Talk:Northern Cities Vowel Shift/Archive 1

message: Quote from external links "characteristic of cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. Some aspects of it are detectable farther afield, in cities like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Indianapolis."
Another of the external links specifically uses the Northern Cities Shift to define a linguistic region (i.e. the region is the area where this shift is taking place) called Inland North, and then shows maps which define the boundaries of this region. These boundaries include the cities mentioned in the first paragraph (Syracuse, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago). They definitely do not include Minneapolis, or St. Louis for that matter.
I propose that Minneapolis and St. Louis be removed from the article, unless proof of their inclusion in the shift is shown.
:Minneapolis is definitely included in the vowel shift. Have you ever heard the way they speak there? Maybe St. Louis doesn't belong. I'm not too sure on that one. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 20:12, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, clearly I understand that, I was joking. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 20:53, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I live 95 miles east of Minneapolis and 300 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.  While I have definitely heard people whose speech quite effectively demonstrates the existence of this phenomenon, not only does it not characterize Minneapolis English, it doesn't characterize Chicago English either.  In my experience it's an affectation in some peoples' speech, but certainly not a majority anywhere.  I suspect what I hear as condescension in Lord Voldemort's assertion is actually a result of a lack of understanding of what the Northern cities vowel shift addresses.  A common feature of upper Midwestern from central Wisconsin westward through the Dakotas is a change from /ɑ/ to /a/ or /ɐ/ in some positions.  This, however, is quite different (and much more widespread in the affected area) than the NCVS, which asserts that this single change is part of a much more extensive shift.  In case anyone is interested in a bit more on how "they speak there", check out my little manifesto. Tomertalk 17:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

text: According to the "Linguistic Atlas of North American English", St. Louis does belong, as shown on the map.  The surrounding area speaks the Midland dialect, but the St. Louis region speaks the Northern dialect.  Also, all of Minnesota, except for the Northern area (which speaks North Central American English) portion speak the Northern (NCVS) dialect.  The Northern dialect extends as far as eastern North Dakota.  To the North and West of the areas shown with the brown line are the following dialects which are quite distinct: the North Central dialect, and the Western US/Canadian dialect which are characterised by the absence of the Northern Cities vowel shift, because this shift is not possible when the vowels in words like "cot" and "caught" are pronounced the same way and perceived to be the same vowel.  Instead, the vowels are shifted in the opposite direction: caught/cot -> caught; map -> mop, ket -> cat.  This can even lead to misunderstandings for someone travelling from for example, Windsor, ON; to Detroit, MI, and asking for a "map" [map] ("map" [æ] shifts to "mop" [a] w/the Canadian Shift ), since [map] sounds like "mop" to someone from the Northern dialect, but like "map" to someone from Canada, the far West, and the North Central area.
Greetingz 04:50, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where'd Minneapolis come from? 

message: Hello phoneticians!  Another civilian here, who lives in a Northern City, interested in finding out what this Great Northern Shift is all about, and especially what it *sounds* like.  The article's "...shifted from IPA [ɛ], [ʌ], [ɔ], [ɑ], [æ] to [ə], [ɔ], [ɑ], [a], [iæ]..." tells me nothing. Zero. Zip.  How about some sound clips to actually hear it? Jedwards01 02:05, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It says that we pronounce things cornily, specifically that what is spelled X is pronounced Y (X→Y) thus:  bed→bud (although with a schwa (/ə/), kind of like b'd, if you can imagine, rather than with a short "uh" (/ʌ/) sound); bud→baud; baud→bod; bod→bad (although not quite like bad which has the much broader /æ/ sound rather than either /ɑ/ or /a/); bad→bee-add (which is just ridiculous...sorry, I can't think of a pair that demonstrates how this difference sounds…just imagine inserting a "long e" (what they teach you in first grade is an "ē", but is really an [i]) in there)  It could be that the article is asserting that we say bad→byad, which is equally silly.  Tomertalk 17:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, from what I've heard of the NCVS has [æ]→[ɛʌ], not [æ]→[iæ].  Tomertalk 19:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Audio files?

message: I removed the link to the Detroit News article bcz it wasn't working.  The title apparently said that ppl in the northern US have nasal accents, which I don't think is really "news" to anyone, nor particularly relevant to this article (which doesn't have anything to do with nasalization).  If that newspaper article will load at some point in the future, or if someone has the text somewhere and can quote the relevant parts here, please verify that the article is actually relevant before reinserting a link to it.
The PBS article is of rather dubious value since (a) it contains incorrect information and (b) says nothing [correct] that this article doesn't.
The UPenn article is a bit more useful, although it pretty clearly says in the Arizona article that the NCVS is only found in traces in a few other cities outside the "Inland North" (none of which are Minneapolis and certainly not as far north as Brainerd, despite the indication that speakers exhibiting the shift were found in both), which its own map shows ending within suburban Chicago at the western extreme.  I continue to highly suspect that the shift is as widespread in the "Inland North" as it's being made out to, and think it instead affects a specific age-group within a specific socio-economic class.  
okéi, ái m dan bitxigh äbàut it fär náu.  óf tä mor pärdàktïv éríaz...  Tomertalk 19:36, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: external links

message: At least here in Milwaukee, there seems to be a clear set of vowel shifts which seems to be related or analogous to the classical NCVS, but which at the same time is very distinct from such.  Such would take the form of: [æ] → [ɛ], [ɛ] → [ɜ], [ɪ] → [ɨ], [o] → [o̠], ([ʌ] → [ɑ]), [ɑ] → [a], and ([a] → [æ]).  Note that the arrows only indicate the directions of the individual shifts, and not that the shifts have actually clearly reached the distination positions in any consistent or clear fashion. Also note that the shifts in parentheses are rather marginal, in the case of [ʌ] → [ɑ] only markedly occurring in very unstressed (like in the interjection/filler word um) or extremely informal speech, and the shift [a] → [æ] only occurring in very unstressed/informal speech in the word ja, which is the only word that could be considered to have /a/ rather than /æ/ or /ɑ/ here (except in individuals for which such is learned, such as my mother, which may have /ɑ/ for such), being a German loanword here (but also a North Germanic loanword in other areas of Wisconsin).
What makes this distinct from the classical NCVS is that historical [æ] is not diphthongized at all and is shifted to a lax position, the tense vowel historical [o] is affected, being backed but not lowered, and the lax vowel [ɔ] is completely unaffected.  In particular, this shift differs from the classical NCVS in its treatment of the back vowels [ɔ] and historical [o] and in its lack of diphthongization of historical [æ].  One note, though, is that it would not be surprising if the shift [ɑ] → [a] were separate from and likely predating the NCVS, and may very well be at least partially coincidental (even though it may have helped "push" [æ]), since it has occurred in other areas where the NCVS has/had not a very significant influence, as mentioned above, and furthermore could be potentially ascribed to substratum influence, like many other local phonological features such as full word-final devoicing, word-initial interdental "hardening", having purely monopthongal tense vowels in almost all positions, and having very round historical [o] and [u].
:Actually, I have to modify that, as what occurs to  is actually more complex.  It either diphthongizes or just shifts, depending on the overall level of stress which it is subject to, diphthongizing as  or sometimes  when more stressed and simply shifting to  when less stressed.  Note that many grammar words such as can and am invariably shift to  except when quite markedly stressed, and many most non-grammar words as well as certain grammar words like can't have  in stressed syllables except when unstressed as a whole.  This is probably simply a matter of how stressed such words are generally realized, and is consistent with how can is generally less stressed than can't in North American English.
:As for why I wrote what I wrote previously, it is simply due to  being hard to perceive as a diphthong due to only having a rather short glide for a diphthong; compare to the only weakly diphthongal  and  that one many not too infrequently hear in NAE dialects.  Travis 22:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NCVS variants 

message: I removed this paragraph for discussion:
:The NCVS can be heard in the speech patterns of a number of popular television actors, including in the idiolect of Joe Flanigan in his rôle as John Sheppard of Stargate Atlantis fame.  As a Losangelino, his NCVS speech exemplifies the fact that the name of the phenomenon [i.e. Northern Cities], is a matter of convenient generalization far more than one of authoritative geographical linguistics; since the phenomenon is clearly far more widespread, and the primary importance of its name is found in the "cities" part of its appellation rather than in the "northern" part.
because it smacks of original research, and also I wonder what aspects of Flanigan's speech are considered to show the NCVS. If he pronounces /æ/ as [eə] before nasals (stand = [steənd]), that's part of the California Vowel Shift too. Does he have æ-tensing before oral consonants? Does he front  and back  to the point where they have very close F2s? Those characteristics have to be present too before it can be said he has the NCVS. (And have to be verifiably attested in a citable source before being added here.) Angr/talk 12:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joe Flanigan 

message: I have to say I'm with the person at the top of the page who found themselves completely baffled by this article.  Of course it's difficult to describe accents in a print medium--but I think we need to try harder than this.  For me and for most readers, the IPA symbols might as well be Chinese characters--when you go to the IPA decoding page, the table gives you examples of words where those words are found, so how is the use of IPA more helpful (to non-specialists) than using common words to illustrate the vowel shift?
I realize that this is kind of like trying to describe color to a blind man--but this article strikes me as being like telling the blind man, "Forget it--if you don't know what colors look like already, you're never going to know."  Surely Wikipedia can do better than that.
The most helpful part of this article is actually the editor on the talk page who tried to explain to the person who didn't think they had the vowel shift that they actually did. Nareek 04:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll second that, this article is completely meaningless to many people, myself included.  Here's a suggestion.  Most people here will be familiar with a southern English accent, (not Cockney mind you, just regular what they used to call 'BBC English').  How about giving some pronunciation smaples using BBC English as a baseline?  --Eamonnca1 07:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help!!! 

message: This article would be easier to understand if you wrote it in Chinese, audio file comparisons would help though. This article would be useful if it was written so lay men could understand it.
Iliketofrolic666 01:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What is this article about?

message: I am sure whoever wrote this article is extremely knowledgeble on this subject. However, I would think the purpose of a wikipedia article is to explain the subject to people who aren't allready familiar with the topic.....just my $.02WacoJacko 07:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS ARTICLE IS TALKING ABOUT

message: There are a few other things going on in the Inland North besides just the NCVS.  Not many other things, but a FEW other things.  Look at the article to see what I mean.  Also the Inland North isn't the ONLY place where the NCVS is going on.  It has crept down into St. Louis, which is in the central Midwest (depending on your definition of the Midwest, of course).  I think the Inland North article is important, because it gives a list of people that speak this way.  It also gives audio links of Inland North speech. 208.104.45.20 19:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are other things going on in the Inland North, true. But it remains true that the NCVS is what defines the Inland North—that is, the Inland North is definitionally the region where the NCVS is the predominant pattern in the speech of [middle- and working-class urban] speakers. It's true that that leaves out St. Louis, which the NCVS is merely in the process of spreading irregularly to; but if St. Louis ever ends up taking part fully in the NCVS, that'll be grounds to say that St. Louis has become part of the Inland North. AJD 19:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response To Edit Summary By AJD 

message: I understand the dialects of the United States.  The NCVS is the predominant speech pattern of White people in that area period, not necessarily middle and working class people (because the Blacks in the area don't speak that way).  I imagine it is the same case with other minority groups.  Also, it isn't necessarily just people in the big cities.  I met a woman from Janesville, Wisconsin who spoke with the NCVS.  My aunt lives in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and she has the NCVS.  If the NCVS is what "defines" the Inland North, then how come the map in that article differs from the map in this article?  Any time you want to discuss dialects, I'm here.  Thanks 208.104.45.20 20:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry; you're right. I should have said "white [middle- and working-class urban]" people. You're right that it isn't necessarily just people in the big cities; however, it's nearly only in the big cities that the research has been carried out, and the Inland North is therefore defined (by Labov) in terms of the big cities. The maps don't actually differ; the blue area on the map in the Inland Northern American English article is the same as the area enclosed by all three isoglosses on the map in this article. AJD 20:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Sure. Just, from the point of view of Wikipedia, in most cases going so far as stating definitely that the small communities in the Inland North are subject to the NCS would be Original Research. Anyhow, with respect to the brown areas: I have no idea if the NCVS will eventually be predominant in those areas. In fact, Labov and a bunch of people in his lab are about to undertake a multi-year research project to investigate what's going on at the boundaries of the Inland North and whether the NCVS is expanding its territory; my own (just barely begun) dissertation research is looking at its eastern boundary, in central New York. AJD 21:08, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

text: The source cited for that map is Labov et al (2006), which explicitly only contains data on large cities, but draws lines around broad regions based on the cities they contain. And I have some telltale Boston phonological features, but not the most noticeable ones. AJD 05:15, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Father/bother distinction (that's the key one); caught/cot merger as [ɒə], marry/merry/Mary distinction.... AJD 15:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

text: What do you mean, if I'm aware that I do these things, how can I still do them? Presumably you're aware that you pronounce pen and pin differently, and you still do that.... AJD 19:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Response

message: I do not understand why northwestern Indiana is only colored brown on the map to the right side of this article.  I met a man just the other night from Michigan City, and he diphthongized /æ/ to [eə] or something similar in his speech.  I think northwestern Indiana should at least be surrounded by the red line; maybe even all three lines.  I don't grasp how the Indiana border signifies the terminus of the "core" of the NCVS, yet the Wisconsin border with Illinois does not.  This area is mostly part of Chicagoland, so I don't see why the people there would speak a different dialect (excluding the speakers of African American Vernacular English, who make up a majority of the population in Gary among other places in the region) than those in the Illinois and Wisconsin part of that region.  Also, one with a keen eye will notice that northwestern Indiana is included as part of the "core" in the Inland North article (it is highlighted in blue); however, it is not enclosed by all three lines on the map in this article.  This needs to be fixed.    208.104.45.20 (talk) 19:10, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Inaccurate Map

message: I recently watched a Nova video called Forgotten Genius.  It was about the legendary black chemist Percy Julian.  In the video, they interviewed Julian's son, Percy Lavon Julian, Jr.  He was raised in Oak Park, a (predominantly white) suburb of Chicago, and he had the 
Northern Cities Vowel Shift in his speech.  208.104.45.20 (talk) 02:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, he certainly does have the NCS, and not a trace of ordinary African-American vowel systems. That's not entirely surprising, him being the son of an upper-middle-class scientist growing up in a suburb, presumably with predominantly white friends. I also read, however, that Oak Park is famous for being diverse and integrated. Very interesting! AJD (talk) 20:36, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Some Blacks Do Have The Shift

message: I know that in the Inland North, [ɑ] often becomes [a] before [ɻ], making far sound different than in many other North American dialects.  However, in this (click on Corrine McCarthy after you get to the Web page) interview with a linguistics instructor, far is said to be moving towards how it sounds in General American [fɑɻ].  This doesn't make sense to me, because I thought the NCVS was supposed to be categorical.  If [ɑ] shifts to [a] in all environments, then why does it sometimes stay around [ɑ] when it precedes [ɻ]?  Does [ɔ] shift to [ɑ] even before [ɻ], making cord sound like card, or is cord pronounced the same as in General American?  I think it is pronounced pretty much the same as in GA, but that doesn't make sense either.  Since [ɛ] precedes [ɻ] in words like there for many people in the United States, then why doesn't that [ɛ] shift to [ə] in those words?  I am quite sure that it doesn't, but once again, it should.208.104.45.20 (talk) 00:06, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The answer to your question is basically that /ɻ/, if that's the symbol you want to use for it, isn't a consonant in American English phonology; it's a (semi-)vowel, like /w/ and /j/. That means that vowels that precede /ɻ/ are essentially not the same phonemes as vowels that precede consonants; rather, their part of diphthongs. So, consider the diphthong /ɑw/: Famously, as /ɑ/ fronts to /a/ or farther in the NCS, /ɑw/ does not front along with it but remains a back vowel—that's because the [ɑ] in /ɑw/ isn't the same phoneme as /ɑ/ itself, but is merely the first half of a diphthongal phoneme whose second half glides up and back to [w]. Likewise, the [ɑ] in [ɑɻ] isn't the same phoneme as the /ɑ/ that fronts to /a/, but merely the first half of a diphthong. AJD (talk) 06:06, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Some Questions

message: 208.104.45.20, I just reverted your edit because the NCVS is in fact found to some extent along the St. Lawrence River, in Ogdensburg at least. The reason this isn't mentioned in the article is because it's OR; I haven't published it yet. AJD (talk) 16:22, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you a linguist AJD?  I trust you, but I'm sure you can understand why I thought that.  I was looking at this map (Map 11.15 on p.30), which shows that area as a residual region (well, actually it shows that area as part of the Canadian region, but presumably that's a mistake, seeing as how it also shows a small area of northeastern Mexico as part of the South and part of northwestern Mexico is included in the West, so we can assume it was meant to be a residual region).  I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, but I thought OR wasn't allowed.  208.104.45.20 (talk) 20:27, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I am a linguist; in fact my current research is on the dialectology of upstate New York. OR isn't allowed in Wikipedia, which is why I haven't yet added to the article that NCS can be found in Ogdensburg—I'll add it in once I've published that finding, or at least presented it at a conference. But I don't think the sentence you removed was itself OR, which is why I put it back in. It's a fine point, though. Also, note that ANAE doesn't really say anything about the linguistic status of cities that aren't in its sample. Labov et al. aren't claiming that NY towns on the St. Lawrence are in a "residual region", or that they're in the Canadian region, or anything else; they're just not making any claim about them. AJD (talk) 20:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

text: That's fine; I understand.  As much as I respect Labov et al., my personal experience disagrees with some of their findings.  208.104.45.20 (talk) 20:52, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  St. Lawrence River 

message: I know two people from the part of New York that is supposedly subject to the NCVS, and neither one of them seems to have the shift.  It is strange. 208.104.45.20 (talk) 21:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, not everyone from anyplace has all the marked features of the local dialect. AJD (talk) 02:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Some Original Research

message: This article is one of the worst examples of incomprehensibility to a general audience I have seen on Wikipedia. 99% of people won't know IPA or the meaning of terms such as "mid-centralized," "backing" and "dipthongization." Remember: Write for ordinary people, like your bus driver, not for fellow specialists in your field.
Unlike areas such as string theory that are hard to explain to a general audience, this topic should be fairly easy to explain. Use examples, explain (don't just wikilink) terms and don't rely exclusively on IPA -- also use the terms Americans learn in schools, such as "short" and "long" vowels, even if linguists avoid them in professional communication. This is an encyclopedia, like your World Book, not a scientific journal read exclusively by professionals. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 12:13, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical tag