The Completion of /u/-Fronting in California English
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This document analyzes the fronting of the vowel /u/ in California English among Asian American and European American speakers in San Francisco. It finds that /u/-fronting is nearly complete, with little difference between age groups for post-coronal /u/. Younger speakers front /u/ in all environments. Asian Americans participate fully in the change and some show more fronting than European Americans. Gender differences are weakening. The change appears to be spreading from post-coronal to other environments.
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The Completion of /u/-Fronting in California English
- 1. The Completion of a Sound Change in California English Lauren Hall-Lew University of Edinburgh Lauren.Hall-Lew@ed.ac.uk *Travel support provided by:
- 2. Overview Analysis of the fronting of /u/ a.k.a.goose,boot, /u:/, or (uw) Analysis with respect to speaker age, gender, & ethnicity: Asian American vs. European American
- 3. /u/-fronting in English A widely documented sound change: United Kingdom(Cruttenden 2001; Gimson 1962; Harrington, Kleber & Reubold 2008; Hawkins & Midgley 2005; Schneider 2004) Southern Hemisphere(Lanham 1978; Lass 1995; Mesthrie 2010; Schneider 2004) North America(Fridland & Bartlett 2006; Hall-Lew 2005; Ohala 1981; Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006; Labov, Yaeger & Steiner 1972; Thomas 2001) & specifically, in California(Fought 1999; Godinez & Maddieson 1985; Hagiwara 1997; Hinton et al. 1987)
- 4. /u/-fronting in California English No documentation (in urban environments) prior to 1987(no mention of it inDeCamp1953) As in most varieties, /u/-fronting first appeared in the environment following anterior coronals (see Flemming 2003). In earlier studies, /u/-fronting among older Californians only occurred after coronals.
- 5. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006) The Atlas of North American English Post-coronal /u/, or too, is fronted across most of the United States. Non-post-coronal /u/, or koo, is mainly fronted across the Southern U.S., but is also found in the Midwest & West.
- 6. /u/-fronting in California English /u/-fronting generally occurs within the vowel nucleus, not the vowel off-glide. Off-glides remain backed, resulting in increased diphthongization. Fronting is inhibited by a following /l/ (The single lexical exception, cool, appears limited to the informal, non-temperature evaluative adjective & social uses, such as taking particular stances. More on this later…)
- 7. post-coronal /u/ San Francisco, Irish American, Female, 65yrs
- 8. elsewhere /u/ San Francisco, Irish American, Female, 65yrs
- 9. pre-liquid /u/ San Francisco, Irish American, Female, 65yrs
- 10. /u/-fronting & Ethnicity in California Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, CA produce /u/ further back than European Americans (Godinez & Maddieson 1985). Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, CA produce a wide range of /u/ realizations, with frontedness varying more with network, gender, and social class (Fought 1999).
- 11. /u/-fronting & Gender in California Hinton et al. (1987) found that /u/-fronting was a feature of a gendered ‘mock California’ persona, e.g. ‘Valley Girl’. Today’s analysis: this indexical association is weakening the correlation with gender is also weakening the change is nearing completion
- 12. Fieldwork Spring & Summer 2008 Guided spontaneous speech from sociolinguistic & ethnographic interviews San Francisco’s largest residential neighborhood, the Sunset District: roughly all ‘middle class’ approximately 50% Asian American, 45% Euro American, 5% Other
- 13. Speakers Analyzed 16 Asian Americans & 14 European Americans 17 females, 13 males Ages 16–76 The Asian Americans: (12) Chinese (1) Filipino (1) Japanese (2) ‘Mixed’
- 15. (1) Tagalog
- 17. Measuring Fronting F1 & F2 values obtained automatically by a script written for the AkustykPraat add-on (Plichta 2006). 18% of the data checked by hand. Measurements were taken at: the temporal midpoint the off-glide (near a boundary placed two glottal pulses from the end of regular voicing)
- 18. Measuring Fronting Fronting, for each speaker, was calculated as the average distance in F2 between /u/ and /i/. NB: Since the onset is most influenced by the place of the preceding consonant, the midpoint data underestimate the full extent of fronting.
- 19. Normalization & Statistics Conversion & Normalization All data was Bark-converted (Syrdal & Gopal 1986) and Lobanov normalized, using NORM(Lobanov 1971; Thomas & Kendall 2007). Mixed-effect Model (word & speaker as random) independent social factors: speaker age (continuous) speaker ethnicity (binary: Asian / European) speaker gender (binary: M / F)
- 20. Results Nothing new here: The midpoint of post-coronal /u/ (too) is significantly further front than /u/ in other environments (koo). The midpoint of both too & koo are significantly further front than /u/ before /l/ (cool).
- 22. Results *Some New Stuff: Differences between three phonological contrasts also obtain for off-glides. Impressionistic percept of off-glide ‘backness’ may be due to rounding (to be tested in future work). too & koo are not significantly different with respect to F1, but both are significantly higher than cool. Not due to raising, but rather mergers-in-progress among pre-/l/ back vowels. * = not in the ICPhS Proceedings Paper
- 23. San Francisco, Chinese American, Female, 16yrs 22
- 24. Results: Social factors Midpoint data, for all /u/ combined: Significant correlation between fronting and speaker age (F[1,29]=6.9, p<0.05) Slight trend effect of gender (F[1,9]=3.3, p=0.081); females > males No effect of ethnicity No interaction effects No qualitative patterning with heritage language and/or level of bilingualism
- 25. Results: Social factors For just too: No correlation of speaker age. For just koo: Main effect of speaker age (F[1,29]=8.7, p<0.01)
- 26. age: p < 0.01 age: n.s.
- 27. Results: Social factors For just too: Actually, no correlations for any social factor. For just koo: Trend effect of gender (F[1,29]=3.2, p=0.089) females > males Trend effect of ethnicity (F[1,29]=3.3, p=0.085) Asian Americans > European Americans
- 28. Gender & fronting of koo
- 29. Ethnicity & fronting of koo
- 30. Ethnicity & fronting of koo NB: The finding that a non-European ethnic group is not lagging with respect to a sound change in progress is unusual in U.S. English (cf. Labov 2001:506). Here, not only are Asian Americans not lagging, but the speakers with the highestkoo-midpoint F2 values are all Asian American (specifically, Cantonese American).
- 31. Discussion Age is still a significant correlate of /u/-fronting in California English. There is still a change in progress. However, the change is nearing completion. Age is no longer significant for /u/-fronting in post-coronal environments – the environment where the sound change initially began. All speakers of all ages front /u/ after coronals. The sound change is limited to elsewhere contexts.
- 32. Discussion Even in non-coronal contexts, /u/-fronting no longer significantly correlates with gender. Full participation by Asian Americans also suggests community-wide entrenchment (cf. Fought 1999 for Mexican Americans in Los Angeles).
- 33. Discussion Indexical associations between /u/-fronting and ‘Valley Girl’ personae also appear (impressionistically) to be fading. *Interestingly, apparent exceptions seem to be: occurrences in particularly rare phonological environments, like cool. occurrences in potentially newer aspects of the change, such as off-glide fronting (shoes as /ʃɪz/, cf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA).
- 34. Implications *As a sound change proceeds: the socio-indexical meanings that were attached to earlier phonological environments fade, and similar or related socio-indexical meanings become (re)assigned to the newer phonological environments where the sound change is still progressing.
- 35. Selected References Flemming, E. 2003. The relationship between coronal place and vowel backness. Phonology, 335–373. Fought, C. 1999. A majority sound change in a minority community: /u/-fronting in Chicano English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3: 5–23. Fridland, V. & K. Bartlett. 2006. The social and linguistic conditioning of back vowel fronting across ethnic groups in Memphis, Tennessee. English Lng. & Ling., 10: 1–22. GodinezM,Jr, & M Maddieson. 1985. Vowel differences between Chicano and General Californian English. Int’l Jrnl of Soc. & Lang. 43–58. Hagiwara, R. 1997. Dialect Variation and formant frequency: The American English vowels revisited. JASA, 102: 655–658. Hall-Lew, L. 2005. One shift, two groups: When fronting alone is not enough. PWPL, 10.2: 105–116. Hall-Lew, L. 2010. Ethnicity and Sociolinguistic Variation in San Francisco. Lng. & Ling. Compass. 4(7): 458-472. Hall-Lew, L & R. L. Starr. 2010. Beyond the 2nd Generation: English use among Chinese Americans in the SF Bay Area. Eng. Today, 26(3):12-19 Harrington, J., F. Kleber, & U. Reubold. 2008. Compensation for coarticulation, /u/-fronting, and sound change in standard southern British: An acoustic and perceptual study. JASA, 123(5): 2825–2835. Hawkins, S. & J. Midgley. 2005. Formant frequencies of RP monophthongs in four age groups of speakers. Jrnl of the IPA, 35: 183-199 Hinton, L., S. Bremner, H. Corcoran, J. Learner, H. Luthin, B. Moonwomon, & M. Van Clay. 1987. It’s not just Valley Girls: A study of California English. BLS Proceedings. 13.117–127. Labov, W. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors (Vol 2). Malden, MA: Blackwell. (p506) Labov, W., S. Ash & C. Boberg. 2006. Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology, & sound change. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lobanov, B. M. 1971. Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different speakers. JASA, 49: 606–608. Mesthrie, R. 2010. Socio-phonetics and social change: Deracialisation of the GOOSE vowel in South African English. J. of Socioling., 14(1): 3-33. Ohala, J. 1981. The listener as a source of sound change. In C.S. Masek, R.A. Hendrick, & M.F. Miller (eds.), Papers from the parasession on language and behavior. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society. 178–203. Reed, D., & A. A. Metcalf. 1979 [1952-1959]. Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Coast. Berkeley, CA. Stevens, K. H. & A. S. House. 1963. Perturbation of vowel articulations by consonantal context: an acoustical study. JSHR, 6:111–28. Syrdal, A.K. & H.S. Gopal. 1986. A Perceptual Model of Vowel Recognition Based on the Auditory Representation of American English Vowels. JASA, 79: 1086–1100. Thomas, E.R., & T. Kendall, 2007. NORM: The Vowel Normalization and Plotting Suite: An online tool for sociophonetic vowel normalization. Wells, J.C. 1982. Accents of English 1 – an Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.