Shifting or Shifted? The state of California vowels Cory Holland University of California, Davis

3. Fronting of back vowels 4. Merger of back vowels before /l/

5. THOUGHT/LOT merger

6. STRUT

2. Raising/fronting of TRAP before /n/

1. Retracting of front lax vowels

Background

Participants

Methods

Conclusions

San Francisco/East Bay

Far East Bay

South Bay

Bay Area: 16 F / 5 M Age: 18-56L1: English (15), Cantonese/English (2), English/Tamil, Japanese, Spanish,Tagalog, VietnameseBilingual L2: Spanish (6), Italian Percentage Bilingual: 67%

Northern Central Valley

Southern Central Valley

Central Valley: 11 F / 16 M Age: 18-56L1: English (19), Spanish (5), German & English, Assyrian, VietnameseBilingual L2: Spanish (4)Percentage Bilingual: 44%

Southern California:8 F / 6 M Age: 18-37L1: English(10), English/Spanish, Spanish(2), HebrewBilingual L2: Spanish(3), FrenchPercentage Bilingual: 57%

Totals: 62 (36 F / 26 M)Age: 18-56 (avg: 27, sd=10)Ethnicity: Asian (10), Hispanic (9), Mixed (6), White (37)Percentage Bilingual: 55%(Spanish/English 36% Other 19%)

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0.0

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age

pilla

i.tra

p

gender

fm

lm(pillai.trap ~ age)Multiple R-squared: 0.157, Adjusted R-squared: 0.1429 F-statistic: 11.17 on 1 and 60 DF, p-value: 0.001435

Data Collection: Because the goal of this study was to collect data from as wide a geographical distribution as possible, data were collected using several recruitment methods: (1) in person from a diverse pool of undergraduate and graduate students and department staff at the university (2) by email from academic, professional and social networks. Those participants not contacted in person were instructed to record the reading passage in their home in .wav format, if possible, and to make the recording in a place with minimal background noise, and read the passage with natural feeling speed and intonation.

Analysis & Normalization: For each sound file: (1) those not already in .wav format were converted using VLC sound editing software (2) the edges of each vowel (excluding on- and off-glides) was hand annotated in Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2012) as a Text Grid (3) the duration of each vowel segment, and the first, second and third formant at three time points (1/3, 1/2 and 2/3 of the marked duration of the vowel) were measured using a script (4) F1 and F2 were normalized using the NORM online vowel normalization suite (Thomas and Kendall 2007), using the Labov Atlas of North American English (ANAE) method and grand mean (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006).

Reading Passages: A total of 6872 tokens from “The Boy who cried wolf” (Deterding, 2006) and “Comma gets a Cure,” (McCullough, Somerville, & Honorof, 2000) were analyzed.

FLEECE: Comma: disease, either, even, fleece, immediately, see, street, treatment Wolf: even, feast, sheep

GOOSE: Comma: Duke, cool, goose, goose's, lunatic, rule, stool, tune, who, you, zoo Wolf: afternoon, soon, two, zoo, fool

KIT: Comma: administered, been, convinced, different, district, give, itchy, kit, millionaire, official, opinion, picked, singing, six, skin Wolf: chicken, convinced, did, fist, this, trick, village, villagers

FOOT: Comma: could, foot, full, put, should, woman, wool, would Wolf: foot, good, looking, full

FACE: Comma: ate, bathe, daily, face, made, name, paying, plain, take, waiting Wolf: gave, later, raising, safety, stayed

GOAT: Comma: bowl, diagnosis, goat, hold, home, note, old, owner, so (x2), stroking Wolf: go, homes, overcoming, so, told

DRESS: Comma: checked, dress, effective, efforts, expect, expensive, gently, headed, herself, kept, letter, measure, medicine, mess, remembered, sentimental, stressed, tell, then, vet, veterinary Wolf: shepherd, get, however, pleasure, successful, threaten, next, himself, again

STRUT: Comma: beautiful, because, come, cup, much, rubbed, strut, suffering, up Wolf: company, cousins, duck, much, rushed, up, wolf

TRAP: Comma: animal, back, bath, began, can’t, happy, imagine, jacket, managed, practice, relaxing, that, trap, unsanitary Wolf: actually, after, afternoon, exactly, have, had, began, plan, ran

THOUGHT*/LOT: Comma: calling, cloth, coffee*, Comma (x2), cost, dog, got, job, long, odd, office, palm, strong, talk*, thought*, walk*, washed, water* Wolf: thought*, bother, flock, shot, watch, hot, not

Statistics: All statistical analysis and graphing was done in the R statistical environment (R Core Team, 2014). Analyses include: Analysis of Variance (aov), Tukey tests for honestly significant differences (TukeyHSD), goodness of fit (lm), and linear regression using Rbrul (Ezra Johnson, 2014). Vowel charts were created using ggplot2 (Wickham, 2009) and phonR (McCloy, 2013), other graphs and charts were created using the car package (Fox, 2014).

nW.dress W.dress nW.dress-n W.dress-n nW.kit W.kit nW.kit-n W.kit-n

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Ethnicity and Vowel

f2 (H

z)

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KIT and DRESS by ethnicity

F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

dressdress-n

kit

kit-n

dressdress-n

kit

kit-n

nWW

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Front lax vowels by sex

F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

DRESS

KIT

TRAP

DRESS

KIT

TRAP

fm

● In a linear regression with Speaker as a random factor, sex, region and ethnicity as fixed factors and age as a covarient the following factors had a statistically significant effect (p<0.001):● KIT – ethnicity (f2)● DRESS – sex (f1), ethnicity (f2), region (f2)● TRAP – sex (f2)

● For each of the three front lax vowels women have a backer and/or lower vowel, on average, than men.

● For DRESS SoCal speakers have a lower vowel and Central Valley speakers have a fronter vowel

● For DRESS and KIT – in both pre-/n/ and non-pre-/n/ contexts – white speakers have a backer vowel (lower f2) than all non-white speakers (p<0.001).See boxplot and chart below.

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Vowels (f)

F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

FOOT-LGOAT-L

GOOSE-L

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Vowels (m)

F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

FOOT-L

GOAT-L

GOOSE-L

lm(fd.goat.foot ~ age)Multiple R-squared: 0.1086, Adjusted R-squared: 0.09374 F-statistic: 7.31 on 1 and 60 DF, p-value: 0.008909

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0100

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age

d.g

oat.f

oot

sex

fm

Negative numbers indicate that GOAT-L F1 is lower than FOOT-L F1, meaning that GOAT-L is above FOOT-L in the vowel space

Positive numbers indicate that FOOT-L F1 is lower than GOOSE-L F1, meaning that FOOT-L is above GOOSE-L in the vowel space, the configuration reflected on the graphs below

With Speaker as a random factor the difference between the three back vowels GOOSE, GOAT and FOOT before /l/ does not reach statistical significance:

aov(f1~vowel+Error(Speaker))Error: Speaker (p= 0.12) Error: Within (p<2e-16)

For younger speakers, primarily

younger women, GOAT-L is

moving up in the vowel space.

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THOUGHT v. LOT by token

F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

bothercalling

cloth

comma

cost

dog

flocks

got

hot

job

long

not

oddoffice

palm

shot

strong

washed

watch

coffee

talk

thought walk

waterLOTTHOUGHT

aov(f1/f2~THOUGHT/LOT+recording+sex+ethnicity+region+bilingual+Error(Speaker)

f1 (p=) f2 (p=)

THOUGHT/LOT 0.368 0.143

recording 0.437 0.267

sex 0.758 0.088

ethnicity 0.258 0.137

region 0.808 0.009

bilingual 0.334 0.247

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THOUGHT v. LOT by Region

F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

LOT

THOUGHTLOTTHOUGHT

LOT

THOUGHT

BayAreaCentralValleySoCal

● THOUGHT and LOT are merged for all speakers. ● Southern California speakers have a backer THOUGHT/LOT than both the

Bay Area and Central Valley speakers. ● Although there appears to be some height difference between THOUGHT

and LOT for Bay Area and SoCal speakers (see graph to lower left), when looking at each token plotted individually it appears that this difference may be the result of lower and fronter LOT before /t/. More investigation is needed.

In the Central Valley Hispanic speakers have a higher and fronter STRUT vowel than white or Asian speakers. No differences by ethnicity exist in the other regions.

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F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)FOOT

FOOT-L

GOATGOAT-L

GOOSEGOOSE-L

FOOTFOOT-LGOATGOAT-LGOOSEGOOSE-L

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F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

could

foot

goodlooking

put

should

woman

would

diagnosisgo

goat

home(s)note

overcoming

owner

so

stroking

dukegoose('s)

lunatic

noon

soon

tunetwo who

you

zoo

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age

FO

OT

ʊʊ ʊ ʊʊʊʊʊ

ʊ ʊʊ ʊʊ ʊʊ ʊʊ ʊʊʊʊ ʊ ʊʊʊ ʊ ʊʊ ʊʊʊʊʊ ʊ ʊʊ ʊ ʊʊʊʊʊ ʊʊʊ ʊʊʊ ʊʊ ʊ ʊ ʊʊʊʊ ʊ ʊ ʊʊ ʊ ʊ

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GO

AT o

o

o

o

o

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oo

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oo

oo

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oo

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o o

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oo

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oo

o oo

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oo

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o

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GO

OSE

u

u

u

uu

u

u

u

u

u

u

uu

u

u uu

u

u

u

u uu

uu

u u

u uu

u

u

u

u

u

uu

u

u

uu

u

uuu uuu u

u

u

u

u

uu

uu u

uu

u

u

GOOSE FOOT GOAT

Avg. 0.817 0.774 0.583

std.dev 0.151 0.145 0.231

slope 0.0008 0.0027 -0.005

R^2 -0.014 0.023 0.041

p 0.666 0.126 0.041

Pillai score of vowel compared to its pre-/l/ counterpart – higher scores indicate more separation, hence, more fronting: GOAT is the only vowel that shows movement in apparent time, suggesting a change in progress. Younger speakers front GOAT more than older speakers, however the correlation with age is very weak.

● For most Californians GOOSE, FOOT and GOAT are fronted, as compared to their pre-/l/ counterparts. And, as found elsewhere, GOOSE is the most fronted and GOAT the least.

● None of the social factors under consideration were found to affect participants' degree of fronting.

● FOOT has a much larger front to back spread (see left), which appears to be caused by token/phonetic environment (see right), more investigation is needed.

Normalized vowels for 62 speakers. Each point represents a single speaker's mean value, ellipses encompass one standard deviation (calculated from combined speaker means).

Men have a higher STRUT vowel than women (p<0.05)

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pilla

i.tra

pN

bbb

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bb b

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w

w

w ww

w

w

w

ww

w w

w

ww

bcw

recording

bothcommawolf

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Vowels by recording

F2 (Hz)

F1

(Hz)

actually

after

afternoonexactly

had

have

plan

rananimal

back

bath

began

can't

happy

imagine

jacket

managed

practice

relaxing

that

trap

unsanitary

wolfcomma

● The raising and/or fronting of TRAP before /n/ is correlated with age, with younger speakers more likely to have a larger separation between the two groups (see left)

● It appears that choice of reading passage (see bottom left) has a significant effect on Pillai score, however, looking at the tokens (bottom right), it seems like the effect should be the opposite, as several of the Comma tokens appear to be much closer to the pre-nasal group. More investigation is needed.

The CVS: (1) the lowering of the front lax vowels(2) the fronting of TRAP before nasals(3) the fronting of GOOSE and FOOT and the centralization of GOAT(4) the merger of back vowels before /l/(5) the merger of LOT and THOUGHT and the backing of the resulting vowel(6) fronting of STRUT

(1) Front lax vowel lowering: Reports are somewhat mixed, but recent reports have KIT and DRESS lowering, when not pre-/n/ to the point that KIT is even in height with FACE. Retraction of TRAP is very advanced in southern California (more for women than for men), with all but the one older speaker retracting TRAP behind the 1875 Hz benchmark for retraction set in the ANAE (Kennedy & Grama, 2012). Earlier work just had DRESS raising after velars and KIT, DRESS and TRAP raising before nasals and lowering and backing before /l/ and /r/ (Hinton et al., 1987). (2) Raising of TRAP before /n/: TRAP is found to be raising before nasals, but not velars or in other contexts, in California(Kennedy & Grama, 2012). Raising of TRAP before nasals is reported to be conditioned by ethnicity, with raising occurring for white, but not Chicano, fifth- graders (Eckert, 2008).(3) Back Vowels – Fronting and Merging: Back vowel fronting is a common feature of many dialects of English, both in North America (Boberg, 2008; Fridland & Bartlett, 2006; Fridland, 2009; Hall-Lew, 2004; Thomas, 1989; Ward, 2003) and Great Britain (Harrington, Kleber, & Reubold, 2008; Harrington, 2007) and is one of the early salient features of the CVS (Hinton et al., 1987). In most recent accounts the shift of GOOSE is reported to be very advanced (Kennedy & Grama, 2012), possibly completed (Hall-Lew, 2011), while GOAT is still in motion, moving forward for younger speakers. (4) Merger of back vowels before /l/: Before /l/, the back vowels are phonetically conditioned to remain in the back of the vowel space and are often used as an indication of the back periphery of a speaker's vowel space (Fridland, 2009; Hall-Lew, 2011). There are several reports of back vowels merging before /l/ in California: Gordon (2008) and Guenter (2000) report a merger of GOOSE ~ FOOT before /l/. Guenter suggests that STRUT ~ GOAT also merge before /l/. Thomas (2001) also reports that his speaker from Northern California has merged GOAT and STRUT before /l/. (5) Low Vowels – backing and merger: LOT and THOUGHT were found to be moving toward merger in the late 1980's (Hinton et al., 1987) with THOUGHT lowering towards LOT, except in the case of a following /l/. Most studies investigating vowels in southern California agree that THOUGHT and LOT are merged, with the resulting vowel occupying a low-back unrounded position (Godinez & Maddieson, 1985; Hagiwara, 2006; Kennedy & Grama, 2012). However, in Northern California Eckert finds the THOUGHT ~ LOT vowel merged and moving back and up into the space occupied by THOUGHT and Hall-Lew (2009) finds a significant interaction with age for the extent of the merger in San Francisco.(6) Fronting of STRUT: The movement of STRUT is the least mentioned feature of the CVS, but is interesting in the current data. Hinton et al mention, but don't investigate the fronting of STRUT. The advancement of STRUT to a position just above TRAP is also mentioned by (Hagiwara, 1997)

(1) the lowering of the front lax vowelsSpeaker sex, ethnicity and region all condition the expression of the front lax vowels. Women, who are generally thought to lead vowel changes, do have lower/backer average values for all three vowels. However, there is no indication of a change in apparent time, suggesting that the vowels are not currently in motion. Interestingly, in post hoc tests white speakers had significantly different F2 values for KIT and DRESS as compared to all non-white speakers. (2) the fronting of TRAP before nasalsWhile all speakers raise/front TRAP before /n/, the effect of age is significant, with younger speakers having a wider gap between the two token groups. (3) the fronting of GOOSE and FOOT and the centralization of GOATGOOSE and FOOT both front, with no age effects and no conditioning factors. GOAT is the least fronted, and fronting does correlate with age. (4) the merger of back vowels before /l/Taking across speaker variation into account all three back vowels (GOOSE, FOOT, GOAT) are merged before /l/. For younger women GOAT before /l/ appears to be moving up in the vowel space, suggesting movement towards a tighter merger. (5) the merger of LOT and THOUGHT and the backing of the resulting vowel.THOUGHT and LOT are merged for all speakers, and while some speakers appear to have a distinction between the two, in most cases the direction of the distinction is not prototypical, with THOUGHT either below or in front of LOT. The resulting merged vowel is low and back in the vowel space, and region is significant, SoCal speakers have a backer vowel. (6) STRUTSTRUT is located centrally in the vowel space, without fronting to the extent reported by Hagiwara (1997). One interesting difference to emerge is that Hispanic participants from the southern Central Valley all have a higher fronter realization from both Hispanics from other regions, and non-Hispanics from the same region.The effects of social factors: Age- Correlates with the fronting of GOAT and the raising of TRAP before /n/Sex- Women back/lower the front lax vowels more than men and men have a higher STRUT vowel than women. Region- SoCal speakers back the merged THOUGHT/LOT more than speakers from other regions. Ethnicity- Hispanic speakers, but only those from the southern Central Valley, raise and front STRUT. White speakers back KIT and DRESS more than all other speakers. Bilingual- Whether or not a participant was bilingual was included in the analysis, but did not reach significance for any vowel.

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