Arkansas 5

Listen to Arkansas 5, a 23-year-old man from Little Rock and De Valls Bluff, Arkansas, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 23

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1978

PLACE OF BIRTH: Little Rock, Arkansas

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: When recorded, subject was a student at the University Of Arkansas.

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject was raised in various Arkansas towns, including De Valls Bluff.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Mavourneen Dwyer

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/09/2001

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, [at] Doctors’ Hospital. I remember when I was 2 or 3 years old, um, I had to take a nap, as I did every day. And I’d go to bed with my sister; we both slept in the same room. And before that I’d pulled a wagon up to my window. And our, my mother put us to bed. I opened the window and crawled out into the wagon and went playin’. I was playin’ for two or three hours before my mother finally figured out that I was outside. And she ran out to git me, I ran and hid in the cotton field. And my hair was bleach-blond, and they couldn’t find me. I stood out there, an’ I could see them but they couldn’t see me. But then my mother told me there was a big snake out in the cotton field so I came runnin’ out of the cotton field and she caught me. I remember another incident. I’d always climb trees when I was a little kid, just like 3, 4, 5 years old. And I climbed an oak tree, I believe it was, way up to the top. My mother was seven-months pregnant with my brother, and, uh, she said that was the last time she was comin’ to git me. Cause, like, the day before that she climbed up the tree to git me and she fell out, and hurt herself. And it was probably three o’clock in the afternoon, when she found me up in the tree, and my dad didn’t get off till about 7. So she told me I had to stay in the tree the whole time. And I started to fall asleep, and she couldn’t climb up the tree; she had to stay out there with me. And she used a fishin’ pole, she’d hit the branches with it and try an’ keep me awake. And, uh, when my dad got home – whew! I’ll never forget that day.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 01/10/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

His speech has a very narrow pitch range and is strongly rhotic. His long “i” vowel as in “liking” and “wiped” always receive an “ah” substitution. When reading, his “ing” endings are fully velar in “working” and “liking,” etc., but alveolar when in conversation. Final consonants in words like “confirmed” are sometimes elided; and some medial consonants in “twenty-one,” “mirror,” and “nearer” are also elided. There is consistent consonant cluster reduction on such words as “never,” “remember,” and “veterinarian.” The vowel in “them” is slightly diphthongized.

COMMENTARY BY: Mavourneen Dwyer

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/09/2001

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

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