User:Mwalcoff/Northern cities vowel shift



The Northern cities vowel shift is a chain shift in the sounds of some vowels in the dialect region of American English known as the Inland North.

Geography
The name of the shift comes from the affected location, a broad swath of the United States around the Great Lakes, beginning some 50 miles west of Albany and extending west through Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Madison, and north to Green Bay (Labov et al. 187–208).

Raising and tensing of
The first sound change in the shift, which was identified in the Northern states as early as the 1960s, was the general raising, tensing, and lengthening of the "short a", that is, the vowel of cat, or in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Inland Northern comes to be articulated so that the tongue starts from a position that is higher and fronter than it used to be, and then often glides back toward the center of the mouth, thus producing a centering diphthong; at its most extreme, this raised "short a" may sound like, similar to the vowel heard in England in words like pier and beer.

Fronting of
The raising of leaves an empty space in low front position that allows  to be fronted in the direction of. was the vowel in Great Lakes residents' pronunciation of both cot and father, often called "short o" (or "broad a"). Therefore, comes to be pronounced farther forward in the mouth, similar to the vowel of car as pronounced in Boston; for some advanced speakers, it may be close or even identical to —that is, the vowel of cat for speakers without the shift.

Lowering of
The fronting of leaves a blank space in Northerners' pronunciation that is filled by lowering  (the "aw" vowel, as in saw), which comes to be pronounced with the tongue in a lower position, closer to. As a result, people affected by the shift may pronounce caught the way speakers without the shift say cot.

Backing of
The first stage, æ-tensing, resulted in a vowel that sounded confusingly like, similar to the "short e" in bet. To get out of the way of, Northern moves in the direction of , the mid central or "schwa" vowel. This is the sound represented by the letter "a" in the word "about." As the vowel is pronounced with the tongue farther back than in the sound, this change is called "backing."

Backing of
The next change is the movement of toward. is the "short u" vowel, as in cut. People with the shift will pronounce cut so that it sounds more like caught to people without the shift.

Lowering and backing of
The final change is lowering and backing of, the "short i" vowel in the word "bit." This makes it sound more like, although the sounds remain distinct.

Reach
Like most chain shifts, the Northen cities vowel shift is not complete in all areas at the same time: some but not all aspects of the shift can be found further afield. For example, the backing of is found as far south as St. Louis and as far west as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the diphthongization of  before most consonants is found in parts of Minnesota, such as St. James, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Brainerd. Accents in which is more retracted than  are encountered as far east as Providence, Rhode Island, as far south as St. Louis, as far north as Bemidji, Minnesota and as far west as Aberdeen, South Dakota (Labov et al. 204). The shift is in progress throughout the Great Lakes cities; thus some speakers might have, for instance, the first two stages only, but none have only the last stage.

The shift is mainly found in white speakers. Speakers of African American Vernacular English show little to no evidence of adopting the Northern Cities Shift. The shift has also not been adopted by Canadian speakers, despite the geographic proximity of millions of Canadians living near the United States border in the Great Lakes region and along the Saint Lawrence River.