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This paper explores the relationship between speaker normalization and dialectal identity in sociolinguistic data, examining a database of vowel formants collected from 88 monolingual American English speakers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Audio recordings of Finnish- and Italian-heritage American English speakers reading a passage and a word list were normalized using two normalization procedures. These algorithms are based on different concepts of normalization: Lobanov, which models normalization as based on experience with individual talkers, and Labov ANAE, which models normalization as based on experience with scale-factors inherent in acoustic resonators of all kinds. The two procedures yielded different results; while the Labov ANAE method reveals a cluster shifting of low and back vowels that correlated with heritage, the Lobanov procedure seems to eliminate this sociolinguistic variation. The difference between the two procedures lies in how they treat relations between formant changes, suggesting that dimensions of variation in the vowel space may be treated differently by different normalization procedures, raising the question of how anatomical variation and dialectal variation interact in the real world. The structure of the sociolinguistic effects found with the Labov ANAE normalized data, but not in the Lobanov normalized data, suggest that the Lobanov normalization does over-normalize formant measures and remove sociolinguistically relevant information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines acoustic vowel data from a group of 88 Finnish and Italian Americans from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP), stratified by task, heritage, age, sex, and educational attainment. Results reveals four sociolinguistic patterns in Michigan's UP English regarding lingering substrate and encroaching exogenous norms. First, the presence of a systematic structural difference of the low and back vowels and the presence of the monophthongized /o/ is argued to result from substratal influence. Additionally, the fully realized low-back merger and the conditionally compromised Canadian raising of /αi/and /α℧/are older features originating from Canadian English. Furthermore, apparent-time evidence in this rural community indicates a developing change in progress in which front lax vowels participate in the Canadian Shift. This change in progress toward Canadian-like norms is led by females of successively younger generations. Finally, the existence of these new local norms in the younger UP speakers' systems for both the reading passage and the word list data indicates that such norms are well established and largely below these speakers' awareness in various speech styles. This study compares subgroups within the larger speech community and reveals much about the impact of ethnic-heritage languages on a rurally spoken American English variety while simultaneously showing the exogenous influences of neighboring regional varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the acoustic properties of the American English vowel spaces of 65 Finnish Americans from Marquette County in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP). The author compares the general system of these UP vowel spaces to substrate Finnish and neighboring English vowel systems and examines the subsystems of these UP vowel spaces along the sociolinguistic variables of LANGUAGE DOMINANCE, AGE, SEX, and EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT to ascertain whether the internal system dynamics show any substrate or exogenous characteristics. The apparent-time evidence in this study indicates a potential change in progress in this UP speech community, with younger speakers using variants typically associated with neighboring Canada (e.g., low-back merger of /ɑ, ɔ/, the lowering and retraction of /I, ε, æ/, the raising of /aI, aʊ/ nuclei before voiceless obstruents). Consequently, Michigan's UP more closely aligns with the Canadian English's regional boundary than the proposed "residual territory" as defined by Labov, Ash, and Boberg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]