A history of the English Language

cot
and 
caught
. The two words are 
generally homonyms 
the same vowel occurring with a considerable range of 
allophones in 
lot, John, palm, barn, law,frost, dog, fog, 
and
 foggy
. 
5. 
Upper South.
This area includes all of West Virginia except the counties bordering on Pennsylvania 
and Maryland,
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the mountain regions of Virginia and North Carolina, most of Kentucky 
and Tennessee, with a small portion of the states to the north and the south. At the present 
stage of investigation it appears that the dialect of the Upper South extends west of the 
Mississippi through southern Missouri and northern Arkansas into north Texas, where it 
blends with that of the Plantation South. Settled first from Pennsylvania and later from 
the South, the region shows in its speech the mixed character that is to be expected under 
the circumstances. Although none of the dialect features of the Upper South are unique in 
themselves, and all of them occur in either the Lower North or the Plantation South, the 
configuration of features is peculiar to the Upper South. Thus the 
r
is sounded as in the 
Lower North, but [aI] is generally pronounced [a
ε
],or in the southern part of the area [a
ə
, 
a] as in many parts of the South. Despite this mix, the speech of the Upper South has so 
much in common with that of the Plantation South that a variety of Southern English 
comprising the two large regions is a linguistic and cultural reality. 
6. 
Lower South.
The dialect of the Lower South covers a large area, the old plantation country, and it 
would be unreasonable to expect uniformity in it. Important focal areas are the Virginia 
Piedmont and the low country near the coast of South Carolina. In many districts it agrees 
with eastern New England in the loss of 
r
finally and before consonants, as in 
car
and 
hard,
but tends to go even further and omit the 
r
before a word beginning with a vowel, 
as in
 far away
[f
a
:
ə
’we]. But it does not have the rounded vowel in words like 
top
and 
hot,
or the broad 
a
in 
grass
and 
dance
. In the latter words it shows a preference for [æ
ə
, 
æ
I
] ae
I
]. A distinctive feature of the Southern dialect is the treatment of the diphthong in 
out
. Instead of the usual [aU] the Southern speaker begins this diphthong with [æ] before 
voiced consonants and finally, while in Virginia and South Carolina this diphthong takes 
the form [
ə
U, 
Λ
U] before voiceless consonants. Equally characteristic is the so-called 
Southern drawl. This is not only a matter of slower enunciation but involves a 
diphthongization or double diphthongization of stressed vowels. In its most pronounced 
form this 
results
in 
yes
becoming [j
ε
Is] or [j
ε
j
ə
s], 
class
becoming [klæIs] or [klæj
ə
s], etc. 
Final consonant groups are likely to suffer from a weakened articulation: 
las’, kep’, fin’,
for 
last, kept, find,
especially in nonstandard use. Around New Orleans and Charleston
33 
In the southern and eastern part of West Virginia the influence of Virginia speech is 
strong.
The english language in america 359

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curl
and 
third
are pronounced [k
Λ
Il] and [
θΛ
Id], as in New York City, a pattern that may 
be phonologically related to certain other diphthongizations in the Southern drawl.
34
Many speakers pronounce