The Northern Cities Shift is an example of a chain shift. If you consider each point of articulation around the cycle of the vowel shift, an innovative vowel adopts the place of articulation of an adjacent pre-shift vowel. For example, the vowel of the shifted (advanced) pronunciation of stock is quite similar to the vowel of pre-shift stack. A good analogy for a chain shift is to characterize it as a game of musical chairs, played by vowels. The next diagram illustrates this with example words; the words in black text are situated where their vowels are pronounced in non-Northern-Cities-Shift dialects, while the words in blue text show the displacement of the vowel in each word. If you follow the movement of each vowel, the shift occurs in a clockwise manner.
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Roll over this button to see the result of the shift,
or click here to see it in action!
© 2001 The Language Samples Project