Recent acoustic analyses examining English in the North American Great Lakes region
show that the area's characteristic vowel chain shift, the Northern Cities Shift (NCS), is …

This paper provides a unified phonologically motivated explanation for the movement of
trap, dress, and kit following the low-back merger in North American English (ie, the …

The Low-Back-Merger Shift (LBMS) is a major North American vowel chain shift spreading
across many disparate dialect regions. In this field-based study, we examine the speech of …

While the retraction of trap is found throughout the American West, it is primarily associated
with California and supposed Californian values in both the popular media and the ears of …

This paper examines the influence of economic change on the reversal of a sound change
in progress in Lansing, Michigan-the tensing of TRAP as part of the Northern Cities Shift …

As individuals position themselves and others in the social landscape, they use language to
convey and to understand the social meanings indexed by linguistic forms. Research taking …

In keeping with the work in this volume (Becker 2019), we investigate the relationship
between the Low Back Merger and the Low-Back-Merger Shift (LBMS), specifically to …

6. STRUCTURAL AND SOCIAL CORRELATIONS WITH THE LOW-BACK-MERGER SHIFT IN A
US MIDLAND COMMUNITY Page 1 6. STRUCTURAL AND SOCIAL CORRELATIONS WITH …

Prevelar raising/fronting has been documented as a “defining feature” of Pacific Northwest
English, yet its status in nearby California remains unclear. This study investigates prevelar …

This dissertation explores the nature of dialect contact, ethnic identity construction by
examining the extent to which the speech of second generation Chinese Americans …