Jan 19
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Keiser/etal:1997
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The choice of using radio speech is interesting, and feels a bit more
formal/careful than spontaneous speech (in a sociolinguistic
interview, for example). Could we expect to see the NCS more advanced
in spontaneous speech? Have more recent studied on central Ohio shown
a progression of NCS?

Why was the age difference of the radio hosts not considered in the
study, if previous literature has shown that young urbanites lead in
implementing NCS, while older rural speakers are not as far in
progress?

How does tenseness relate to the vowel status of monophthongal vs
diphthongal?

This study was published in 1997. Have further works investigated the
progression of the changes reported here over time, or if the patterns
of this vowel shift has remained constant?

Considering that women are more prone to maintaining the standard
variety of a language than men, how could the patterns observed here
be applied to women? Would a woman with the same profile as "Red" have
a vowel space more similar to "Daniel's", for instance?

Are there any special reasons for (central) Ohio being previously
largely ignored by dialect studies?

(Page 59) Why, in case of polysyllabic words, is tensing and raising
limited to syllables headed by a non-degenerate foot?

Is there a reason why a preceding /l/ disfavors the raising and
tensing of /ae/?  Since the authors were not able to conclusively
answer the research question of whether central Ohio speakers actually
participate in the NCS, I wondered if that area was studied in more
detail and what status the dialect has today.

In their work, they ignored the age differences between the speakers.
However, isn't it likely that age differences affect the results, as
language also differs from one generation to another?

The interactions between the two speakers are also different. One has
interactions with listeners, the other with colleagues. I would assume
that the interactions with colleagues (at least on air) are somewhat
more professional than those with listeners.

They mention background music that was played while the broadcaster of
the country station was speaking. Doesn't the background music affect
the quality of the recordings and therefore also the formants? Or is
the background music too quiet to make a difference?

In the discussion, they raise the question "what is the effect of
place of articulation on tensing and raising?" Is there an answer to
that question?

Furthermore, only two out of six vowel shifts were tested, and only
one of them was found to have a shift. What about the other four?