Incipient and Established Dialect Differentiation and Segmentation in North American English

Dialects, like brands, are built on the concepts of differentiation and segmentation. When dialectologists think of these concepts in language variation and dialectology, they recognize that not all variation in the linguistic signal (spoken, written, signed) produces perceptual differentiation or segmentation. Papers in this volume reflect established variation across groups, while other variation described in this volume are novel and serve to establish a baseline or examine ongoing variation that could lead to change. Such change leads us to look at older dialect forms and refer to the early latency as incipience.