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Northwestern Ohio: A Transition Area

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Alva L. Davis and
Raven I. McDavid Jr.
Alva L. Davis
Affiliation:
Western Reserve University
Raven I. McDavid Jr.
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

Students of dialect geography recognize, in general, three types of speechareas. A FOCAL AREA is one whose economic, cultural, or political prestige has caused its speech-forms to spread into surrounding areas. A RELIC AREA is one whose geographic or cultural isolation has permitted the preservation of older forms that have been lost elsewhere and has prevented the spread of local terms. A TRANSITION AREA is one which has undergone influence from two or more directions, so that competing forms exist in it side by side. Focal areas are studied because they set the patterns for standard types of speech; relic areas because they are able to throw light on earlier stages of the language; transition areas because they may help us to see what happens when population spreads from an area of early settlement to one of later settlement, or when arteries of communication are developed between areas of different cultural backgrounds. The speech patterns of a transition area are likely to be more complex than those of the other two types. For this reason there have been comparatively few studies of transition areas; this paper is a preliminary study of such an area. It attempts to find out what problems a linguist may expect to encounter in investigating transition areas, and to suggest what further studies might be desirable.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 26 , Issue 2-Part1: April-June , June 1950, pp. 264 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © 1950 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Typical focal areas in the eastern United States are Boston and its environs, metropolitan New York, and the Virginia Piedmont.

2 Typical relic areas are Cape Cod in New England and the Banks Islands off the North Carolina coast.

3 The only American study of a transition area is Joseph S. Hall, The phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain speech (New York, 1942). Hall's introductory study of the settlement history indicates that the Smokies are to be considered a transition area; but unfortunately his analysis seems to assume that the area is a relic area of considerable uniformity.

4 Hans Kurath, A word geography of the eastern United States (Ann Arbor, 1949); E. Bagby Atwood, Verb morphology of the eastern United States (unpublished MS); Albert H. Marckwardt, Middle English δ in the American English of the Great Lakes area, Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 26.561–71 (1941); Marckwardt, Middle English wa in the speech of the Great Lakes region, American Speech 17.226–34 (1942); A. L. Davis, A word atlas of the Great Lakes region (University of Michigan diss.; microfilm, Ann Arbor, 1948).

5 Only eight field records have been made as yet in Indiana, and the parts of Ohio adjacent to this northwestern sector have not been completely investigated.

This paper is based on ten records made in northwestern Ohio—nine by McDavid in June 1949, the other by Frederic G. Cassidy in 1939. Funds for field work in Ohio have been provided by the University of Michigan, Western Reserve University, and the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Association.

6 Nevin O. Winter, A history of northwest Ohio 318 (Chicago, 1917); Writers' program of the Work Projects Administration, The Ohio guide 536, 560 (New York, 1940).

7 United States Census, Ninth census: Population and social statistics, Table 7 (Washington, (1870).

8 The sixty-six field records made in Michigan reveal a remarkable similarity to the findings for western New England and upstate New York. This is especially true of the records from the southeastern part of Michigan.

9 The field worker must often make a judgment about the educational status of an informant. Home study and aggressive social life may cause an informant with relatively little formal schooling to be regarded as better educated than another with the same school background.

The ten informants are designated by letter-and-number codes; the letter, or combination of two letters, denotes the community (P, Perrysburg; D, Defiance; VW, Van Wert; 0, Ottawa; US, Upper Sandusky); the numerals 1 and 2 denote respectively the more and the less old-fashioned informant interviewed in that community. Personal data on the informants are given here:

P1: retired merchant, 84; F[ather] b[orn in] Ireland, M[other] b Ohio; 7th grade; not much interested in reading; virtually untraveled.

P2: retired merchant, 85; F and M b Germany; 8th grade; considerable reading (president of local library board) and extensive travel in U. S. (as salesman in his younger days).

D1: laborer, 94; F b Scotland, M b Pennsylvnaia; 2d grade.

D2: retired farmer, 80; F b Pennsylvania, M b Ohio; normal school.

VW1: farmer, 82; F and M b Ohio; 3d grade.

VW2: farmer, 73; F and M b Wales; grade school; self-educated, well-read; extensive travel as cattle buyer.

01: farmer, 76 (in 1939, when the record was made); F b New York State, M b Ohio; school till 15 years old.

02: retired restaurateur and saloon-keeper, 77; F and M b Ohio; 6th grade; extensive social contacts.

US1: laborer, 79; F and M b Ohio; grade school.

US2: farmer, 85; F and M b Ohio; normal school.

10 George Hempl, Grease and greasy, Dialect Notes 1.438–44; Kurath, review of A pronouncing dictionary of American English, by J. S. Kenyon and T. A. Knott, Lg. 20.150–5 (1944).

11 Marckwardt, Middle English ŏ.

12 Kurath, Mourning and morning, Studies for William A. Read 166–73 (Baton Rouge, 1940).

13 Greasy with [s] is regular in the Pennsylvania German area.

14 In the Linguistic atlas of New England there are only 40 instances of the voiceless spirant, 22 of them in Maine and New Brunswick.

15 Atwood, op.cit.