This fascinating record of how English is spoken in England is now being reprinted. Over 400 maps detail differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax. The Atlas provides a unique survey of the linguistic geography of England. This volume was inspired by the English Dialect Survey which set out to elicit information about the current dialectical usages of the older members of the farming communities throughout rural England. The Survey secondly mapped this information to illustrate the regional distributions of those features of their speech which persisted from ancient times. Published after Orton's death, the publication of this volume testified to the sustained interest in the lingusitic geography of England.

The Atlas of North American English provides the first overall view of the pronunciation and vowel systems of the dialects of the U.S. and Canada. The Atlas re-defines the regional dialects of American English on the basis of sound changes active in the 1990s and draws new boundaries reflecting those changes. It is based on a telephone survey of 762 local speakers, representing all the urbanized areas of North America. It has been developed by Bill Labov, one of the leading sociolinguists of the world, together with his colleagues Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg. The Atlas consists of a printed volume accompanied by an interactive CD-ROM. The print and multimedia content is also available online. Combined Edition: Book and Multimedia CD-ROM The book contains 23 chapters that re-define the geographic boundaries of North American dialects and trace the influence of gender, age, education, and city size on the progress of sound change; findings that show a dramatic and increasing divergence of English in North America; 139 four color maps that illustrate the regional distribution of phonological and phonetic variables across the North American continent; 120 four color vowel charts of individual speakers. The multimedia CD-ROM supplements the articles and maps by providing a data base with measurements of more than 100,000 vowels and mean values for 439 speakers; the Plotnik program for mapping each of the individual vowel systems; extended sound samples of all North American dialects; multimedia applications to enhance classroom presentations. Online Version: Book and CD-ROM content plus additional data The online version comprises the contents of the book and the multimedia CD-ROM along with additional data. It presents a wider selection of data, maps, and audio samples that will be recurrently updated; proffers simultaneous access to the information contained in the book and on the multimedia CD-ROM to all users in the university/library network; provides students with easy access to research material for classroom assignments. For more information, please contact Mouton de Gruyter: [email protected] System Requirements for CD-ROM and Online Version Windows PC: Pentium PC, Windows 9x, NT, or XP, at least 16MB RAM, CD-ROM Drive, 16 Bit Soundcard, SVGA (600 x 800 resolution) Apple MAC: OS 6 or higher, 16 Bit Soundcard, at least 16MB RAM Supported Browsers: Internet Explorer, 5.5 or 6 (Mac OS: Internet Explorer 5.1)/Netscape 7.x or higher/Mozilla 1.0 or higher/Mozilla Firefox 1.0 or higher PlugIns: Macromedia Flash Player 6/Acrobat Reader

This fascinating record of how English is spoken in England is now being reprinted. Over 400 maps detail differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax. The Atlas provides a unique survey of the linguistic geography of England. This volume was inspired by the English Dialect Survey which set out to elicit information about the current dialectical usages of the older members of the farming communities throughout rural England. The Survey secondly mapped this information to illustrate the regional distributions of those features of their speech which persisted from ancient times. Published after Orton's death, the publication of this volume testified to the sustained interest in the lingusitic geography of England.

Who uses "skeeter hawk," "snake doctor," and "dragonfly" to refer to the same insect? Who says "gum band" instead of "rubber band"? The answers can be found in the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS), the largest single survey of regional and social differences in spoken American English. It covers the region from New York state to northern Florida and from the coastline to the borders of Ohio and Kentucky. Through interviews with nearly twelve hundred people conducted during the 1930s and 1940s, the LAMSAS mapped regional variations in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation at a time when population movements were more limited than they are today, thus providing a unique look at the correspondence of language and settlement patterns. This handbook is an essential guide to the LAMSAS project, laying out its history and describing its scope and methodology. In addition, the handbook reveals biographical information about the informants and social histories of the communities in which they lived, including primary settlement areas of the original colonies. Dialectologists will rely on it for understanding the LAMSAS, and historians will find it valuable for its original historical research. Since much of the LAMSAS questionnaire concerns rural terms, the data collected from the interviews can pinpoint such language differences as those between areas of plantation and small-farm agriculture. For example, LAMSAS reveals that two waves of settlement through the Appalachians created two distinct speech types. Settlers coming into Georgia and other parts of the Upper South through the Shenandoah Valley and on to the western side of the mountain range had a Pennsylvania-influenced dialect, and were typically small farmers. Those who settled the Deep South in the rich lowlands and plateaus tended to be plantation farmers from Virginia and the Carolinas who retained the vocabulary and speech patterns of coastal areas. With these revealing findings, the LAMSAS represents a benchmark study of the English language, and this handbook is an indispensable guide to its riches.

For nearly 400 years, New England has held an important place in the development of American English, and "New England accents" are very well known in popular imagination. This book is the first large-scale academic project since the 1930s to focus specifically on New England English as a whole. It presents new variationist sociolinguistic research covering all six New England states, with detailed geographic, acoustic phonetic, and statistical analyses of recently collected data from over 1,600 New Englanders. The book systematically documents major traditional New England dialect features and their current usage in terms of location, age, gender, ethnicity, social class, and other factors.