The (non-) acquisition of New York City vowels by two generations of Caribbean immigrants

The study discussed in this article is based on a sample of 10 extensive interviews conducted with two generations of Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants, looking more specifically at the realization of two variables described in Labov et al.'s Atlas, namely, /æ/ (also called “short /a/”, or “the vowel of BAT/BAD”) and /∧/ (also called “long open /o/”, or “the vowel of BOUGHT”). Our results suggests that these immigrants do raise long open /o/, however they do not consistently follow the short /ae/ split, but rather the general nasal pattern. We discuss possible explanations for this asymmetry.