Tensing of /æ/ in Cincinnati

The vowel of TRAP, BATH, and DANCE, known as “short-a”, serves as a distinguishing feature of several American dialects. As noted above, the pattern found throughout most of the West and Midwest involves moderate raising of the vowel in the context of a following nasal. In Cincinnati, /æ/ is raised in this environment as well as before fricatives (e.g., have, path) and /d/ (e.g., bad). Phonetically, the raised variants are described as “tensed” because they typically involve a peripheral nucleus with an inglide; i.e., [eə] . Similar forms are heard in the Great Lakes region as part of the Northern Cities Shift and along the Atlantic Coast including the cities of Philadelphia and New York. However, the Cincinnati pattern is distinct from the others in terms of its conditioning. The tense forms appear in a wider range of contexts in Cincinnati speech than in the Mid-Atlantic dialects. Raising before voiced fricatives, for example, is very restricted in the East. On the other hand, tensing does not occur in all contexts, a fact that distinguishes Cincinnati speech from that affected by the Northern Cities Shift. Speakers in the Inland North, for example, will typically have raised forms before voiceless stops (e.g., cat) and /l/ (e.g., pal) while such items appear with a lax [æ] in Cincinnati. Actually, the Cincinnati pattern described here is today largely restricted to older speakers and appears to be undergoing change. Younger Cincinnatians seem to be moving toward the general Western pattern in which raising of /æ/ occurs only before nasals.