LELA 10082 Lecture 3

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LELA 10082Lecture 3

• Describing accents I

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How accents differ

• Want to talk in general about how to describe
  accents
• Well apply todays ideas to some case studies
  later
• Accents means well concentrate on phonetic
  aspects
• To do this properly, you really need to be a good
  phonetician
• Know your phonetic symbols
• Have a really good ear
• But even if not, you can still grasp the
  principles

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How to approach the task?

• Independent phonemic analysis (endocentric)
• More scientific, but can be long-winded
• Comparison with something else (probably RP)
  (exocentric)
• More convenient, but
• Beware of false impressions
• That accent is derived from RP (may be vice
  versa, or accents are historically quite
  distinct)
• That RP is better (cf last class RP used to be
  prestigious, and certainly may influence changes
  in regional accents)

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Differences between X and RP

• Differences of phoneme system
• Additional phoneme distinctions missing
  phonemes
• Differences of distribution
• X and RP have equivalent phonemes, but the
  phonetic contexts in which they occur differ
• Differences of incidence
• X and RP have equivalent phonemes, but in
  particular words, a different phoneme is chosen
• Differences of realisation
• X and RP have equivalent phonemes, but the
  phonetic and/or allophonic realisation differs

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Systematicity

• Phoneme systems generally show some systematic
  patterns this also applies to differences
• Examples of systematicity in RP
• Phonemes can be grouped
• Allophones of voiceless stops
• Vowels in long-short pairs

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Phonemes can be grouped

• Three places of articulation with voiced and
  voiceless stops and nasals ptk/bdg/mnN
• Fricatives/affricates also in voiced/voiceless
  pairs
• Diphthongs
• three/four centring (i?,E?,??,u?)
• five closing of which three close to front
  (ei,ai,?i) and two to back (au,ou)

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Allophones of voiceless stops

• /p,t,k/
• Aspirated word initially
• Slightly aspirated syllable initial
• But not aspirated after s-
• Glottalized word finally
• Ejective word finally for emphasis

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Vowels in long-short pairs

• Vowel phonemes are distinguished mainly by
  quality, but also by length
• aA Ii ?? ?u ?? ( EE? or Eei)
• Qualitatively, long vowels are even longer before
  voiced consonants (eg coursecause)

final or voiced
nasal voiceless Short vowels
17.2 13.3 10.3 Long vowels
31.9 23.3
16.5 Diphtongs 35.7
26.5 17.8 Length in csecs (from
Gimson 1970)
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1. Differences in phoneme system

• /?/ generally absent in accents north of
  Severn-Wash isogloss
• lucklook, puttput, etc
• hypercorrection
• push, pull p?S, p?l, butcher

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1. Differences in phoneme system

• Scots doesnt have three long-short distinctions
• /?/ /u/ pull, pool
• /?/ /?/ caught, cot
• /a/ /A/ psalm, Sam
• Three vowel phonemes where RP has six
• Two are long (u,A) one short (?)
• (hearthat distinction affected by another
  difference see later)

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1. Differences in phoneme system

• Rhotic accents
• Have /r/ pre-consonantal and word-final (see
  later)
• dont have centring diphthongs /i?,E?,??,u?/
• Have combination of vowel /r/ instead
• eg hear /hir/, bear /bEr/, floor /fl?r/, poor
  /pur/

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1. Differences in phoneme system

• Scouse lack /E?//?/ distinction eg fairfur
• Scouse lack /D/ as in /di du d?u d?unt di d?u/
• North Wales lack /z/ and /Z/ eg zincsink,
  zooSue, facephase, pleasure/plES?/
• Many accents lack /h/
• Some Irish accents lack /T/ and /D/, so
  threetree, thicktick, otherudder, pathPat
• Midlands and North N is not a phoneme, but an
  allophone of /n/
• Note eg hanging /haNgINg/, sing /sINg/
• N only occurs before /k/ and /g/, so can be
  analysed as allophone of /n/
• Be aware of implications of saying an accent
  lacks something

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1. Differences in phoneme system additional
phonemes

• Accents which distinguish /w//?/ witchwhich
• Scots has extra phoneme /?i/ eg in tide ? tied
• Scots has extra phoneme /x/ in technical,
  Brechin, loch, Buchan and for some speakers in
  bright, light, night
• Welsh speakers of English have extra phoneme /?/
  though only in loan words (place names, eg
  Llangollen), so status as phoneme is debatable
• London has extra phoneme /??/ eg in door, bore,
  paw, law bored ? board, paws ? pause
• only occurs in morpheme-final position
• note bored bored, paws paws

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Differences seen as speech defects?

• Some accents (or idiolects) lack /f//T/ contrast
  generally viewed as showing lack of education,
  and something to be avoided but cf Irish
• A lisp is identified by a missing phoneme
  contrast /s//T/, and is viewed as a minor speech
  defect

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2. Differences of distribution

• Phonemes are characterised by the contexts in
  which they can appear
• Not all phonemes can appear in all contexts, eg
• /h,j,w,r/ do not appear word-finally
• consonant clusters with -r and -l limited to
• pr, br, tr, dr, kr, gr, fr, Tr, sr, Sr
• pl, bl, tl, dl, kl, gl, fl, Tl, sl, Sl,

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2. Differences of distribution

• /r/ in rhotic accents can occur after a vowel
  in word-final position (eg four, car) and
  pre-consonant position (bird, work)
• Rhotic accents include Scots, Irish, most North
  American, SW England, N Lancs

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2. Differences of distribution

• Final unstressed /I/ realised as /i/ in South,
  West, Wales, Scouse, Geordie (creeping into RP),
  eg studded?studied, pitted ?pitied, taxis ?taxes,
  candid ?candied
• Scots word-final /I/ realsied as /e/ eg lady
  /lede/, daily /dele/
• Norfolk no /j/ after labials purepoor,
  mutemoot, beautybooty, ? few /fu/, view /vu/

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2. Differences of distribution

• Several accents no /j/ after /t,d,n,s,l,z,T/
  tune, dune, nuclear, pursuit, lewd, resume,
  enthuse
• Yorkshire voiceless assimilation at morpheme
  boundaries, eg Bradford /bratf?d/, frogspawn
  /fr?ksp?n/
• Cockney /D/ becomes /v/ except initially the
  bruvvers, they bave (bathe), they like baving