Gormur wrote:Kirk wrote:This isn't a recording of continuous speech but
this site does have audio clips of some super-progressive CVS speakers (adolescent girls in the Bay Area). One thing to note is that these examples are pretty extreme but they are indicative of a larger trend thruout the state (tho few are currently as progressive as those teenage girls, who seem to be exaggerating already-existent trends).
The link seems to be dead, though I found a brief interview about the CVS here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1693373 I definitely hear this
vowel lowering, though far more frequently in female speakers than in male speakers.
Yes, females are usually more progressive but the overall pattern is visible for both males and females (usually the males eventually catch up).
Gormur wrote:The lowering of "oo" as in the words "movie" and "move", i.e., seem to be used for some type of emotional emphasis (sarcasm, derisiveness, negativity, etc) -- as discussed in the interview.
Yes, Eckert mentions "drama speech" as the kind that really draws out the more progressive forms. But of course, the fronting and unrounding of /u/ (it's not lowered, by the way, as it still remains a high vowel in the vowel space) is an overall general trend here as in many other places.
Gormur wrote:Listening to my speech when conversing w/2 of my friends, I notice that I use an "a" like that described in the interview -- illustrated by the particular CVS pronunciation of the word "stand" (it is a lower sound from the GAE sound),
Well, here, for a progressive CVS speaker you'd expect it actually to be higher because before nasal stops the phoneme /æ/ raises and diphthongizes to [eə]. However, in other cases /æ/ does lower towards /a/. In my speech I personally have much more /æ/ lowering towards /a/ than the raising in the pre-nasal-stop environment (tho, with an unrelated phenomenon, it does raise before /ŋ/). This may be a gender difference as I've heard /æn/ --> [eən] much more often in females here. Interestingly, it is worth noting my /æn/, while not usually raising to [eən], is barred from moving down to *[an], so obviously there's something about the pre-nasal environment which discourages lowering there even if no raising occurs. Thus, for me, I can have:
"back" [bæk] or [bak] or something in between
"bat" [bæt] or [bat] or something in between
"ban" [bæn], but never *[ban], rarely [beən]
Gormur wrote:and my "ou" (as in "out", "about") is unrounded, "i" in "did" is similar to "e" in "dead" and "bed", "i" in "thinking" is like "ee" in "feed" or "weed".
Yeah, in California many speakers have front-vowel raising before /ŋ/, as I've mentioned before. I also have [i] in "think" as compared to [ɪ] in "thin."
Gormur wrote:In any case, I doubt I'm a very progressive speaker. This leads me to think it's more area-specific, and maybe hasn't "penetrated" certain areas as much as others, particularly San Bernardino County and the Inland Empire. I know growing up that I could hear a difference between people in my area (native to the area, anyway) and LA natives. I could never quite figure out why, but it may well have something to do with the CVS being more prevalent there and/or in a more advanced stage.
It's definitely true that while it's spreading, it can take awhile for changes to reach everyone. Researchers on the NCVS have often found that the most progressive forms of the NCVS tend to "skip" between urban areas while the rural areas are either unaffected or take awhile to catch up (and in turn often arrive at somewhat different results than the urban ones even after the advent of the change in question). Even in an area which is the locus of the change, some speakers resist the change longer than others or resist it entirely (obviously, a lot of sociological factors are involved here which I won't go into).
I think the fact that the CVS has been noted in the major urban areas in California (So and Nor Cal) is no coincidence, as there tends to be a relatively high rate of exchange in population between places like the Bay Area and LA, even tho they're several hundred miles apart. Meanwhile, you're less likely to hear the CVS as widespread outside the main urban areas. What's interesting is that some of my friends from my hometown (which is not in a predominantly urban area but is close to the Bay Area and Sacramento areas) are actually some of the most progressive CVS speakers I know, but this makes sense as they either work in the Bay Area or spend a lot of time there, and unconsciously bring back the newer forms with them.
Gormur wrote:the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, now past its infancy of the 1950s and 60s, is common across the generations, while younger speakers do tend to lead some of the changes or become more progressive in them. This makes sense as they're just building upon trends which were already existent in the previous generation.
I think my family must be the exception because they live fairly isolated and aren't in a very diverse area in terms of demographics (over 70% of the population of their county are of Norwegian background, the remaining are of German, Danish, and Polish descent, around 1% are in the "other" category, and a good majority of the population share similar family names and are related). Most of them display features from Norwegian and borrow expressions from it when speaking English (they call North Dakota the "Uffda State" for a reason) - there are a few of my family (about 6 people) which don't speak Norwegian as their first language (they grew up in Minnesota) and learned it as a 2nd language. They do display some features of the NVS, interestingly enough. This could also be because the NVS is more wide-spread and advanced in Minnesota than in ND (where the largest city is Fargo - a city of around 180,000 people).
Yes, the matter of social relations is of course a big factor. When shifts spread, they don't reach everyone at first. First there are a few progressive speakers, who will be imitated if enough people admire them or at least hold them in relatively high esteem and subconsciously imitate the new forms (or at least register the more progressive forms as a new limit for what may be interpreted as the sound in question). The fascinating thing is this all happens almost entirely subconsciously and few consciously notice the changes.