Naomi Nagy

Linguistics at U of T

NEW ENGLAND DIALECTS

Aims | Papers | Geographic Domain | More on N. England dialects | PIs | Instruments | "Live free or die"

Overview

We examine dialect variation in Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the bordering region of Quebec, looking particularly at variation that can be attributed to patterns of migration of various ethnic groups. After conducting a series of surveys across the area, we recorded speech from people who live throughout the region. Our goal is to decribe linguistic variation relating phonological, syntactic, etc. patterns to where people live, where they (or their ancestors) came from, as well as differences according to age, sex, class, and attitude, which would help us determine the direction and rate of any changes in progress.

Specific Aims

• To update the base of knowledge concerning the phonological dialect features, which have not been thoroughly examined since publication of the Linguistic Atlas of New England (1937), map out current isoglosses and dialect regions and compare them to those of LANE, where possible.

• To examine the effect of geographic features (i.e., barriers such as mountains and rivers) and compare them with that of political borders.

• To examine children’s and adolescents’ participation in their speech community by virtue of their acquisition of Vermont and New Hampshire dialect features as compared with that of their parents and other adults.

• To explore children’s participation in dialect change by examining their acquisition of new dialect features as opposed to those which appear to be becoming obsolete.

• To examine the effect of various ethnic influences characteristic of speakers in the region: Abenaki, English and French. We are particularly interested in exploring the influences on English of Abenaki and French, both of which died out in this region in the 1950's. French was spoken for a relatively short period of time, beginning in the mid 1800's, whereas Algonquian was spoken for 4000 years

• To determine the influence of expanding urban culture on older rural dialects.

Papers and presentations

Principal investigators

Naomi Nagy, Department of Linguistics , University of Toronto.
Julie Roberts, Department of Communication Sciences, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT.
Charles Boberg, Linguistics Department, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

Domain of the original survey

To date, we have collected and entered survey data from the following locations (# of responses is approximate):

Map of regions surveyed in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Location

(USA)

No. of Responses

Location

(Canada)

No. of Responses

NH

Quebec

Barrington

12

Montreal

72

Contoocook

12

Eastern Townships

12

Derry

10

Western provinces

Durham

6

Calgary, AL

6

Gorham

12

Saskatoon, SA

6

Keene

12

British Columbia

12

Londonderry

12

Ontario

Manchester

30

Brockville area

12

Nashua

18

Eastern

12

Newmarket

12

Ottawa

12

Rochester

12

Toronto

12

Sandwich, Tamworth

12

N. Brunswick

MA

Moncton

12

Amherst

12

Belmont, Northfield

12

Beverly

12

Various others

40

Billerica

6

Chelmsford

6

Milford

12

Boston

18

Sheffield

12

Haverhill

12

Central

24

north of Boston

24

Southern

12

ME

Saco

12

Learn more about this project.

 
email: naomi dot nagy at utoronto dot ca | Return to my home page