Regional Patterns in Prevelar Raising

Abstract

Prevelar raising is the raising of TRAP and DRESS vowels before voiced velars. While BAG-and BEG-raising have been described in Canada, the Upper Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest, an in-depth investigation of their distribution across North America is lacking, especially for BEG. Using an online survey distributed to over 5,000 participants via Reddit (which skews towards younger White males) and ordinary kriging for spatial interpolation, this study finds that prevelar raising is more widespread than previously reported. BAG-raising is found in much of the North and the Upper Midwest. BEG-raising is far more variable and is common across much of the Midlands and the West, with concentrated pockets in the Northern Great Plains and various other regions. This data suggests that the two can occur independently, with areas like the upper Midwest exhibiting BAG-raising alone, and the Midlands and the West reporting BEG-raising alone. These findings suggest that additional research on prevelar raising and other infrequent phonological variables is required to uncover their regional distribution and social meaning.

Prevelar Vowel Raising and Merger in Manitoba English

“…Relative to Mielke, Carignan, and Thomas’ (2017) results, this study indicates the value in carrying out detailed phonetic analyses of smaller population areas. As already discussed, Stanley ( forthcoming ) described Manitobans as exhibiting both bag - and beg -raising, with the former having a greater incidence of occurrence. While Stanley’s (forthcoming) survey was based on rate of occurrence, something which this study cannot address directly, the findings presented here are nonetheless compatible, in that /æ/ before voiced velars exhibits more distinctive productions relative to /k/ and non-velar codas in comparison with /ɛ/ (see Figure 3 ).…”

“…As already discussed, Stanley ( forthcoming ) described Manitobans as exhibiting both bag - and beg -raising, with the former having a greater incidence of occurrence. While Stanley’s (forthcoming) survey was based on rate of occurrence, something which this study cannot address directly, the findings presented here are nonetheless compatible, in that /æ/ before voiced velars exhibits more distinctive productions relative to /k/ and non-velar codas in comparison with /ɛ/ (see Figure 3 ). However, this is complicated by the fact that positional differences regarding /ɛ/ are more related to F2 than F1—in other words, advancing more than raising—while prevelar /æ/ exhibits differences along both dimensions.…”

“…In one of the most recent studies on North American English prevelar raising, Stanley (forthcoming) found that the Prairies comprise part of the general region where the rates of occurrence of both bag -raising and beg -raising are greatest, with the former being more advanced in Manitoba and adjacent US states. The present study’s results accord with this finding (and previous observations in the literature) while providing critical detail which can only be gleaned from a direct analysis of production.…”

“…Here, the Cartesian distance (across the vowel space as a two-dimensional plane) between non-raised /æ/ (e.g., trap versus raised bag ) was significantly greater than regions in eastern Canada including southern Ontario, but only slightly greater than British Columbia. In Boberg (2010 :208), raising of bag (i.e., the class of words containing /æ/ in prevelar position) is described as one of the clearest contributors to western Canadian regional identity, wherein “the separation of the Prairies from Ontario within [ ANAE ’s] Inland Canada is a more important division than the separation of the Prairies from British Columbia.” In a recent continent-wide survey study, Stanley (forthcoming) found that the Prairies are among the highest-rated regions for raising of both bag and beg , but with some intriguing cross-provincial variation; parts of Saskatchewan show a higher prevalence of beg -raising, while in Manitoba there is generally a higher degree of bag -raising. The latter matches the relative prevalence of raising variants in Manitoba’s regional neighbors of northwestern Ontario, North Dakota, Minnesota, and (near-neighbor) Wisconsin; however, it should be noted that the Manitoba speaker sample in Stanley’s (forthcoming) study does appear to be relatively small.…”

“…Other studies of Wisconsin describe a number of phenomena: raising of bag but absence of a merger with either beg or bagel ( Bauer & Parker 2008 ); differentiation between the voiceless (i.e., /k/) and voiced (i.e., /ɡ/) velar coda environments, with pre-/ɡ/ context being more raised ( Purnell 2008 ); and the complicated interplay between prevelar raising and other vowel processes in the region such as the Low Back Merger and Northern Cities Shift ( Benson, Fox & Balkman 2011 ). To the west, prevelar raising patterns have also been documented in Minnesota ( Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006 ; Benson, Fox & Balkman 2011 ; Koffi 2014 ; Stanley forthcoming ), although that state has received less attention in terms of detailed phonetic analysis.…”