Date:  Tue, 5 Dec 1995 10:33:49 -0600

From:  "Timothy C. Frazer" <mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU>

Subject: Re: Great Northern Vowel Shi**



On Tue, 5 Dec 1995, TERRY IRONS wrote:



> Now we have returned to a significant topic for consideration, pinheads

> and bubbleheads to be forgiven. What is it with all of this vowel

> shift shit? I think this list needs to engage itself in a serious

> discussion of Labov's hypothesis, rather than bowing down to that

> name as some god or something. He was simply somebody's student who

> lucked into a good situation, and so forth.

>

> I was sitting in the airport in Lexington, waiting for a plane and I

> eavesdropped on the perfect illustration of Mister Bill's famed

> NVS (read Northern Vowel Shift), when i heard this yankee guy say to some

> other guy, I lost my wallet in the bar last night. The concept of

> shift notwithstanding, the sentence is perfectly diagnostic for the

> crucial low vowels under consideration. Guess what went where. Perhaps

> I'll save it for some revelatory paper at some important conference.

>

> All of this rot and nonsense about vowel shifting buys into some major

> and yet unstated assumptions about the phonoloogy/phonetics of spoken

> Americn English. To say that a shift has occurred assumed that all

> speakers at some point participated in some basic system. I would

> suggest that some pronunciation patterns reflect not a change from this

> system but a persistence of some variety historically that the generative

> agenda, into which Mr. Bill buys wholsale, is not willing to acknowledge.

>

I'm not quite sure where you're going, Terry. Are you trying to say that

these vowel shifts do not exhibit the neogrammarian inevitability that L

and hsi students seems to ascribe to them? I would probably agree. But

I don't quite understand the intensity of your rhetoric.



Tim Frazer