New York City English Research Articles

Aspects of change in New York City English short-a

AbstractThis article focuses on change in the “short-a system” of New York City English (NYCE). Recent results suggest that a complex set of tensing rules traditionally described for NYCE are being replaced by several simpler systems. This article reports on a study of this change using a recently developed large audio-aligned parsed speech corpus (CoNYCE). This change is similar to the simplification reported for Philadelphia by Labov et al. (2016). Unlike in the Philadelphia case, however, our results do not show evidence of a single abstract process of change. Our findings, rather, suggest at least two separate changes in the community—one affecting short-a in prenasal contexts and a second affecting pre-oral obstruent contexts. In addition, the results suggest an additional independent process of lowering and retraction affecting short-a sounds in contexts not targeted by the process of phonological reorganization, that is, “trap-backing.”

The short-a split in a suburban area of the New York City dialect region

In American English, the most common pattern for the pronunciation of the allophones of the vowel phoneme /æ/ is the “nasal-split,” where the vowel is tense (raised, fronted) when followed by a nasal consonant and lax (lowered, backed) otherwise. In contrast, historically New York City English (NYCE) has had a “complex short-a split” with different conditioning factors for each allophone. This paper reports on new data from the eastern edge of the NYCE dialect region: suburban Nassau County, Long Island. Using word-list data from the sociolinguistic interviews of 24 high school students, aged 14-18, and 7 of their teachers and mentors, this paper shows that while young speakers in this region are moving towards the wider American nasal-split, the local version of that nasal-split still includes components of the traditional NYCE complex-split.

The social motivations of reversal: Raisedboughtin New York City English

AbstractThis article presents a variationist analysis of theboughtvowel in New York City English (NYCE) and finds that it has reversed the trajectory of change outlined in Labov (1966). An acoustic analysis of production data from sixty-four native residents of the Lower East Side demonstrates thatboughtis lowering in apparent time, a change led by young people, white and Jewish speakers, and the middle classes. A second source of data comes from perceptions of raisedboughtgathered from a matched guise experiment, which highlights an indexical field (Eckert 2008) of social meanings for raisedboughtthat comprise a ‘classic New Yorker’ persona: an older, white ethnic New Yorker from the outer boroughs who is mean and aloof. Taken together, the data suggest thatbought's reversal is motivated by its contemporary social meanings. (bought,New York City English, dialectology, variationism, sound change, social meaning, perception, sociophonetics)*

(r) we there yet? The change to rhoticity in New York City English

AbstractLabov (1966, 1972b) described the variable production of coda /r/ in New York City English (NYCE) as a change in progress from above in the direction of rhoticity. Since then, scholars have commented on the slow rate of change toward rhoticity in NYCE and characterized (r) as a superposed feature restricted to formal speech (Fowler, 1987; Labov, 1994; Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006). This study's ethnically diverse sample of speakers from the Lower East Side of Manhattan (n = 65) shows a mean rate of /r/ production of 68%, with young people, women, and middle-class speakers leading in the production of /r/ in apparent time. Speakers from five ethnic backgrounds—African American, Chinese, Jewish, Puerto Rican, and white—show coherence for the internal constraints on variable nonrhoticity. However, only Chinese, Jewish, and white speakers participate in the change toward rhoticity. These findings highlight the role of ethnicity in patterns of variation and change and demonstrate that the change toward rhoticity in NYCE has accelerated and is no longer restricted to formal speech.

/r/ and the construction of place identity on New York City's Lower East Side1

This paper argues that a group of white residents on the Lower East Side of Manhattan use a New York City English (NYCE) feature – non‐rhoticity in the syllable coda – in the construction of a place identity, one aspect of identity tied to localness and authenticity. A quantitative analysis confirms that the change in progress towards rhoticity in NYCE (Labov 1966) continues to advance slowly, so that non‐rhoticity remains a resource for New Yorkers, imbued with local social meaning. Ethnographic observation of the Lower East Side reveals conflict among residents, which motivates one group to highlight their place identity by using non‐rhoticity. These Lower East Siders utilize micro‐variation of /r/ in stretches of interview talk, increasing non‐rhoticity when discussing neighborhood topics. Results support a social practice approach to stylistic and sociolinguistic variation, where Lower East Siders use /r/ in constructing a place identity in order to present themselves as authentic neighborhood residents.