18. Low-Mid Front Vowels : ME /ɛː/, ME /ɛ/

Chapter 18 continues the discussions introduced in Chapter 17, focusing on the pronunciation of Meat words (ME /ɛː/) and Dress words (short ME /ɛ/). In the case of Meat words, we examine the persistent conservation of the original ME pronunciation in New England. The overwhelming number of Face ~ Meat rhymes in the poetry of Franklin, Barlow, and Dwight provides strong evidence for this. To demonstrate that this is not merely a poetic device, abundant examples from contemporary English dialects are also examined.The chapter also examines the tendency to lower [ɛː] before [ɹ] to [æːɹ] in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England English, for example, near [nɛːɹ] > [næːɹ] > [naːɹ] rather than raising to [niːɹ]. The chaotic vowel shifts across southern English dialects are attested and are studied as well, including ME /ɛ/ > [æ] and [ɛ] > [ɪ] or [i] in words such as “length” ([lɪŋkθ] vs. [læŋkθ]) and “fetch” ([fɪtʃ] vs. [fætʃ] or [fɒtʃ], shared in 19th century New England and modern Appalachia and Lancashire). These patterns illustrate the utility of the notion of “phonetic range” (Chapter 11), which allows analysts to describe vowel variation without imposing artificial phonemic boundaries that are only valid within a single dialect system.As indicated in Chapter 16 with regard to the shift from short ME /i/ to /ɛ/, downward shifts of short vowels are critical for understanding not only the nature of New England English but also other varieties where similar processes occurred, in both American and English dialects—for example, [ɪ] > [ɛ] and [ɛ] > [æ]. The chapter also addresses the centralization of ME /ɛ(ː)/ before /r/.