Saks vs. Macys: (r-1) marches on in New York City department stores

Labov\u27s 1963 study of /r/ in New York City department stores had three principal findings: 1) social stratification: use of consonantal /r/ in coda position (r-1) was correlated with the status of the store, i.e. more (r-1) in Saks than Macys 2) an age distribution suggesting ongoing \u27change from above\u27 towards increased (r-1) use 3) linguistic conditioning: more (r-1) in word-final position and emphatic repetitions. These observations have subsequently been reinvestigated, in 1986 by Fowler, and in 2009 by Mather, effectively providing a real-time trend series by replicating the original methodology. In this paper we replicate Labov’s methodology. The results indicate continuing progression in the direction Labov predicted. This is a unique case in variationist studies of change in progress; no other change has been so frequently sampled with controlled methodology across so long a time frame. The present study extends the duration of this series to 54 years. The original study investigated three department stores that were socially stratified by price level and target clientele: Saks, Macys and S. Klein. Klein, the low-end store, closed in 1976, but the other two still operate in their original locations in Manhattan and were investigated for the present study using Labov\u27s original methodology. 160 speakers were observed in each store. The results show continued advance of (r-1) in real time. The percentage of speakers using all (r-1) has increased by a factor of 2.8 in both stores since Labov’s study, but the rate of change has accelerated considerably since Mather’s 2009 data collection. Social stratification of the variable is still apparent: Saks, the high-end store, continues to show higher rates of (r-1) than Macys. In Labov’s apparent time results, (r-1) use increased among younger speakers at Saks, but was higher among older speakers at Macys, suggesting that the change originated among higher status speakers, and spread to lower status speakers by diffusion in adult life. In the current study, this pattern has shifted. The age distribution at Saks is flattening out at a high level (speaker groups under age 50 all produce over 80% (r-1) tokens), while Macys now shows a conventional apparent time pattern, with (r-1) advancing among younger speakers. The linguistic conditioning on the process is moderating as the change approaches completion: Macys speakers showed moderate increases in (r-1) of about 7% between internal (\u27fourth\u27) and final position (\u27floor\u27), and between non-emphatic and emphatic productions, but Saks employees are essentially uniform across all conditions

The Effect of Salience on Co-variation in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper analyzes cross-correlations among six variables of Brazilian Portuguese (the pronunciation of nasal /e/, coda r-retroflexion, coda r-deletion, NP agreement, 3rd person plural subject-verb agreement, and 1st person plural subject-verb agreement), with the objective of identifying constraints that promote the co-occurrence of sociolinguistic variants in individual speakers’ speech. We focus on the perspective of structural cohesion, and show that co-variability is conditioned not only by structural similarities among dependent variables (such as agreement processes or coda weakening), but also by general linguistic constraints that operate across multiple variables, such as phonic salience (Naro 1981, Scherre 1988, Naro et al. 1999). Finally, we suggest that markedness may be a more general linguistic principle underlying co-variation

English in New York, 50 years after

Labov’s classic account of New York City English in 1966 identified a number of distinctive phonological characteristics that were sociolinguistically stratified, by speakers’ age, class, and speech style. The evidence indicated that many of the variants most associated with the city dialect were socially stigmatized, and some were involved in ongoing change. A comparison of those results with recent studies of the city provides a unique perspective on how those changes have progressed over fifty years. Broadly speaking, most of the features formerly typical of New York City English have receded or disappeared, continuing trends that were already evident in Labov’s study. The social stigma accorded those features was the likely motivation for these changes

Lexical Phonology and the Problem of Variation

Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Semantic Typology and Semantic Universals (1993

Inhibition of a viral enzyme by a small-molecule dimer disruptor.

We identified small-molecule dimer disruptors that inhibit an essential dimeric protease of human Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) by screening an alpha-helical mimetic library. Next, we synthesized a second generation of low-micromolar inhibitors with improved potency and solubility. Complementary methods including size exclusion chromatography and 1H-13C HSQC titration using selectively labeled 13C-Met samples revealed that monomeric protease is enriched in the presence of inhibitor. 1H-15N HSQC titration studies mapped the inhibitor binding site to the dimer interface, and mutagenesis studies targeting this region were consistent with a mechanism where inhibitor binding prevents dimerization through the conformational selection of a dynamic intermediate. These results validate the interface of herpesvirus proteases and other similar oligomeric interactions as suitable targets for the development of small-molecule inhibitors