- An abbreviated version of the present paper was given at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New York City on December 29, 1962.
- See E. Sturtevant, An Introduction to Linguistic Science. New Haven: 1947. Ch. VIII: “Why are Phonetic Laws Regular?” The discussion by Martinet in his report, “Structural Variation in Language,” Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, implies a similar model.
- A number of these theories are reviewed by Alf Sommerfelt, “Sur la propagation de changements phonétiques,” Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap IV (1930), 76–128.
- Economie des changements phonétiques. Berne: 1955. The empirical confirmation of many of Martinet's ideas to be found in Moulton's investigation of Swiss German dialects has provided strong motivation for some of the interpretations in the present essay. In particular, see “Dialect Geography and the Concept of Phonological Space,” Word XVIII (1962), 23–32.
- “Phonology in a Generative Grammar,” Word XVIII (1962), 67–72.
- “The Rise of the American English Vowel Pattern,” Word XI (1955), 57–63.
- For a parallel criticism of restrictions on the data imposed by Bloomfieldian linguistics, see W. Diver's review of W. P. Lehmann's Historical Linguistics, Word XIX (1963), 100–105.
- Op. cit., pp. 74–84. See also H. Hoenigswald's remarks in “Are There Universale of Linguistic Change?” J. S. Greenberg, ed., Universali of Language. Cambridge, Mass., 1963. Footnote8: “Sound changes can apparently not be entirely predicted from internal, systemic stresses and strains, nor can they be explained as the effect of scatter around a target or norm; they have direction and are in that sense specific, much like other happenings in history.”
- For further details on the social and economic background of Martha's Vineyard, see my 1962 Columbia University Master's Essay, The Social History of a Sound Change on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, written under the direction of Professor Uriel Weinreich.
- H. Kurath et al. Providence: 1941. Background information on the informants is to be found in H. Kurath, Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England. Providence: 1939.
- From U.S. Bureau of the Census. U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Number of Inhabitants. Massachusetts. Final Report PC(1)—23A. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962. Table 7, page 23–11.
- From U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population: 1960. General Social aid Economic Characteristics. Massachusetts. Final Report PC(1)—23c. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962. Table 89, page 23–260.
- There is a sizeable number of retired mainlanders living on the Vineyard as year-round residents. While they are included in the population total, they do not form a pan of the social fabric we are considering, and none of the informants are drawn from this group.
- On the Lane maps, we find that Guy Lowman regularly recorded the up-island /r/ as [ɚ] in [WɐIɚ, haɚd, baɚn], and down-island /r/ as [ǝ] in the same positions. Essentially the same pattern is to be found among the older speakers today, though not with the regularity that Lowman noted. It is possible that this treatment of /r/ was in fact intended as a broad transcription, for the Lane was much more concerned with vowels than consonants.
- See H. Kurath, A Word Geography of the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: 1949. Fig. 162. Belly-flop (and the corresponding lexical item in other regions) has generally shifted for the younger generation to denote a flat dive into the water. Coasting is now a less important sport, and its terminology is appropriately impoverished.
- Many ingenious devices are needed to detect and eliminate deceit on the part of metropolitan informants, whether intended or not. On Martha's Vineyard, this is much less of a problem, but the effects of the interview situation are evident in the careful style of some informants.
- The disappearance of New England short /o/ follows the pattern described by W. Avis, “The 'New England Short o': a Recessive Phoneme.” Language XXXVII (1961), 544–558. Exploratory interviews at other points in southeastern New England (Woods Hole, Falmouth, New Bedford, Fall River, Providence, Stonington) indicate that the loss of the /or~ər/ and /hw-~w-/ distinctions is parallel to that on Martha's Vineyard.
- The terms centralized diphthongs, centralization, and degree of centralization will be used throughout this study to refer to the various forms of the diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ with first elements higher than [a]. It is not intended that the terms themselves should imply any process or direction of change, except when used with explicit statements to that effect.
- See O. Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, I, London: 1927, page 234, and H. Kökeritz, Shakespeare's Pronunciation, New Haven: 1953, p. 216. Among recent historical linguists, H. C. Wyld is a notable exception in positing a front first element in the transition of M.E. i: to Mod.E. /ai/, relying on occasional spellings with ey and ei, but without considering the many other indications of central position. See A History of Modern Colloquial English, Oxford: 1920, pages 223–225.
- Abundant evidence is given by George Phillip Krapp, The English Language in America, II, New York: 1925, pages 186–191.
- The best view of the distribution of /ai/ may be had from Maps 26–27 in H. Kurath and R. McDavid, The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States, Ann Arbor: 1962. Centralized diphthongs are well known as a feature of Canadian English, where the effect of the voiceless-voiced consonant environment is quite regular.
- Jespersen, op. cit., pages 235–236. Kökeritz, op. cit., pages 144–149. Wyld, op. cit., pages 230–231.
- Op. cit., pages 192–196.
- Kurath and McDavid, op. cit., Maps 28–29.
- The possibility of phonemic confusion with /əi/ apparently became a reality in the 17th and 18th century, in both England and America, when both diphthongs had central first elements.
- “When we speak of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, what does right mean?… Is it in writing?… If a man is successful at a job he doesn't like, would you still say he was a successful man?” These questions were generally successful in eliciting the informant's versions of the italicized words.
- This two-hundred word reading is constructed as a story told by a teen-age Vineyard boy, of the day he found out his father wasn't always right. An excerpt will show the technique involved: “After the high winds last Thursday, we went down to the mooring to see how the boat was making out…. My father started to pump out the bottom, and he told me to find out if the outboard would start. I found out all right. I gave her a couple of real hard pulls but it was no dice. ‘Let me try her,’ my father said. ‘Not on your life,’ I told him. ‘I've got my pride.’”
- The interviews were recorded at 3¾ inches per second on a Butoba MT-5, using a Butoba MD-21 dynamic microphone. A tape recording of the standard reading, “After the high winds…” read by five of the speakers whose formant measurements appear on Figure 3, and other examples of centralized diphthongs used by Vineyard speakers in natural conversation, may be obtained from the writer, Department of Linguistics, Columbia University, New York 27, N.Y.
- Spectrograms were made on the Kay Sonograph, using both wide and narrow bands. Seven of these, showing fifteen instances of /ai/ and /au/, are reproduced in the Master's Essay cited above.
- G. E. Peterson and H. L. Barney, “Control Methods Used in a Study of the Vowels,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America XXIV (1952), 175–184. The degree of overlap shown in Figure 3 seems roughly comparable to Peterson and Barney's results.
- A parallel problem of condensing a finely graded impressionistic scale is discussed in L. Gauchat, J. Jeanjaquet and E. Tappolet, Tableaux phonétiques des patois suisses romands (Neuchatel: 1925), p. ix. A seven-level transcription of the mid vowels was reduced to five levels, but without the instrumental justification presented here.
- See Edwin F. Shewmake, English Pronunciation in Virginia. Davidson, N.C.: 1927.
- /ai/ and /au/ are rare before /b, g, ŋ, č, j/; /t/ includes [?]. The non-distinctive [?] variant of zero onset also favors centralization heavily, as in the 1 forms of Figure 3.
- One small stylistic influence which appeared was in the standard reading. Those with centralized norms, whose charts were of type b and c, had slightly higher indexes of centralization for reading than for conversation. The opposite effect was noted for those with uncentralized norms.
- Language (New York: 1933), p. 347.
- Ibid., p. 365.
- A Course in Modern Linguistics (New York: 1958), p. 439.
- Review of Hockett, A Course in Modern Linguistics, in Romance Philology XIII (1959), pp. 329–332. “It is hard to feel comfortable with a theory which holds that the great changes of the past were of one kind, theoretically mysterious and interesting, whereas everything that is observable today is of another kind, transparent and (by implication) of scant theoretical interest.”
- L'unité phonétique dans le patois d'une commune. Halle: 1905.
- “Lautveränderungen in der Individualsprache einer Mundart,” Nachrichten da Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philosophisch-historische Klasse XI (1929), 195–214.
- Such arguments were indeed advanced in some detail to explain Gauchat's results, by P. G. Goidanich, “Saggio critico sullo studio de L. Gauchat,” Archivio Glottologico Italiano XX (1926), pp. 60–71, [cited by Sommerfelt, op. cit.]. As implausible as Goidanich's arguments seem, they are quite consistent with Bloomfield's position cited above.
- Sturtevant, op. cit., pp. 78–81. See Hoenigswald, op. cit., for further considerations which support this view.
- We might wish to construct a rule here which would, in essence, convert [+compact] to [—compact], simpler by one feature than a rule which would merely convert [aı] to a centralized form. While such a statement is satisfying in its simplicity and neatness, it should be clear from the following discussion that it would explain only a small part of the mechanism of linguistic change.
- The information given in the following discussion of social patterns on Martha's Vineyard was derived in part from conversations with the 69 informants. Even more significant, perhaps, was information gained from discussions with community leaders who were in a position to view these patterns as a whole. I am particularly indebted to Mr. Benjamin Morton, head of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Henry Beetle Hough, editor of the Vineyard Gazelle, and Mr. Charles Davis, superintendent of the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School. Among my informants, I am especially grateful to Mr. Donald Poole of Chilmark, Mr. Benjamin Mayhew, selectman of Chilmark, and Mr. Albert Prada, town clerk of Edgartown.
- Table 36 of the 1960 census report PC(1)—23c, cited above in footnote 12, shows some striking contrasts among Massachusetts counties. The median family income for the Vineyard is $4,745, as against $6,272 for the state as a whole. Barnstable County (Cape Cod) and Nantucket are also dependent on a vacation economy, yet they show median incomes of $5,386 and $5,373. The most agricultural county in Massachusetts, Franklin, shows a median of $5,455. The state as a whole has only 12.4% of families with incomes under $3,000; the Vineyard has 23%. The state has 17.0% with incomes over $10,000; the Vineyard has only 6.6%.
- See Table 82 of the 1960 census report, as in footnote 45.
- Despite the low number of Vineyarders listed as fishermen by occupation in the Census, a much larger number of islanders rely upon part-time fishing to supplement their income. In particular, harvesting bay scallops in the salt ponds is a prized source of revenue in the summer months. A great deal of local legislation is designed to protect the professional fishermen from the great number of part-time scallopers taking in too large a share. Much discussion and considerable bitterness develops as a result of this conflict of interest, in which the truly professional Chilmarkers are, psychologically at least, on top.
- On the question of leaving the island, one of these boys said: “… I can't see myself off island somewhere… I like it a lot here, like my father goes lobstering. That's quite a bit of fun… as long as I get enough money to live and enjoy myself. I was figuring on… going into oceanography because you'd be outdoors: it wouldn't be office work.”
- In many ways, the Vineyard seems to be more democratic than the mainland. I have heard on the mainland strong expressions of hostility between Portuguese groups from the Azores and those from the Cape Verde Islands, but never on Martha's Vineyard.
- On the other hand, I have heard a strong Portuguese accent from a second generation Portuguese man, about 40 years old, who was raised on a farm near Taunton, Mass.
- In several cases, Vineyard youngsters have received rather severe shocks on leaving the island for the armed services or for work in an area where caste restrictions were in force. One boy was put into a Negro regiment on entering the service, though action from Vineyard leaders had him transferred soon afterwards.
- A very rich vein of information on this score may be tapped from Richard L. Pease's Report of the commissioner appointed to complete the examination… of all boundary lines… at Gay Head. Boston: 1871. Pease was acting essentially as the hatchet man for the Governor of Massachusetts, to whom he was reporting.
- “Where they come from—down south somewhere?… Lot of 'em come from Jerusalem, you know…”
- In the technical sense developed by R. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, 111.: 1957.
- The speaker is one of the Mayhews, a retired Chilmark fisherman, who has as much claim to be a “typical old Yankee” as any person on Martha's Vineyard.
- In the following list of the variables in question, the up-island form is given first. Phonemic Inventory: /o/~/ou/ in road, toad, boat, whole… Phonemic Distribution: /ε/ only before intersyllabic /r/ instead of both /ε/ and /æ/; /r/~/ə/ in tautosyllabic position. Phonemic Incidence: /I~ε/ in get, forget, when, anyway, can…; /ε~æ/ in have, had, that; /λ~a/ in got. Phonetic Realization: [ɐI~aI] and [ɐu~au]; [ṛ~ɚ]; [π~ər] in work, person…; [ə~λ] in furrow, hurry…; [O-U~OU] in go, no…; [ii~Ii] and [uu~uu]; [Iə~I] and [εə~ε].
- The problem of sampling technique for linguistic variables is a difficult one at the moment. While we are sure that linguistic behavior is more general than the behavior usually traced by survey methods, we do not know how much more general it is, nor can we estimate easily now far we may relax the sampling requirements, if at all.
- In addition to the positive correlations discussed above, the explanation given is reinforced by certain negative results of alternate explanations. The educational level of the informants is not correlated significantly with degree of centralization. The distribution of sub-standard or archaic grammar does not correspond to the distribution of centralized forms.
- For example, two interviews with Ernest Mayhew, Chilmark fisherman, age 83, showed these results: first interview, CI /ai/ 0.67, CI /au/ 0.58; second interview, CI /ai/ 0.59, CI /au/ 0.40. The count for /au/ is based on about one-third as many items as for /ai/.
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