South Midland Pronunciation in the North Central States

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses about the determination of the northward extent of six South Midland pronunciation features in the North Central states. Evidence was taken from 124 interviews taped for the Dictionary of American Regional English: 28 in Ohio, 16 in Indiana, 46 in Illinois, 7 in Kentucky, 20 in Missouri, and 7 in southern Iowa. As a part of each interview, the informants read a short passage designed to elicit specific phonological variables. Ohio played the greatest part in the settlement of the states farther west. By the time migration from Ohio began, the railroad and the steel plow made the prairies accessible and tillable so that a wave of Ohioans in the middle 19th century inundated northern Indiana and a large area of Illinois. South Midland pronunciation is predominant in southwestern Indiana; in the Wabash, Mississippi, and Sangamon valleys of Illinois; and in all of Missouri except the Ohio settlements of the northwestern parts of the state.