超级灌水小弟 超级灌水小弟
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美国方言区域图 Traditionally, dialectologists have listed three dialect groups in the United States: Northern, Midland, and Southern--although some scholars prefer a two-way classification of simply Northern and Southern, and one may also find significant difference on the boundaries of each area. The map shown above represents a synthesis of various independent field studies this century. These are in chronological order: the Linguistic Atlas fieldwork begun under the direction of Hans Kurath in the 1930's; the informal but extensive personal observations of Charles Thomas in the 1940's; the DARE fieldwork of the 1960's under Frederic Cassidy; and the Phonological Atlas fieldwork of William Labov during the 1990's.Although it may seem that a great amount of data has been collected over a short time span, the shifts in American dialects this century have been rapid enough to outpace the data collection. What appears to be a well-entrenched dialect marker today such as the Northern Cities Shift, may barely appear in earlier studies--affecting both classification and mapping. Nevertheless, some basic observations on current American linguistic geography can be made. The New England DialectsThese dialects are non-rhotic, dropping r's before consonants and at the end of words. This area is further subdivided into Eastern New England, including Boston and much of Maine, where O and AU shift into an intermediate vowel so that cot and caught are merged. Transitional between Eastern New England and New York, Western New England is less well defined. Providence retains R-dropping, but does not merge O and AU.The New York DialectsNew York City has a rather anomalous linguistic situation, in that its local dialect was not reproduced further westward and therefore cannot be fit into any larger regional grouping such as New England or the Midland.(1) Like New England, the dialect is R-dropping--other features are more generally common to the Northeastern seaboard. The Hudson Valley dialect of Albany, though R-preserving, is nevertheless close enough to New York City's to be grouped with it: both of them shared a Dutch linguistic substratum which is now only vestigial.The Great Lakes DialectsAmong all the dialect regions, the Great Lakes region is perhaps the most homogenous, since the major cities in this area (Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee) are simultaneously undergoing a chain shift known as the Northern Cities Shift, with a rotation of the short vowels so that "they may be heard as members of another phoneme by listeners from another dialect area with consequent confusion of meanings: Ann as Ian, bit as bet, bet as bat or but , lunch as launch, talk as tuck , locks as lax" (Labov 1991). This area is fully R -preserving, even though the earliest settlers of this area were primarily New Englanders. At present New England influence is evident only in the lexicon.The Upper Midwest DialectsThis area is characterized mainly by a conservative vowel scheme, where the long vowels (often attributed to Scandinavian influence) have remained purely monophthongal, exemplified in the widely known long O in the name Minnesota. Along the northern border are found Canadianisms such as the centralized long I in fuyr (fire) and the centralized ow "uh-oo" in : ouwt (out).
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