Within-region diversity in the Southern Vowel Shift: Production and perception

In this paper, we attempt to refine our understanding of the relationship between Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) norms and Southern orientation in the U.S. We ask to what degree Southerners from three different states (TN, NC, VA) show evidence of these shifts acoustically. Most crucially, we examine how much the different locales vary in terms of how much they align with traditional Southern features such as /ay/ monophthongization and /e/-/ɛ/ reversal. Then, through a perception study, we investigate whether differences exist in how the same speakers identify vowel categories in a perception task, looking particularly at how subjects across our three Southern sites compare.