A Phonological Analysis of the Speech of Hays County, Texas. Betty Ruth Heard Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1969 A Phonological Analysis of the Speech of Hays County, Texas. Betty Ruth Heard Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Heard, Betty Ruth, "A Phonological Analysis of the Speech of Hays County, Texas." (1969). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 1546. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/1546 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. _ ......... This dissertation has been 69-17,110 f microfilmed exactly as received | ■5( HEARD, Betty Ruth, 1935- j A PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SPEECH OF 5 HAYS COUNTY, TEXAS. | .ja Louisiana State University and Agricultural and | Mechanical College, PhJD., 1969 | Language and Literature, linguistics | I University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan § 3 (~c) Betty Ruth Heard 1969 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SPEECH OF HAYS COUNTY, TEXAS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Speech by Betty Ruth Heard B.A., University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1957 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1959 January, 1969 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To my parents for their constancy To the people of Hays County for their generosity Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The writer wishes to thank those persons who contributed to the planning, exercise and completion of this study. First,! am indebted to Dr. J. Donald Ragsdale who assumed the direction of this dissertation in June, 1968. His counsel, encouragement, and humor were invaluable. The author is appreciative of Dr. Claude L. Shaver's guidance in the initiation of the study. He also checked the phonetic transcription of the worksheets. The constructive suggestions and willing cooperation of the committee members, Dr. Waldo W. Braden, Dr. William W. Evans, Dr. Michael V. Karnis, Dr. Stuart I. Gilmore, were appreciated. Although he was not available to serve on the committee, thanks are due Dr. William R. Van Riper for suggestions for the conduct of the field work and for permission to use his worksheets. The support of many friends and colleagues at Louisiana State University and Southwest Texas State College made this study possible. Special thanks are due Dr. Elton Abernathy for the use of departmental equipment, to Mrs. Betty Phillips for special help with regional materials, and to Mrs. W. A. Wyatt, Sr. for her knowledge of the history and people of Hays County, Texas. Special recognition is given to. Jack and Maty Frances HopKins for the typing and lettering of half the phonetic corpus. i n Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page DEDICATION.......................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT...................... iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS............................... Vi ABSTRACT............................................ vii I. INTRODUCTION........................................ 1 Purpose and Problem.............................. 1 Procedure........................................ 1 Previous S tudies................................ 4 Limitations...................................... 5 Organization .................................... 5 II. HISTORY AND INFORMANTS.............................. 9 History of Hays C o u n t y ........................... 9 Spanish Exploration in T e x a s ......... 9 European-American Settlement ..................... 11 Statehood........................................ 12 Early History of Hays C o u n t y ..................... 12 Stringtown, the Earliest Community ............... 13 Hays County.............................. 14 Newspapers............... 24 Schools....................... 25 Population...................................... 28 The Informants ........ 29 III. PRONUNCIATION IN HAYS COUNTY......................... 55 Organization .................................... 55 Stressed Vowels. ............................... 56 Vowels before [r J ............................... 65 Vowels before Intersyllabic [r] ........... 68 Incidence of Vowels and Consonants ............... 69 Unstressed Vowels................................ 78 Consonants...................................... 79 Influences of Northern, Midland and Southern S p e e c h .......................................... 31 Northern and Midland Speech....................... 81 Southern Speech........... 83 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER Page IV. SELECTED LEXICAL ITEMS.............................. 86 Hays County Usage.......................... 87 Influences of Northern, Midland and Southern Vocabulary...................................... 119 Northern Words .................................. 120 Eastern New England Words......................... 122 Midland Words.................. 122 North Midland Words.............................. 123 South Midland Words ........... 123 Coastal Southern Words ........................... 124 General Southern Words ........................... 125 V. CONCLUSION.......................................... 128 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................. 137 APPENDIX I. QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE WORKBOOK FOR HAYS COUNTY, TEXAS.................................. 140 II. TRANSCRIPTION OF THE WORKBOOKS................. 165 VITA.................................................. 297 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE Page 1. Vowel Chart ...................................... 7 2. Diacritics Used in Transcription................... 8 3. Location of Hays County, Texas Informants .......... 30 vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze the phonology of the speech of the people of Hays County, Texas. Although the major emphasis of this study was phonological, some attention was devoted to a survey of selected lexical items. The problem was to determine the following: (1) the phono logical characteristics of the speech of Hays County, Texas; (2) the patterns suggested by differing speech usage at several levels of age and education; (3) the possibility of pronunciation or vocabulary isoglosses within the County. The conduct of the stages of the study proceeded in the follow ing manner. First, a study of the history and settlement patterns of the County determined that most of the pre-Civil War immigrants came from or through the southern states, but most of the post-Civil War immigrants came from Missouri, Tennessee or Arkansas. Second, a questionnaire was compiled for the interviews. Third, from each, community, representative Hays County residents of varied age, edu cation and occupation were chosen. Fourth, thirty-three interviews yielded twenty-seven usable tape recordings. Fifth, the workbooks were transcribed phonetically. Sixth, the phonology of the speech of Hays County was described, and selected lexical items were dis cussed. The dialect of Hays County was mixed. Features more character istic of Northern and Midland pronunciation predominated. For example, vii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. postvocalic [r] and unstressed syllabic [ £■] were retained in words like door and father. [3-] appeared in words like thirty. Mono- phthongal checked vowels [ I tU t £ fA,S3] were used in words like whip, wood, red, sun, sack. Other Northern or Midland sound patterns were the use of [u] in two; [o] in law, orange, fog; [au] (with a low-front quality) in cow; [i] in ear, rinse; [u] in poor; [e] in both merry and Mary, deaf, yellow; [o] as the unstressed vowel in yellow and infrequent use of [r] in wash. Features of Southern pronunciation that occurred were usually restricted to positional allophones or choice of a sound within one word. Examples were the use of [ei] before the voiced velar [g] in egg and the use of [z] in greasy. A large number of characteristically General Southern words influenced the vocabulary of the County. For instance, use of pallet, (corn) shucks, pully bone. light bread, (horse) lot, and whetrock was widespread. The survey of lexical items also revealed several terms apparently somewhat restricted to the central Texas area and Hays County. They were cedar chopper (poor white trash), Jew Pudding (a Christmas strudel), and Roosevelt or Hoover willows. Some of the terms used more often or only with informants over sixty were mantel- board , mantelpiece, wardrobe, bakery bread, (cherry) kernel, clingstone peach, shirtwaist, widow woman, French harp, a right smart, tolerable,