Advances in Sociophonetics

22 William Labov

Children

Parents

% secondary stress on BAI

Age

0

0 10

10

20 30 40 50

20

30

40

50

60

70 Correlation of children

and parents: r = .61

PT

WD

JM LX

SD

LZ

CW

Mrs. W.

Mrs. M.Mrs. T.

Mr. & Mrs. D.

Mr. W.

Mr. X

Mrs. Z. Mr. T.

Figure 3. Percent secondary stress on future marker BAI of Tok Pisin by parents and

children (source: Sankoff & Laberge 1973 and G. Sankoff, personal communication).

2.4 The low back merger in Eastern Massachusetts

Children’s acquisition of a new change can also be observed quite clearly in Johnson’s

study of the spread of the low back merger in eastern Massachusetts (2009). In the

area of eastern Massachusetts around Boston, there is a complete merger of /o/ and

/oh/ in cot and caught, Otto and auto, etc. while in the region next to Rhode Island,

this distinction is maintained.^1 Figure 4 is Johnson’s map of the boundary that he

established between the merged region on the right and the unmerged region on the

left. He found that this boundary was stable across two or three adult generations but

when he studied families in the border towns of Attleboro and Seekonk, he found a

rapid shift towards the merger in the youngest generation.

Figure 5 shows the state of the merger among the children of the families

that Johnson studied in the town of Seekonk. The vertical axis registers Seekonk

children’s grade in school, and along the horizontal axis are grouped the various

families according to whether mothers, fathers, or both make the distinction. In

grades 2–6 there is a belt of 10 black symbols indicating complete merger, while

older children maintain the distinct system of the community and younger chil-

dren have not completely emerged from the influence of their parents.

1. As the captions indicate, the area to the west where /oh/ and /o/ are distinct shows the
   merger of /ah/ in father with /o/ in bother, while these are distinct in the area to the east where
   /o/ and /oh/ are merged.