 This second e-lecture about the phonological dialects of North America looks at these dialects, which are listed here, including the reference dialect which we already defined in the north. It looks at these dialects not in terms of their individual sound systems, but in terms of currently ongoing sound changes. Thus, we will define the phonology of North American English in the context of the recently published Atlas of North American English. In fact, it was published in 2005. Now, the Atlas of North American English is based on a large telephone survey of the urbanized areas of all English-speaking people in North America. It was conducted by the world's leading sociolinguist, William Labov, between 1992 and 2003. So this was the research period. Now, together with his co-workers Sharon Ash and Charles Boeberg, this is Sharon Ash, this is Charles Boeberg, and this of course is Labov himself. Together with them he interviewed a total of almost 800 subjects from something like 300 communities, including Canada and Alaska. The interviews were based on a variety of interview techniques to obtain different types of data, keywords, minimal pairs and so on. And to obtain reliable results, the data was examined acoustically and the resulting maps with their isoglosses were based on features such as formant analysis and other types of acoustic measurements. As a result, the Atlas of North American English provided a continental map of regional North American phonological dialects based on ongoing sound changes. Now, this dialect map and its numerous additional maps that trace the logic of these dialect definitions were published not only in book form but also on the CD-ROM and well, I can proudly say that we were the team here in Marburg that created the CD-ROM for Labov's team. The following main regional dialects were defined on this map. Now, first of all, we have the big region of Canada, this red isogloss then represented in green, the west. The blue isogloss is essentially the north and then we have the midlands or the midland variety and finally surrounded by the big south isogloss, the south. Now, these are the main phonological dialects. The other areas, for example, here you find an area inside the south which is called Texas south or another one over here towards Georgia, the inland south and so on and so forth. Now, central to the new definition of these dialect boundaries or isoglosses are recent developments in the North American vowel system that is simple and complex vocalic changes. Let us start with an overview of the most prominent simple sound shifts. Now, here's a selection of such sound changes more are discussed in the atlas itself and in the unit on the virtual linguistics compass English in North America. Let's look at them in detail. Now, the first one is the fronting of OO and it applies to keywords such as 2 or 2 and it is a feature that applies to all varieties that are listed here so it is a unifying feature across the entire North American continent so the result would be something like 2 becomes 2, 2. The second one would be O, the fronting of O in keywords such as go and we find that this feature is primarily realized in the Midland and in the South. Diphthongel A in words such as say can be found in a large number of varieties for example in Canada, in the North, in the Midland, not in the South but in the West so instead of saying say you would still have a diphthongel version such as say. Very prominent is the low back merger in words such as caught versus caught where the two vowels, the two low back vowels or and or merge to become identical in especially the Canadian dialect and of course in the West. Now the South does not realize this type of sound change but in the North and in the Midland we find transitional effects so some speakers do realize this type of sound shift others don't. The pin-pen merger, the in-end merger by contrast only applies to the South so you have words such as pin and pen which become identical. The glide deletion of I is another typical feature of the South where words such as five realize the vowel not as a diphthong but they delete the off glide and so five becomes five. Canadian raising is a feature that not only applies to Canada but also to the North and the key word would be something like house where the onset of the ow is raised towards o so house becomes host. And finally we have the Canadian shift which is a typical Canadian feature and it can be found in items such as pack which where the vowel is retracted so the result would be something like pack. Thus we can find some sound changes that unify the entirety of North America for example the fronting of oo. Others apply to large areas diphthongle A and the low back merger and then we have several ongoing sound changes that can be clearly associated with particular areas such as the South or the North. Furthermore there are additional regionally restricted sound shifts such as the short ass split in the North and North East or the southern drawl in the South. Some of these sound shifts even constitute the starting point of more complex system effects the so-called chain shifts. Two of them are very prominent in North America. The so-called northern city shift and the southern shift. So let's start with the northern city shift. This is a chain shift affecting the short vowels of the English spoken in the United States regions bordering the Great Lakes. It is triggered by the general raising of air in man and that and back and then it is followed by a fronting of awe, a lowering of awe and then quite interestingly the A in words such as get, yes and read is centralized so the result will be something like yes and read and get. This of course pushes the wedge out of the way the central vowel and backs it so that words such as but will become but. Let us listen to an example. Now here's a good friend of ours, Dan Spencer from Detroit in Michigan. In fact he uses the same teaching method that of the inverted classroom. Let's listen first. I welcome all users to this website on linguistics. My name is Dan and I speak American English. Let's now listen to the stages of the northern city shift. I said the first stage is the raising of air to air, clear cut raising of air. The fronting of awe, cut, well it is very much fronted and then the lowering of awe, cut. The backing of air in words such as yes, yes. And finally the backing and lowering of awe, the wedge as in but. So but will be but, but you hear the backing of awe. So this is a nice example of the northern city shift. The southern shift is triggered by the removal of eye from the low central position. So in most southern states of the United States, the triggering movement is a monofungalization of eye which we've already seen here. So this was our example of the glide deletion of eye and it applies to the southern states. Now when this monofungalization of eye to are takes place, we can also observe a slight shift of the monofungal nucleus towards the front as it enters the subsystem of long and in gliding vows. Let us represent all these changes on a map. Now the first dialect area which we looked at was Canadian and with its main features the fronting of awe, Canadian raising, Canadian shift and the low back merger. We didn't represent defungal eye here because we confined ourselves to the four main features. By the way we're using here the colors of the isoglosses that are used in the atlas of North American English. Now here's the west as our next big dialect area and we see represented in green here that the fronting of awe and the low back merger are two features that this and the defungal eye, in fact all these three features are shared with Canadian. In the north we find again the fronting of awe, Canadian raising shared with Canada, defungal eye like in Canada as well and here as a special feature the northern cities shift. The next is the midland a transitional area where we don't find the low back merger but the fronting of awe and awe and defungal eye. And finally the south which is specific due to its realization of the southern shift, no low back merger but it is unified with the other dialect areas by the fronting of awe and the fronting of awe. Let's listen to a speaker from the south. Here is a speaker from Jackson in Missouri. Let's listen to some examples first. So here you typically find the monothongization of eye. The two vowels in caught and caught are not merged. Then we typically have the fronting of zoo. And finally the in and merger we listed earlier on in words such as chin and pen you would find no difference between the two vowels chin, pen, chin, pen. Well let's summarize. Just like in England we have no uniform dialect situation in North America. Love of study and that of his co-authors Sharon Ash and Charles Bulberg have shown that the examination of ongoing sound changes allows us to define regions in North America that otherwise would have been separated either politically by means of their sheer distance or by social aspects such as prestige. To represent these sound changes and the North American vowel systems most adequately a transcription system other than the one used for the varieties of English seems indispensable. This system which takes into account the binary character of North American vowels will be introduced in the e-lecture the North American vowel system.