Phonological characteristics

All phonetic transcriptions in X-SAMPA; for example:

how are you? ho"wa:j@

Deletion of post-vocalic r`

The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the phoneme r` does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. Thus, there is no r` in words like park pa:k , car ka: , and Harvard ha:v@d . After high and mid-high vowels, the r' is replaced by @ or another neutral central vowel like 1 : weird wi1d , square skwe@ . Similarly, unstressed 3` ("er") is replaced by @ , 6 , or 1 , as in color kVl@ .

In the most traditional and old-fashioned Boston accents, what is in other dialects Or` becomes a low back vowel Q : corn is kQ:n , pronounced the same or almost the same as con.

For some old-fashioned speakers, stressed 3` as in bird is replaced by Y ( bYd ); for many present-day Boston-accent speakers, however, 3` is retained. More speakers lose r` after other vowels than lose 3` .

The Boston accent possesses both "linking r" and "intrusive r": that is to say, a r` will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and indeed a r` will be inserted after a word ending with a central or low vowel if the next word begins with a vowel: the tuner is and the tuna is are both D@ tun@r`Iz

Vowels

The Boston accent has a highly distinctive system of low vowels, even in speakers who do not drop r` as described above. Eastern New England is the only region in North America where the distinction between the vowels in words like father and spa on the one hand and words like bother and hot on the other hand is securely maintained: the former contain a: ( fa:D@ , spa: ), and the latter Q: ( bQ:D@ , hQ:t ). This means that even though heart has no r` , it remains distinct from hot because its vowel quality is different: ha:t . By contrast, the accent of New York uses the same vowel in both of these classes: A: . The Received Pronunciation of England, like Boston English, distinguishes the classes, using A: in father and Q in bother.

On the other hand, the Boston accent (unlike the Providence, Rhode Island accent) merges the two classes exemplified by caught and cot: both become kQ:t . So caught, cot, law, water, rock, talk, doll, and wall all have exactly the same vowel, Q: . For some speakers, as mentioned above, words like corn and horse also have this vowel. By contrast, New York accents have kO:t for caught and kA:t for cot; Received Pronunciation has kO:t and kQt , respectively.

Some older Boston speakers—the ones who have a low vowel in words like corn kQ:n —maintain a distinction between horse and for on the one hand and hoarse and four on the other hand. The former are in the same class as corn, as hQ:s and fQ: , and the latter are ho@s and fo@ . This distinction is rapidly fading out of currency, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it.

Boston English has a so-called "nasal short-a system". This means that the "short a" vowel { as in cat and rat becomes a mid-high front diphthong e@ when it precedes a nasal consonant: thus man is me@n and planet is ple@n@t . Boston shares this system with the accents of the southern part of the Midwest. By contrast, Received Pronunciation uses { regardless of whether the next consonant is nasal or not, and New York uses e@ before a nasal at the end of a syllable ( me@n ) but not before a nasal between two vowels ( pl{n@t ).

A feature that some Boston English speakers share with Received Pronunciation is the so-called Broad A: in some words that in other accents have { , such as half and bath, that vowel is replaced with a: : ha:f , ba:T . (In Received Pronunciation, the Broad A vowel is A: .) Fewer words have the Broad A in Boston English than in Received Pronunciation, and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the Broad A system as time goes on, but it is still noticeable.

Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial r` than many other modern American accents do: Boston accents maintain the distinctions between the vowels in marry m{r`i , merry mEr`i , and Mary me@r`i , hurry hVr`i and furry f3`r`i , mirror mIr`@ and nearer ni@r`@ , though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered. Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and Received Pronunciation, but the Midwest, for instance, has lost them entirely.

Other phenomena

• It has been said that some speakers from the North Shore sometimes insert v before r` in such words as really v r`i@li , remember v @mE~b@ .

• Words stressed on antepenultimate (third_from_the_end) syllable (principal, economical, certificate) may have voiced final consonant (marked in bold in the examples above): economical Ek@nOm@g@l .

• potatoes p@4e4@z
• Somerville sVmO~vo5
• Final s may be voiced
• mine (as in "It's mine!") maI@n
• Final unstressed 1d may be voiceless ("wicked", etc)
• Older phenomenon: outside aUntsaId or aU~tsaId
• Infrequent: h inserted in vowel-initial position

Recordings of Boston Accents

http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/english21.html

http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/english79.html

http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/english76.html

References

• McCarthy, John (http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~jjmccart/) (1993). A case of surface constraint violation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics (http://www.utpjournals.com/jour.ihtml?lp=cjl/cjl.html) 38. 169-195.

• George Mason University. The Speech Accent Archive (http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/), 22 September, 2004.