Boston (r): Neighbo(r)s nea(r) and fa(r)

Abstract

Boston (r): Neighbo(r)s nea(r) and fa(r) A B S T R A C TThe influence of linguistic and social factors on (r) in Boston and two New Hampshire towns is described. The preceding vowel and geographic, ethnic, and age-related differences were found to have strong effects. In comparison to Bostonians, New Hampshire speakers exhibit a higher rate of rhoticity, and fewer factors constrain their variability. Younger speakers are more rhotic than older speakers, as are more educated speakers and those in higher linguistic marketplace positions. This study demonstrates that these patterns fit the transmission (within Boston) and diffusion (to New Hampshire) framework (Labov, 2007) only with the addition of accommodation theory (Niedzielski & Giles, 1996), which connects our linguistic findings to evidence that many New Hampshire residents do not identify with Boston. The effects on (r) in other studies are compared to determine which effects are particular to individual communities (nonuniversal) and which occur across all communities examined. The nonuniversal effects are therefore available as measures of contact-induced change. This study introduces a method for quantitatively comparing the amount of change between communities.As sociolinguistic research accumulates, we acquire multiple perspectives on certain linguistic variables whose usage has been examined in a variety of communities and by a variety of methods. The variable (r), defined as the variable acoustic presence of a constricted [r] in a syllable coda, is among the most widely studied sociolinguistic patterns, having been the subject of one of Labov's (1972) early investigations. 1 It has been examined in a variety of English dialects in the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, at least, as well as in other Germanic languages, such as Dutch (see overview in Plug & Ogden, 2003). Given the extensive research on (r) in the fields of phonetics, phonology, and sociolinguistics, and the notoriety of (r) as a featureWe thank all the speakers for their contributions. We are very grateful for comments, which greatly improved the paper, from the anonymous reviewers. Remaining shortcomings are our own.

Abstract and Lexically Specific Information in Sound Patterns: Evidence from /r/-sandhi in Rhotic and Non-rhotic Varieties of English

“…Irwin and Nagy (2007) examined /r/-deletion in Boston English using read narrative, but did not find a significant effect of lexical frequency. A subsequent study by the same authors using the same methodology did find effects of lexical frequency in the speech of White Boston and New Hampshire speakers, but not in the speech of African American Bostonians (Nagy & Irwin, 2010). Likewise, Piercy (2012) found a significant effect of lexical frequency on /r/-deletion in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews with speakers located in Dorset, England.…”

Farewell to the Founders: Major Dialect Changes Along the East-West New England Border

“…roberts (2006,2007) analyzes Vermont /t/ glottalization and Farewell to the Founders 131 diphthongs (/ai/ and /au/). Nagy and Irwin (2010) examine two locations in southeastern New hampshire in comparison to eastern massachusetts, and madan (2010a, 2010b) provides phonological analyses of central New hampshire. Villard (2009) finds a correlation between postvocalic-r and social attitudes along a stretch of the Upper Connecticut river Valley straddling New hampshire and Vermont.…”

“…the interview activities consisted of a word list, a list of sentences to read, a reading passage adapted from Nagy's (2010) "how to Survive a New england Winter" (Nagy and Irwin 2010), and questions to elicit free speech. our word list and sentence list are provided in the appendix below.…”

Identidade na pluralidade: avaliação, produção e percepção linguística na cidade de São Paulo

“…Labov ( [1966), em seu estudo sobre o apagamento/vocalização vs. a realização de (-r) em Nova Iorque (em sua terminologia, R-0 e R-1, respectivamente), havia sinalizado uma lenta mudança na comunidade na direção da forma de prestígio R-1, tendência que tem se mantido segundo estudos mais recentes (Labov, 1994;Becker, 2009). A "restauração" do (-r) também tem ocorrido em outras localidades do nordeste norte-americano (Nagy & Irwin, 2010), e de forma bastante vigorosa nos estados do sul (Labov et al, 2006 : 46-47).…”

“…De modo semelhante à "restauração" do (-r) no inglês norte-americano Becker, 2009;Nagy & Irwin, 2010), esses resultados mostram que é possível haver reversão de tendências na comunidade e que a mudança linguística, pelo menos quando vista em curtos espaços de tempo, nem sempre é unidirecional. Nesse sentido, os movimentos de (-r) verificados em São Paulo são também um novo exemplo do modelo de fluxos e contrafluxos (Naro & Scherre, 2013) -movimentos que possivelmente se estendem desde os tempos dos bandeirantes, passando pelo dialeto "caipira" da época do Império, pela massiva imigração europeia no início do século XX, até a chegada de migrantes internos desde meados do século passado.…”