Caught in the pandemic: The rates of the caught-cot merger in Michigan speakers from the Covid-19 pandemic

Voiceover

Presenter(s)

Olivia Marquardt

Abstract or Description

My research looks to focus on an aspect of the low-back-merger, the caught-cot merger, within Michigan speakers using data gathered during the Covid-19 pandemic. The caught-cot merger is when the vowels /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ have the same pronunciation. The merger is widely spread across the U.S., and though Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006) said Michigan speakers were strongly resisting this merger, Nesbitt, Wagner, and Mason (2019) have found that the rates of this merger are starting to appear more frequently within Michigan English. How have the rates of low-back-merger adoption changed over time? To gather this data, I will use audio diaries submitted to MI Diaries, a research project that is observing language change in Michigan over the course of the pandemic. Participants receive weekly emails with questions, and one of these will be, “Do you pronounce the words caught and cot differently?” thus providing the necessary data. However, because self-reported pronunciations are not always reliable, I will measure usage of the vowels in caught and cot when the vowel is in the primary stress position of a word. I hypothesize that there will be a trend in the direction of the vowels becoming more merged as this vowel merger seems to be spreading throughout Michigan.

Mentor

Adam Barnhardt, Betsy Sneller