Language in Society 32, 451485. Printed in the United States of America DOI: 10.

10170S0047404503324017

The /ay/ diphthong in a Marthas Vineyard community: What can we say 40 years after Labov?
RENE BLAKE Department of Linguistics New York University New York, NY 10003-6860 renee.blake@nyu.edu mqj6193@nyu.edu MEREDITH JOSEY English Department Utica College of Syracuse University Utica, NY 13502-4892 mjosey@utica.edu
ABSTRACT

This article revisits Labovs (1962, 1972a) germinal sociolinguistic work on Marthas Vineyard speech, providing a synchronic analysis of the 0ay0 diphthong in words like right and time, and, in turn, a diachronic perspective on a sound change in progress. Labov observed that the first element of the 0ay0 diphthong was raised in the speech of Marthas Vineyarders, particularly fishermen, and he correlated it with social factors like identity (i.e., local heritage) and resistance to summer visitors. The present authors provide a sociolinguistic analysis of 0ay0 from a new set of data collected in a Marthas Vineyard speech community. The outcome suggests a change in the linguistic pattern observed by Labov, which the authors argue is linked to socio-economic restructuring and resulting ideological changes taking place on the island. The acoustic and social factors are analyzed using VARBRUL to show how 0ay0 variation today patterns with various internal and external factors found to be salient in Labovs earlier study. (Sociolinguistics, linguistic variation, sound change, dialectology, Marthas Vineyard)*
INTRODUCTION

Intrinsic to the field of sociolinguistics is the inquiry into real-time diachronic change in language communities, which is often explained by transformations in a set of social dynamics. A key proponent of this procedure, William Labov, imprinted the field with his early research on a sound change in Marthas Vineyard,1 situated 3 miles off the mainland Massachusetts coast, shown in Figure 1. Yet today, 40 years after Labovs (1962, 1972a) momentous work, there has been no study that gives perspective on how the language and social structure of Mar 2003 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045003 $12.00

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figure 1: The island of Marthas Vineyard on the northeastern coast of the United States. thas Vineyard has evolved since the 1960s. Here we attempt to rectify this by offering present-day data with which to correlate Labovs findings. We painstakingly perform analyses that parallel those found in Labovs work, but we also take into account more recent methodological and theoretical developments, both acoustic and social, that have been incorporated into sociophonetic studies. Although Labov (1962, 1972a) analyzes phonetic variation within the first element of the diphthongs 0ay0 2 and 0aw0 in several speech communities of Marthas Vineyard, in this article, we focus our analysis on the 0ay0 diphthong alone. This diphthong is an appealing linguistic variable for studying social 452
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and linguistic variation in Marthas Vineyard for several reasons. First, it occurs abundantly in speech. Second, despite being salient to the linguist, it is below the level of consciousness for most native 3 Vineyarders, thereby limiting the chances of conscious distortion by the interviewee. And third, it has great phonetic latitude that is outside of the merging range with other vowels (Labov 1972a, Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1996, Josey 1997). Furthermore, it occurs more than twice as frequently as 0aw0 in Labovs Marthas Vineyard database (1972a:14), and it has a longer history of well-established marked behavior (i.e., raising) among Vineyarders. Labov (1972a:9) uses the term centralization to refer to the raising of the first element of the 0ay0 and 0aw0 diphthongs into a higher vowel space (e.g., for 0ay0, [r@yt] for [rayt]). He notes (1972a:10) that the nucleus of the 0ay0 diphthong in English was centralized as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that this continued well into the nineteenth century (cf. Jespersen 1927:234; Kkeritz 1953:216; Kurath & McDavid 1951, Maps 2627). Furthermore, the Linguistic Atlas of New England (L ANE ) registers [@I] throughout the rural areas of New England, and in western New York (Kurath et al. 1941). In the mid-twentieth century, it disappears from the Midland but shows up regularly in the Upper and Lower South before voiceless consonants. Although, as Labov mentions, centralized 0ay0 is heard on Marthas Vineyard and in neighboring Nantucket and Cape Cod, it appears to have been moderate in the early part of the twentieth century. He argues that the four Marthas Vineyard informants in the 1933 L ANE survey have a lower degree of centralization than the informants in his sample three decades later (Labov 1972a:24). The six communities in which Labov conducted research are Aquinnah (or Gay Head), Chilmark, Tisbury, Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs, and Edgartown, also shown in Figure 1.4 He observes that all Marthas Vineyard speakers generally tend to use a more raised vowel, i.e., [@], for the first element of the 0ay0 diphthong instead of using the vowel [a], which is associated with the mainland (or more specifically, the Southeast New England standard variant). Within the island, the greatest degree of centralization is found in the community of Chilmark in the southwestern section of Marthas Vineyard, up-island in Figure 1. Moreover, within Chilmark, the highest degree of 0ay0 centralization is found among the middle-aged fishermen. Labov (1972a:29) attributes the origins of this increased centralization found on the Vineyard to the Chilmark fishermen, a closeknit group in a community of residents often identified as old-time Yankees, a reference to the first maritime English settlers on the island in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Labov (1972a:29) references Chilmark as the last vestige of a fishing community on the Vineyard. He argues that Chilmark fishermen have a distinct status characterized by their independence, skill, courage, and strength, and their conviction that the island of Marthas Vineyard belongs to the local fishing community. Furthermore, they are the individuals most stubbornly opposed
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to the incursions of summer people. They also serve as a reference group for members of the community, particularly the younger generations, for whom the fishing industry is a memory of whaling captains of centuries past (37). In his sociolinguistic analysis, Labov correlates the fishermens high instantiations of the more centralized 0ay0 variant with several factors. Greatest among these factors are the fishermens positive orientation and loyalty to the island, a consequence of their local heritage. Furthermore, although summer visitors have become essential to the economic survival of the Vineyard, the fishermen perceive them as a disturbance to the social equilibrium of the local community. This is seen as motivating the observed linguistic resistance to their presence. Besides the influence of extralinguistic factors on the centralization of the 0ay0 diphthong, Labov finds that internal linguistic particularly segmental or phonological constraints significantly affect the behavior of 0ay0 in his Marthas Vineyard data. For the present study, we reexamine the behavior of 0ay0 in present-day Chilmark speech and provide an acoustic analysis of a new set of data. In the sociolinguistic analysis, we consider the direction of a linguistic change in progress in a Marthas Vineyard speech community, and we suggest how this change may be connected to larger social phenomena that have occurred over the past decades. Forty years ago, Labov asked why the centralized 0ay0 diphthong had been left after the Great Vowel Shift. Today, we ask what are the phonetic qualities of the 0ay0 diphthong, and what motivates its present state.
THE COMMUNITY AND SAMPLE

Because Chilmark is the community where Labov observed the highest rate, or most marked degree, of centralization among Marthas Vineyard speakers, it seems to be the most obvious point of entry for a subsequent study. Thus, the data for this study come from tape-recorded sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Chilmark by Josey 1997. In order to collect data, Josey resided in Chilmark during the spring and early summer months of 1997, 1999, and 2000, prior to the onslaught of seasonal tourists, commonly referred to as summer people. She worked as an au pair in the home of a native Chilmark family with deeply rooted maritime ties, who became her host family on the island. According to one family member, New Englanders are pretty private people, but Vineyarders are even more so. Therefore, in order to gain further access into one of the insular communities of Marthas Vineyard, Josey applied Milroys 1987 social network techniques. In this case, the host family served as the entre to an extended network of local Chilmark families and individuals. Although Labov 1962 encountered a yearly Chilmark population that was less than one-third its present size of approximately 900 year-round local residents,5 similarities still exist. As in Labovs study, the Chilmark informants with whom Josey interacted claim to trace their ancestry to the original seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Protestant settlers. Moreover, they self-identify as belonging 454
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to the middle class, and they are lifelong residents of Marthas Vineyard, having attended the local public schools. Thus, we argue that in Chilmark one can still find evidence of the close-knit (e.g., bound by historical ties and a sense of native belonging) community that Labov entered some 35 years earlier. And, as several decades before, the economy of present-day Chilmark is undergoing a continuing change from being based on a once-thriving fishing industry to being sustained by tourism. Despite the compelling similarities to Labovs earlier ethnographic findings, however, there is an increasing trend for mainlanders to reside year-round in the Chilmark community, as well as throughout the Vineyard, the consequences of which we explore here. The sample used for this study comprises 16 Chilmark men between the ages of 17 and 82, with professions including fisherman, fireman, real estate agent, blacksmith, carpenter, caretaker, and student. The informants, similar in age to those in Labovs study, are separated into three groups older, middle, and younger which generate a time dimension for this study. The age delineations are created based on the 0ay0 centralization patterns observed by Labov (1972a:22) for various generations of speakers. Older informants are categorized as those above age 60,6 the middle informants are between their mid-30s and late 50s, and the younger informants are from 18 to 34 years of age. Although we recognize that the inclusion of women would lend sophistication and complexity to the social and linguistic analysis, our research is limited to men in order to parallel closely the work of Labov and earlier studies. The strength of the relationships among the 16 informants in this study is displayed in Table 1, which gives the reader insight into the degrees of the interaction among the informants.7 As noted in the key, four degrees of intensity are delineated. A first-degree (1) or intense relationship is one in which two individuals communicate on a daily basis at work, school, or home. In a second-degree (2) or strong relationship, the individuals communicate on a regular basis. A third-degree (3) relationship indicates that the individuals consider each other friends and occasionally spend time or talk together. Finally, a fourth-degree (4) relationship is one in which each individual knows who the other is to the extent that they can identify each other, as well as their respective social networks. A negative ( ) sign at the beginning of a numerical mark indicates a relationship that has become acrimonious at some point in time. It is evident that every informant has a sense of who the others are, and a number of them are a part of the same close social network. Perhaps most salient in Table 1 is the fact that the strongest relationships are found among individuals affiliated with the fishing industry, principally defined by strong relationships with one another. This contrasts with the relationships that the men outside the fishing industry have with one another, which are primarily at the acquaintance level. The relationships between fishermen and members of the non-fishing community are generally at the levels of friend or acquaintance. It is evident from Table 2 that within generations, there is a tendency for relaLanguage in Society

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TABLE 1.

Degree of interaction among Chilmark informants by occupation.

Joey 44 F 2 2 4 2 X 1 3 4 4 3 2 4 3 4 3 4 Sten 38 F 2 2 4 2 1 X 3 4 4 3 2 3 3 4 3 4 Pook 37 F 3 3 -3 3 3 3 X 2 4 4 3 4 3 2 2 4 Smil 75 N 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 X 4 1 4 4 4 4 4 4 Flap 65 N 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 X 4 4 4 3 4 3 4 Smit 43 N 3 3 4 3 3 3 4 1 4 X 4 3 4 4 4 4 Star 39 N 3 1 4 3 2 2 3 4 4 4 X 3 4 4 4 4 Carl 35 N 3 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 3 3 X 4 4 4 4 Jerry 23 N 3 3 3 1 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 X 3 1 4 Haro 21 N 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 X 4 4 4 4 3 X 3 2 Tod 18 N 3 3 4 1 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 1 3 X 3 Maly 17 N 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 3 X

INFORMANT AGE OCCUPATION Coti Lou Wes Grey Joey Sten Pook Smil Flap Smit Star Carl Jerry Haro Tod Maly

Coti 82 F X 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 4

Lou 77 F 2 X 1 2 2 2 3 2 3 3 1 3 3 4 3 4

Wes 76 F 2 1 X 3 4 4 -3 3 4 4 4 3 3 4 4 4

Grey 57 F 2 2 3 X 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 4 1 4

Relationship key: 1 intense relationship, 2 strong relationship, 3 Occupation key: F Fishing industry, N Non-fishing Industry

friendly relationship, 4

acquaintance, -

acrimonious relationship

TABLE 2.

Degree of interaction among Chilmark informants by generation.

Flap 65 3 3 4 4 X 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 3 4 Grey 57 2 2 3 3 3 X 2 3 3 2 3 3 1 4 1 4 Joey 44 2 2 4 4 4 2 X 3 2 1 3 4 3 4 3 4 Smit 43 3 3 4 1 4 3 3 X 4 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 Star 39 3 1 4 4 4 3 2 4 X 2 3 3 4 4 4 4 Sten 38 2 2 4 4 4 2 1 3 2 X 3 3 3 4 3 4 Pook 37 3 3 -3 4 4 3 3 4 3 3 X 4 3 2 3 4 Carl 35 3 3 3 4 4 3 4 3 3 3 4 X 4 4 4 4 Jerry 23 3 3 3 4 3 1 3 4 4 3 3 4 X 3 1 4 Haro 21 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 4 3 X 3 2 Tod 18 3 3 4 4 3 1 3 4 4 3 3 4 1 3 X 3 Maly 17 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 3 X

INFORMANT AGE Coti Lou Wes Smil Flap Grey Joey Smit Star Sten Pook Carl Jerry Haro Tod Maly KEY: 1

Coti 82 X 2 2 2 3 2 2 3 3 2 3 3 3 4 3 4

Lou 77 2 X 1 2 3 2 2 3 1 2 3 3 3 4 3 4

Wes 76 2 1 X 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 -3 3 3 4 4 4

Smil 75 2 2 3 X 4 3 4 1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

intense relationship, 2

strong relationship, 3

friendly relationship, 4

acquaintance, -

acrimonious relationship

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tionships to be at the friendly level, although the older generation also has a high degree of strong relationships with one another. The relationships between young people and those of the other generations are generally as acquaintances. The middle and older generations, however, also have substantial numbers of friendly relationships with each other. Later, we explore the extent to which the nature of these relationships correlates with the linguistic findings. More specifically, we assess whether closer relationships among fishermen, as well as among older and middle generations, affect the sociolinguistic dynamics surrounding the behavior of 0ay0 in Chilmark. The 1960 census shows the Marthas Vineyard that Labov entered had a total labor force of 2,000 people, with 2.5%, or approximately 50 individuals, engaged in the fishing industry (Labov 1972a:28). However, as Labov notes (29), the low number of fisherman listed on the census does not take into consideration the far larger number of individuals supplementing their income as part-time fishermen.8 Ironically, the present-day information on the number of fishermen on the Vineyard, estimated at 299 individuals, is misleading because it includes all individuals (e.g., mechanics, line pullmen) employed by the big conglomerates that have largely replaced the local fishing industry.9 The fishermen interviewed by Josey, as well as those comprising the greater Chilmark community, are generally self-employed and therefore feel compelled to engage with outsiders, or more specifically with tourists coming into their communities. One of the fishermen notes, Theyre what definitely keeps my business open. Id say that the majority of summer people are just really sweet and interested in Vineyard life, always asking questions. I dont find it annoying. Another fisherman recognizes the almost apathetic sentiments of Chilmarkers toward the annual visitors to their community, stating, We all know that by June 1st, the floodgates open and the tourists are here. Its something we expect, neither resisting, or welcoming [it]. It is just part of Vineyard life. This does not, however, suggest that tensions do not arise with the advent of summer visitors. This is apparent from one of the non-fisherman, who has the specific complaint that they [summer people] act like they own this place, and they dont. I put a rope across my property and people still walk over it. Burns me up. Present-day Chilmarkers feel that the number of traditional fishermen on the island has steadily declined over the years, to the extent that the younger generations do not conceive of fishing as a career option. Therefore, it is no surprise that today, fishermen are found among the older and middle-aged populations in Chilmark and Marthas Vineyard more generally, but not in the younger populations. The range of potential career options for the younger generations seems to have expanded over time, as access to mainlanders and to mainland life itself has increased. According to one younger community member, Its [Chilmark] stifling, boring sometimes. You run out of things to do, you see the same old people all the time and hanging around the dock gets mighty tiring. I wanna 458
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go to California, and play professional basketball. Im not going to get to do that if I stay here. His sentiments are echoed more generally by one of his peers, who says, You [young people] have to get off the island, at least for a little bit, or you start to develop the island mentality.Anyone our age who stays and doesnt get off for a while is seen as a deadbeat. 10 In the middle and older generations, there is a mixture of men who have left and returned to the island for limited spans of time and those who remained behind. While the younger generation are more resolute about their desire for experiences and opportunities outside on the mainland, the middle and older generations are more acquiescent about their lives on the Vineyard. According to a fisherman in the older generation, Ive never left this island. Dont need to, I have everything I want right here. This is home. One of the middle-aged nonfishermen who left the island temporarily as a young man feels similarly, noting, I wouldnt live anywhere else. I grew up here and had the best childhood. I want my kids to have the same. What remains to be seen is whether, over time, the younger generation will return to the local orientation expressed by their older community members.
M E T H O D S O F S O C I O P H O N E T I C A N A LY S I S

We apply multiple instrumental techniques for the sociophonetic analysis; some are complementary to those used by Labov, and others are supplementary and include the application of relatively recent methodological developments (e.g., Syrdal & Gopal 1986; Thomas 1991, 2001, 2002; Labov 1994). The data for this study were recorded using high-resolution tapes on a Sony DAT recorder attached to an omnidirectional lavaliere microphone. The tokens collected were taken from the middle of the sociolinguistic interviews,11 which generally lasted for 2 hours. Spectrographic measurements were made with Praat 4.0 using wide-band spectrograms, with signals digitized at a sampling rate of 4.4 kHz and a low pass filter at 2.2 kHz. We measured the first and second formant, F1 and F2, of the 0ay0 nuclei in addition to eleven other vowels, including 0i, I, ey, E, , u, U, o, O, , 20, which serve as the anchors in which to spatially locate 0ay0. Both monophthongs and diphthongs were measured from the center of the F1 steady states, and if there was no discernible steady state for the diphthong, values were taken where F2 shows a change in trajectory for the first element. For 0ay0, tokens were taken from onesyllable words. In the case of anchor vowels, tokens were taken from monosyllabic words as well as from the primary stressed syllables in multisyllabic words.12 Approximately 40 tokens of 0ay0 and 10 tokens of each anchor vowel were measured for all 16 speakers, with no more than 2 tokens of the same lexical item. This procedure generated 2,400 tokens total, with 150 tokens per speaker. Formant measurements were used to generate scatterplots for the individuals in this study,13 which allowed us to examine the phonetic spacing of 0ay0 in
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relation to other vowels, and consequently to discuss its current phonetic quality. To approximate a comparison with Labovs findings, we plotted all the 0ay0 nuclei together and located them within the phonetic scales he developed. We also utilized his indexing application to determine further the nature of the sound change that may have occurred on the Vineyard over the past four decades. Additionally, the VARBRUL 14 statistical analysis package was used to assess the linguistic and social constraints on the present-day data. Finally, we applied a normalization procedure that reduced interspeaker differences, allowing us to garner further information about the dialectal, as opposed to individual, characteristics of 0ay0 for our sample.
A C O U S T I C R E S U LT S A N D D I S C U S S I O N

Range of /ay/ variation In order to determine the phonetic range of the 0ay0 nucleus, we generated individual scatterplots for the informants. Figures 2 through 5 are the graphs for four representative Chilmark speakers. The F1 and F2 phonetic values of the vowels are plotted on a grid reflecting the cardinal vowel system; F1 is displayed along the y-axis, increasing in vowel height, and F2 is displayed along the x-axis, increasing in terms of backness. The plots include variants of the 0ay0 nuclei within several contrasting phonological environments,15 in addition to the means of the anchor vowels. In the case of 0ay0, there are tokens in what are considered to be raising (e.g., voiceless obstruents) as well as non-raising (e.g., voiced obstruents and pauses) following phonological environments.16 The graphs show the three salient types of phonetic distinctions for the Chilmark sample, with the 0ay0 nuclei ranging from a low phonetic space to an upper mid phonetic region. For example, in Fig. 2, the 0ay0 nuclei for the 43year-old non-fisherman are located primarily in the lower front and centered vowel 0a0 space, with no distinction by following phonological environment. In contrast, the cluster of 0ay0 variants for the 44-year-old fisherman in Fig. 3 is slightly more raised and central, again with no obvious phonological difference. The undifferentiated clustering in Figs. 2 and 3 lay in contrast to Fig. 4. In Fig. 4, the 0ay0 nuclei followed by voiceless obstruents for the 75-year-old non-fisherman are clustered as a group in a generally higher and more fronted position than those in other phonological environments. This differentiated clustering by phonological context is also evident for the 35-year-old non-fisherman in Fig. 5; however, in this case the 0ay0 nuclei are raised into a higher mid phonetic space. As the results in Figs. 4 and 5 indicate, when phonological distinctions are apparent, there is a trend toward 0ay0 nuclei being more raised when followed by voiceless consonants than in other positions, albeit with some overlap. The phenomenon in Figs. 4 and 5 is the well-documented process of Canadian Raising, which is broadly defined in the sociolinguistics literature as the raising of the nuclei of 0ay0 and 0aw0 before voiceless consonants. The observ460
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figure 2: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus by following phonetic environment for Smit, born 1957.

able fronting of the 0ay0 nuclei that accompanies raising is explained by Thomas (2001:55), who notes that these processes are virtually indistinguishable because both are products of truncation of the onset of the diphthong, and they ordinarily occur together. Thomas (p.c.) also provides finer distinctions for the definition of Canadian Raising, such that voiceless consonants are contrasted with voiced consonants and pauses, and not with nasals and laterals, environments with unpredictable effects on vocalic quality.17 While Canadian Raising is a term coined by Chambers 1973 in the early 1970s, it has been associated with Canada since Joos 1942. Chambers (1973:12) explains that the term serves as a mnemonic device and is not bound by a particular geographical region. He does state, however, that the appropriateness of the term resides in the relative role the rule plays in Canadian English, where its effect is the most identifiable trait of the dialect. 18
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figure 3: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus by following phonetic environment for Joey, born 1953.

In Labovs Marthas Vineyard data, phonetic conditioning, particularly regarding the following phonological environment, is primary in the discussion of 0ay0 centralization.19 He proposes at the consonant series in (1) in the order of their favorability toward centralization:
(1) Following grammatical environment favoring 0ay0 centralization (Labov 1972a:20) 0t, s; p, f; d, v, z; k, T, D;
20

; l, r; n; m0

Furthermore, as shown in (2), he provides a table of articulatory distinctions by following consonants along a continuum that indicates the extent of favoring for 0ay0 centralization: 462
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figure 4: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus by following phonetic environment for Smil, born 1922.

(2) Following phonological effects on 0ay0 centralization Not favoring centralization (a) sonorants (b) nasals (c) voiced (d) velars (e) fricatives zero final labials Favoring centralization obstruents orals voiceless apicals stops

Although there is some discrepancy between (1) and (2), with the voiceless obstruents 0k,T0 in (1) showing a less favoring effect than the voiced obstruents 0d,v,z0, the general trends in (2) still hold. Whereas Canadian Raising, represented by the rule formulated in (3), is regularized, the raised variants in Marthas Vineyard speech can occur in all environments, although there is a tendency for following voiceless consonants to favor such occurrence, as evidenced in (1) and (2).
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figure 5: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus by following phonetic environment for Carl, born 1965.

(3) Canadian Raising (Chambers 1973:116) V tense [ low]0 ___GLIDE C voice

According to Chambers (1973:1323), The key similarity between Canadian Raising and the process observed in Marthas Vineyard, then, is that the rule of Canadian Raising states the most probable environments for raising on Marthas Vineyard rather than the invariant environments. In other words, the Canadian Raising rule is directional for the linguistic behavior of 0ay0 in Marthas Vineyard speech. If we consider the present-day Chilmark data, it is evident that Canadian Raising continues to have descriptive relevance for Marthas Vineyard speech. This is visible in Fig. 6, a graph with the means of the 0ay0 variants by following phonological environment for all 16 speakers in this study. These measurements are plotted along with the means of the anchor vowels for all speakers. Again, there is a discernible raise 464
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figure 6: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus by following phonetic environment in relation to anchor vowels for Chilmark speakers.

in vowel space for the voiceless obstruents when compared to the other environments. Eleven of the 16 Chilmark informants show some form of Canadian Raising. More specifically, all five of the older speakers show Canadian Raising, whereas three of the six middle-aged and three of the five younger speakers demonstrate the phenomenon. There appears to be no substantial differentiation by profession or social network, but Figs. 7 and 8 show that the degree of Canadian Raising is greater for the men not affiliated with the fishing industry than for those who are. Nonetheless, the findings suggest that the variable presence of the Canadian Raising rule in the speech of Vineyarders today follows the same directional pattern observed by Labov for his data decades earlier. This lends support to the presupposition of Labovs (1972b:275) uniformitarian principle, which posits, The forces operating to produce linguistic change today are the same kind and order of magnitude as those which operated in the past (cf. Labov 1965:93; Chambers 1973:130). Later we will consider what
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figure 7: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus by following phonetic environment with anchor vowels for fishing industry Chilmarkers.

these parallel findings, along with others, indicate about linguistic change and stability on the Vineyard. Comparative Status of /ay/ In Labovs (1972a) phonetic analysis, he devises two scales of measurement for the variations of the nucleus of 0ay0, as shown in Fig. 9. The first scale includes the initial six discernible auditory demarcations in order of increasing vowel height. To test the validity of his initial impressionistic scaling, Labov takes acoustic measurements for 0ay0 and generates graphs for a sample from his corpus with F1 and F2 placed on a bi-logarithmic scale.21 His first set of auditory delineations is mapped onto the corresponding acoustic measurements. While there is generally clear acoustic separation of the impressionistic delineations, a few overlaps appear. Thus, the finely graded scale is reconfigured, resulting in the second scale in Fig. 9. The final outcome is four variants of 0ay0 represented along a number 466
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figure 8: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus by following phonetic environment with anchor vowels for non-fishing industry Chilmarkers.

figure 9: Revised impressionistic scale of 0ay0, Marthas Vineyard (1972) (adapted from Labov 1972:17).
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figure 10: Correlation of instrumental measurement and impressionistic ratings of centralization (adapted from Labov 1972:16).

scale, with 0 denoting the most [ low] vowel position, and 3 denoting the most [ mid] position. Fig. 10 is a graph with the second scale in Fig. 9 mapped onto the acoustic values for Labovs sample. The formant measurements of 0ay0 are plotted on a coordinate grid with the F1 and F2 displayed in reverse position to that of the cardinal vowel grid. In this case, F1 is displayed along the x-axis and F2 along the y-axis; furthermore, F2 is also inverted. Thus, along the x-axis we observe increasing vowel height, and along the y-axis, increasing vowel fronting. The phonetic envelopes, 03, that are generated reflect the four differentiated 0ay0 variants in Scale II of Fig. 9. Although Labov does not explicitly state that the tokens in his 468
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study lie predominantly in the higher envelopes, we argue that this is implied by the results for his sample in Fig. 10, where the majority of the tokens are located in Envelope 2, or the [ mid] region. In addition, Labov unequivocally states that there is marked centralization in Vineyarder speech. We therefore use Fig. 10 as a guide to assess the potential change in vowel behavior on the Vineyard over time. Labov (1972a:17) notes that ideally if we were studying the acoustic nature of the . . . diphthongs, we would want a more uniform group of speakers. The implication here is that normalization would be optimal so as to reduce interspeaker variance. However, this procedure is forgone in Labovs study, which he argues is primarily sociolinguistic in nature. In order to be comparable with Labov, then, we do not normalize our data in this section. We do, however, select informants in age ranges similar to those in Labovs corpus, allowing for comparisons with his results. In an attempt to spatially locate the present-day instantiations of 0ay0 relative to those evaluated by Labov, we estimate four points from each of the three curves in Fig. 10 in order to re-create the phonetic envelopes.22 Fig. 11 shows the acoustic measurements of 0ay0 for all 16 speakers in the present-day data set, along with the total means of their anchor vowels mapped within the regenerated envelopes. If we compare the 1972a data set in Fig. 10 with the acoustic mapping for the present-day data set in Fig. 11, there is an apparent shift in the abundance of 0ay0 from Envelope 2 to Envelope 1. Most of the realizations of 0ay0 for Labovs sample appear to be in a lower-mid vowel space, whereas for the present-day corpus, the 0ay0 variants are generally in a low vowel region. This and prior results suggest that, although Canadian Raising is still present on the Vineyard today, there has been an overall linguistic change toward decentralization of the 0ay0 nucleus over the past several decades. In Fig. 12, we show the means of all the 0ay0 variants for each speaker within the total group means for the anchor vowels. Again, the results support the findings in Fig. 11, with the 0ay0 token means of 5 of the 16 speakers located in Envelope 2, or Labovs centralized region, and the remaining eleven in Envelopes 0 and 1. Labov devised an index measurement that operates as a heuristic tool for determining the relative degree of centralization for the speakers in his corpus. For this measurement, speakers are assigned a score based on the mean values of the variants according to the numbers, 03, assigned in Scale II, Fig. 9, multiplied by 100 (cf. Labov 1972a:19). The index results by geographical location on the island are displayed in (4) below, and indicate that in the early 1960s up-islanders, especially Chilmarkers, had the greatest propensity for centralization:
(4) Index of centralization by geographical distribution (adapted from Labov 1972a:25) Down-island Edgartown Oak Bluffs Vineyard Haven 35 48 33 24 Up-island 61 Oak Bluffs 71 N. Tisbury 35 West Tisbury 51 Chilmark 100 Gay Head 51

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figure 11: Phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus in relation to anchor vowels for Chilmark speakers with Labovs phonetic envelopes.

In terms of occupation, (5) shows that the 0ay0 nuclei of fishermen throughout the island are notably more centralized than of those in other professions:
(5) Index of centralization by occupation (adapted from Labov 1972a:26) Fishermen 100 Farmers 32 Others 41

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figure 12: Individuals phonetic space of 0ay0 nucleus with anchor vowels, with Labovs phonetic envelopes (name, age, fishing (F) or non-fishing (N) industry).

Labov also shows that the middle-aged speakers, especially those between 31 and 60 years of age, have a bias for 0ay0 centralization. When he compares his findings with that of the four informants, aged 5682, in the 1933 L ANE survey, he surmises that there has been an increase in 0ay0 centralization. He states, It is impossible to calibrate the [L ANE ] transcription against our present scale, espeLanguage in Society 32:4 (2003)

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cially since [the] data put more stress on short utterances with stressed, elicited forms. But . . . it appears that these [L ANE ] speakers had centralized norms for (ay) averaging about 86, as high for the highest point reached in our sample for age level 60 to 90, but only half as high as the highest point for age level 30 to 60. If the present-day findings are compared with those of Labovs in Table 4 for geographic location, it is evident that there has been a drop in 0ay0 centralization in Chilmark, from an index of 100 to 78. There also appears to be no salient degree of difference by occupation, with the index for fisherman, 78, patterning very much like those in other occupations, 79. These findings are actually similar to those for the L ANE informants six decades earlier, with the highest index for any one of the present-day speakers reaching 94. Interestingly, there is only a 25-point difference in the index score for the present-day Chilmark speakers with the highest and lowest index, which renders no one speaker or group of speakers prominent. While one should exercise caution in interpreting these results, as we cannot be certain that the methodologies are exactly comparable, the trend toward fishermen having high degrees of 0ay0 centralization has clearly halted. Strikingly, the five middle-aged Chilmark fishermen in Labovs study have an average index of 148 for 0ay0, compared to 78 calculated for their present-day cohort.
S O C I O L I N G U I S T I C A N A LY S I S

Variation As mentioned before, Labov (1972a:8) notes that although the centralized diphthong in Marthas Vineyard is not salient to the ears of most, it is still sensitive to internal and external effects. Therefore, in this section, we explore the degree to which linguistic and social constraints have remained the same or changed over time. In the quantitative examination of the data, the [ mid] vowels, or those associated with 1960s Vineyard speech, are contrasted with the [ low] vowels. For the binomial VARBRUL analysis, the vowels in Labovs 2 and 3 phonetic envelopes represent the more raised variants i.e., [ mid] and are considered the application on which to test the effect of sociolinguistic factors. Vowels located in regions 0 and 1 comprise the [ low] category and are the non-application. The frequencies and VARBRUL probabilities for the data are displayed in Table 3. Labov finds the following phonological environment to be a highly significant factor in his study, and likewise, in our study, it is the most significant factor affecting 0ay0 centralization, followed by the preceding phonological environment and the generations by which speakers are classified. As also indicated by the prior mapping of the spectrographic measurements, the total percentage of raised 0ay0 tokens 16% is small. In the following phonological category, the greatest percentage of raised tokens is with voiceless obstruents, at 21%. This is followed by nasals, voiced obstruents, and pauses, all in the 1012% range, and laterals, with the smallest percentage at 3%. If we 472
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Frequency and VARBRUL results for /ay/ centralization.*

Frequencies (n 616) Varbrul probabilities

Following phonological environment voiceless obstruents nasals voiced obstruents pauses laterals Preceding phonological environment pauses nasals laterals voiceless obstruents voiced obstruents Generation Younger Middle Older *Overall frequency 16% Input probability .13 Log likelihood 248.327 Significance .03

21% 12% 11% 10% 3% 27% 23% 16% 15% 5% 19% 18% 10%

.62 .45 .47 .33 .16 .77 .63 .48 .50 .28 .56 .55 .38

compare the relative frequencies with the VARBRUL probabilities, the orderings of the constraints match closely. With VARBRUL factor weights greater than .5 indicating favoring by a constraint and values less than .5 indicating a disfavoring effect (.5 is neutral), the voiceless obstruents show a favoring effect (.62) on 0ay0 centralization compared to the other environments. Nasals and voiced obstruents behave similarly, with slight disfavoring effects or neutral (.45 and .47, respectively). They are followed by pauses, with a strong disfavoring effect (.33), and laterals, with the greatest disfavoring effect (.16). The results in Table 3 suggest that the strong influence of voiceless obstruents on 0ay0 centralization observed by Labov 35 years ago is still present today. Although our results correspond to Labovs findings concerning the effects of voiceless and voiced obstruents on centralization, there is some discrepancy in the degree of centralization when the following consonants are nasals and laterals. If we consider the findings of Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1996, who find the following phonological environment to have the greatest linguistic influence on the behavior of 0ay0 in their Ocracoke (North Carolina) data set, the analysis appears even more perplexing.
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figure 13: The various locations of 0ay0 in American English varieties (from Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1996:77).

Below are the rankings for 0ay0 raising in terms of following phonological environment found by Labov, by Wolfram & Schilling-Estes (W&S.E), and by our (B&J) study:
(6) Labov: W&S.E: B&J: voiceless obstruent . voiced obstruent . lateral . nasal voiced obstruent . nasal . lateral . voiceless obstruent voiceless obstruent . voiced obstruent . nasal . lateral

In the case of the Marthas Vineyard corpora, the raised vowel is in the [ mid] [ central] region, i.e., [@y], whereas in the Ocracoke corpus, the vowel is realized as [ mid] [ back], i.e., [Oy]. Wolfram & Schilling-Estes find that the raised (and in this case backed) 0ay0 variant is favored when the following segment is a voiced obstruent (as in tide) as opposed to a voiceless obstruent (as in nice). Moreover, they argue that, contrary to their findings, the Marthas Vineyard hierarchy patterns like that of standard English varieties (1996:72), and they provide an explanation of this, as discussed below. In Fig. 13, Wolfram & Schilling-Estes (1996:77) illustrate Labovs (1994) distinction between peripheral vowels, which tend to be long and tense, and nonperipheral vowels, which are short and lax, and located in a more centralized tract in the vowel grid.23 They assert that voiceless consonants favor the raising and centralizing of the 0ay0 nucleus along the non-peripheral tract, whereas voiced consonants favor the raising and backing of the 0ay0 nucleus along the peripheral tract (1996:75). In our Marthas Vineyard data, we find the same general trend as Labov did, with voiceless consonants having a greater triggering effect on raising 474
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and centralizing of 0ay0 than voiced consonants. As noted earlier, while 0ay0 raises and centralizes in the Marthas Vineyard studies, in the Ocracoke study it raises and backs into the non-peripheral tract. Hence, based on Wolfram & Schilling-Estess argument, it follows that the voiced consonants have a greater influence on raising and backing in Ocracoke than do the voiceless consonants. It is worth noting that within the voiced consonant category, there is a discrepancy in the order of factors influencing raising in the three studies, as seen below:
(7) Labov: W&S.E: B&J: first position second position third position voiced obstruent . lateral . nasal voiced obstruent . nasal . lateral voiced obstruent . nasal . lateral

In all three studies, obstruents are shown to have the greatest effect on 0ay0 raising. In the second and third positions, Wolfram & Schilling-Estess results are similar to those of our Marthas Vineyard study, with nasals in the second position and laterals least favoring 0ay0 raising.24 Clearly, more work needs to be done in this area.25 At this time, however, these findings lead us to conclude that the voicing constraint is primary, or takes precedence over sonority in 0ay0 raising, giving the following ranking:
(8) Labov: W&S.E: B&J: voiceless consonant . voiced consonant (peripheral vowel raising) voiced consonant . voiceless consonant (non-peripheral vowel raising) voiceless consonant . voiced consonant (peripheral vowel raising)

According to Labov (1972a:20), the preceding phonological environment has considerably less effect on 0ay0 centralization, and it patterns almost the reverse to the following phonological environment. He states, The most favoring initial consonants in centralized syllables are 0h, l, r, w, m, n0. In our present-day Marthas Vineyard data, we also find the preceding phonological environment to have a less significant effect on 0ay0 centralization, and with some reverse in patterning of the constraints as well. As shown in Table 3, pauses and nasals have the highest frequencies of raised variants at 27% and 23%, respectively, and favor 0ay0 centralization. Laterals and voiceless obstruents behave similarly, with relative frequencies of 16% and 15%, respectively; both of them show a neutral influence on 0ay0 centralization. Finally, the voiced obstruents, with only a 5% frequency rate for raised 0ay0, strongly disfavor centralization. While the order of the constraints in the two studies appear slightly different, it is evident that for the preceding phonological category, sonority rather than voicing is likely the consequential constraint on ordering.
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The relative frequencies of the raised 0ay0 variant for the three generations of Chilmark speakers are also displayed in Table 3. The younger and middle generations, with the same frequencies of the raised instantiations of 0ay0 (19% and 18%, respectively) and a slight favoring of centralization, stand in contrast to the older generation of speakers, who have a lower frequency rate at 10% and disfavor 0ay0 centralization. These results differ from the index scores in (9) below, calculated by Labov to test for variation of 0ay0 centralization by age. While the younger and older informants behave similarly, the middle-aged speakers have substantially greater degrees of centralization, which prompts Labov to consider whether the variation is an indicator of a sound change occurring on Marthas Vineyard or a pattern dictated by age grading. He argues that the mixed pattern of uneven phonetic conditioning, shifting frequencies of usage in various age levels, areas, and social groups, as we have observed it on Marthas Vineyard, is the process of linguistic change in the simplest form which deserves the name (1972a:23). Although he does not completely discount the possibility of the effect of age on his data, a comparison with the 1933 L ANE data supports a change in community language habits.
(9) Index of centralization by age (adapted from Labov 1972a:22) Age 75 6175 46 60 31 45 1430 (ay) 25 35 62 81 37

A comparison of Labovs findings with the statistically significant VARBRUL results for the present-day Chilmark community members suggests that, over the span of a generation, another linguistic change appears to be in progress. First, today there is a lower degree of 0ay0 in the Chilmark community than that observed by Labov. Second, though all of the older speakers in our data set show Canadian Raising, there is little centralization for this group in the Labovian sense. Moreover, today the younger generation shows linguistic behavior similar to that of the middle generation, which can be interpreted as the middle-aged population no longer showing marked linguistic behavior. Normalization Thus far, we have examined the vowel systems of individuals and groups in the Chilmark community to get a sense of the how 0ay0 behaves in its phonetic contexts and across time. In this section, we exploit the technique of normalization, which is one of the procedures of instrumental phonetics developed over the past two and a half decades for comparison of speakers with differing vocal tract sizes. Along these lines, Thomas (2001:174) notes, A problem faced by many acoustic studies of vowel production is that speakers mouth sizes differ, which results in differing formant values for the same vowel uttered by different speakers. As a 476
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figure 14: Normalized 0ay0 centralization scores for Chilmarkers according to birth year and occupation (F fishing industry, N non-fishing industry).

result, quantitative comparison of vowel formant measurements from different speakers requires normalization. Presently, there are several normalization techniques that reduce the formant differences between speakers that are due to physiological factors (cf. Neary 1977, Hindle 1978, Disner 1980, Syrdal & Gopal 1986, Thomas 2001). While each has its own set of drawbacks, they all allow the sociolinguist to investigate the linguistic and social characteristics of a language or dialect. For our analysis, we apply the normalization technique suggested by Sydral & Gopal 1986, wherein F2F1 distances are computed in units of perceptual distance (i.e., Bark units, Z2Z1) and mapped for comparison of speakers.26 According to Thomas 2000, the advantage of Syrdal & Gopals method is that, in addition to eliminating interspeaker variance while preserving linguistic differences, it is applied to a single vowel without reference to other vowels, thus reflecting human vowel perception. In Fig. 14, we map the Bark distances for each speaker by year born and occupation. The speakers born before 1940 comprise the older generation; those born between 1940 and 1970 are in the middle generation; and those born after 1970 are in the younger generation. As noted by Thomas (p.c.), a higher Z2Z1 value indicates more raising and fronting. At first glance, it appears that the middle-aged speakers as a group have a lesser degree of raised 0ay0 (below 4.2 Barks). However, this is less clearly not the case when we consider whether the Bark differences between individuals and groups are sigLanguage in Society 32:4 (2003)

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nificant. To test the potential difference between generations of speakers, we apply an ANOVA statistical test,27 which shows that there are no significant trends by age or occupation. In the next section, we address how these normalized results contribute to an analysis of language behavior and change on Marthas Vineyard when considered with the other findings.
T H E P A S T A N D P R E S E N T S O C I A L M E A N I N G O F 0 A Y 0 B E H AV I O R

In the early 1960s, Labov (1972a:27) entered a Marthas Vineyard that was sustained by little industry. The local islanders felt economic pressure from declining fishing, farming, and dairy industries, and consequently, an increased reliance on a seasonal tourist industry. This took a psychological toll on the historically independent communities, particularly those of the old Vineyard whaling stock. Labov (1972a:28) notes, [Vineyarders] understand that the vacation business cannot help but unbalance the economy, which produces far too little for the summer trade, but far too much for the winter. Yet it is hard for the Vineyarder not to reach for the dollar that is lying on the table, as much as he may disapprove of it. Labov argues that vowel centralization is imbued with social meaning and identity for a community undergoing dispossession. It is a linguistic means by which local Vineyarders show resistance toward the changing economic conditions, and toward those identified as responsible for these changes mainlanders. This is most evident in the speech of native Vineyarders residing in places like Chilmark, where local fishing was then still a common occupation. There is a positive correlation between certain social factors and the centralization of the 0ay0 diphthong in the speech of the men Labov interviewed. The age of the informants, their desire to remain on the island, and their occupation carry the greatest influence on centralization. Specifically, Chilmark fishermen in the 35 45 age range who intend to reside in Marthas Vineyard indefinitely have the highest rates of centralization. As noted earlier, Labovs impression is that the fishermen are the instigators of the increased use of centralization, which is brought about by their sovereignty, close-knit communities, and firm resistance to the incursions of summer people. He says, There was an inherently dramatic character to the fishermans situation, and a great capacity or selfdramatization in the fisherman himself, which makes him an ideal candidate to initiate new styles of speech (1972a:37). Here, 0ay0 centralization linguistically marks Vineyarders, specifically those affiliated with the local fishing industry, in opposition to tourists from the mainland. Since Labovs study, Marthas Vineyard has continued to experience tremendous growth in popularity and is now considered a favorite recreational spot for the well-to-do. In the 1960s, the Vineyard was a vacation resort primarily for the upper classes from the northeastern United States; today it is often referred to more generally as the playground of the rich and famous. 28 The Vineyard, however, has also become popular with summer vacationers of differing social 478
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statuses and regions, including those from outside the United States (e.g., Europe). According to estimates made by the Marthas Vineyard Commission (1996), in 1995 the year-round population of approximately 14,000 swelled to 102,000 during the summer months, with the influx of approximately 88,000 visitors. Specifically in Chilmark, the summer tourist population generally outranks the locals 4 to 1. Whereas four decades ago tourism threatened the local economy, today it is understood as what virtually sustains the local communities. Naturally, community attitudes have been undergoing changes that reconstruct the role and meaning of tourism in Marthas Vineyard, albeit with complications. Furthermore, the impetus for the sound change that Labov observes regarding 0ay0 centralization has been greatly diminished. In the remainder of this section, we couch our analysis in the integrative framework offered by Milroy 1999, which addresses language behavior within a social practice model such that language ideologies shape the patterns and direction of language variation and change (1999: 6).29 Here we refer to social practice in Eckerts (2000) sense of individuals in a community constructing and representing themselves in a particular time and space, with these acts connected to linguistic choices as well as to sociocultural and psychological phenomena within a community. Ideology, as a set of beliefs, knowledge, values, and desires, is viewed from Silversteins (1995) perspective, in which, Milroy notes, it is a system for making sense of the indexicality inherent in language, given that languages and language forms index speakers social identities fairly reliably in communities (1999:4). Milroy (1999:89) notes that the centralization of 0ay0 and 0aw0 on Marthas Vineyard can be viewed as a case of ideologically motivated language changes, as described by Irvine & Gal 1994, 2000. According to Irvine & Gal (1994:19): Changes in 0ay0 and 0aw0 reported by Labov in Marthas Vineyard could be analyzed by exploring the content of the ideology giving rise to these changes. This would involve considering the way in which contrasts between ethnic groups in the 1930s (Yankees, Portuguese, Indians) receded into background and were replaced by a contrast between Islanders and Mainlanders in the 1960s. Island phonology diverged more sharply from mainland forms, after the development of the tourist industry made that contrast more socially significant than local, within Island differences . . . the change [is] ideologically mediated because it depended on local images of salient social categories which shifted over time. Today, Vineyarders no longer appear to locate themselves strongly in opposition to tourists from the mainland, and thus they seem to be releasing the symbolic centralized 0ay0 diphthong. As a consequence of the social changes befalling Marthas Vineyard, the notion of the fisherman as a local construct has nearly disappeared, and as a result, 0ay0 centralization has lost its earlier social meaning. (This is not to say, however, that Vineyard men are not still identifying as fishermen.)
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Milroy (1999:10) argues that, in order to maintain localized norms, a tightknit community network structure is needed. If this structure loosens and members become mobile, the social prerequisites for supporting these localized norms disappears. She also highlights the importance of social class, as the middle class networks are characteristically relatively loose-knit (cf. Kerswill & William 1999, Milroy & Milroy 1992). We have described presentday Chilmark as a close community, although it does not display the dense, multiplex personal networks that comprise the tight-knit community referred to by Milroy 1999. Furthermore, the economic status of Chilmark residents has undergone a change since Labovs study. As Labov (1972a:27) notes, [Marthas Vineyard] is the poorest of all Massachusetts counties: It has the lowest average income, the highest number of poor people, and the smallest number of rich people. He continues, The Vineyard had the highest rate of unemployment . . . and the highest rate of seasonal employment. And to compound matters, the cost of living is high. In present-day Marthas Vineyard, however, the local population earns wages comparable to the national average; according to the Marthas Vineyard Commission, in 1995 the per capita income was $27,643, which was 98.7% of the state average and 119.2% of the national average. Most Vineyarders today hold middle-class status.30 While the unemployment rate for Massachusetts remains in the 5% range throughout the year, the unemployment rate for Marthas Vineyard fluctuates between 2% during the summer months and as high as 11% during the off season. This, however, no longer appears to be the case in Chilmark, which in 1997, for example, experienced its highest unemployment rate (5.9%) in the month of January, compared to Gay Head, which reached as high as 18.5% in April (Marthas Vineyard Commission). We conjecture that this may be due to the fact that over the past decades Chilmarkers, most threatened by a declining fishing industry, were forced to consider ways to diversify their work portfolios with the advent of tourists as residents (e.g., in carpentry and services). Today, Chilmark fishermen no longer have the status they once did, and young people are not inclined to choose fishing as a profession. In essence, the marked contrast between Chilmarkers as local and mainlanders as the other has virtually dissipated. Also of psychosocial importance to Chilmarkers are the political actions on the part of local legislators to acknowledge and reward the native standing of locals; one example is the Childrens Plot Program, which gives the offspring of established native community members priority in the purchase of public land. The increases in 0ay0 centralization along social categories observed by Labov are what Milroy (1999:1011) refers to as ideologically motivated. These are contrasted with ideology-free changes, which recur in speech communities unbounded by time or space, and are characterized as not being reactions to indexical processes and their social categories like class, gender, and ethnicity. Milroy notes: 480
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If social boundaries become permeable and indexical systems disrupted as a result of migration or mobility, ideology free changes will take their course, uninhibited by social boundaries. When indexical systems reestablish themselves however, ideology-motivated restructuring will take place as a reaction to those systems. Such an approach accounts for the restructuring evident in Marthas Vineyard. (1999:16) We argue that our results indicate that at the moment, the decentralization of 0ay0 is an indicator that an ideology-free change is in progress. Although we observe some discrepancy in 0ay0 behavior by age, over all 0ay0 no longer appears to be a linguistic marker of social identity. This is apparent in the low frequency rate of centralization, the undifferentiated index scores, and the normalized calculations that show that no one group, or network of speakers, is unique in terms of 0ay0 centralization. In addition to the change in the degree of centralization of 0ay0, we argue that there has been a concomitant ideology-free process, Canadian Raising, taking place on the Vineyard over the past decades. As we have noted, studies have referred to this process as a natural phonetic change that has originated independently in a number of different dialect areas in North America and elsewhere (cf. Chambers 1973, Vance 1987, Thomas 1991). Our results show that for the older Chilmark informants, this is a highly productive process, and for the middle and younger generations it appears to be advancing. While Labovs work shows that Canadian Raising has had an influence on Marthas Vineyard speech in the past, we have shown that this innovation appears to become more regularized with age.
CONCLUSION

This study provides sociolinguistic evidence for a shift in a sound change on Marthas Vineyard documented by Labov 1972a four decades earlier. In Labovs work, middle-aged fishermen are the group most favoring the centralized instantiations of 0ay0, which he argues is tied to their strong desire to maintain their maritime background and tradition, and is an act of resistance toward outsiders or non-locals. He identifies centralization as a marker of identity for local Vineyarders that locates them within a changing social and economic structure in which they are juxtaposed to the privileged tourists encroaching on the Vineyarder way of life. The sociolinguistic findings for the present-day database suggest that, with a change in the socio-economic structure of the Vineyard, locals allegiance to a traditional way of life has diminished. As a consequence, there has been a decline in the linguistic marking of opposition to non-local populations. Along these lines, being a fisherman from Chilmark no longer appears to be a salient social constraint on language behavior in this case, 0ay0 centralization. There are several explanations for these social and linguistic changes; over the years, the economy of the island has been maintained primarily by tourism, with locals going from an oppositional to cooperative stance toward tourists. There
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also appears to be a less strained relationship with the mainland, to the extent young people identify it as avenue for opportunity. We have shown that while 0ay0 centralization has decreased in Chilmark and appears no longer to be a marked feature of Vineyarder speech, variation by phonological environment is evidenced by the independent process of Canadian raising. Clearly, more work is needed on Marthas Vineyard and its speech communities, since the size of our sample limits generalizations about all of the residents of Chilmark, or Marthas Vineyard more generally. Josey (forthcoming) will undertake further research in this area, expanding the analysis to include other linguistic features, as well as the female population, in order to provide a more comprehensive synchronic picture of Vineyarder speech. Suffice it to say that the findings presented here provide evidence that there has been an ongoing change in progress occurring on Marthas Vineyard. Furthermore, Labovs hypothesis that sound changes are socially motivated seems to be borne out. As the small but strong fishing communities of Marthas Vineyard dwindle, replaced by large fishing conglomerates, so too does a linguistic change in progress occur, away from a linguistic marker that has been crucial in identifying a typical old Yankee community.
NOTES

*This work is dedicated to William Labov. The authors are indebted to Erik Thomas for the considerable guidance and training he generously offered for this paper. We are also grateful to Walt Wolfram and the William C. Friday Linguistics Laboratory at North Carolina State University for kind support and advice, and to Lesley Milroy for an analytical framework. A very special thanks to Frank LoPresti and Robert Yaffee of New York Universitys Information Technology Services for their extensive statistical services. Finally, we appreciate the comments and suggestions offered to us by Gregory Guy, Charles Boberg, William Labov, Paul DeDecker, John Singler, Karen Wallace, Hwei-Bing Lin, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Diamandis Gafos, Cecilia Cutler, Malcah Yaeger-Dror, the graduate students of the Linguistics Association at NYU, Jane Hill, and the anonymous referees. The authors, however, take responsibility for any flaws. 1 Marthas Vineyard is also referred to as the Vineyard. The local population is referred to as Vineyarders. 2 We use 0 0 to represent the phoneme as well as the linguistic variable (see Labov 1972a:11 for a discussion of the distinction). 3 Here, native refers to those born and raised on Marthas Vineyard, and having kinship ties to long-established local communities. 4 Gay Head was and continues to be populated predominantly by Native Americans, Chilmark by people of English descent, and the other communities have been comprised of local populations of English and Portuguese lineage. 5 The Marthas Vineyard Commission Annual Report 1997, Table 1.5. 6 Note that one of Joseys middle-aged informants is the son of a middle-aged fisherman Labov interviewed 35 years prior to Josey. Unfortunately, the father was not willing to provide a follow-up interview. 7 Note that a familial relationship does not necessarily dictate the highest degree of interaction. 8 Fourteen of Labovs informants are from Chilmark. We speculate that many would have been fishermen. 9 The Marthas Vineyard Commission (personal communication). 10 One of the members of the younger generation has recently returned to the Vineyard with his fiance from the mainland. He talks of eventually leaving the Vineyard again for greater economic opportunities.

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Interviews were conducted in the quiet of informants homes. After communication with Erik Thomas, we also included multisyllabic words during the later coding of anchor vowels. The measurements should not be significantly different from monosyllabic words, as we only considered the primary stressed syllable. 13 Plots are created with the Microsoft Excel 98 program. 14 GoldVarb Version 2.0 by David Rand and David Sankoff, 1990. 15 We eliminate anchor vowels located in environments with strong coarticulation effects preand post-nasals, pre and post-0l,r0, pre-0g0, post-0w,y0 (hman 1966, Thomas 2001). Tokens of 0ay0 before nasals and laterals are included when making comparisons with other studies. 16 We are grateful to Charles Boberg for his guidance with this procedure. 17 We do include nasals and laterals in our analysis and graphs, and discard unexpected measurements of 0ay0 in these contexts. 18 As Thomas (2001:59) points out, dialect here refers to the General Canadian dialect, spoken throughout Canada, except for Qubec and Newfoundland. 19 In addition to Labovs (1972a) reference to centralization as a general raising process, he alludes to the process of Canadian Raising for several regions of the United States. In reference the 1933 L ANE records, he states (1972a:10), The differential effect of voiceless and voiced following consonants was only a directing influence in the North, but stood as a regular phonetic rule in the South. In a footnote (p. 10) he also notes that the regularity of differentiated effects of voiceless0voiced environments on 0ay0 centralization is a salient feature of Canadian English. 20 We interpret the symbol [ ] as representing a following pause, or what Labov refers to as zero final. 21 Labovs measurements of the vowels at the F1 peak appear to correspond to Peterson and Barneys (1952) measurements for steady state vowels. Furthermore, Labov finds shifts in the first formant, as opposed to the second, to correspond with his impressionistic delineations for 0ay0. 22 The estimation points we use for F1 and F2 to re-create the phonetic envelopes are: 0: (850,1550), (750,1350), (700,1300), (645,1285); 1: (700,1475), (650,1350), (550,1190), (645,1350): 2: (600,1695), (550,1510), (500,1465), (645,2010). As the statistician Frank LoPresti notes, in Fig. 3, a linear scale is overlaid onto the bi-logarithmic scale, onto which the formants are plotted. We therefore do not have to convert the formant values in Fig. 3 to generate a linear scale. 23 Note that here, centralized refers to the position of the vowel in the vowel system, as opposed to the process of raising that Labov references. 24 Although, for individual speakers, we also find the results observed by Labov. 25 Suffice it to say, in all of the studies, laterals are always in the penultimate or last position. This generally disfavoring effect on the raising of 0ay0 may be linked to the acoustic impression that laterals give to preceding vowels as being lowered and backed. 26 We use Syrdal & Gopals (1986) model for normalization because it requires only one vowel for normalization (Thomas 2001:175). In contrast, Nearys (1978) method generates a scaling factor for F1 and F2 values and requires formant measurements for a substantial part of an individuals vowel system. In Syrdal & Gopals method Hz are converted to Barks, such that every 10 Hz equals .1 Bark unit. The conversion formula developed by Hartmut Traunmller is: Bark [26.8101 19600F] 0.53, where F formant value (c.f., http:00www.ling.su.se0staff0hartmut0bark.htm). 27 We apply a Kruskal-Wallis one-way non-parametric analysis of variance test using SPSS, which gives an exact test option. 28 Several well-known entertainers, politicians, lawyers, and the like have homes there. 29 Also see the work of Kroch 1978, LePage & Tabouret-Keller 1985, Eckert 2000. 30 This does not appear to be the case for the residents of Gay Head, populated by a high concentration of Native Americans. While outside the scope of this paper, we conjecture that there may be a shift in ideological contrast from between Vineyarder and mainlander back to local distinctions.

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