Phonetic features of English in Ireland

Ministry of Education and Science  
West Kazakhstan State University after M.Utemissov  

 

 
 
 Chair of Theory and Practice  
 of Teaching English  
 
 

 

 

 
 
 
 
Coursework  
 
Theme: Phonetic features of English in Ireland  
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Done by: 03301 Askarova A.E. 
Checked by: teacher Nasimullina A.B.  
 
 
 
 

 
 

 

 

Uralsk, 2013 

 

 

 

Contents

 
Introduction………………………………………………………………………..3  

 

     CHAPTER 1.  History of Standard Scottish English

1.1. The Relationship of Scots to Other Germanic Languages……………………5 
1.2. Dialectal features and typology of contemporary English……………………..8

 
Chapter 2. PHONOLOGY of Scottish English

2.1. Segmental Features 11

2.1.1. Vowels 12

2.1.2. Consonants 19

2.2. Prosodic Features

2.2.1. Pitch, Intonation 21

2.2.2. Rhythm 22

2.3. Paralinguistic Features 22

 

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………24

 
List of literature…………………………………………………………………...26 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction

 
        The problem of contacts is one of the central problems in modern linguistics. Languages ​​and dialects live and develop in a continuous and close cooperation, which has an impact on all aspects and levels of language interaction. The complexity of linguistic processes in a given society is not a reflection of the internal organization of a single homogeneous system, but can be understood in terms of relations between several quantitatively different from each other's systems. It is recognized that the natural state of language - this change, not stability. 

       The urgency of the problem. One of the major contemporary issues of linguistics is the problem of development of the language, its causes and forms, as well as the symbiosis of language in terms of forced intercourse, which resulted in the formation of other languages ​​with a simplified grammar, phonetics and spelling, called – Standard Scottish English (SSE).

Perspective of the study. The phenomenon of language SSE to be active in the study of philology and psychology, only recently, as previously followed a secured status of "second-class languages. In spite of a sufficient number of papers on the subject, the status of SSE and its place in the world's languages ​​remain quite uncertain, and the matter remains little developed in both theoretical and practical terms. 

The purpose of the study is to determine the characteristics of SSE dialect of the common system of dialects of modern English, especially in Scotland. 

This objective involves the following tasks: 

1. to analyze the Received Pronunciation as the dominant standard for the modern English language; 

2. to consider the particular dialect of modern English; 

3. to determine the status of Scottish English as a dialect of English; 

4.to  illustrate the features of modern Scottish English for example, its lexical composition. 

Theoretical base is the work of scholars such as O.Alexandrova, R. Bell, J. Gumperz, Dolgopolsky A.B., Kashkin V.B., Labov W., Mechkovskaya N.B., Mikheev N.F., ShevchenkoT.I., Bell R., Hymes D. 

The structure of the work consists of an introduction, two chapters, conclusion and list of literature. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Chapter 1. History of Standard Scottish English

1. The Relationship of Scots to Other Germanic Languages

        The first language known to have been spoken in Scotland was Pictish. The Picts occupied Scotland north of the Forth. What little evidence there is, such as place names with the elements Aber-, Lhan- and Pit-, indicate that Pictish was a Brythonic language related to the modern Celtic language Welsh. Around 300 A.D. the Picts got their name from the Romans who called them Picti. This referred to their supposed habit of painting their faces with blue woad. Picti means the painted people. At the time south west Scotland (Strathclyde) was occupied by another Brythonic tribe (Britons) speaking Cumbric, also related to modern Welsh. South east Scotland was part of a Northumbrian kingdom based on the Lothians. Those people who spoke Anglo-Saxon, or Old English as it is also known, were the descendants of the Angles who had settled in the north of England. By 500 A.D. a tribe of people from Northern Ireland called the Scoti had began to settle in Argyle. These new immigrants spoke Gaelic another Celtic language, and they called their new kingdom Dalriada. By 900 A.D. the Scoti of Dalriada had absorbed and integrated the original Pictish inhabitants and formed the kingdom of Alba north of the Forth and Clyde. Shortly afterwards the British kingdom of Strathclyde became part of the kingdom of Alba. It wasn't long after 970 A.D. that the parts of the Northumbrian kingdom between the rivers Tweed and Forth also became part of the kingdom of Alba, creating the borders of modern Scotland that have hardly changed since.

 

     One of the conditions to the annexation of the northern part of the Northumbrian kingdom was that the Northumbrians were allowed to use their own language and laws. Scotland's political centre of gravity moved from the west Highlands into Central Scotland. Soon a situation had emerged where the Royal household was only Scots in name. They too were speaking Old English. At this time speakers of Old English called Gaelic Scotis. After the Norman invasion of England in 1066 King David I of Scotland (1124-53) granted lands to many Norman noblemen who held lands in the Midlands and northern England. Most of the lower rank people accompanying those Norman noblemen spoke a variety of Northern Middle English, which they called Inglis, a variety heavily influenced by the Anglo-Scandinavian of the Danelaw. This would explain much of the Scandinavian vocabulary of Modern Scots that can not be ascribed to the Norse influence in The Northern Isles and Caithness. The variety of Inglis resulting from the speech of recent incomers and the natives of south east Scotland soon gained in prestige, and by 1290 A.D. Inglis had spread up the east coast to the Moray Firth and taken hold south of the Clyde. Only Galloway, South Ayrshire and the Highlands to the north and west remained Gaelic speaking. The wars of independence in the eleventh century soon separated the two divisions of Northern Middle English  north and south of the Cheviots. During the following centuries Inglis developed separately north and south of the border. In the twelfth century extensive trade took place between the eastern seaboard of Scotland and the Low Countries. Trading colonies were established in Low Countries and similarly many traders and craftspeople from the Low Countries settled in Scotland. They too enriched the vocabulary of Scots with Dutch and Low Saxon loans. Later on the Auld Alliance with France further influenced the Inglis of Scotland with the addition of more Norman and central French vocabulary. Meanwhile the Gaelic had also been adding vocabulary to the Inglis of Scotland. Many terms for topographical features are of Gaelic extraction although little more was passed on due to the low regard held for things Gaelic. The great language of learning in middle ages Europe was Latin, this too influenced the Inglis of Scotland especially in the realms of literature and law.

 

The Inglis (Early northern Middle English) spoken in Northumbria and Scotland were very much the same but the emergence of the two competing Political entities of England and Scotland caused a shift in their population's centre of gravity. In Scotland the population looked to their capital Edinburgh and to the Inglis spoken in the Lothians as a model for a national standard, both spoken and written. In Northumbria the population looked to the emerging standard language of the east Midlands and later the speech of London. The early Middle English varieties in the south and north were noticeably different, reflecting the patterns of settlement by different Anglo-Saxon tribes and Scandinavian influence. Those varieties did share a considerable amount of common vocabulary but later divergent pronunciation and grammatical shifts further increased the difference between the Northern and Southern varieties. In England what was to become modern Standard English spread, and the in Scotland what was to become known as Scots had began to become a fully fledged national vernacular being used as a vehicle for both literature and legal documentation. Although early Scottish literature, in Inglis, such as Barbour's Brus (c.1375), Whyntoun's Kronykil and Blind Harry's Wallace (c.1478) may more accurately be described as early northern Middle English, scholars of Scots refer to the contemporary variety in Scotland as Early Scots.

 

By the end of the fifteenth century the Inglis of Scotland had become a national language and was being called Scottis to distinguish it from the language of England. The following period in the development of Scottis, known as Middle Scots, brought forth an abundance of literature based around the Royal Court in Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews. Masterpieces by writers such as Henrysoun (1450-c.1505), Dunbar (c.1460-c.1530), Douglas (1476-1522), and Lynsay (c.1486-1555) saw the introduction of a great many French and Latin words into Scots. At the same time the spellings employed by these writers indicated many pronunciation changes that were probably due to natural developments in the language. By the end of the seventeenth century the continued influence of English writers like Chaucer and later Elizabethan English literature, started to have an effect on the spelling of Scots.

 

 

 

1.2. The Development of Standard English and Scots

 

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. Elocution lessons were in great demand among the aristocracy, who were the first to endeavour to adopt the southern tongue in both speech and writing by eradicating Scotticisms (Scots words and grammar features). They were of course closely followed by the middle classes and then generally by anyone who desired to be upwardly mobile. Modern Scots of course continued to be used as the vernacular of the vast majority of the lowland Scottish population and the centuries old ballads in the vernacular continued to be immensely popular among all sections of society, even though the population was being increasingly educated in Standard English. It was also during this period that many of the ballads of the Borders and the North East, that had been orally handed down the centuries came to be written down. Writers like Sempill, Lady Wardlaw and Lady Grizel Baillie helped keep the vernacular alive as a literary medium until the eighteenth century revival of interest in Scots and Scottish literature.

In the eighteenth century not all the Scots intelligentsia accepted the marginalisation of Scots. Some writers, among them Ramsay (1686-1758), Fergusson (1750-1774), Burns (1759-1796) and Scott (1771-1832) continued to use Scots. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels, to great effect. This eighteenth century revival of Scots literature was based largely on current colloquial Scots, although the spelling were becoming increasingly anglicised, and apostrophes substituted for some supposedly missing letters, some spellings based on the standard written Scots of the sixteenth century court continued to be used. The revival of the eighteenth century continued into the nineteenth century, with the publication of Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808). Scots was once again being regarded as the national language by the intelligentsia, although use of it for any purpose other than literary was frowned upon. Writers such as Galt (1779-1839), Macdonald (1824-1905), Stevenson (1850-1894), Barrie (1860-1937) and Crockett (1859-1914) followed the lead set by Scott by using Scots dialogue in their novels. This pan-dialect literary Scots continued to be used through the 19th century but later in the period indications of different dialectal pronunciations began to make an increasing appearance in written Scots.

By the twentieth century Scots had become the language of the so called lower classes used only informally and more or less condemned to the pub and playground. Consequently knowledge of the 18th and 19th century written tradition began to wane and the effects of education in Standard English led many writers to increasingly use the Standard English sound-to-letter correspondences to represent their dialect's pronunciation and even more apostrophes to indicate supposedly missing letters, thus adding to the misconception that Scots is a debased form of Standard English. The Scots revival of the twentieth century produced a resurge in the interest in Scots with the publication of reference and dictionary works such as Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary and the 10 volume Scottish National Dictionary. In the 1920's. A renaissance in the use of Scots led by Hugh MacDiarmid was not just literary but also political - for a nation to regain its soul it must also regain its language. MacDiarmid found himself among many contemporaries writing both prose and poetry. Among them Douglas Young, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garioch and Robert Mclellan. Many of those writers were accused of artificially reinventing a language because they recoursed to Scots Dictionaries and older literary works to increase and developed their already substantial native Scots vocabularies. On the other hand recourse to dictionaries and other literary works by writers using German, French or Standard English who wished to expand their vocabularies was considered an enlightening and educational experience - a touch of discrimination perhaps? These attempts to have Scots hold its own continued after the Second World War, even though the ever expanding reach of the mass media, especially radio and then television, which was as good as completely presented in Standard English, gave the whole population access to a spoken English on which they could then model their speech. Scots was now considered the language of the tartan variety show or the country bumpkin. Mainstream Scotland spoke Standard English or more correctly Standard Scottish English, which itself retained many grammatical traits of the older Scottish tongue.

 

 

Chapter 2.

PHONOLOGY of Scottish English

This chapter is primarily devoted to segmental features of Scottish English, namely to consonants and various systems of vowels, and prosodic features.

1. Segmental 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.

1. Vowels

Both Wells (1982) and Abercrombie (1979) agree that the vowel systems vary over the English speaking world significantly, and that the Scottish one is the smallest of them. Wells (1982), who introduced four systems which can be divided further into four subsystems, presents the Scottish vowel system comprising of items shown in . . It is presented first for it comprises of 12 items (whereas the parenthesized items may or may not be present) .

1. Vowel System of Scottish Accent

         Part-system A shows the traditional stressable short vowels present in the system. These vowels are phonotactically restricted to occurrence in checked syllables (syllables where the final consonant can be interpreted as checking the pulse of air for the syllable and its vowel). This part-system comprises of five elements: kit – /ɪ/, dress – /ɛ/, or /ɛ̈/ if present, strut – /ʌ/, and lot and cloth – /ɒ/. The part-system may be further reduced by the loss of lot and cloth to part-system C through its merger with thought.

Table 2

Vowel System of Scottish Accent
ɪ			i						u
ɛ	(ɛ̈)	ʌ	e	(ʌi)		(ɜ)			o
		(ɒ)	ae	(ɒɪ)	a		(ɑ)	ʌu	ɔ
A			B		C			D

Part-systems B, C, and D are normally permitted to occur in free syllables (the vowel occurs free of any checking consonant or before a checking consonant). The part-system B includes those of traditional long vowels and diphthongs which have a front mid to close quality or endpoint. This part-system may comprise five elements: fleece – /i/, face – /e/, price – /ae/, or /ʌi/ for those who have it, and choice – /ɒɪ/ which may or may not be present. Part-system C comprises those of the traditional long vowels and diphthongs which have relatively open quality or endpoint. This part-system can include three members: thought and cloth merge – /ɔ/, palm and start merge – /a/, and nurse – /ɜ/ for those who have it. If /ɑ/ is present in the system (for those palm words which have it) then /a/ belongs in part-system A to trap words. Part-system D comprises those of the traditional long vowels and diphthongs which have a back mid to close quality or endpoint. It includes four members: foot and goose merge – /u/, goat – /o/, lot, thought and cloth merge – /ɔ/, and mouth – /ʌu/.

2. Basic Scottish Vowel System

Wells’ (1982) system, however, comes from the system of Scottish Standard English created by David Abercrombie (1979, p. 72), which is shown in Table 3.

The Basic Scottish Vowel System, as Abercrombie names it, comprises of 13 items providing a basis for description of other accents. The Basic Scottish Vowel System compares two representative accents: Standard Scottish English as a representative of Scotland, and Receive Pronunciation as the representative of England, which is the most commonly-used system for Standard English in England.

The modifications of the Basic Scottish Vowel System can be described as modifications towards the Anglo-English system. Although these modifications might seem random, they form a hierarchy. However, these modifications were not made by individuals to their own speech in imitation of Anglo-English speakers, but transmitted from parents to children or learnt by children from contemporaries at school and thus properly institutionalised.

According to Aitken (1979), ‘Scots did not follow the London English in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in splitting its /u/ phoneme and its /a/ phoneme into two’ (p. 100), and it possessed only one round vowel to serve as /o/, thus The main differences originating from etymology are SSE lack of any opposition of the kind /ʊ/ vs. /u/ (pull vs. pool, foot vs. goose), opposition /a/ vs. /ɑ/ (bad vs. balm, trap vs. palm) and /ɒ/ vs. /ɔ/ (not vs. nought, lot vs. thought) (Wells, 1982, p. 400).

Table 3

Basic Scottish Vowel System
Scotland (SSE)	England (RP)
bead	i	I
bid	ɪ	ɪ
bay	e	eɪ
bed	ɛ	ɛ
(never)	(ɛ̈)
bad	a	A
balm		ɑ
not	ɔ	ɒ
nought		ɔ
no	o	oʊ
pull	u	ʊ
pool		U
bud	ʌ	ʌ
side	ʌi	aɪ
sighed	ae
now	ʌu	aʊ
boy	ɔe	ɒɪ