Phonetic features of English in Ireland

Table 4

Syllables closed by /r/
	Scotland (SSE)	England (RP)
first	ɪ	ɜ
word	ʌ
heard	ɛ
(herd)	(ɛ̈)
here	i	ɪə
fair	e	ɛə
hard	a	ɑɔ
forty	ɔ	ə
four	o
poor	u	ʊə

 

Table 5

Vowels of Unstressed Syllables
	Scotland (SSE)	England (RP)
china	ʌ	ə
father	ɪ
pitted		ɪ
pitied	e

 

The antiquity is shown also in another sub-system of vowels shown in

, where syllables closed by /r/ are under investigation. SSE column does not contain any new items but RP does, and interestingly RP seems to reduce rather than increase the number of items (Abercrombie, 1979, p. 79).

Another sub-section of the Basic Scottish Vowel System is vowels of unstressed syllables which are shown in Table 5.

3. Aitken’s Law

The Scottish vowel length rule, also known Aitken’s Law after its discoverer, professor Aitken, is probably the most characteristic Scottish rule. This law, originating in the sixteenth century, governs the exact realisations in different phonetic and morphemic environments of long or non-high short vowels.

The general rule is that ‘a vowel is phonetically short unless it is followed by #, a voiced fricative, or /r/, in which case it is long’ (Wells, 1979, p. 400).

Thus there is a short vowel in bead, pronounced [bid], and the duration is similar to the vowel in bid [bid] and bed [bɛd]. Similarly, mood [mʉd] rhymes with good, both words having short but close [ʉ]. 

Vowels are long in morpheme-final position, or in the environment of following /v, ð, z, r/ (this applies to all vowels except /ɪ/ and /ʌ/ which are always short). Thus there are long vowels in key [kiː], two [tuː], stay [steː], know [noː]; and in words such as sleeve [sliːv], smooth [smuːð], maze [meːz], pour [poːr], Kerr [kɛːr], Oz [ɔːz].

This long duration is also retained if a morpheme-final vowel is followed by a suffixal /d/, as in agree#d [əˈgriːd]. However, a vowel before a final /d/ belonging to the same morpheme is short, as greed [griːd]. Hence there is a phonetic contrast between the two types of word with final /d/, those which are morphologically simple and those which contain a word-internal #. Few pairs which are bearing phonetic distinction are listed below:

need [nid] knee#d [niːd]

brood [brud] brew#ed [bruːd]

staid [tod] stay#ed [toːd]

bad [bad] baa#d [baːd]

toad [nod] gnaw#ed [noːd]

Some other speakers also show signs of apparently autonomous length contrasts in other environments, for example leek [lik] vs. leak [liːk], vane [ven] vs. vain [veːn], creek [kreːk], choke vs. joke, made vs. maid, badge vs. cadge. (Wells, 1979, pp. 400-401)

Since changes were described in historical context, the characteristic features of Standard Scottish English from a diagnostic point of view follow. The classification of Wells’ (1982, pp. 400 onwards) analysis of SSE, enriched by examples from Abercrombie (1979) is used.

4. Monophthongs

ʉ The absence of a phoneme /ʊ/ is the most important characteristic of the Scottish vowel system. The vowel of foot words merges goose words; hence there are homophones such as pull—pool, full—fool, look—Luke, and rhymes such as good—mood, foot—boot, puss—loose, wool—tool, woman—human, pudding—brooding. This lack of phonetic opposition between /ʊ/ and /u/ is characteristic that seems virtually resistant to any alteration in the speech of anglicized Scots.

ɔ - o This phoneme is common to many ScE speakers. It is used for words of lot, thought and cloth type and gives homophones of the type cot—caught, knotty—naughty, don—dawn, not—nought. Even though some speakers do distinguish /ɒ/ and /ɔ/, they still use in certain lot words, for instance yacht, wash, watch, squad, squash, and lorry.

a - ɑ As far as open vowels are concerned, SSE has just a single phoneme /a/ (which could be written /ɑ/ as well) to palm, trap, bath, and start words, e. g. bad—balm. Similarly to [ɔ] vs. [o], some speakers can also make the distinction between [a] and [ɑ], which is probably most readily found following nasal, for example, Sam [sam] distinct from psalm [sam]. In addition, back [ɑ] is found in the environments __#, __r#, and __rC (bra, car, farm), and sometimes also before a fricative (calf, path, mass, vast).

Abercrombie (1979) claims that an implicational relationship holds between these three optional vowel oppositions /u-ʊ, ɔ-ɒ, a-ɑ/: contrastive /ʊ/ implies the presence of contrastive /ɒ/, and contrastive /ɒ/ implies the presence of contrastive /ɑ/, but not the reverse.

ɛ - ɛ̈ This vowel is sometimes called ‘floating’ vowel because it is not an integral part of any Scottish vowel system, or sometimes ‘Aitken’s Vowel’ because it was him who discussed first its phonetic quality. This fairly centralised vowel is probably determined geographically, since it is commonly found in the west of Scotland, in the Borders, in Perthshire and sometimes in Edinburgh for example. This vowel has no equivalent in RP, it is not considered as forming part of the Basic system, and it appears to occur only in stressed syllables. Where present, /ɛ̈/ occurs in words such as bury, devil, earth, clever, jerk, eleven, heave, next, shepherd, twenty.

ɪ In kit words, the quality of /ɪ/ is – in an educated Scottish accent – much the same as in RP. In more popular accents it may be considerably opener and/or more retracted. Its phonetic quality also varies geographically.

ə The analysis of unstressed vowels, as often, presents problems. In many places where RP has, it seems correct to regard Scottish English as having /ɪ/ or /ɪr/, for example pilot [ˈpaelɪt], letter [ˈlɛtɪr]. It will be recalled that Scottish /ɪ/ is in any case often very [ə]-like. Yert many speakers make a consistent distinction between except and accept, etc., so that these must be phonemicized as /ɪk-, ʌk-/ respectively. In final position, an opener vowel is usual; this commA vowel may be analysed as /ʌ/, too. There is a consistent distinction between commA and lettER: manner—manor ̟/ˈmanɪr/ vs. manna ̟/ˈmanʌ/.

e The final vowel in happY words is perhaps most typically /e/ in Scotland, so that lady is /ˈlede/, studded /ˈstʌdid/ differs from studied /ˈstʌded/.

5. Diphthongs

price words  Many speakers of ScE have two perceptibly distinct diphthongs in price words. One, phonetically, is [aˑe], the other [ʌi] (or in working-class speech, [ɛ̈ɪ]). There are several minimal pairs such as tied vs. tide, sighed vs. side, spider vs. wider, which are not identical in morphological structure: tie#d, tide; sigh#ed, side; in the third pair, there is also a difference of syllabication, spid$er, wid$#er. These examples are further instances of length variation in accordance with Aitken’s Law. These two diphthongs are virtually in complementary distribution.

The first, [ae] is used in the environments finally and before a voiced fricative or /r/, thus buy, high, alive, prize, fire [ˈfaer  ̴ fae.ɪr] (some people say [fair] for fire in the north-east). It is also used in morpheme-final position before an ending or suffix, as in tri#ed, shy#ness; and in syllable-final position in words such as diet [ˈdae.ɪt], iron [ˈae.rn̩], pilot, tiger, python.

The other diphthong [ʌi] is used elsewhere, namely before tautosyllabic /v/ in inflected noun plurals, by analogy with the singular form where is regular before /f/: thus sometimes wives [ˈwʌivz], because of wife [ˈwʌif]; five knives [ˈfʌev nʌivz].

From previous, it can be claimed a phoneme split has occurred in Scottish English.

mouth words The vowel of mouth has no tendency to split into two phonemes, but there is considerable sociolinguistic variability, with quality ranging from a high-status [aʉ] to [oʉ] to a popular [ʉː]. This variation correlates in Glasgow clearly with social class. The investigations have shown that in those areas where Scots dialect is spoken alongside ScE, individual speakers usually have both possibilities of mouth words, [ʉ] for Scots and [ʌʉ] for English. This [ʉ] in mouth is a well-known Scotticism outside Scotland and is familiar in such stereotyped Scottish pronunciations as ‘hoose’ for house.

choice words In the case of choice words, the usual pronunciation involves the diphthong here written /ɒɪ/, which ranges phonetically over [ɒɪ ~ ɔɪ]. Where it occurs in the non-final position, some speakers use [ʌɪ] instead, thus merging pairs such as vice—voice. Another possibility is to have instead of a diphthong a disyllabic sequence of /o/ plus /ɪ/, thus boy [ˈbɒ.ɪ], voice [ˈvo.ɪs] (with the same sequence as lowest). This phenomenon occurs in the informal utterance of Gerry Watson.

face and goat words The face and goat vowels are generally monophthongal, though diphthongal realizations are spreading presumably due to English influence. In particular, [oʊ] for /o/ is now not uncommon.

2. Consonants

Accents of English do not differ much in their consonant systems. The Scottish system remained conservative by retaining the velar fricative, /x/, which is not possessed by any other accent of English. The use of /x/ is restricted to proper names (Tulloch /ˈtʌlʌx/, Auchtermuchty /ˈɔxtɪrˈmʌxte/, Strachan, Buchan), in loan-words from Gaelic (loch), and to some names of Greek of Hebrew origin spelled with ch (technical /ˈtech-/, patriarch /-rx/, epoch). Another item retained is [ʍ], which is preserved only in few instances, like weasel in south-east Scotland.

1. Rhoticity, /r/

Standard English generally has poses restrictions on the combination of segments to combine with each other and it can be said that most of the combinations of sounds that do not comply, are normally found difficult to pronounce by native speakers. In this respect, SSE shares most of the structural constraints of RP. However, SSE contains a restriction that is unique to other accents of SE. This feature is called Rhoticity. All accents of SE can be divided into two classes depending on where the phoneme /r/ occurs in words (without reference to the way of phonetic realisation). If /r/ can occur only before a vowel, and not before a consonant or before a pause, this accent is called non-rhotic; the majority of RP speakers in Britain are non-rhotic. On the other hand, when an /r/ can occur just as well before a consonant or a pause as before a vowel and thus behaves as any other consonant, then this accent is called rhotic. Rhotic accents are – in addition to SSE – for example GenAm or most Canadian accents.

Furthermore, /r/, it is necessary to describe its realization in more detail. The first of the three most usual realizations of /r/ is an alveolar tap, [ɾ], particularly associated with within-word environments V__V and C__V (sorry, agree), and the other two are an alveolar or retroflex approximant, [ɹ] or [ɻ], associated with the environments V__C and V__# (word, care).

2. Plosives

As opposed to RP, where plosives in the initial position are pronounced with aspiration, SSE pronounces /p, t, k/ with little or no aspiration; the place of articulation or /t/ and /d/ can be either dental or alveolar. When /t/does not occur in the initial, it is a subject of T Glottalling, thus words like sentimental are pronounced [ˈsɛnʔɪˈmɛnʔl]. Some speakers, who glottal /t/ may also add a glottal reinforcement to /p/ and /k/ in the same environment, thus purple is pronounced [ˈpʌrpʔl]. T Glottalling can be heard in Robert Martin’s informal utterance.

3. Voicing Assimilation

Voicing assimilation is an interesting phenomenon occurring time to time in ScE (Wells, 1979, p. 412), which can be observed for example in most valuable being transcribed as [ˈmoz ˈvaljəbl]. The elision of the /t/ of most can be found in virtually all accents of English; but the change from [s] to [z] under the influence of the following voiced /v/ can be found only in Scotland and few other territories.

4. Fricatives

Although SSE does pronounce [θ] and [ð] in the same way as RP does, there are dialects of ScE where these fricatives do miss completely or certain words, where the pronunciation differs from RP. Namely, words although, though, thither are generally pronounced with [θ] instead of [ð].

2. Prosodic Features

All accents, of all languages, have characteristic features of intonation, rhythm and voice quality. Since these features are the least investigated aspects of SSE and there is not very much of importance to be said about them.

1. Pitch, Intonation

‘Pitch’ makes differences of tone in tone languages /r/, where a syllable or word consisting of the same segmental sequence has different lexical meanings according to the pitch used with it (e.g. in Chinese). Outside tone languages, pitch also makes differences of intonation whereby different pitch contours produce difference of attitudinal or discoursal meaning (discoursal here refers to the way successive chunks of utterances are linked together). However, in SSE pitch does not play an important role.

While tone is a feature of syllables of words, ‘intonation’ is a feature of phrases or clauses. Some combination of the features of pitch, length and loudness will also produce accent, whereby particular syllables are made to stand out from those around them. (Cruttenden, 2008, p. 51).

Rising tones are reported for many northern cities, for example in Glasgow (Cruttenden, 2008, p. 289). Apart from Glasgow, another pattern involves a series of falls, one on each accented syllable and another on the last accented syllable. Variation in the height of the peak may arise: for statements such accented syllables have high fall and high fall, for wh-questions high fall and mid fall, and for yes-no questions mid fall and high fall (Wells, 1982, p. 415).

2. Rhythm

Cruttenden (2008) understands the term ‘rhythm’ as the ‘extent to which there is a regular ‘beat’ in speech’ (p. 52). According to Abercrombie (1979, p. 82), it is certainly one of factors which differentiate accents. RP (as well as all accents spoken in Britain) is spoken with what is known as a stress-timed rhythm, which means that the stressed, or salient, syllables tend to recur at roughly equal intervals of time (which distinguishes them from the syllable-timed rhythm of many other languages, where all the syllables recur at roughly equal intervals of time). The distinct rhythm of SSE is audible in Scottish music in what is known as ‘Scottish snap’: in two-syllabic words such as table, the first syllable is short and the second is long.

3. Paralinguistic Features

Pause – has the most common interruptive effect, in the intonation system ‘it is one of the indicators of an intonational phase boundary, but at the other times functions as a hesitation marker’ (Cruttenden, 2008, p. 52). Cruttenden (2008) adds that this hesitation marker tends to be rather filled than silent. In RP, filled pauses are generally filled with [ə] or [m], whereas Scottish English uses [e:] (p. 52)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion 
          The period after the seventeenth century ushered in and saw the gradual decline of modern Scots as a national language. During the ongoing struggles of the reformation the reformers failed to introduce a Scots translation of the Bible, instead taking the Standard English version which was already available. The written Languages, of course, posed no insurmountable problems of intelligibility for an educated readership but the spoken word remained as different as ever. After The union of the crowns in 1603 the Scottish court moved to London, further increasing the Status of Standard English in Scotland. Finally the union of the English and Scottish parliaments in 1707 dealt the death knell to Scots as the official language of Scotland. Standard English increasingly became the language of politics, education, religion and prestige.

          The second chapter is primarily devoted to segmental features of Scottish English, namely to consonants and various systems of vowels, and prosodic features. Firstly, the segmental features will be discussed, i.e. vowels and consonants of SSE. The segmental features can be differentiated according to four criteria: structural differences, systemic differences, distributional differences, and differences of phonetic realisation. These aspects will be taken into consideration in further description of vowels and consonants.

         The Scottish vowel length rule, also known Aitken’s Law after its discoverer, professor Aitken, is probably the most characteristic Scottish rule. This law, originating in the sixteenth century, governs the exact realisations in different phonetic and morphemic environments of long or non-high short vowels.

       All accents, of all languages, have characteristic features of intonation, rhythm and voice quality. Since these features are the least investigated aspects of SSE and there is not very much of importance to be said about them.

Standard English generally has poses restrictions on the combination of segments to combine with each other and it can be said that most of the combinations of sounds that do not comply, are normally found difficult to pronounce by native speakers. In this respect, SSE shares most of the structural constraints of RP. However, SSE contains a restriction that is unique to other accents of SE. This feature is called Rhoticity. All accents of SE can be divided into two classes depending on where the phoneme /r/ occurs in words (without reference to the way of phonetic realisation). If /r/ can occur only before a vowel, and not before a consonant or before a pause, this accent is called non-rhotic; the majority of RP speakers in Britain are non-rhotic. On the other hand, when an /r/ can occur just as well before a consonant or a pause as before a vowel and thus behaves as any other consonant, then this accent is called rhotic. Rhotic accents are – in addition to SSE – for example GenAm or most Canadian accents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

List of literature

1. Ivanov I.P, Belyaev, T.M. A Reader on the History of the English language. - L., 1980.
2. Arakin V.D. History of English: Textbook. - M., 1985.
3. Gukhman M.M. Development of collateral oppositions in the Germanic languages. Experience the historical and typological studies of related languages. - M., 1964.
4. Stuart-Smith J. Scottish English: Phonology in Varieties of English: The British Isles, Kortman & Upton (Eds), Mouton de Gruyter, New York 2008. p.48
5. Macafee, C. (2004). "Scots and Scottish English.". in In Hikey R.(ed.),. Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. Cambridge: CUP. p.61
6. Hewlett, N., Matthews, B., and Scobbie, J.M. 1999. Vowel duration

        in Scottish English speaking children