LAUSR

In a study of intonation in Appalachian English (AE), Greene (2006) suggested that relative frequency and phonetic realization of pitch accents might reflect a stronger regional identity. The present study tests these observations, using rootedness—defined as one’s orientation to place—as a means to describe observed intonational variation. Data were drawn from sociolinguistic interviews with 25 AE speakers from northeast Tennessee. In addition to the interview, every participant completed a Rootedness Metric, a psychometric survey designed to quantify place-based orientation. To consider the extent how AE speakers compared to the broader South, this cohort was also compared to a non-Appalachian Southern cohort. A section of speech from each speaker was labeled following MAE-ToBI conventions (Beckman et al., 2005). Pitch accent frequencies were totaled. Additionally, tonal peak alignment for the L + H* pitch accents was measured. Results indicate that AE speakers have a greater occurrence of L + H* pitch ...