A Phonological analysis of (ing) in Southern Vermont

Mieka LeClair & Julie Roberts

Sat. 2-3:40 D

The purpose of the present study is to document (ing) production in the dialect spoken by native Southern Vermonters. The participants consisted of twelve Vermonters, who were recruited by the first author, herself a native of Vermont. They were interviewed for one hour each on topics related to life in Vermont, family, work, hobbies, etc. Interviews were audiotaped, coded, and analyzed using the Goldvarb 2.0 variable rule analysis program with the purpose of looking specifically at the variable (ing), which alternates between the variants /^n/ and /ing/.

It has been found in previous research on this variable that /^n/ is favored most in progressive verbs and participles, less in gerunds, and least in nouns. The results of the current study support these findings by showing /^n/ to be more likely to be used in complements and verbs than in nominal forms, such as nouns, adjectives, and gerunds. There were significant gender differences found with women leading in the use of the more standard variant /ing/ as well as a large style effect for most speakers. In fact, it is this interaction of gender and style effects that leads us to the proposal that for Southern Vermonters, (ing) is not only an important local feature but a highly stigmatized one as well. There were dramatic individual differences in usage of (ing), in that many of the male subjects demonstrated extremely high rates of /^n/ usage -- up to 100% whereas some of the women evidenced almost no [^n] productions at all. The proposal that (ing) is an important feature of the Vermont dialect was supported by interviews with Vermonters, who stated that local speakers often used [^n] and that it was associated with stigmatized rural speech.