Chapter 9. Child and adolescent transmission and incrementation in acquisition in historical sociophonetic data from English in Missouri, 1880–2000

Abstract

Phonological conditioning of allophones of /æ/ is typologically important for American Englishes and a site of ongoing sound change. Combining historical and present-day data, this chapter traces productions of /æ/ in the US state of Missouri from the 1880s to 1990s. It reveals a transition to a nasal /æ/ system that progressed via children’s probabilistic calculations, as children initially acquired the /æ/ of their speech community (transmission) and then introduced innovations as they approached adulthood (incrementation). It also posits roots for the actuation of modern-day /æ/-backing in turn-of-the-century associations with high socioeconomic status and/or metropolitan Kansas City, which may have initiated incrementation. These findings highlight the value of historical sociophonetic explorations of sound changes as consequences of cognitive processes of language acquisition.