New Hampshire Three - Text
Associate Editor: Doug Honorof
The participant is a 25-year-old Caucasian man born near Boston but raised from the age of three months in Sandown, New Hampshire. At age 18, the participant moved away to attend college in Lowell, Massachusetts where he studied engineering. He then moved to Italy to work as a fashion model, and, several months before the date of the recording, to New York City to pursue a career in acting. The participant suspects that the tempo of his speech has slowed as a consequence of his having lived away from home, but his accent remains representative in important respects. This sample was collected November 11, 2000 by Esther K. Chae. After reading an early draft of "Comma Gets a Cure," the participant offers a very brief life history, some parts of which were reordered in the editing. Running time (excluding the copyright notice): 00:03:30.
The listener may notice:
PROSODY
Loud, abrupt punch on stressed syllables.
Reduction of syllables ('normally', 'expensive').
CONSONANTS
Varied realization of the letter 'r' after a vowel.
Active use of the tongue-tip in '-ing' endings ('morning', 'suffering').
Dental 'th' ('there', 'stuff like that').
Voicing in MassachuSets.
VOWELS
A split of the historical lexical set TRAP so that some words (e.g., 'managed') come to rhyme with DRESS words, while other words (e.g., 'trap' itself) maintain a more open vowel as does BATH (but not as open as so-called intermediate 'a' for this talker). As in many other Northeastern American accents, the TRAP split is conditioned by the identity of the following consonant. The present passage is too short to allow a full analysis of the split, but it seems that this talker's pattern may be different from either the pattern typical of Metro New York, where BATH is reported to merge with those TRAP words having the higher, not the lower, vowels, and also different from the pattern typical of the Northern Cities, where the TRAP and BATH lexical sets are reported to merge completely. (For a discussion of the Northern Cities vowel shift, see much of the work of William Labov. For a definition of the lexical set concept, see Volume One of J. C. Wells, 1982, "Accents of English." Cambridge University Press.) TRAP words before 'r' have an open vowel, but so do some SQUARE words ('Sarah' rhymes with 'Harrison', not 'Mary').
NORTH=FORCE?
A fairly low, back vowel in the LOT, THOUGHT and CLOTH lexical sets-all alike in vowel length (half-long, perhaps), but, in the present sample, variable in lip-rounding, even from instance to instance of the same word (e.g., 'Comma').
A mid-open front vowel in START, especially front in 'car' and in the word 'start' itself the last time it occurs toward the end of the unscripted material. This is the famed "Park your car in Harvard Yard' lexical set.
GOOSE and CURE: No yod (that is, no liquid 'u') after tongue-tip consonants including 't', 'd' and 'n' ('Duke', 'new', 'tune'). A fairly back vowel in GOOSE.
A mid-open vowel in DRESS.
happY is said with a very close vowel.
The editor acknowledges having received support from NIH Grant DC-03782 to Haskins Laboratories during the preparation of the present comments.
TRANSCRIPTION
I was born in New Hampshire, a town called Sandown, small population, about 5,000 people. Very small town. Born and raised there. Actually, I was born in a different city, but (uh) I was brought there at three months old, and I was raised there for the rest of my life in the same town. It’s (uh)-- it’s definitely the simple life.
I’m real excited ’cause I’m going back there for (uh) Thanksgiving, so… That should be interesting, but (uh) I don’t usually get back there too often, you know. It’s usually a long weekend here and there, but other than that, no. It’s about (uh)… four hours, by car. (Um) Plane is only 45 minutes, which is good, but then you gotta get from the city up-- up to New Hampshire, you know, which is an hour. Or if you fly into New Hampshire, but now the plane tickets have just gone crazy. They’re four hundred dollars. Yeah, you could fly to Paris, you know, for a weekend for cheaper than that. Which is insane to me, but…
God, I lived there for 20-- 20 years. No, I lived there for 18 years, and then when I went to college, I moved to a town called Bolton, Massachusetts. That is where there’s a university that’s-- it’s a good size, about 12,000 people _____.
About my third year, I left and moved to Milan, Italy, to start a career over there in modeling and stuff like that. Someone approached me, and they had an agent in Boston, and all this big stuff. Well, a friend of mine was actually working with this agent in Boston. And I was on the football team with him at school, so he’s like, “Yeah, I want you to come down with me.” And I was like talking to my girlfriend, and like, “What do you think about this? You know, it seems a little weird to me.” You know, it was just really strange. And then I went there, and she was like, “Oh yeah,” you know, and she started working with me. And two months later she brought me to-- to New York, for a convention. So I was-- I was like, “Uh, okay.” And then when I was here for a week, somebody-- You know, I got a bunch of offers and stuff like that. People wanting me to go to Florida, or, you know, LA, or… you know, wherever. Really strange places, you know, Tokyo and (uh)… I decided to go to Milan, ’cause, you know, it’s a really cheap way to start a career, as far as-- I mean, that’s what they told me…