RESEARCH ON ENGLISH PHONOLOGY IN NEW YORK CITY IS DESCRIBED. CURRENT LINGUISTIC THEORY IS CONSIDERED UNABLE TO ACCOUNT FOR MASSIVE "FREE VARIATION" IN THE PHONOLOGY OF THE SPEECH OF THAT AREA. ISOLATED WERE PHONOLOGICAL VARIABLES WHICH ARE ASSOCIATED WITH SOCIAL, STYLISTIC, ETHNIC, AND INDIVIDUAL FACTORS IN NEW YORK CITY. QUANTITATIVE…

This book examines dialect variations in the United States. Chapter topics include an introduction to dialect study, colonial English, eastern settlement, eastern words, eastern pronunciation, eastern grammar, the westward movement, sectional atlas studies (the Great Lakes, the Upper Middle West, Texas, Colorado and other Rocky Mountain areas,…

The recent work by sociolinguists is more accurate for consideration of urban dialects than is the analysis provided in the "Linguistic Atlas" materials. The sociolinguists' work shows that the use of nonstandard phonological and grammatical features varies according to one's socioeconomic status, ethnic background, speech context, age,…

A current vocabulary of argot terms and meanings was collected from a Black male control group in the South Central Los Angeles ghetto. This lexicon was used to elicit and compare responses from 5 male groups of youths between 15 and 20 years old. Two of the groups consisted of lower class blacks separated geographically. The other groups were…