The style effect on the TRAP phonemic split in UP English

Abstract

The short-a system, or the phonemic split of the TRAP vowel (i.e., /æ/), refers to the raised position of the vowel in pre-nasal and pre-velar phonological environments (Labov et al., 2006; Labov, 2007; Becker et al., 2010; Labov et al., 2015; Wagner et al., 2016). The present study builds upon these previous studies by examining the TRAP-system in rural, under-documented American English speech communities across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP). Previous work on this feature in reading passage data has revealed UP speech communities on the east- and west-sides of the peninsula have strikingly different systems (i.e., a two-way phonemic split in eastern UP, while a three-way split in western UP). The present sociophonetic talk examines the apparent-time change of the phonemic split of an 87-speaker sample as an interaction of task types (passage/word list/minimal pairs), area (east/west), age groups (18-39/40-59/60 + ), and self-gender (female/male). The three-way phonemic split of TRAP only occurs in informal speech styles in western UP; in contrast, the two-phonemic split is preferred in eastern UP irrespective of speech style. The two-way phonemic split is preferred in more formal speech styles and is stable in the eastern UP suggesting an external influence from outside Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.