Where are the dialects of American ENglish at anyhow?

by Preston
http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/78/3/235.pdf

Preston wishes Labov, Ash and Boberg had surveyed people who live outside major cities.

He proposes that there IS a Midland, but it is very skinny and begins north of Indianapolis!

Dialect Features Affecting the social mobility and economic opportunities of the disadvantaged in Fort Wayne, IN

thesis
by Charles Edward Billiard

1969

p. 107 "cultivated speakers distinguished /o/ and {backwards}/c/ in such words as cot and caught...WOrking class and lower-class Latin-Americans have difficulty attaining proper distinctions in the English vowel systems, particularly in pronouncing the phonemes, /I?, /ae/, /schwa/, u/,...."

p.205 --Southern and SOuth Midland forms were less tolerated than Northern forms (greazy rejected by prestigious groups)

The Speech of terre haute: a hoosier dialect study

by marvin dale carmony

thesis

p. xv "This study indicates, among other things, that 1 the vocabulary of Terre Haute is essentialy Midland, witha strong admixture of Northern and North Midland words, as well as a considerable proportion of Southern words; (2) the pronunciation of Terre Haute clearly reflects the city's settlement and cultural history, the prestige dialect of today stemming from the prestigiouis and dominat Yankee elemt of yesterday, while "inferior" speech is that containing tyhe most substantial number fo South Midland features; (3) the degree of both social stratification and racial segregation is considerable, judging form the number fo lexical, phonological, morphological and syntactic features with social and racial connotations."

Positive anymore in the midwest

by thomas e. murray
in "heartland" english

negative anymore is standard english, but some dialects also accept positive anymore. positive anymore has "little or no sociolinguistic significance". "various forms of positive anymore having unequal acceptance throughout the Midwest: all forms are evidently not considered equal in the mids of all users;..."

"continues to spread outward"

Linguistic COntroversies, VBE Structures, and Midwest Attitudes

by Timothy J. Riney
in heartland english

p 85 "...VBE and vernacular Midland share a lot of common grammatical structures."
p. 85-87 differences and similarities in Midland and VBE
Waterloo is 21% black

Subjects rated standard English, black accented Eng. with historical present, and VBE on an perceived intelligence scale.

Of course, VBE was associated with less intelligence, standard with highest intelligence, and black accent in the middle.

The Language of Yankee Cultural Imperialism

frazer
in in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest

p 62 IN and IL experienced tension between the N and S over political power
p 63-64 New Englanders moved entire congregations together Their culture stressed accumulation of wealth
p64-65 "want out" in a novel a Yankee schoolmistress heard this expression for the first time
p. 65 Inland N. became dialect of Midwest cities

"On Inland Northern and the Factors for Dialect Spread and Shift

donahue
in in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest

Inland Northern was once considered just a regional dialect, but is now conidered "basic and correct." "General American."

4 reasons for this:
p 52
1. industrial Great Lakes region increased in economic and social power
2. Webster's 2nd Intl Dictionary
3. NBC Pronouncing Dictionary
4. Mass media

p54 N. Inland is used by mass culture, the dialect used away form family
p56-57 people in the 30s went to movies and learned inland n. dialect. Like finishing school
p57-58 inland N. in decline and N Midland on the rise due to "collapse of the rust belt" and social factors

Two Heartland Perceptions of language variety

by Preston
in in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest

Hoosierss have linguistic insecurity from their association with the South
p46-47 insecure areas such as IN perceive themselves as "exaggerated isolation"

Problems in Midlwest English: Introduction and Overview

in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest
by Timothy C. Frazer

p2 Inland Northern sometimes mistaken as General American
p3-4 Northern-Midland boundary thru Indiana. Debate about where S. and N. boundaries are
p9 Terre Haute IN--a Hoosier apex but N regional vocab
p. 267 Where are the boundaries of the Midwest? North Central, according to Ling. Atlas

Indiana dialects in their historical setting

by Marvin Carmony

p9 south and north immigrants to IN
p11 Hoosiers are "isolated and self-sufficient"
p15 older dialectology
p18 N. and S. divided, but some words throughout IN
p19 North, South, and Midland with N.Midland and S.Midland
p26 there was a fuzzier line between dialects for freshmen in 1969
p28 southern march of northern words
p28-29 southernmost IN is seperate still
p 32-33 northern forms winning out
p38 "melk" and "manella"

Afrcan American Vernacular English in "Middletown"

by Huang

Muncie has a small African American population which must interact with whites on a daily basis.

p. 245 "this study has found linguistic convergence of Muncie AAVE with WVE phonologically in the last two decades."

p. 252 also syntactically

p. 253 "a linguistic change in which Muncie AAVE is converging with WVE both syntactically and phonologically" due to linguistic accomodation and close daily contact

contrast to Labov 1986, where in a city setting the dialects are diverging

American Dialects: a manual for actors, directors and writers

by Lewis Herman and Marguerite Shalett Herman

p. 298 the Midwestern Dialect is spoken by most in IN.
p. 299 the dialect has musical notes, lilting, cogitation

This view is corroborated by the BBC site and by the Midwestern guy in American Tongues

"The Midlands: The Upper South and Lower North Dialects"

Craig M. Carver

in American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography

The Midlands do not have their own dialect, but only subdialecs of the Upper South and Lower North. Indiana is basically cut in half.

Appalachian English in Southern Indiana?

by Brian Jose

Montgomery (1989, 2007) proposed three standards for establishing that dialects are genetically related: historical connection, explicit quantitative description of plural verbal -s, and the plural verbal -s was compared to dialects of Appalachian English.
He also gave evidence that the patterns are not simply "universals" of english vernaculars.
Jose also investigated other aspects of the grammar.