- It is a pleasure for me to set on record my gratitude to the sponsor and administrators of the Fulbright Program at whose invitation I was able to visit the U. S. and prepare the present paper. For valuble suggestions and stimulating criticism I am under special obligation to Messrs. B. Bloch, H Kokeritz, and A. Martinet.
- I am profoundly indebted to all of my informants in different parts of the U.S., especially to Mrs. Carol Craddock, New Haven.
- Cf. the definition of the phoneme by Troubetzkoy, TCLP 7, 32–36; the terms vowel pattern and vowel system are used here to translate Troubetzkoy's Vokalsystem, and opposition for his phonologischer Gegensalz, cf. op. cil. 30, 87.
- For the diachronic phonemic method in general, on the definition of such technical terms as push-chain, margin of security, etc., cf. A. Martinet, Word 8, 1–32, and, by the same author, the forthcoming treatise Economie des changements phonétiques, Berne: A. Francke AG.
- These forms are North German colloquial pronunciation and from the Flemish variety of Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands respectively.
- Cf. infra § 15.5.
- Cf. the detailed description of this process by Haudricourt and Juilland, Essai pour une histoire structurale du phonélisme français, Paris 1949, 6–8.
- When this happens in all words with x1, this case is the same as treated sub (b).
- Cf. my discussion in Word 10, 98–103.
- This is an axiomatic statement on the analogy of the transitive relation between real numbers in mathematics.
- Cf. NED.
- Cf. infra § 14.1.
- Cf. infra fn. 96.
- Cf. infra § 9.3.
- Cf. Luick § 268.
- Sp. 1783 Preface, Diss. 108 fn., 135, 152, 171–179.
- Diss. 168 f.
- These forms are well evidenced in modern dialects.
- The same reservation applies to our reference to ME, Br., Am. etc. They mean that, in my opinion, a substantial number, but not necessarily all or even a majority of the speakers concerned pronounce or pronounced English in the way indicated. Similarly the ststements on the grographical distribution of different phoneme patterns which are chiefly based on my observations as I happened to come across willing informants during a short tour of the U.S. should be considerd purely tentative and may contain major errors.
- Cf. Webster's definition: “Whenever a sound can be begun and completed with the same position of the organs, it is a simple sound. A diphthong is a union of two simple sounds pronounced at one breath” (Sp. 1798, 11).
- “The only difference in the sound that can be made by the same configuration of the parts of the mouth is to prolong or shorten the same sound. According to this principle we observe that late and let being pronounced with the same aperture of the mouth, and with the same disposition of the organs… must contain the same vowel. The same rule will apply to the other examples” (Sp. 1798, 13; similarly Diss. 82–84).
- Diet. 1828, Liii b.
- “I know of no language in Europe, in which o has not one uniform sound, viz. the sound we give it in rose” (Diss. 119).
- Diss. 104.
- Diet. 1841, Lvi a, Lxxi a.
- Webster's equation of the vowels of fate and fall with the pronunciation of Arab. falha is based on erroneous information.
- Diss. 151. Cf. Wallis' description approvingly quoted by Webster: “Hunc sonum Extranei fere assequentur, si diphtongum iu conentur pronunciare;… (ut in Hispanorum ciudad, civitas). Non tamen idem est omnino sonus, quamvis, ad ilium proxime accedat; est enim iu sonus compositus, at Anglorum… u sonus simplex” (Diss. 150 f.).
- Sp. 1798, 14; Diss. 85.
- Sp. 1798, 12, 14; Diss. 84, 86; Dict. 1828, Lvi a.
- Diss. 85.
- The length mark placed in brackets (:) indicates that the vowel occurs both short and long and that length is phonemically distinctive. Vowels combining in diphthongs are connected by an arrow pointing to the second component
- Other types of tongue movement, e.g. the ingliding diphthongs occurring before -r, are non-distinctive, cf. infra § 5.6.
- This definition has already been suggested by A. Martinet, La phonologie du mot en danois, Paris 1937, 50.
- In view of the diachronic developments studied later this approach which permits us to conceive of the transformation of long vowels into diphthongs as merely a change of distinctive features seems to me more convenient than the impressionistic segmentation of diphthongs into two constituent phonemes. Readers who prefer the latter solution will find no difficulty in translating our terminology into theirs.
- On iu cf. infra § 5.2
- Sp. 1798, 54.
- Sp. 1783, 23.
- Cf. Luick, § 103.
- PDE forms with /o:f, o:p/ are due to later lengthening.
- Sp. 1798, 12; Diss. 85. Webster's apparently contradictory descriptions of /i:/ sometimes as a monophthong and sometimes as a diphthong are not mutually exclusive, but refer to the different sounds with which it is in complementary distribution.
- Diss. 152.
- Cf. [du:z] with central [u:] in Portland, Me. (LA 563).
- Sp. 1783, 7; Diss. 148 ff., 159.
- Diss. 153–155; Diet. 1828, Lxii b, Lxxii b.
- Sp. 1783, 22 fn; Dict. 1828, Liv b fn. As Webster does not define what he means by long and short consonants, the distribution of the allophones concerned cannot be ascertained in detail. His examples suggest a pattern similar to PDE with shorter vowels before voiceless than before voiced consonants and finally.
- Cf. on /ai/ and /au/: “But if it is followed by a mute consonant, the last sound is prevented and we hear barely the first sound of the diphthong which is therefore a simple sound or vowel. Thus in the word rout, ou appears to be as simple a sound as any in the language, but in now the sound is evidently diphthongal” (Sp. 1787, 13 fn.).
- Sp. 1787, 12 fn.
- Diet. 1828, Liv a, Lxxiib.
- Sp. 1783, 23.
- Cf. LA 191 and LA Records.
- Diss. 154 f.; Dici. 1828, Liv a, Lvii a-b.
- Diss. 156 ff.
- This phonemic analysis differs from that of A. A. Hill (Lang. 29, 550–555) in three respects: (a) Long vowels and diphthongs are treated as unit phonemes (cf. supra, § 4.4 d). (b) We draw on the dialect with [a, ā] for [o, ō], Thus æ, ǣ stand in opposition to a, ā, but not to [a:], (c) We recognize vowel length as distinctive. Hill overlooks oppositions like have /hæv/ ‡ halve /hæ: v/ (with loss cf l, cf. Kökeritz 310), ani /ænt/ ‡ aunt /æ: nt/ (Cf. Kökeritz 341: “[æ:] was used… before n+consonant in Romance words,” Capitals mine; cf. also Luick § 522). His case for /ei/ rather than /e:/ rests exclusively on modern speech material where the fact that some dialects have [ei] and others [e:] cannot, in my opinion, prove anything either way for Shakespeare, let alone invalidate the contemporary evidence presented by Kökeritz.
- A. A. Hill, I. c., himself admits the unsatisfactoriness of his attempt to argue otherwise.
- The last two words have /u:/ elsewhere in ENE, cf. Luick § 508 fn. 3.
- Cf. supra § 5.2.
- Cf. supra § 5.4.
- Sp. 1783, 47 fn.; 1787, 59, 64.
- Sp. 1798, 49. This may go back to an ENE variant with /a:/, cf. Jespersen § 10.72. J. Neumann's list in American Pronunciation according to Noah Webster, Columbia Diss. 1924, 45 is misleading, as in 1783 Webster does not yet discriminate between /a:/ and /a/ and identifies the latter with the o spelt in not.
- But Diet. 1828 has /a/ in wan, swan etc.
- Cf. Luick §§ 527, 1; 580, 1.
- Cf. Tragerand Smith, Outline of English Structure, Norman, Okla. 1951, 12 ft.
- Cf. supra § 5.3. and Luick § 576 fn. 2–3. Our interpretation of this lengthening as allophonic disposes of Luick's objections against accepting Cooper's testimony.
- Diet. 1828, Lxxi.
- An explanatory and phonographic Dictionary of the English Language, New London 1847, 10 ff.
- A Dictionary of the English Language, Boston 1860, XI ff. The author bases his phonetics on the authority of Walker and Smart rather than on his own observation.
- The Ithaca Dialect, DN 1, 85–173, esp. 100–102.
- L. c. 123. We take this statement to confirm our view of a direct connection between non-phonemic vowel lengthening and the de-phonemicization of length.
- The Elements of English Pronunciation, in Oriental and Linguistic Studies 2nd ser., N. Y. 1874, 202–276.
- A New Englanders English, DN 1 (1896), 33–42.
- “In each case that which is the briefer in quantity is the more open in quality of the two” (Diet. 1865, Principles of Pron. § 8 fn.). “Our longs differ decidedly also in quality from our shorts” (Whitney, op. cit. 207).
- Speaking of vowels: “All the wide are naturally short, and the narrow naturally long, because of the fixed, braced position of the tongue in the latter case and the opposite in the former” (Diet. 1890, Guide to Pron. § 21).
- On scattered earlier references cf. Bronstein, Speech Mon. 16, pp. 228, 230, 235.
- I prefer to write these diphthongs in this way, the first element of the digraph indicating the initial tongue position and the second marking the direction of the movement (cf. supra § 4.4d). The symbols /ii, uu/ do not necessarily imply phonetic identity of the beginning and the end of the vowels concerned, but indicate movement within the high-front and high-back zones of articulation respectively. With the provision that the way covered by the moving tongue varies between some maximum s (= spatium) and zero, our symbols cover both the monophthongal and diphthongal pronunciations of items like heat [hiit] or [hi: t]. Thus we avoid having to interpret as phonemically different the vocalic nuclei of, for instance, beat, bead, and bee in dialects which use a monophthong in the first and a diphthong in the two latter words. I cannot accept a transcription based on Trager & Smith's semivowel theory (op. cil. 20–22) which not only postulates many more ft's, y's, and w's than'I can hear either in English, German or Dutch, but also contains overlapping definitions. For instance, a more central and unrounded position is, in respect of low-back /a/, also a higher and fronter position. From this follows /ay/=/ah/ (using Trager & Smith's symbols).
- There still are non-phonemic length differences partially reflecting the former phonemic correlation, cf. R. M. S. Heftner, Notes on the Length of Vowels, AS 12, 128–134.
- Cf. infra § 10.1 b.
- Cf. infra § 12.
- Cf. “The basic assumption of the functional approach to diachronic phonology is that the distinctive role played by a given phonemic opposition is one of the factors involved in its preservation or eventual elimination” (A. Martinet, Word 9, 1).
- Cf. supra § 4.4 c-d.
- Cf. supra § 5.2. and M. Joos, MPh. 1934, 3–6; Kenyon, Am. Pron. 216–221.
- This is the most common situation today in Br.
- This is recorded as early as in Diet. 1865, Principles of Pron. § 29; Diet. 1890, Guide to Pron. §§ 131–134. The coalescence is restricted to stressed syllables, cf. /uu/ in due = do, but /juu/ in schedule.
- Cf. Trager & Smith, op. cit. 14.
- With central [u:]; cf. Kŏkeritz 211.
- This distinction is still noted as rare by Whitney, op. eil. 224.
- Cf. the phrase /we'wenttuiSoe/ which may mean either “we were not too sure” or “we went to shore.”
- Cf. Hubbell 59.
- Cf. infra § 14.1.
- B. Bloch, Lang. 24, pp. 34, 40 analyses /∂'/ into /ə+r/.
- Cf. Hubbell 63.
- Cf. Luick § 566 f.
- This /əi/ has coalesced with ME ui when this is kept distinct from ME oi as in boil /beil/ ‡ joy /džɔi/. I suggest this as a possible explanation of the “irregular” /əi/ ‡ /əi/ distribution in N. Y. City described by Hubbell 67–70.
- hurry has /A/ in the East and South, but /∂'/ in the Mid West and Far West, cf. the isogloss line drawn by C. K. Thomas, AS 21, 112–115.
- Cf. supra § 5.4.
- Cf. supra § 4.3.
- Webster's sudden elimination of /o/ from the word lists in his Spelling Books from 1789 onward must be due to the fact that he recognized it as a local New England peculiarity.
- Cf. Hubbell 82 f.
- After w- the vowel /æ:/ alternated with /a:/, and developed as described sub (c).
- The “exceptions to this rule” in derivatives from bases with final -r such as starry /sæe: ri/ are so few as to be negligible for our purposes.
- Cf. infra §§ 14, 15.4.
- E. g. in S. C. and N. Y. City, cf. Hubbell 60, 80, 81, 82.
- Principles of Pron. § 6 fn.
- Principles of Pron. § 6; Guide to Pron. § 59.
- Remnants of this usage survive today in some types of Br., cf. D. Jones, Outline' § 294.
- Cf. infra § 10.3. and Whitney, op. cit. 207, where the same vowel is given for father and pass.
- I have noted it in Utah, Cai., Ore., and Wash. On Wash. cf. C. E. Reed, AS 27, 186–189.
- Cf. supra § 10.1 b.
- From LA 379, 666 it appears that tot is unknown in those areas where taught is recorded as [tot].
- These two words are already noted as homonyms by Sheldon, DN 1, 35.
- The statistics compiled by V. R. Miller, Speech Mon. 20, 235–246, show that this is also the most wide-spread distribution in Eastern Mass.
- Evidence of /sei/ in Wentworth s. v.
- No short vowels occurred in final position, cf. supra § 5.1.
- Cf. supra § 7.1.
- On this point in the theory of linguistic change cf. my article Der Untergang des Präverbs ge- im Englischen, to appear in Anglia.
- It may be set up as a general rule that in chain shifts of the type A&vector above;B&vector above;C some items with A are transferred to the level of B so early as to coalesce with the original B and share in its shift to C. Thus the LME chains ē &vector above;ī &vector above;əi and o&vector above;a &vector above;æ comprise a few jumps ē> əi, o > æ, as in NE friar <i ME frere, slrap<_ stroppe. (Cf. Luick §§ 481, 535.) Similarly the Russ. tilt&vector above;tolt&vector above;tolol, and ě &vector above;e&vector above; o (before hard consonants) produce a few forms with tolol < tilt, e. g. polon < *piln, and o < ě e.g. vjodra < vědra. The development in hand may be symbolized as a&vector above;ā&vector above; ɔ with the jump a > in words like prong, dog.
- Cf. supra § 6.3 a.
- Before final and preconsonantal -r this lengthening was general.
- On the different historical interpretation of ɔ < a in the dialects with cot = caught cf. supra § 10.2–3.
- Cf. the isogloss line by C. K. Thomas, AS 22, 104–107.
- /æ/ did not coalesce in these instances with its opposite number /æ:/ except in some dialects where the latter remained low-front in the diphthong æi (cf. infra § 11.4). Elsewhere there had already been retraction ǣ > a, or /æ:/ had disappeared totally under the generalization of the short allomorphs, cf. supra § 10.1–3.
- This city is not included in LA.
- The distribution in the surrounding dialects where some words with earlier /æ/ have /æ/ and others /ε/ makes it highly probable that even in Waterbury not all words changed æ > εɔ at one stroke, but first a few and then more and more; cf. the discussion mentioned supra fn. 114.
- The three latter forms from LA Records of Southern Ohio, Southern 111., Ky.
- The corresponding /og, ug/ of the back series did not occur.
- Cf. Thomas, AS 10, 293; O. Stanley, AS 11, 15; Wentworth s. v.
- /ei/ in measure is also heard in the Pacific North West, /æi/ in ash in Nebr.
- Tenn. speakers use /æi/ in fresh, flesh = flash on the level of /æi/ in fashion which does not rhyme with /ei/ in nation. These forms parallel the obscure development of thrash < thresh (cf. Luick § 541).
- Although it would be tempting to derive many of these words direct from ME ē treated like in great (cf. Kökeritz 194–197), I prefer the theory advanced here in view of the parallel forms on the æi and ii levels.
- The two latter examples from Hubbell 65.
- Scattered LA Records from Ind., S. C., N.
- Cf. Trager & Smith, op. cil. 27, fn. 9, 10.
- LA Records from Ohio.
- Cf. the texts transcribed by E. K. Kane, DN 5, 355 ff.
- For the material here presented I am indebted to Professor B. Bloch.
- Cf. Hubbell 135.
- Nebr. (DN 3, 56); Tenn.
- Cf. supra § 5.6.
- This is explicitly recognized by Emerson: (Before -r) “where the glide and vowel have together the quantity of a long vowel” (DN 1, 101).
- In Eastern New England, hoarse, more, etc. are on the same level as home, whole with the “New England short o,” i.e. /o/.
- Recorded in Waterbury, Conn.
- Cf. supra § 10, introduction.
- Cf. T. S. Eliot's rhymes wars: stars: scars: cars in Burnt Norton II, East Coker II.
- , ǣ < ē before -r as in care /kæ: r/ (differing from the /æ/ of cat in length only) is noted both in Diet. 1890, Guide lo Pron. § 49, and by an observer in Jackson's time (cf. Hi L. Mencken, The American Language, N. Y. 21921, 81). Emerson, DN 1, 113 records [æ∂] in these words. The common form /væri/ for vary of speakers who distinguish marry ≠ merry = Mary does not belong here, but goes back to an 18th-century variant (cf. NED s. v.).
- The former /i: ə/ of real and /auə/ of vowel are treated similarly, i.e. i: ə>i· ə>ii, auə>au, e.g. in real = reel /riil/ (R. I.), vowel: foul /-aul/ (Utah). Cf. further examples in Kenyon, Am. Pron. § 355.
- Cf. supra § 10.3.
- Cf. Hubbell 82, 83.
- Cf. supra § 11.1·3.
- Cf. supra § 11.3.
- Cf. supra § 14.1.
- Pronouncing Dictionary, Philadelphia 1803 (1st Am. ed.).
- Term translated from L. Hjelmslev's virtuel, cf. Omkring Sprogleoriens grund- læelse, Copenhagen 1943, 37.
- The proposition derived here from the surprising parallelism in the history of British and American English that similarly structured vowel patterns may react alike to similar stimuli even in geographically non-adjacent areas also follows from the fundamental assumption of diachronic phonemics that sound laws do not work blindly, but that the internal structure of a linguistic pattern is one of the factors shaping its development (cf. A. Martinet, Word 8, 5).
- Especially the phonemes equivalent to 18th-century short vowels are, on an average, perceptibly longer in comparable environments in modern American than in modern British pronunciation.
- Term as defined by L. Hjelmslev, op. cil. 32. On Dici. 1865 cf. supra § 7.2.
- Organically the same vowels of different length are opposed in Br. in a few odd pairs such as Raleigh /rali/ ‡ Charlie /tša: li/ (my own record), particular/pət-/ ‡ pertain /pə: t-/.
- Cf. D. Jones, Outline7§ 242.
- In Am. these words often are on the same level as occur, Cf. supra § 9.2.
- Cf. supra § 9.1.
- The only possible exception is the rare variant /gɔ: n < ga: n/ for gone. The “drawled forms” of dog, God, odd noted by Ellis show merely allophonic lengthening before voiced consonants. They are “different from E. awed, gawd” with /gə:/ (Ellis 7, 1154).
- Cf. supra § 14.1.
- [ae] is presupposed as an intermediate stage of the shift æ gə > a. gə.
- Cf. D. Jones, op. eit. § 431.
- With the exception of certain Public School and Oxford University dialects which pronounce loss /l gɔ: s < la: s/, etc.
- Cf. supra § 10.3.
- On the origin of ENE /æ/ in rather cf. Luick § 494, or it may be from rath /ræ: p/.
- For access to these I am indebted to Mr. Raven McDavid of Western Reserve University.
- Choose new content alerts to be informed about new research of interest to you
- Easy remote access to your institution's subscriptions on any device, from any location
- Save your searches and schedule alerts to send you new results
- Export your search results into a .csv file to support your research