Introduction 7the embedding, but the shifted respondents relocated their crossover points in
line with the expectations, moving the crossover from 4.5 to 5.4, a strong sug-
gestion that, at least in part, the normalization routine involved in by speakers
is dependent on both speaker system and other contextual clues (e.g., Lade-
foged and Broadbent 1957).
In Chapter 10 Preston continues the search begun in Chapter 9 by asking
not only if locals understand locally changing systems better but also if demo-
graphic subdivisions of speakers within those areas have advantages and if
the linguistic units of the shift itself play a role. By presenting shifted NCCS
single-item tokens, he is able to show that groups more centrally associated
with the shift are indeed better comprehenders of these tokens, although the
best are far below the comprehension scores for such studies as Peterson
and Barney (1952) and Hillenbrand et al. (1995). This study also shows that
misunderstood vowels are overwhelmingly understood in the “pre-shift” or
conservative position, not in the shifted position actually used by the most
advanced of these respondents. For example, when a word like “bat” is mis-
understood, it is taken to be “bet,” even though, in the NCCS, “bet” will have
moved to “bat” or “but,” and the closest vowel to the shifted “bat” would be
that of stable /e/ (“bait”) or shifted Ԍ/ (“bit”). Finally, this chapter suggests
that a number of characteristics of individual vowels (recency in the shift,
historical complexity) also contribute to degree of misunderstanding.
Chapter 11 is the most exploitative of the speech science inÀ uence on
sociophonetics and reports on a number of studies that clearly show the
importance of implicit knowledge, explicit knowledge, and social identity
in speech perception. Niedzielski illustrates this by reporting on studies
such as Koops, Gentry, and Pantos 2009, which discusses the undoing of the
previously merged /Ԍ/-/͑/ before nasals in Houston, Texas, USA. Production
studies show that, along with shifting most other vowels away from South-
ern variants, many younger speakers now make the “pin-pen” distinction.
To test awareness of this change, they asked hearers to indicate what word
a speaker produced, from a set of words such as “rinse” or “rents,” while
their eye movements were tracked. The decision was inÀ uenced by a picture
presented in the middle of the screen, along with the “rinse” and “rents”
choices and two unrelated words. In some cases, the picture was that of a
younger speaker, and, indicating awareness of the distinction being made
by that group, respondents showed little or no eye movement back and forth
between the two reasonable choices when “rinse” was spoken; they focused
on “rinse.” When the accompanying picture was that of an older person
and the pronunciation was “rinse,” however, the respondents indicated an
awareness of age as a factor in the merger by eye movements that went