The (non-) acquisition of New York City vowels by two generations of Caribbean immigrants Patrick-André Mather Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico article info Article history: Received 3 April 2014 Received in revised form 19 November 2014 Accepted 25 November 2014 Available online 12 January 2015 Keywords: New York City English Sociophonetics Latino English Urban sociolinguistics abstract The study discussed in this article is based on a sample of 10 extensive interviews con- ducted with two generations of Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants, looking more specifically at the realization of two variables described in Labov et al.’s Atlas, namely, /æ/ (also called “short /a/”, or “the vowel of BAT/BAD”) and /^/ (also called “long open /o/”, or “the vowel of BOUGHT”). Our results suggests that these immigrants do raise long open /o/, however they do not consistently follow the short /ae/ split, but rather the general nasal pattern. We discuss possible explanations for this asymmetry. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Since Labov’s (1966) groundbreaking work on variation in New York City English, notably the social stratification of variables such as post-vocalic /r/, short /a/ and long open /o/, few follow-up studies have been conducted in the New York City area over the following 30 or 40 years. However, since the turn of the 21st century, several researchers have revived interest in this local variety of English, sparked in part by Labov et al. (2006) Atlas of North American English. This comprehensive work mapped out regional varieties of English in the United States and Canada, based largely on telephone surveys conducted in the 1990s. Among recent studies on New York City English, one should mention Becker (2009a, 2009b, 2010), Becker and Coggshall (2008, 2009), Becker and Wong (2010), Newman (2010) and Slomanson and Newman (2004). At the 39th NWAV meeting in November 2010 in San Antonio, Texas, William Labov explained that one of the goals of the Atlas was to spur interest in more detailed, local surveys of English in order to shed more light on the general patterns described in the Atlas. While most of the above-mentioned studies do just that, few have dealt specifically with recent immigrants to New York City, and focus almost exclusively on New York born subjects, albeit of various ethno-linguistic backgrounds. The study discussed in this article seeks to fill that gap, and is based on a sample of 10 extensive interviews conducted with two generations of Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants, looking specifically at the realization of two variables described in Labov et al.’s Atlas, namely, /æ/ (also called “short /a/”, or “the vowel of BAT/BAD”) and />/ (also called “long open /o/”, or “the vowel of BOUGHT”). For many linguists interested in describing the local variety of a language, it makes sense to focus specifically on locally- born individuals, since immigrants often only partially acquire the language, and cannot be expected to be reliable informants of local varieties. Thus, many linguists exclude immigrants a priori from sociolinguistic studies of dialects; I believe this is a E-mail address: pa_mather@yahoo.fr. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Language Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.11.003 0388-0001/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Language Sciences 48 (2015) 48–61