Previous Findings:
PALM-fronting refers to pronouncing the words such as "palm" more like "paahlm." It is a classic feature of Eastern New England (ENE) English according to the Atlas of North American English (Kurath, 1939; Labov, et al., 2006; Kim, et al., 2019:174). Interestingly, Black speakers in Boston were less likely to participate in PALM-fronting, whereas white South Boston speakers were more likely to use fronted-PALM (Browne & Stanford, 2018).
Our Findings:
44.87% of the Black Bostonian speakers we interviewed produced slightly less fronted PALM. Meanwhile, 48.72% of our speakers were slightly more fronted in their PALM vowel. We predicted that our speakers would not use Fronted PALM, based on prior work in the Black Boston community (Browne & Stanford, 2018). However, our results show that most of our speakers land somewhere in the middle between most fronted and least fronted.
References:
- Browne & Stanford (2018:21)
- Kim, et al., (2019:174)
- Kurath (1939)
- Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:140)
