GERMAN SUBSTRATE EFFECTS IN WISCONSIN ENGLISH: EVIDENCE FOR FINAL FORTITION

Abstract

A once predominantly German-speaking community in Watertown, Wisconsin,shows distinct phonetic and phonological traces of that immigrant heritage in the speech of its English-speaking monolinguals. Acoustic and perceptual studies suggest that speakers do not produce all the expected cues for English fi nal laryngeal distinctions, nor do they exploit those cues to the same degree as a set of control speakers. This instance, for which the language varieties and contact situation involved are all well understood, provides good evidence for structural influence from a substrate and provides a challenge to conventional views of language contact.