Date: Wed, 12 Oct 1994 00:48:43 -0400 From: PPATRICK[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.BITNET Subject: Re: Phila. dialect As other folks pointed out re: Philly dialect studies, Labov and a whole list of collaborators have written a whole slew of stuff. But a starting point (for white, as opposed to black, Philly vernacular) would be "The Exact description of the speech community", which painstakingly describes the precise phonetic conditioning of the /ae/ to /aeh/ split. But it also briefly notes and reviews other Philly studies, from the 1940s on, including Ferguson, Cofer etc. Unfortunately I don't know where it's published, I only have a mid-80s manuscript. Anybody know the proper ref? "Three Dialects of English" also has some Philly stuff (pub. I think in Penny Eckert's edited NWAVE volume, 1992?)... --plp