Here is information on NYCE including…

Be a Dialect Researcher on the Western Border of the New York City Dialect Area.

If you live or go to New Jersey, you can help crowdsource where people stop using “hero” and start using “sub” or even “hoagie” to refer to those delicious but fattening sandwiches. Just scroll down past the picture below and answer the questions. It should take less than 5 minutes.

 

…an incomplete and idiosyncratic bibliography (feel free to tell me to include other papers)

  1. ■Babbitt, Eugene H. 1896. The English of the lower classes in New York City and vicinity. ''Dialect Notes ''1: 457–464.

  2. ■*Becker, Kara & Amy Wing Mei Wong. 2009. The short-a system of New York City English: An update. '''University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. ''Volume 15, Issue 2 Article 3. pp: 10-20. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol15/iss2/3/

  3. ■*Becker, Kara & Elizabeth Coggshall. 2010. The vowel phonologies of white and African American New York Residents. In Malcah Yaeger-Dror and *Erik R. Thomas (eds.)  ''African American English Speakers And Their Participation In Local Sound Changes: A Comparative Study''. American Speech Volume Supplement 94, Number 1. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press. pp: 101-128

  4. ■*Becker, Kara & Elizabeth L. Coggshall. 2009. The Sociolinguistics of Ethnicity in New York City, 2009, Language and Linguistic Compass, 3(3): 751-766.

  5. ■*Becker, Kara. 2009. /r/ and the construction of place identity on New York City’s Lower East Side ''Journal of Sociolinguistics''. 13(5): 634–658.

  6. ■*Becker, Kara. 2010. ''Regional Dialect Features on the Lower East Side of New York City: Sociophonetics, Ethnicity, and Identity''. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, NYU.

  7. ■*Bonfiglio, Thomas Paul. 2002. ''Race and the Rise of Standard American''. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 214–225.

  8. ■*Cohen, Paul. 1970. Cohen 1970.pdf (this is a widely cited documentation of the short a split in and around NYC. The linked copy is missing the last two pages.)

  9. ■*Cutler, Cece. 1999. Yorkville crossing: White teens, hip hop and African American English.'' Journal of Sociolinguistics'', 3(4):428–442.

  10. ■*Cutler, Cece. 2007. Hip-hop language in sociolinguistics and beyond. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(5):519–538.

  11. ■*Cutler, Cece. 2008 Brooklyn Style: hip-hop markers and racial affiliation among European immigrants. International Journal of Bilingualism, 12(1-2), 7-24.

  12. ■*Gordon, Matthew. 2004. "New York, Philadelphia and other Northern Cities" in Kortmann, Bernd & Schneider, Edgar W. (Eds.) ''A Handbook of Varieties of English: Volume 1'': Phonology Walter de Gruyter

  13. ■*Hubell, Allan F. 1972. The Pronunciation of English in New York City. NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

  14. ■*Kurath, Hans and Raven I. McDavid. 1961. ''The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

  15. ■*Labov, William, Paul Cohen, Clarence Robins, and John Lewis. 1968. ''A study of the Non-Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City, V. 1: Phonological and Grammatical Analysis''. Washington, DC: Office of Education, Bureau of Research/ERIC.

  16. ■*Labov, William, Paul Cohen, Clarence Robins, and John Lewis. 1968. ''A study of the Non-Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City', V. 2: The Use of Language in the Speech Community''. Washington, DC: Office of Education, Bureau of Research/ERIC.

  17. ■*Labov, William. 1966/1996. ''The Social Stratification of English in New York City 2nd Edition''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  18. ■*Labov, William. 1972a. ''Language in the Inner City:  Studies in the Black English Vernacular''. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

  19. ■*Labov, William. 1972b. ''Sociolinguistic Patterns''. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

  20. ■*Labov, William (1994) ''Principles of Linguistic Change: Volume 1: Internal Factors'' Blackwell ISBN 0-631-17914-3

  21. ■*Labov, William (2001) ''Principles of Linguistic Change: Volume 2: Social Factors'' Blackwell ISBN 0-631-17916-X

  22. ■*Labov, William (2007) [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/Papers/TD.pdf "Transmission and Diffusion"], ''Language'' June 2007

  23. ■*Labov, William, Sharon Ash, & Charles Boberg (2006) ''Atlas of North American English'' DeGruyter ISBN 3-11-016746-8

  24. ■*Newman, Michael (2005) "New York Talk" in ''American Voices'' Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward (eds). p. 82-87 Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-2109-2

  25. ■*Newman, Michael. 2010. 'Focusing, implicational scaling, and the dialect status of New York Latino English''. Journal of Sociolinguistics,'' 14(2): 207–239.

  26. ■*Schneider, E. W., Kortmann, B. (2005), A Handbook of Varieties of English: A Multi-Media Reference Tool, Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN-10: 3110175320, p. 284

  27. ■*Slomanson, Peter, and Newman, Michael. 2004. Peer Group Identification and Variation in New York Latino English Laterals. ''English World-Wide'' 25: 199- 216.

  28. ■*Thomas, C. K. 1932. Jewish dialect and New York Dialect. ''American Speech'' 7(5). 321–6.

  29. ■*Thomas, C. K. 1942. Pronunciation in downstate New York. ''American Speech'' 17(1).30–41.

  30. ■*Thomas, C. K. 1947. The place of New York City in American linguistic geography. ''Quarterly Journal of Speech'' 33(3). 314–20.

  31. ■*Wells, J. C. 1982. ''Accents of English. ''3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  32. ■*Wolfram, Walt. 1974. ''Sociolinguistic Aspects of Assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York City''. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

  33. ■*Wolfram, Walt & Natalie Schilling Estes (2006) ''American English'' 2nd edition  Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-1265-4

  34. ■*Wolfram, Walt & Ward, Ben (2005) ''American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast'' Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-2109-2

  35. ■*Wong, Amy. 2007. Two Vernacular Features in the English of Four American-Born Chinese. ''University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics'' 13, no. 2, 217-230.