We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Dialect leveling and /ai/ monophthongization among African American Detroiters.
- Authors
Anderson, Bridget L.
- Abstract
In this paper I present evidence that Detroit African Americans are participating in a recent sound change which is typically associated with some White, but not African American, varieties in the American South. Although both Southern White and African American speakers monophthongize /ai/ in pre-voiced phonetic contexts ( tide ), the spread of the monophthongal or glide-reduced variant to pre-voiceless environments ( tight ) is a salient characteristic of some subregions of the Southern U.S. I report a leveling pattern in which /ai/ monophthongization has expanded to the salient pre-voiceless context in Detroit African American English (AAE). I explain this is in terms of a change in the group with whom African American speakers perceive themselves as saliently contrastive.
- Subjects
DETROIT (Mich.); MICHIGAN; DIALECTS; VOWELS; MONOPHTHONGIZATION; AFRICAN Americans; LANGUAGE &; languages
- Publication
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2002, Vol 6, Issue 1, p86
- ISSN
1360-6441
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-9481.00178