Study questions:

1. What does the different behavior of women regarding the "Chicago Sound Shift" in Chicago and outside suggest about the role of gender differences in linguistic change?
2. What are the major patterns resulting from the dialectal spread of linguistic features or innovations? How can we use these patterns to explain prehistoric situations such as the one involving "satem-assibilation"?
3. Why is it difficult for linguists to be certain where the major dialect boundaries are situated in long-settled areas?
4. In what sense is it true that "every word has its own history"?
5. What is "dialect leveling", what motivates it, and what are its effects?
6. Be sure to understand what is meant by the following terms.

Terms:

Exercises (do at least two):

(1) Write a short paragraph on a section in the chapter on Dialect Geography and Dialectology that you found especially remarkable (strange, interesting, or fascinating).

(2) Latin initial groups of s + stop became es + stop in a large part of Romance by "prothesis"; compare Lat. schola 'school' : Span. escuela. (In most of French we find es + stop has further changed to ι + stop, as in Stand. French ιcole 'school'.) In the regional dialects shaded in the map below, we find forms without prothesis. Given the geographical distribution, what do you think is the explanation? (Hint: The shaded area in the middle of the French-speaking territory is located in a socially relatively isolated central mountain area.)

(3) Use the information on the following text, adapted with annotations from an article in the News-Gazette (27 Oct. 1994), to make a dialect map of Illinois. If you are from Illinois, indicate where you belong and add features that you are familiar with. Even if you are not from Illinois, you should be able to supplement the map by adding the feature for the Chicago sound shift which, as our textbook notes, has been spreading into the "collar counties" around Chicago and which even is spreading to Champaign-Urbana. In the map of Illinois given below, enter the approximate isoglosses of the features mentioned in the article and those you are familiar with.

Any more you keep hearing sentences around here beginning with words that used to end them. [This use of any more is a feature of "Midlands" speech and seems to go as far north in Illinois as about Kankakee.]

How's come we don't all talk the same all over the country? [How's come appears to be more of a northern feature; if you are from the north, are you familiar with it?]

It's a situation that needs explained. [This again appears to be a "Midlands" feature.]

Linguists can point out that central Illinois has remnants of its own peculiar pronunciation - "wash" comes with an "r" in the middle of it, "fish" rhymes with "niche" - If you ask to borrow a pin, somebody might hand you a pen. [These again are "Midlands"; they go along with opry, sody and the like.]

Our speech is in part determined by the history of immigration a century or more ago … Hordes of German, Dutch, and Scandinavian farmers plowed through the Midwest in the 19th century, leaving traces of an American dialect known as "Midlands" speech, which extends th[r]ough central Illinois, stretching from about Pittsburgh to the St. Louis area.

Why is it that "how's come" survives in a world where "why" would do? H. L. Mencken … listed several Midwestern phrases that seem to be direct translations from a foreign tongue.

For instance, if kids are heading to a video arcade, a boy might say "I want to go with". [This seems to be a feature of northern Illinois.]

To Mencken's Eastern ear, that rang false, but generations of Midlanders are unconsciously paying tribute to the word sense and word order in the Swedish phrase, "jag vill ga med". [Note also German ich will mit-gehen or ich gehe mit, lit. 'I go with'.]

Baron [Dennis Baron, Professor of English and Linguistics, University of Illinois] credits a German-Dutch-Amish influence for the distinctive use of the passive voice in the Midlands. The phrase "to be" is commonly dropped; for example, "the car needs washed", "the room needs cleaned".

Also distinct to the Midland swath is the use of what linguists call "any more without negative constraint". (For example: "Any more you hear people talking funny."

There's probably no such beast as an Illinois dialect. Baron points out that Illinois is more than 300 miles long from top to bottom, managing to be both north of Cape Cod and south of Richmond.

In the state there are three separate dialects: North Midland, Midland, and South Midland.

In the north of the state, Baron says, some speakers say "Ellenois" for "Illinois" and "melk" for "milk".

As we head south, its' more likely to hear "warsh" for "wash" … North-south distinctions that Baron cites include "faucet" (north) and "spigot" (south) … as well as "bag" (north) and "sack" (south). But the geographic lines for these usages are not impermeable, and a Southerner might drink from the same tap as a Northerner.

Rural and urban distinctions come into play as well as north-south. The distinctly southern "you'uns" has currency as far north as Arthur [which is located about 30 miles south of Champaign-Urbana], Baron says.

In the extreme south, some phrases might sound like a foreign language to [us], such as "I don't care to" to mean "I don't mind".

The extremely common pronunciation of "pin" for "pen" is one application of a wider rule for all vowels before nasals [it is a feature of Midlands and Southern speech]