“Decline of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in western Lower Michigan:

Apparent-time evidence of a change in progress ”

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS) appears to be weakening as a distinguishing characteristic of the
Inland North. Recent studies have reported a reversal of this shift in younger speakers, both in the region’s urban
centers (e.g., Chicago in McCarthy (2010)) and in its fringe areas (e.g., Upstate New York in Dinkin (2009)).
Moreover, some studies (e.g. McCarthy (2010)) also report the low-back near-merger of /æ/ and /æ/ as well as
an allophonic split of /æ/ in pre-nasal vs. pre-plosive contexts. These observations suggest younger speakers are
exhibiting a more global reorganization of the vowel system, not a mere reversal of the NCVS.
Similar reports of NCVS’s decline have been made for Lower Michigan, where the NCVS was once firmly
established. For example, Wagner et al. (2016) describe Lansing (in central Lower Michigan) as exhibiting both
a reversal and reorganization of the NCVS. At present, however, no similar data is available for western Lower
Michigan, including Kent County (which is home to Grand Rapids, the second largest city in Michigan). Thus, the
present study explores evidence for a reversal and/or reorganization of the NCVS in Kent County.
Data was collected from 45 monolingual speakers of American English who have spent at least 80% of their life
in Kent County. The sample of speakers was stratified by sex, age (18-38, 39-59, and 60-83 years), and ethnic-heritage
(Dutch and non-Dutch). Participants read a four-paragraph passage containing 151 target vowels, all from lexically
stressed syllables. After manually demarcating each vowel token (N=6,729), formant measurements were extracted
and then normalized using the Labov procedure.
The results show two forms of evidence for the reversal of the NCVS: the lowering/retracting of /æ/ and the
retracting of /A/; see (1) and (2) in Figure 1a, respectively. In addition, the near-merger of /A/ and /O/ in (3),
plus the allophonic split of /æ/ (not shown), suggests a broader reorganization of the system. Moreover, it appears
females lead these changes. While middle- and younger-aged males also have a lowered and retracted /æ/, /A/,
and /O/, they lag behind the females; see Figure 1b. Overall, this study provides evidence that the reversal and
reorganization of the NCVS is not limited to central Lower Michigan but also extends to the west as well.

(a) Females (b) Males

Figure 1: Average F1/F2 values for /æ/, /A/ and /O/ as a factor of sex and age group.
References
Dinkin, A. J. (2009). Dialect Boundaries and Phonological Change in Upstate New York. Ph. D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania.

McCarthy, C. (2010). The Northern Cities Shift in Real Time: Evidence from Chicago. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in
Linguistics 15 (2), 101–110.
Wagner, S. E., A. Mason, M. Nesbitt, E. Pevan, and M. Savage (2016). Reversal and Re-Organization of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan.
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 14 (2), 172–179.