Variation in Form and Function in Jewish English Intonation Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Rachel Steindel Burdin ∼6 6 Graduate Program in Linguistics The Ohio State University 2016 Dissertation Committee: Professor Brian D. Joseph, Advisor Professor Cynthia G. Clopper Professor Donald Winford c Rachel Steindel Burdin, 2016 Abstract Intonation has long been noted as a salient feature of American Jewish English speech (Weinreich, 1956); however, there has not been much systematic study of how, exactly Jewish English intonation is distinct, and to what extent Yiddish has played a role in this distinctness. This dissertation examines the impact of Yiddish on Jewish English intonation in the Jewish community of Dayton, Ohio, and how features of Yiddish intonation are used in Jewish English. 20 participants were interviewed for a production study. The participants were balanced for gender, age, religion (Jewish or not), and language background (whether or not they spoke Yiddish in addition to English). In addition, recordings were made of a local Yiddish club. The production study revealed differences in both the form and function in Jewish English, and that Yiddish was the likely source for that difference. The Yiddish-speaking participants were found to both have distinctive productions of rise-falls, including higher peaks, and a wider pitch range, in their Yiddish, as well as in their English produced during the Yiddish club meetings. The younger Jewish English participants also showed a wider pitch range in some situations during the interviews. The Jewish English participants also showed an increased use of rising pitch accents in listing contexts, as well as (!)H-L% boundary tones in narratives and a discourse completion task. The source of this increased use of (!)H-L% contours appears to be in Yiddish, as similar boundaries, as a part of a rise-fall contour, were found to be used in similar scenarios in the Yiddish DCT task by the Yiddish speakers. It is hypothesized that these contours can function more readily as a way of linking clauses together in Yiddish and Jewish English, compared to Standard English. The Yiddish speakers also showed other distinctions, in the ii use of more rise-falls in a narrative task, as well as more rises, and fewer plateau contours in a listing task. All of the above leads to an increase of what Jun(2014) calls macro-rhythm, a regular alternation between high and low tones within a phrase, in Jewish English, and particularly in the variety spoken by those who also speak Yiddish. This dissertation thus provides evidence that macro-rhythm can vary among varieties spoken in the same geographic area, and also that intonational substrate features can be maintained in a variety, even in the face of increased spatial assimilation, and loss of speakers of the substrate. This increase in macro-rhythm is also shown to be socially meaningful: that is, speakers use macro-rhythm to construct particular types of Jewish identities, and that this feature is heard as signaling Jewishness by listeners. This social meaning is shown first by its use in comedic performance of Jewish speech, as well as through a perception task, where rises and rise-falls were found to make a speaker sound more Jewish compared to plateau contours. This perception of \Jewishness" is tied to a particular type of Jewish identity (specifically, one that is older and Yiddish-speaking) in both the performances and the perception task, providing evidence for conceptions of Jewish English that predict the use of features being tied to particular types of Jewish identities, rather than a homogenous ethnolect. iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I must thank the incredible generosity of the Lynda A. Cohen Yiddish Club in Dayton, OH, for welcoming me over two years ago, and allowing me to record them, both at meetings, and in their homes. I feel incredibly privileged to have heard their stories, and shared in their laughter and their love of the mameloshn. The greater Jewish communities of Dayton and Columbus also deserves thanks, for serving as subjects in both the production and perception studies, as well as all of my other subjects, and those who helped me find them. I also give whole hearted thanks to my entire committee. It was in Don Winford's sociolinguistics class where, in some ways, this dissertation was born, when during my first year, I mentioned that I thought it might be the case that Jewish people had distinct intonation. I thank Don for his guidance through both the sociolinguistic and contact literature, which has been valuable beyond measure, and for always asking the probing questions that I needed to be asked (\But what is a dramatic transition?"). I thank Cynthia Clopper for passing on her knowledge of prosody, statistics, and experimental design, and always being a source of help when I came to her office with a pile of data and questions. Finally, I thank my adviser, Brian Joseph, for sticking by me, for being a fountain of knowledge on language change, contact-induced or not, for pushing me to be not just to be a better socio-, contact and historical linguist, but a better linguist, and for always reminding me of the importance of every piece of data, no matter how small, and the value of qualitative research. This project would not have been possible without financial support from several sources: the Melton Center for Jewish Studies, who provided funds for travel to the Vilnius Summer Yiddish Institute in 2013 and the Samuel M. Melton Graduate Fellowship for 2014-2015, and iv the NSF, which provided a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (#1451569), which covered equipment, travel, and paying my two amazing research assistants, Virginia Fisher and Jordan Maier, who helped with the transcription and ToBI annotation of the data. Thanks also to Isaac Bleaman, Arun Viswanath, Monica Hamblet, Randi Mackler, and Jacob Wolf, for help with stimuli design and piloting; any remaining errors in the stimuli are my own. I must also thank the other faculty and staff here at Ohio State: Mary Beckman, for serving on my candidacy committee, and giving me invaluable feedback on intonational meaning and phonetics on this project during classes and Phonies sessions over the years. Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, for first teaching me statistics, and for her thoughts on sociolin- guistics and sociolinguistic meaning. Shari Speer and Judith Tonhauser, who were valuable sources of information about intonation and semantics. Kiwako Ito, for helping me through the IRB process. Everyone in the Phonies, Changelings, and Speerlab discussion groups who heard and gave feedback on this project. And to the rest of the linguistics department staff: Julie Papke, Julia McGory, Jim Harmon, and especially Hope Dawson for her help with both teaching and research over the years. Thanks also to my teachers in German and Yiddish and Ashkenazi Studies departments, Anna Grotans, Dovid Miller, and Neil Jacobs; and those further afield, including my teachers in Vilnius, Lithuania; Sarah Bunin Benor, and my undergraduate professors at UNC. Thanks also to my fellow students at Ohio State, both in the Linguistics department and across the university, who provided both academic and social support over my six years here. Mike Phelan, who hosted me when I first came to visit. Kodi Weatherholz and Rory Turnbull deserve special mentions for their help in doing battle with R, Latex, and ggplot. Abby Walker, Katie Carmichael, and Marivic Lesho, who showed me that this all, in fact, can be done. Cindy Johnson, for always being up for a writing session, and for dinner and drinks after. My cohort mates, past and present, including Shontael Elward, Tsz-Him Tsui, Dave Howcroft, Jefferson Barlew, who've been there from the beginning, and my global v cohort (glohort?) mates who have made going to conferences a joy. And finally, Ryan Perkins and Hope Wilson who have been as equally happy to talk shop or about Hamilton; Camila Tessler also deserves an honorable mention for putting up with the former on so many occasions. Thanks also to the staff at the various coffee shops across Columbus that this dissertation was written in, including Stauf's in Grandview and German Village, One Line, Impero, and most especially, Mission, as well as the staff at the Grandview Public Library, for providing both a place to work and books that are not about linguistics to help me relax. Finally, thanks to my family. To my father, for leaving Steven Pinker books lying around the house and sparking my interest in linguistics, and for the exposure to Mel Brooks (who can be found in chapter 15). To my mother, who always pushed me to be a better writer and a better musician (who knew that all of that ear training for French horn would pay off in linguistics?). To my brother, for forging the path through graduate school before me, who I could always count on to be a voice of sympathy when things got rough. And, most especially, thanks to my husband, James, who six years ago agreed, without question, to move to Ohio with me so I could start on this journey. I could not have asked for a more supportive and loving partner through this whole process, who was always there with a hug, and a \You're awesome!" when I most needed it. vi Vita 2010 B.A. in Linguistics and English. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2014 . M.A. in Linguistics, The Ohio State University. Publications Journal articles 2015. Turnbull, R., Burdin, R. S., Clopper, C. G., & Tonhauser, J.