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Regional variation of pronunciation in the south-west of England

| | |suet [?u?t]. |

| | |The same happens when |

| | |[s] is in the middle of |

| | |the word: |

| | |first [fer?t] |

| | |breast [br??t] |

| | |next [n??t] |

| | |North-West W: [s] is |

| | |sometimes pronounced as |

| | |[(]: sure [(u?r] |

|“sh”, “sk” at the end of the word |

| |Western | |

| |> [s]: | |

| |cask [k s] | |

| |flask [fl s] | |

| |leash [li:s] | |

| |tusk [tus] | |

| |Sometimes instead of [k]| |

| |[t?] is heard: | |

| |back [b t?] | |

| |wark [wa:t?] | |

|sometimes the initial letter or a syllable is apsent |

| |Western |Eastern |

| |believe, deliver, desire, directly, disturb, |

| |eleven, enough, except, occasion, inquest, |

| |epidemic |

|the initial “cl” |

|> [tl]: clad [tlad], clap, clay, claw, clean, cleave, clergy, clerk, clew, |

|cliff, climb, cling, clip, cloak, close, clot, cloth, cloud, clout |

|“gl” in the beginning of the word |

|> [dl]: glad, glass, glisten, gloom, glove, glow |

|[l] in the middle of the word isn’t pronounced |

| |Western |Eastern |

| |Already |

| |shoulder [’?a:d?r] |

| | |the Middle/Eastern |

| | |[l] is often > [ ]: |

| | |bill [b?’ ] |

| | |tool [tu’ ] |

| | |nibble [n?’b ] |

| | |milk [m?’ k] |

| | |silk [s?’ k] |

3. Grammar.

3.1 Nouns.

The definite article.

- There isn’t the definite article before “same”: ’Tis same’s I

always told ’ee”.

- The of-phrase “the… of” is of ten used instead of the possessive

pronoun (e.g. “the head of him “instead of” his head”)

The plural form of a noun.

- In many cases -s (es) can be added for several times:

e.g. steps [’steps?z] (South Som.)

- in some cases [n] is heard at the end of the word:

e.g. keys [ki:n] (Wil.)

cows [kain] (Dev.)

bottles [botln] (South-W. Dev.)

primroses [pr?mr zn] (Dev.)

- but sometimes [s] is heard in the words ended with “-n”

e.g. oxen [ ksnz] (Western Som.)

rushes [r?ksnz] (Dev.)

- some nouns have the same form in the singular and in the plural:

e.g. chicken - chickens [t??k] (Som.)

pipe - pipes [pa?p] (Som.)

- sometimes the plural form of the noun is used insted of the

singular form:

a house [auzn] (Southern Wil.)

3.2 Gender.

The full characteristic of Gender in South-Western English I’d like to

base on the part of the article by Paddock. Paddock uses the historical

lebel “Wessex” to describe the countries of South-Western England.

3.2.1 Gender making in Wessex-type English.

“It is usually claimed that English nouns lost their grammatical

gender during the historical period called Middle English, roughly 1100-

1500. But this claim needs some qualification. What actually happened

during the Middle English period was that more overt gender marking of

English nouns gave way to more covert marking. As in Lyons (1968:281-8),

the term ‘gender’ is used here to refer to morphosyntactic classes of

nouns. It is true that the loss of adjective concord in Middle English made

gender marking less overt; but Modern English still retains some determiner

concord which allows us to classify nouns (Christophersen and Sandved

1969). In addition, Modern English (ModE), like Old English (OE) and Middle

English (ME), possesses pronominal distinctions which enable us to classify

nouns.

We can distinguish at least three distinctly different types of gender

marking along the continuum from most overt to most covert. The most overt

involves the marking of gender in the morphology of the noun itself, as in

Swahili (Lyons 1968:284-6). Near the middle of the overt-covert continuum

we could place the marking of gender in adnominals such as adjectives and

determiners. At or near the covert end of the scale we find the marking of

gender in pronominal systems.

During all three main historical stages of the English language (OE,

ME, ModE) one has been able to assign nouns to three syntactic classes

called MASCULINE, FEMININE and NEUTER. However, throughout the recorded

history of English this three-way gender marking has become less and less

overt. In OE all three types of gender marking were present. But even in OE

the intrinsic marking (by noun inflections) was often ambiguous in that it

gave more information about noun declension (ie paradigm class) than about

gender (ie concord class). The least ambiguous marking of gender in OE was

provided by the adnominals traditionally called demonstratives and definite

articles. In addition, gender ‘discord’ sometimes occurred in OE, in that

the intrinsic gender marking (if any) and the adnominal marking, on the one

hand, did not always agree with the gender of the pronominal, on the other

hand. Standard ME underwent the loss of a three-way gender distinction in

the morphology of both the nominals and the adnominals. This meant that

Standard ModE nouns were left with only the most covert type of three-way

gender marking, that of the pronominals. Hence we can assign a Standard

ModE noun to the gender class MASCULINE, FEMININE or NEUTER by depending

only on whether it selects he, she or it respectively as its proform.

During the ME and Early ModE periods the south-western (here called

Wessex-type) dialects of England diverged from Standard English in their

developments of adnominal and pronominal subsystems. In particular, the

demonstratives of Standard English lost all trace of gender marking,

whereas in south-western dialects their OE three-way distinction of

MASCULINE/FEMININE/NEUTER developed into a two-way MASS/COUNT distinction

which has survived in some Wessex-type dialects of Late ModE. The result in

Wessex was that the two-way distinction in adnominals such as

demonstratives and indefinites came into partial conflict with the three-

way distinction in pronominals”. (№18, p.31-32)

- Nowadays in the south-western dialects the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are

used instead of a noun:

e.g. My ooman put her bonnet there last year, and the birds laid their

eggs in him. (= it)

Wurs my shovel? I aa got’im; him’s her. (= Where is my shovel? I’ve

got it. That’s it.)

- In the south-western dialects objects are divided into two categories:

1) countable nouns (a tool, a tree), and the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are used

with them

2) uncountable nouns (water, dust), and the pronoun ‘it’ is used with them.

The pronoun ‘he’ is used towards women.

3.3 Numerals.

In south-western dialects the compound numerals (21-99) are pronounced

as: five and fifty, six and thirty.

In Devonshire instead of ‘the second’ ‘twoth’ is used (the twenty-

twoth of April).

3.4 Adjectives.

In all dialects of the south-west -er, -est are used in the

comparative and superative degrees with one-, two- and more syllabic

adjectives:

e.g. the naturaler

the seasonablest

delightfuller (-est)

worser - worsest (Dw.)

- The words: ‘gin’, ‘an’, ‘as’, ‘nor’, ‘till’, ‘by’, ‘to’, ‘in’, ‘on’

are used instead of ‘than’ in the comparative forms:

e.g. When the lad there wasn’t scarce the height of that stool, and a

less size on (= than) his brother…;

That’s better gin naething;

More brass inney (= than you) hadd’n;

It’s moor in bargain (= more than a bargain).

- The word ‘many’ is used with uncountable nouns

e.g. many water / milk

- The word ‘first’ is often used in the meaning of ‘the next’:

e.g. The first time I gang to the smiddie I’ll give it to him.

Will you come Monday first or Monday eight days?

3.5 Pronouns.

- The forms of the nominative case are often used instead of the forms

of the objective case and vice versa:

e.g. Oi don’t think much o’ they (= of them).

Oi went out a-walkin wi’ she (= with her).

Oi giv ut t’ he (= it) back again.

Us (= we) don’t want t’ play wi’ he (= him).

Har (= she) oon’t speak t’ th’ loikes o’ we (= us).

When us (= we) is busy, him (= he) comes and does a day’s work

for we (= us).

- The pronoun ‘mun’ (‘min’) is used in those cases, when in the

literary language ‘them’ is used:

e.g. put mun in the house

gie mun to me

I mind (= remember) the first time I seed mun.

- ‘Mun’ is also used instead of ‘him’, ‘it’

e.g. let min alone

it would sarve un right if I telled the parson of mun

- Instead of ‘those’, ‘them’ is used:

e.g. I mind none of them things.

Give us them apples.

Fetch them plaates off o’ th’ pantry shelf.

- In the south-western dialects at the beginning of the sentenu the

personal and impersonal pronouns are often dropped.

- “Whom” is never used in the south-western dialects. Instead of it

‘as’ / ‘at’ is used:

e.g. That’s the chap as (or what) his uncle was hanged.

The man’ at his coat’s torn.

- The nominative case of the personal pronouns is also used before

‘selves’:

e.g. we selves (Somerseshire, Devonshire)

- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ is used in the south-

western dialects as: ‘this’, ‘this here’, ‘thease’, ‘thisn’,

‘thisna’.

- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘that’ is used in the south-

western dialects as: ‘thatn’, ‘thickumy’, ‘thilk’:

e.g. I suppose I could have told thee thilk.

- ‘Those’ is never used in the south-western dialects.

“thir’ ans” is used instead of it.

3.5.1 Demonstrative adjectives and pronouns in a Devonshire

dialect.

I’d like to give not only the grammatical description of adjectives

and pronouns in the south-western part of England, but the pronunciation of

demonstrative adjectives and pronouns found in the dialect of south zeal, a

village on the northern edge of Dartmoor. Martin Harris made his research

work in this field:

“The analysis is based on a corpus of some twenty hours of tape-

recorded conversation, collected in the course of work for a Ph.D. thesis,

either in the form of a dialogue between two informants or of a monologue

on the part of a single informant. The principal informant, Mr George

Cooper, has lived for some eighty-five years in the parish, and has only

spent one night in his life outside the county of Devon.

For the purposes of this chapter, only one phonological point needs to

be made. The /r/ phoneme is retroflex in final position, and induces a

preceding weak central vowel [?] when occurring in the environment /Vr/,

(thus [V?r]), when the /V/ in question is /i:/ or /?/. (These are the only

two vowels relevant within this work.). The transcription used for the

actual forms should not give rise to any further problems. In the case of

the illustrative examples, 1 have decided to use a quasi-orthographical

representation, since the actual phonetic/phonemic realization is not

directly relevant to the point under discussion. The prominent syllable(s)

in each example are illustrated thus: “.

We may now proceed to look at the actual forms found in the dialect

(Table 1):

| |/рi:z/ |/рat/ |/рi-ki:/ |

|Simple |/рs/ | | |

|Simple |/рis/ |/рat/ |/ рi-ki:/ |

| |/рi:z/ | | |

| |/рi:z/ | | |

|Simple (only) | |/рej/ | |

The relative frequency of these forms is shown in Table 2.

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