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Western New England English is a dialect of New England English native to Vermont, the western half of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the New York State capital of Albany. Sound patterns historically associated with this area include the General American features of rhoticity (full pronunciation of all ''r'' sounds), the horse–hoarse merger, and the father–bother merger, which are not features traditionally shared in neighboring Eastern New England English. The status of the cot–caught merger here is inconsistent, being complete in the north of this dialect region (Vermont), but incomplete or absent in the south (southern Connecticut), with a "cot–caught approximation" in the middle area (western Massachusetts). Western New England English is often relatively difficult for American laypersons and even dialectologists to identify by any "distinct" accent, compared to its widely recognized neighbors: Eastern New England English, New York City English, and Inland Northern English. In fact, General American, or "mainstream" U.S. speech, derives from a sound system widely heard (at least, before the twentieth century) in the "Inland North" or "Midwest," an area settled originally by Western New England English speakers.〔Mencken, H. L. (1963). ''The American Language''. 4th ed. New York: Knopf. p. 455.〕 ==Overview of phonology== Some Western New England speakers show early stages of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (or NCVS: the defining feature of the Great Lakes region's Inland North dialect) in slightly backing (to ) and fronting (to ), and in tensing all instances of to something like . Though actually variable among Western New England speakers, these features occur just enough to suggest that they are the "pivot conditions" that influenced the NCVS in the Inland North, likely beginning in the early twentieth century. Except for having uniform rhoticity and all the vowel mergers associated with General American speech, the English of Western New England is in fact fairly inconsistent throughout. In 2001, Charles Boberg, discussing that Western New England English was a likely direct influence on Inland Northern English, still identified as many as four or five English dialectal sub-regions within Western New England itself, based on data from the late 1990s: *Northwestern Vermont (centered on Burlington) shows no raising of (except before nasal consonants), and therefore stays back in the mouth, leading to a cot–caught merger to (); this whole process consistently follows the logic of the Canadian Shift of Standard Canadian English. *Southwestern Vermont (centered on Rutland) shows shows a universal raising to and fronting to , but then oversteps and defies the logical direction of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift by producing a cot–caught merger to (). *Western Massachusetts (centered on Springfield) shows shows a universal raising to and fronting to , following the logic of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, except that it tends towards a cot–caught merger to (), which is especially completed among younger speakers. *Central Connecticut (centered on Hartford) shows shows a universal raising to and fronting to , and thus avoiding the cot–caught merger; this whole process consistently follows the logic of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. *(Coastal Connecticut, centered on New Haven, in the above respects, appears to have much in common with New York City English) In 2001, Charles Boberg argued that Northwestern New England (Vermont) English, due to its cot–caught merger but failure to demonstrate other features of the Eastern New England dialect, must be considered as its own separate dialect. On the other hand, in discussing Southwestern New England English as its own unique dialect, he instead hesitantly proposed that it be regarded as a "subtype" of the Inland North dialect, based on the aforementioned commonalities, even if variable, such as the universal raising of the short ''a'' and no cot–caught merger. However, younger Southwestern New England speakers have diverged away from both of these features, which Boberg at least partly foresaw; such variables are discussed in greater detail below. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Western New England English」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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