SEMINAR 8. TERRITORIAL VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

TOPICS FOR REPORTS:

1. RP (Received Pronunciation)

2. Southern English Accents

3. Northern and Midland Accents

4. Welsh English.

5. Scottish English.

6. Northern Ireland English.

7. American English

a) The Eastern type

b) The Southern type

c) General American (GA).

Optional:

8) Australian and New Zealand variant

9) South African English

HOME PRACTICE.

EXERCISE 1 Consider the following English constructions, and say what part of the English-speaking world they are most likely to come from:

(a) I'll give it him.
(b) Have you ever gone to London?
(c) Going away tomorrow he is.
(d) He ordered the town evacuated.
(e) The dog wants out.
(f) I'll come see you soon.
(g) We'd a good time last week.
(h) It was very ill that he looked.

EXERCISE 2. What is the regional origin of the following poem?

The wuid-reek melts wi the winter haar
And aa the birds are gane;
They're burnan the leaves, the treen are bare,
December rules a dour domain.

The wuid-reek draws a memorie
Frae some far neuk in the brain
When I was a loun and hadna loed
And never kent the world's bane.

Och, burn the leaves and burn the branch
And burn the holly treen!
O winter, burn the hairt I want -
And syne burn mine again!

EXERCISE 3. What is the regional origin of the following passage? Make a list of the words and spellings which led you to make this identification.

She must have felt me staring at her, for she turned around, and her eyes, which were an astonishing color, now looked at me with an open small-town concern. And now I realized the detective had seen me chatting with nothing less than a blonde. We stepped into a squad car, the siren was turned on, and we drove to an exit, and then turned back to the apartment. By the time we arrived, there were two more squad cars in the street. Our silence continued as we rode up in the elevator, and when we got to the apartment, a few more detectives and a few more police were standing around. There was a joyless odor in the air.

EXERCISE 4. What is the regional origin of the following passage? Make a list of the features which led you to make this identification.

I've lost my pal, 'e's the best in all the tahn,
But don't you fink 'im dead, becos 'e ain't.
But since he's wed, 'e 'as ter nuckle dahn,
It's enough ter vex the temper of a saint.
E's a brewer's drayman, wiv a leg of mutton fist,
An' as strong as a builick or an horse.
Yet in 'er 'ands 'e's like a little kid,
Oh! I wish as I could get him a divorce.

EXERCISE 5. The following words mean different things in American and British English. Find out what the differences are:

nervy, scrappy, pavement, homely, momentarily, cheap

EXERCISE 6. The following English words have at least two different pronunciations in different varieties of the language. Say what they are:

dance, butter, bath, off, card, head, plant, one, supper, girl

EXERCISE 7. Convert the following Traditional (East Anglian) Dialect passage into Standard English:

I reckon yow wonder why I han't writ lately. Well, Aunt Agatha she ha been a-spring-cleanin', and we ha wery nigh finished. She ha got only one more place to do that's outside (that's the coal shud). Granfa he mob. He say yow can't see no difference when that's done, only yow can't find nothin'. But he lend a hand. We all got fit, when Aunt Agatha found she'd lent her whitewawsh brush to Mrs. W., so I had to go ahter that. Well, bor, she say to me 'Thank yar Aunt Agatha for the use of the brush. I ha got a new one now so I shall neither want to borra nor yit lend'. She gan me some peppermint cooshies for Granfa. He mobbed. He say 'I don't want them things'.

EXERCISE 8. Look at the twelve 'English words' and try and find out what they mean, by consulting dictionaries or other sources, if necessary.

lewze, mawther, eftmistall, loup, laikbairn, shippon, fainitesnesh, thole, keek

EXERCISE 9. Discuss why it is that, in many parts of the country, dialect words are dying out.

EXERCISE 10. Think of twenty English words that you would guess are of French origin. Check in an etymological dictionary to see if you were correct.

EXERCISE 11. Consider the way you pronounce t.

Say out loud He's got a lot of little bottles. Do you use glottal stops in got, lot, little and bottles? Do you use no glottal stops at all? Do you use a d-sound in some of these words? Or do you say gorraand lorrafor got a and lot of? What dialects are characterized by the above mentioned types of pronunciation?

EXERCISE 12. Make a short list of regional pronunciation features that you could use in helping you to decide where a speaker comes from.

QUESTIONS FOR SELF STUDY:

1) Is the term “Southern English” indicative of its birth place, or is it confined only to the South of England?

2) Who introduced the term “Received pronunciation”?

3) For what reasons is RP accepted as the teaching norm in most countries where English is taught as a foreign language?

4) What accent of British English has the most in common with American English? Why?

5) What are the two major differences of the Scottish variant of English from RP?

6) What is a “Southern drawl”? Where is it typical for?

NB! Diglossia

This word is used to refer to the case where speakers of a language regularly use (or at least understand) more than one variety of that language. In one sense this situation is found in all languages: it would always be strange to talk to one's boss in the same way as one spoke to one's children. But in some languages the differences between varieties are much more sharply defined, and many societies have evolved exclusive varieties which may only be used by one sex, or in conversation between people of a particular status or relationship relative to the speaker.

Slip of the tongue (speech error)

Much has been discovered about the control of speech production in the brain as a result of studying the errors we make in speaking. These are traditionally known as "slips of the tongue", though as has often been pointed out, it is not usually the tongue that slips, but the brain which is attempting to control it. Some errors involve unintentionally saying the wrong word (a type of slip that the great psychoanalyst Freud was particularly interested in), or being unable to think of a word that one knows. Many slips involve phonemes occurring in the wrong place, either through perseveration (i.e. repeating a segment that has occurred before, as in 'cup of key' for 'cup of tea') or transposition (the slip known as a Spoonerism), as in 'tasted a worm' instead of 'wasted a term'. Such slips apparently never result in an unacceptable sequence of phonemes: for example, 'brake fluid' could be mispronounced through a Spoonerism as 'frake bluid', but 'brake switch' could never be mispronounced in this way since it would result in *'srake bwitch', and English syllables do not normally begin with /sr/ or /bw/. Some researchers have made large collections of recorded speech errors, and there are many discoveries still to be made in this field.

LITERATURE:

1) Васильев В.А. Фонетика англ.яз. Теоретический курс. – М.: Высшая школа, 1970 – с. 36-58.

2) Дикушина О.И. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. – М.: Просвещение, 1965. – С. 185-202.

3) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Тихонова И.С., Тихонова Р.М. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. – 3-е изд., стереотип. – М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2003.- с.252-283.

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LITERATURE FOR FURTHER READING:

1. Антипова Е.Я., Каневская С.Л., Пигулевская Г.А. Пособие по английской интонации (на англ.яз.) . – Л.,1974

2. Бубенникова О.А. Основные тенденции развития диалектов современного английского языка в области фонологии//Вестник МГУ. Сер.19.

3. Васильев В.А. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. (На англ.яз.). – М.,1970

4. Васильев В.А. и др. Фонетика английского языка. Нормативный курс (на англ.яз.). – М.,1980

5. Зиндер Л.Р. Общая фонетика. – М.,1979

6. Кузьменко Ю.К. Фонологическая эволюция германских языков. – Л.,1991

7. Леонтьева С.Ф. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка (на англ.яз.). – М., 1980

8. Маковский М.М. Английские социальные диалекты (онтология, структура, этимология). – М.,1982

9. Плоткин В.Я. Очерк диахронической фонологии английского языка. – М.,1976

10. Плоткин В.Я. Строй английского языка. – М., 1989

11. Селезнёв В.Х. Пособие по развитию навыков английской интонации. – М.,1983

12. Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Тихонова И.С., Тихонова Р.М. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка (на англ.яз.). – М.,1996

13. Трубецкой Н.С. Основы фонологии. – М.,1960

14. Швейцер А.Д. Истоки фонетических и грамматических особенностей американского варианта английского языка//Известия РАН. – 1994. - № 5. – С.30-45

15. Carr, Philip. English Phonetics and Phonology. An Introduction.: Blackwell Publishers,1999

16. Clark, John and Yallop, Colin. An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. Series: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics, 1995

17. Johnson, Keith. Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics: Blackwell Publishers, 1996

18. Lyons J. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. – Cambridge, 1969

19. Mills C. American Grammar. Sound, form, and meaning/American Univ. Studies. Series XIII. – N.Y., 1990

20. Phonological Theory. The Essential Readings/Ed. By John A.Goldsmith. Series: Linguistics: The Essential Readings,1999

21. Phonology. Critical Concepts in Linguistics/Ed. Charles W.Kreidler.: Routledge,2000

22. Spencer, Andrew. Phonology. Theory and Description. Series: Introducing Linguistics.: Blackwell Publishers,1995

23. Yule G. The Study of Language. An Introduction. – Cambridge: Univ.Press, 1985