"It's Too Hat in Here?" The Perception of NCS a-Fronting

Abstract

What is the role of specific items in carrier phrases in promoting or demoting an advantage in understanding words that contain advanced tokens of change-in-progress sounds? Labov and Ash (1997) and Plichta (2004) note such an advantage for local speakers, but they do not provide evidence about individual features. 

In Labov and Ash (1997), carrier phrases contain other tokens of Northern Cities Shift (NCS) and Southern Yowel Shift (SYS) vowels. For the NCS test, had and sandals occur along with the test item socks; for the SVS test, I and knew occur along with the test item guy. In the NCS test, therefore, another vowel of the shift occurs (re), but not the same vowel as that of the test word socks. In the SVS test, however, I occurs, the same vowel as in the test item (guy). Additionally, the potential misunderstanding is a real word in the NCS test (socks) but not in the SVS test (gah). Finally, the NCS test gives a semantic/pragmatic clue to the identity of the word; the SVS test does not.