How do learners of English or speakers with other language backgrounds adapt to the varieties of American English that they hear around them after moving to a local area? Do they simply copy the local variety of English spoken by the people most like them in age, sex, status, and so on? Or do they acquire a variety that is more like that of other immigrants who speak their native language, both from their own and previous immigrant generations? Or do they acquire some more general variety of American English, one not specifically identified with the region to which they have moved? How does their native language background influence these possibilities? With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Dennis Preston will study the pronunciation of English by speakers of Lebanese Arabic, Mexican Spanish, and Polish who have moved to urban areas in Southern Michigan. Tape recordings of their speech designed to elicit vowel pronunciations of those items that are typical of a changing pronunciation pattern among local native speakers will be made and analyzed acoustically. One group, Mexican Americans in Benton Harbor, MI, will also be investigated to determine the degree to which African American pronunciation is acquired by them in a city which is more than 90% African American. The degree to which each speaker studied participates in acquiring local speech will be correlated with their sex, age, and integration into local networks.
