Farewell to the Founders: Major Dialect Changes Along the East-West New England Border

hans Kurath’s 1939 Linguistic Atlas of New England reported a significant east-west dialect contrast along the Green mountains of Vermont. In 1987, using data from 1960s fieldwork for the Dictionary of American Regional English, Craig Carver found the contrast remained intact a generation later. Such results reflect the enduring influence of eighteenth-century settlers, known as the Principle of first effective Settlement or the “founder effect.” to determine the current status of the east-west dialect contrast and whether the founder effect is still present, the authors examined 62 speakers along the border in both real and apparent time. the real-time results show that, among older speakers, Kurath’s east-west line of traditional New england features has moved eastward to the state border of New hampshire. the apparenttime results show that many traditional eastern variants are receding among younger speakers, and these linguistic changes are reflecting and constructing significant social changes occurring in this region. for about two centuries, the east-west contrasts of the early european settlements were faithfully transmitted to each new generation. But now, among the current generations of speakers, the founder effect in northern New england is rapidly dissipating. The Vermont–New Hampshire border region is steeped in traditional cultural contrasts that reflect early european settlement patterns. this eastwest border is a socially meaningful place ( johnstone 2004), and in local lore, “the air itself changes upon crossing the Connecticut river [state border]” (Wooster 1998, 2). Dialect features play a role in New hampshire and Vermont state identities, and folk linguistic knowledge of these traditional dialect contrasts can appear in unexpected places. In a sandwich shop menu from a small town near the state border, the “New hampsha’” sandwich has a nonrhotic spelling while the “Vermonter” sandwich is rhotic (figure 1). Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-pdf/87/2/126/230221/ASp87.2E.2StanfordEtal.pdf by guest on 08 July 2019 Farewell to the Founders 127 What is the current status of the traditional east-west dialect contrast of northern New england? the original motivation for our research in this region grew out of the authors’ personal experiences along the Vermont–New hampshire border. In daily neighborhood life on the New hampshire side of the border, we commonly hear older speakers using traditional eastern New england dialect features, such as fronted father vowels and lack of postvocalic-r, among others. Notably, however, local neighborhood children and young adults do not seem to produce the traditional eastern New england features. these everyday occurrences go relatively unnoticed at the conscious level. yet such observations should give sociolinguists pause for thought: Is there a generational change in progress? What is happening along this borderland of various socially meaningful places and generations? on the Vermont side of the border, one of our coauthors, thomas leddy-Cecere, has experienced a similar sense of generational change. Born and raised in a small rural town near the Vermont–New hampshire border, leddy-Cecere observes that his generation of young adults does not retain many of the east-west contrasts found among the older generations. Such impressions call for new empirical investigations in this border region. figure 1 from the Bagel Basement menu in hanover, New hampshire, near the New hampshire–Vermont State Border Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-pdf/87/2/126/230221/ASp87.2E.2StanfordEtal.pdf by guest on 08 July 2019 american speech 87.2 (2012) 128 labov, Ash and Boberg’s (2006) landmark examination of North American dialect patterns, The Atlas of North American English (ANAE), discusses the “enduring influence of the original regional patterns” of the early englishspeaking settlers (303). Such patterns include a sharp distinction between eastern and western New england: a key line of east-west dialect contrast observed with 1930s fieldwork and confirmed with 1960s fieldwork (Kurath 1939; Carver 1987). Are the east-west distinctions of northern New england still present or are they dissipating? Is transmission (labov 2007) faithfully continuing from the time of the early european settlements to the present? What is the current status of the founder effect in this region? to answer these questions, we designed our fieldwork along two complementary dimensions: a real-time study and an apparent-time study. the realtime component consisted of fieldwork at senior citizen lunches in different locations around the region, enabling us to compare our 2010 results with the dialect geography of the 1931–33 fieldwork of the Linguistic Atlas of New England (Kurath 1939), a time depth of about 77 years. In the apparent-time component, we held geography constant and examined age differences: interviews were conducted with two different age groups in a single town on the east side of the east-west border, Claremont, New hampshire. this community has older speakers who continue to use traditional eastern New england variants, even as younger generations are changing. We therefore provide new localized information about the border of two major U.S. dialects, a rural region not sampled by ANAE. We find clear evidence of significant changes in both the real-time and apparent-time dimensions of the study, and we also examine sociohistorical reasons behind these ongoing changes. After so many generations of consistent transmission tracing back to the founders, the social patterns laid down by the founders are now rapidly shifting and dissipating in the current generations.