Ethnicity and Sound Change: African American English in Charleston, SC

This study investigates the degree to which African Americans participate in the sound changes currently in progress in the dialect of Charleston, South Carolina. It is based on a sample of 60 African Americans native to the area, recorded during sociolinguistic interviews; spontaneous speech is supplemented with word list reading and minimal-pair tests. The speech of 20 of the informants has been analyzed acoustically. The paper focuses on two sets of sound changes found earlier in the white population, three vocalic mergers: the cot-caught merger, the pin-pen merger, the beer-bear merger, and the fronting of the back upgliding vowels /uw/ and /ow/, as in two, goose, and so, goat, respectively, and compares the progress of the changes in the two populations. The oldest generation of African American Charlestonians share the distinctive features of the traditional dialect, such as very back /ow/, with the oldest white speakers. The younger generations, however, are not participating in the fronting of the back vowels advanced by white Charlestonians. The two groups are acquiring the cot-caught merger and the pin-pen merger, but African Americans are more conservative in the unmerging of the bear-bear merger found in the traditional Charleston dialect, now largely unmerged in the white population

On the Role of Social Factors in the Loss of Phonemic Distinctions

The paper tests the generalization of the curvilinear hypothesis and the tendency of females to lead linguistic change in vocalic mergers on the basis of two mergers currently in progress in Charleston, SC: the low-back merger and the pin-pen merger. It is based on minimal-pair tests and on the acoustic analysis of the speech of 90 speakers, aged 8-90, representing the entire socio-economic spectrum of the city. While the low-back merger is a change from below showing a female advantage and a curvilinear effect of social class, the pin-pen merger shows a decreasing monotonic relationship with social class and no female lead. The difference is argued to be due to the two mergers being at different levels of conscious awareness in the community

The Southern Shift in a marginally Southern dialect

This paper, based on a community study of 100 speakers, aged 8-90, representing the socioeconomic spectrum of the city, reports on the extent to which the dialect of Charleston, South Carolina, has been affected by the defining characteristic of Southern phonology, that is, the Southern Shift. The shift consists of the monophthongization of /ay/ (PRICE) and of the laxing and lowering of the nuclei of the front upgliding vowels /iy/ (FLEECE) and /ey/ (FACE) (Labov, Ash and Boberg 2006). The degree of /ay/-monophthongization is measured impressionistically for 100 speakers. This is supplemented by a rapid and anonymous survey conducted in downtown Charleston, in which tokens of /ay/ were elicited by asking passers-by the time of day at around 5:25 pm. The second linguistic variable is the laxing and lowering of the nucleus of the front upgliding vowel /ey/ (FACE), which was measured acoustically as the distance between the nuclei of /ey/ and /e/ (DRESS) and their relative positions in phonetic space for 43 speakers. These results were subjected to a series of multiple regression analyses in which the age, gender, and social class of the speakers were entered as independent variables. The level of /ay/-monophthongization in Charleston is very low in comparison with the Inland South. It is inversely correlated with social class. Age is also a significant factor: /ay/-monophthongization appears to be decreasing in apparent time. There is very limited laxing and lowering of /ey/ (FACE) in Charleston in comparison with the Inland South. Similarly, social class and age are correlated with this feature, indicating that the Southern Shift is in retreat, and confirming the results of other studies, such as Labov, Ash, & Boberg (2006), Fridland (1999, 2001), and Thomas (2001). In conclusion, Charleston shows little involvement in the Southern Shift and as such remains a marginal Southern dialect. The study provides evidence for the lack of a structural relation between the chain shifting of the front upgliding vowels (the Southern Shift), also found in a number of other English dialects, such as Cockney, Australian English, and New Zealand English, and the fronting of the back upgliding vowels /uw/ (GOOSE), /ow/ (GOAT). Charleston is a dialect which resists the Southern Shift, though it is in close contact with dialects affected by it; yet it shows advanced fronting of /uw/ and /ow/. Furthermore, while the highest-status social group is leading in the fronting of the back upgliding vowels (Baranowski 2006), it lags behind the rest of the community in the chain-shifting of the front upgliding vowels, which is in turn most advanced in the lowest social class. This provides support for treating the two processes as separate phenomena

TD-deletion in British English:New evidence for the long-lost morphological effect

This paper analyzes td-deletion, the process whereby coronal stops /t, d/ are deleted after a consonant at the end of the word (e.g., best, kept, missed) in the speech of 93 speakers from Manchester, stratified for age, social class, gender, and ethnicity. Prior studies of British English have not found the morphological effect—more deletion in monomorphemic mist than past tense missed—commonly observed in American English. We find this effect in Manchester and provide evidence that the rise of glottal stop replacement in postsonorant position in British English (e.g., halt, aunt) may be responsible for the reduction in the strength of this effect in British varieties. Glottaling blocks deletion, and, because the vast majority of postsonorant tokens are monomorphemic, the higher rates of monomorpheme glottaling dampens the typical effect of deletion in this context. These findings indicate organization at a higher level of the grammar, while also showing overlaid effects of factors such as style and word frequency

Preface

The University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) is an occasional series published by the Penn Linguistics Club, the graduate student organization of the Linguistics Department of the University of Pennsylvania. The series has included volumes of previously unpublished work, or work in progress, by linguists with an ongoing affiliation with the Department, as well as volumes of papers from the NWAV conference and the Penn Linguistics Colloquium. This volume contains the proceedings of the 32nd NWAVE Conference, October 9 to 12, 2003, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The inaugural Charles Ferguson Prize for best student paper or poster was awarded to Christine Mallinson and Becky Childs’ “Communities of Practice in Sociolinguistic Description: African American Women’s Language in Appalachia.” Thanks to Aaron Dinkin, Aviad Eilam, Michael Friesner, Ron Kim, Maya Ravindranath, Gillian Sankoff, and Suzanne Evans Wagner for their help in editing this volume

Correlation between temporomandibular joint dysfunction and Eichner classification

Introduction: The Dental Prosthetics Department's most common patients are elderly who have lost their teeth. Dental deficiencies not only impair the functions of the stomatognathic system but can also be the cause of temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Deficiencies in the lateral sections lead to a decrease in the occlusion height in patients, which negatively affects the aesthetics of the face by shortening the lower floor and overloading the remaining teeth, eventually leading to their pathological wear. Loss of occlusion height changes the spatial arrangement of the lower jaw to the upper jaw, which can lead to changes in the temporomandibular joint. The loss of a tooth or group of teeth is an indication for proper prosthetic treatment. The dentist should be able to take into account, evaluate and, if necessary, cure TMD, but this is not a common skill among dentists. Such treatment requires an appropriate comprehensive approach. There are currently no standards for such treatment. We presented one of the methods as part of our study.Purpose of work:The aim of the study was to check the correlation between the occurrence of temporomandibular disorders and missing teeth and used prosthetic restorations. Material and methods:Medical history records of 58 patients under the care of the Department of Dental Prosthetics at Medical University of Lublin were analyzed. Factors such as age and gender, occlusion height, distribution of missing teeth according to the Eichner classification and symptoms of temporomandibular joint disorders, i.e. crackling, pain, limited and excessive abduction of the jaw were checked. Before starting prosthetic treatment, every patient underwent comprehensive conservative, surgical and periodontics treatment in accordance with existing needs. Results:The study group consisted of 38 women and 20 men. The average age of all patients was 69.6 years; - average for men - 70.45 years, women 68.16 years. The oldest patient was an 88-year-old man, and the youngest was a 43-year-old woman. 31% of patients were toothless. 25.9% of patients had pain within the stomatognathic system, of which 86.7% were women and 13.3% men. Relaxation splint was made in 24.1% of patients.Summary:The study showed that the ailments associated with the stomatognathic system are correlated with a reduction in occlusion height. Larger dental deficits are more common in older people. Pain symptoms are the most common cause of making relaxation splints. Women more often than men complain of pain. The correct treatment scheme for patients with missing teeth and long-term loss of support zones is staggered treatment - two-stage. The first stage of treatment is to restore the correct occlusion height by using the occlusal splint. Then, after the adaptation period, there is a transition to the second stage of treatment - the use of proper prosthetic restoration maintaining the correct height of occlusio