California English: Encyclopedia II - California English - Phonology

California English - Phonology

As a variety of American English, California English is similar to most other forms of American speech in being a rhotic accent, which is historically a significant marker in differentiating different English varieties. The following chart represents the relative positions of the stressed monophthongs of the accent, based on nine speakers from southern California.^[2] Notable is the absence of /ɔ/, which has merged with /ɑ/ through the cot-caught merger, and the relatively open quality of /ɪ/ due to the California vowel shift discussed below.

There are several phonological processes which have been identified as being particular to California English. However, these shifts are by no means universal in Californian speech, and any single Californian's speech may only have some or none of the changes identified below. The shifts might also be found in the speech of people from areas outside of California.

• Front vowels are raised before velar nasal [ŋ], so that the near-open front unrounded vowel /æ/ and the near-close near-front unrounded vowel /ɪ/ are raised to a close-mid front unrounded vowel [e] and a close front unrounded vowel [i] before[ŋ]. This change makes for minimal pairs such as king and keen, both having the same vowel [i], differing from king [kɪŋ] in other varieties of English. Similarly, a word like rang will often have the same vowel as rain in California English, not the same vowel as ran as in other varieties.
• The vowels in words such as Mary, marry, merry are merged to the open-mid front unrounded vowel [ɛ]
• Most speakers do not distinguish between the open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔ] and open back unrounded vowel [ɑ], characteristic of the cot-caught merger. A notable exception may be found within the city limits of San Francisco, whose native inhabitants' speech somewhat reflects a historical East-Coast heritage which has probably influenced the maintenance of the distinction between words such as caught and cot.
• According to phoneticians studying California English, traditionally diphthongal vowels such as [oʊ] as in boat and [eɪ], as in bait, have acquired qualities much closer to monophthongs in some speakers of California English. However, the continuing presence of slight offglides (if less salient than those of, say, British Received Pronunciation) and convention in IPA transcription for English account for continuing use of [oʊ] and [eɪ].
• The pin-pen merger is complete in Bakersfield, and speakers in Sacramento either perceive or produce the pairs /ɛn/ and /ɪn/ close to each other^[3]

One topic that has begun to receive much attention amongst scholars in recent years has been the emergence of a vowel shift unique to California. Much like other vowel shifts occurring in North America such as the Southern Vowel Shift and the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the California Vowel Shift is noted for a systematic chain shift of several vowels.

This image on the right illustrates the "California Vowel Shift". The vowel space of the image is a cross-section (as if looking at the interior of a mouth from a side profile perspective); it is a rough approximation of the space in a human mouth where the tongue is located in articulating certain vowel sounds (the left is the front of the mouth closer to the teeth, the right side of the chart being the back of the mouth). As with other vowel shifts, several vowels may be seen moving in a chain shift around the mouth. As one vowel enroaches upon the space of another, the adjacent vowel in turn experiences a movement in order to maximize phonemic differentiation.

Two phonemes, /ɪ/ and /æ/, have allophones that are fairly widely spread apart from each other: before /ŋ/, /ɪ/ is raised to [i] and, as mentioned above, may even be identified with the phoneme /i/. In other contexts, /ɪ/ has a fairly open pronunciation, as indicated in the vowel chart above. /æ/ is raised and diphthongized to [eə] or [ɪə] before nasal consonants (a shift reminiscent of, but more restricted than, non-phonemic æ-tensing in the Inland North); before /ŋ/ it may be identified with the phoneme /e/. Elsewhere /æ/ is lowered in the direction of [a]. The other parts of the chain shift are apparently context-free: /ʊ/ is moving towards [ʌ], /ʌ/ towards [ɛ], /ɛ/ toward [æ], /ɑ/ toward [ɔ], and the starting points of /uw/ and /oʊ/ toward /i/ and /e/ respectively.

Unlike some of the other vowel shifts, however, the California Vowel Shift is generally considered to be in earlier stages of development as compared to the more widespread Northern and Southern Vowel Shifts, although the new vowel characteristics of the California Vowel Shift are increasingly found amongst younger speakers. As with many vowel shifts, these significant changes occurring in the spoken language are rarely noticed by average speakers; imitation of peers and other sociolinguistic phenomena play a large part in determining the extent of the vowel shift in a particular speaker. For example, while some characteristics such as the Close central rounded vowel [ʉ] or Close back unrounded vowel [ɯ] for [u] are widespread in Californian speech, the same high degree of fronting for [oʊ] is common only within certain social groups. No matter the individual degree a speaker displays the emergence of the California Vowel Shift and its spread amongst younger speakers point to a future form of California English which will have undoubtedly diverged significantly from other varieties.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Phonology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki