Date:  Fri, 17 Dec 1993 06:58:34 -0600

From:  mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU

Subject: Re: productive competence



On Thu, 16 Dec 1993, Donald M. Lance wrote:



> And how is it that so many ESL students make pen/pin distinctions when

> taught by pin/pin teachers? Perhaps even cot/caught?

> And kids who keep the home phonology rather than shifting to the teacher's

> model, or vice versa.

> And why young speakers from St. Louis manifested a lot of ae-raising twenty

> years ago but current ones don't.

>                 DMLance

>

On ae-rasing in St.Louis: Not an answer, but an observation: Remember Ed

Callary's article on ae-raising in n. Ill? That was 20 years ago. If

classical wave and/or continuum models represented any form of reality,

ae-rasing should be very salient in n. Ill. towns outside Chicago and in

previously lagging groups (i.e., males). I should behearing a lot more

/E[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]/ for ae among my Chicago students than I did 2 decades ago. ([AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]=schwa

is the convention here?) I know casual observations are suspect, but I

haven't noticed any evidence that this sound change is advancing as Ed's

or lots of other data would have predicted 20 and more years ago. Are my

observations right, I wonder? Ed, are you out there? What do you hear at

NIU?

    Anyway, my point is that whatever is going on St.L. may be going

in in and around Chicago. Perhaps one factor is demographic: with the

white diaspora to the suburbs, the very urban neighborhodds which nurtured

this sound change have vanished. Mall culture is not a neighborhood.

Cities like many of us grew up knowing are self-destructing, cf. the

recent Chicago

Trib series on white flight.



Tim