIT is even in height with FACE. Retraction of TRAP is very 350 duke 400 ● For most Californians GOOSE, FOOT and GOAT are fronted, as goose('s) and “Comma gets a Cure,” (McCullough, Somerville, & Honorof, 2000) were analyzed. advanced in southern California (more for women than for men), with all but the one older speaker 400 zoo should tune could 450 two who lm(fd.goat.foot ~ age) retracting TRAP behind the 1875 Hz benchmark for retraction set in the ANAE (Kennedy & Grama, 2012). 450 compared to their pre-/l/ counterparts. And, as found elsewhere, would ● Front lax vowels by sex GOOSE you sex FLEECE: Comma: disease, either, even, fleece, immediately, see, GOOSE: Comma: Duke, cool, goose, goose's, lunatic, rule, In a linear regression with Speaker as a random factor, sex, region and ethnicity soon lunaticlooking Multiple R-squared: 0.1086, Adjusted R-squared: 0.09374 F2 (Hz) GOOSE-L 500 Earlier work just had DRESS raising after velars and KIT, DRESS and TRAP raising before nasals and 500 good f street, treatment Wolf: even, feast, sheep stool, tune, who, you, zoo Wolf: afternoon, soon, two, zoo, fool ) ) GOOSE is the most fronted and GOAT the least. noon z z H 2600 2400 2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 H ( ( as fixed factors and age as a covarient the following factors had a statistically m Positive numbers indicate that FOOT-L F1 is lower FOOT 1 F-statistic: 7.31 on 1 and 60 DF, p-value: 0.008909 1 F FOOT-L F ● lowering and backing before /l/ and /r/ (Hinton et al., 1987). 550 KIT: Comma: administered, been, convinced, different, district, give, FOOT: Comma: could, foot, full, put, should, woman, wool, 400 GOAT-L None of the social factors under consideration were found to affect stroking 550 significant effect (p<0.001): so overcoming than GOOSE-L F1, meaning that FOOT-L is above put woman itchy, kit, millionaire, official, opinion, picked, singing, six, skin would Wolf: foot, good, looking, full (2) Raising of TRAP before /n/: TRAP is found to be raising before nasals, but not velars or in other 600 diagnosisfoot GOAT participants' degree of fronting. go ● 600 Wolf: chicken, convinced, did, fist, this, trick, village, villagers KIT – ethnicity (f2) 500 FOOT goat GOOSE-L in the vowel space, the configuration KIT 650 ● contexts, in California(Kennedy & Grama, 2012). Raising of TRAP before nasals is reported to be FOOT-L ● KIT FOOT has a much larger front to back spread (see left), which appears note GOAT home(s) FACE: Comma: ate, bathe, daily, face, made, name, paying, plain, GOAT: Comma: bowl, diagnosis, goat, hold, home, note, old, DRESS – sex (f1), ethnicity (f2), region (f2) GOAT-L owner 650 reflected on the graphs below conditioned by ethnicity, with raising occurring for white, but not Chicano, fifth- graders (Eckert, 2008). 700 0 GOOSE 0 ● 600 GOOSE-L to be caused by token/phonetic environment (see right), more 2 take, waiting Wolf: gave, later, raising, safety, stayed owner, so (x2), stroking Wolf: go, homes, overcoming, so, told (3) Back Vowels – Fronting and Merging: Back vowel fronting is a common feature of many dialects of TRAP – sex (f2) 750 700 ● investigation is needed. DRESS: Comma: checked, dress, effective, efforts, expect, expensive, STRUT: Comma: beautiful, because, come, cup, much, rubbed, ) DRESS z English, both in North America (Boberg, 2008; Fridland & Bartlett, 2006; Fridland, 2009; Hall-Lew, 2004; For each of the three front lax vowels women have a backer and/or lower vowel, H ( 700 1 gently, headed, herself, kept, letter, measure, medicine, mess, strut, suffering, up Wolf: company, cousins, duck, much, DRESS F t 0 Thomas, 1989; Ward, 2003) and Great Britain (Harrington, Kleber, & Reubold, 2008; Harrington, 2007) o remembered, sentimental, stressed, tell, then, vet, veterinary Wolf: rushed, up, wolf on average, than men. 0 o f 1 . t ● TRAPTRAP 800 Pillai score of vowel compared to its pre-/l/ counterpart – higher scores indicate more separation, hence, more fronting: a shepherd, get, however, pleasure, successful, threaten, next, himself, and is one of the early salient features of the CVS (Hinton et al., 1987). In most recent accounts the shift For DRESS SoCal speakers have a lower vowel and Central Valley speakers have GOAT is the only vowel that o g . d 0 again 0 0 . 1 uu u u 1 1 of GOOSE is reported to be very advanced (Kennedy & Grama, 2012), possibly completed (Hall-Lew, GOOSE FOOT GOAT uu u u u uu u u ʊ ʊ ʊ ʊ o o shows movement in apparent Negative numbers indicate that GOAT-L F1 is a fronter vowel u u u u u u ʊʊʊ ʊ ʊ ʊ o 900 u u ʊ ʊʊ ʊ ʊ o o uu u u ʊʊ ʊʊ ʊ ʊ ʊ ʊ o o o o TRAP: Comma: animal, back, bath, began, can’t, happy, imagine, THOUGHT*/LOT: Comma: calling, cloth, coffee*, Comma (x2), 8 u 8 ʊ 8 . u u . ʊ ʊ ʊ o 2011), while GOAT is still in motion, moving forward for younger speakers. ● 0 uu u 0 ʊʊʊ 0 o o uuu u u u ʊʊ ʊ ʊ o oo o 0 lower than FOOT-L F1, meaning that GOAT-L is For DRESS and KIT – in both pre-/n/ and non-pre-/n/ contexts – white speakers f uu u u ʊʊ ʊ ʊ ʊ ʊ oo o time, suggesting a change in Avg. 0.817 0.774 0.583 u u u u ʊ ʊ ʊ oo o jacket, managed, practice, relaxing, that, trap, unsanitary Wolf: cost, dog, got, job, long, odd, office, palm, strong, talk*, m u u u ʊ ʊ ʊ ʊ oo o 6 u 6 6 o o . (4) Merger of back vowels before /l/: Before /l/, the back vowels are phonetically conditioned to . o 0 u 0 ʊ ʊ 0 o 1000 u u ʊ o o o o o progress. Younger speakers above FOOT-L in the vowel space actually, after, afternoon, exactly, have, had, began, plan, ran thought*, walk*, washed, water* Wolf: thought*, bother, flock, E T ʊ ʊ T o o have a backer vowel (lower f2) than all non-white speakers (p<0.001).See S o A u u O oo O o O O o O F ʊ G remain in the back of the vowel space and are often used as an indication of the back periphery of a std.dev 0.151 0.145 0.231 G u ʊ o o 4 4 ʊ 4 o o o . ʊ shot, watch, hot, not 0 0 ʊ 0 o o boxplot and chart below. u o o o front GOAT more than older o 0 speaker's vowel space (Fridland, 2009; Hall-Lew, 2011). There are several reports of back vowels merging o o 0 2 2 2 . slope 0.0008 0.0027 -0.005 o 1 0 0 0 o o speakers, however the - o Analysis & Normalization: For each sound file: (1) those not already in .wav format were before /l/ in California: Gordon (2008) and Guenter (2000) report a merger of GOOSE ~ FOOT before /l/. KIT and DRESS by ethnicity o o 0 0 0 . R^2 -0.014 0.023 0.041 0 0 0 correlation with age is very 20 30 40 50 Vowels (f) Vowels (m) converted using VLC sound editing software (2) the edges of each vowel (excluding on- and off- Guenter suggests that STRUT ~ GOAT also merge before /l/. Thomas (2001) also reports that his speaker F2 (Hz) 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 0 0 2600 2400 2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 age age age F2 (Hz) F2 (Hz) 0 weak. 3 p 0.666 0.126 0.041 1400 1200 1000 800 600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 glides) was hand annotated in Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2012) as a Text Grid (3) the duration of from Northern California has merged GOAT and STRUT before /l/. 400 age 350 350 (5) Low Vowels – backing and merger: LOT and THOUGHT were found to be moving toward merger in 450 each vowel segment, and the first, second and third formant at three time points (1/3, 1/2 and 2/3 0 the late 1980's (Hinton et al., 1987) with THOUGHT lowering towards LOT, except in the case of a 0 kit 500 of the marked duration of the vowel) were measured using a script (4) F1 and F2 were normalized 5 kit 400 400 2 kit-n following /l/.
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