Exploring Midland Dialect of American English: The Change in Progress
University
Shawnee State University
Major
Culture and Media Studies
Student Type
Undergraduate Student
Presentation Types
Oral Presentation (Live)
Keywords:
Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Simplification
Abstract
This presentation takes a narrative approach to the study of modern American dialectology learned through the digitized recordings of speakers in randomized samplings. It focuses on the southern variety of the Midland dialect of American English (AE) spoken in Portsmouth, OH and its vicinity. The paper attempts to analyze the recordings of an 80+ year-old speaker who has always lived in Southern Ohio rural community and shows very interesting patterns of vowel shifts causing various levels of vowel mergers before nasal and other sounds. Other interesting features of the dialect include glide retention in diphthongs, vowel fronting and backing, some syntactic simplifications, and morphological regularizations. Initially we review Great Vowel Shift (GVS) from the 15th century UK and then show the current vowel shifts that are underway in Northern Cities of Ohio. The presentation is very interesting and entertaining even for those who has no or minimal background in Sociolinguistics.
Human and Animal Subjects
yes
IRB or IACUC Approval
yes
Faculty Mentor Name
Leila Lomashvili
Faculty Mentor Department
English and Humanities
Recommended Citation
Jarrells, Cainen, "Exploring Midland Dialect of American English: The Change in Progress" (2025). Celebration of Scholarship. 1.
https://digitalcommons.shawnee.edu/cos/2025/session3/1
Location
LIB 204
Exploring Midland Dialect of American English: The Change in Progress
LIB 204
This presentation takes a narrative approach to the study of modern American dialectology learned through the digitized recordings of speakers in randomized samplings. It focuses on the southern variety of the Midland dialect of American English (AE) spoken in Portsmouth, OH and its vicinity. The paper attempts to analyze the recordings of an 80+ year-old speaker who has always lived in Southern Ohio rural community and shows very interesting patterns of vowel shifts causing various levels of vowel mergers before nasal and other sounds. Other interesting features of the dialect include glide retention in diphthongs, vowel fronting and backing, some syntactic simplifications, and morphological regularizations. Initially we review Great Vowel Shift (GVS) from the 15th century UK and then show the current vowel shifts that are underway in Northern Cities of Ohio. The presentation is very interesting and entertaining even for those who has no or minimal background in Sociolinguistics.
