Feature Loss in 19Th Century Irish English
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In: Terttu Nevalainen, Irma Taavitsainen, Päivi Pahta and Minna Korhonen (eds) The Dynamics of Linguistic Variation: Corpus Evidence on English Past and Present. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008, 229-243. Feature loss in 19th century Irish English Raymond Hickey Essen University Abstract The current contribution is concerned with the disappearance of a number of dialect features from the English language in Ireland during the course of the 19th century. At the outset of this century there were many archaic and dialectal features from earlier input varieties of English as well as transfer features from Irish which had been carried over by bilinguals during the language shift to English. In the course of the 19th century a native middle class arose in Ireland due to the emancipation of, and general education for the Catholic population. This in turn led to the emergence of a supraregional variety of English in which many of the earlier features were removed and/or replaced by more mainstream ones, stemming from southern British usage. Developments were not always straightforward and many features were relegated to vernacular varieties or to positions of slighter salience, thus escaping censure by later generations. The consideration of just what paths was taken by what features forms the backbone of this contribution. List of keywords for index 18th century prescriptivism, ASK-metathesis, CATCH-raising, dialect / archaic features, feature loss, lexical diffusion, SERVE-lowering, SOFT-lengthening, supraregional standard, transfer features from Irish, unraised long E, unshifted vowel values, variant pronunciation Introduction Any consideration of the development of English in Ireland in the past two centuries shows quite clearly that many features which were present in the 18th century were lost in the course of the 19th and possibly the early 20th century. This fact in itself is not surprising and similar loss is to be found among traditional dialects throughout Britain. What makes an investigation of such feature loss of general linguistic significance is its manner and course as well as the consideration of precisely what features disappeared. The loss of dialect features has its roots in external developments. As there is no language internal motivation for feature loss, such as analogical levelling or reanalysis of structure by language learners, only changes in social attitudes towards dialect speakers and assessment of their speech can be appealed to as a cause. Assuming this external perspective is helpful in finding the triggers for feature loss. These lie in developments located in the 18th century, chiefly the rise of prescriptivism in language use. Raymond Hickey Feature loss in 19th century Irish English Page 2 of 13 While variant pronunciations had been registered by authors writing in the 17th century, e.g. John Ray (1674) who pointed out many of these, it was not until the 18th century that the additional factor of social censure is to be found with authors writing about the English language (Beal 2004a, 2004b). In Britain the notion of accent as social symbol (Mugglestone 2003, Phillipps 1984) became prominent in the late modern period. The foundation for this was laid by the general dominance of London and its surroundings, a fact which also had a linguistic dimension. This contrasts with other European countries at the time, such as Germany, which lacked a central region which was socially and politically dominant. In such cases the primacy of one accent, and the attendant censure of other accents, is not to be found to anything like the same extent as in Britain. The position of the Celtic regions is interesting in this respect. The two major regions, Ireland and Scotland, were both heavily influenced by attitudes to language use in England. This was due in large part to native authors writing in English. These authors show a typical colonial stance: language use in the centre, in this case south-east England, was the model for the periphery. The fringe regions of Britain had to strive particularly hard for acceptance by those at the centre. In Ireland, Thomas Sheridan is the main author who embodies this attitude. In his attempts at acceptance in England, Sheridan was singularly censorious towards his compatriots in Ireland. Similar behaviour was also found in Scotland, e.g. with James Buchanan who specifically stated in the title of his The British Grammar (Buchanan 1762) that it was intended for use in Great Britain and Ireland. The Celtic periphery was explicitly included as remedial instruction was regarded as necessary there. The framework for this concern with language as a social symbol was undoubtedly determined by the large-scale political situation in the 18th century. Certainly, the relative peace of this period (see Johnston 1994 for a consideration of Ireland) contrasted strongly with the political and military vicissitudes of the 17th century during which more pressing matters than the relative value of accents were uppermost in society. Late 18th century prescriptivism continued into the 19th century and in the Irish context it was, if anything, strengthened by the rise of a native middle class. The roots of this lie in the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the introduction of general primary education for Catholics in the 1830s (Dowling 1971). This furthered the spread of English throughout Ireland and with the possibilities for social advancement which were now open to Catholics in Ireland a native middle class arose during the course of the 19th century. This class also developed notions of correct linguistic usage which ultimately were responsible for the shape of supraregional Irish English usage in the 20th century (Hickey 2003a). Some features were censured, and still are to this day, e.g. the expression of habitual aspect via do(es) be, while others escaped this censure and are part of the supraregional standard of the Republic of Ireland, Examples for the latter are the perfective aspect with after + V-ing, as in She is after breaking the glass ‘She has just broken the glass’, or the resultative aspect expressed via the word order ‘Object + Part Participle’ as in He has the work done ‘He has completed the work’. These changes part of the general process of supraregionalisation (Hickey, forthcoming). Just what is involved here and how the process proceeds depends on the specific conditions in the country or region where it occurs. What is certain is that supraregionalisation is an externally motivated instance of language change and Raymond Hickey Feature loss in 19th century Irish English Page 3 of 13 that it is driven by the desire by more educated speakers embedded in weak-tie social networks to remove obvious local features from their speech. The upper ceiling in supraregionalisation is determined by additional factors such as the presence of an extra-national norm of the same language, as is the case with standard British English vis à vis Irish English. Although vernacular features are lost on supraregionalisation there is never full approximation to the standard of the language in question as this would lead to a loss of linguistic identity for the group undergoing the supraregionalisation. Many features of Irish English pronunciation also disappeared in the course of the 19th century. These had various sources, both transfer from Irish by bilinguals during the long period of language shift and the retention of dialect and/or archaic features of English input to Ireland. The source is not the determining factor, or at least there is no evidence for this. Indeed the factors which were responsible for the censure of features and their subsequent loss are difficult, if not impossible, to identify definitively. But the salience of features (Hickey 2000) certainly played a role. Some features, such as ‘Unraised long E’ – speak [spe:k] – were perceived as indicative of a non-standard Irish English accent. This is clear from comments by authors on the Irish ‘brogue’ (Murphy 1943), a pronunciation of English in Ireland far removed from southern British accents. It is also obvious from the exploitation of such features in the speech of stage Irish characters by many 19th century authors in Ireland, e.g. Dion Boucicault in his plays (Blunt 1967, Duggan 1969). For the examination of feature loss in the current chapter, A Corpus of Irish English, compiled and published by the author (see Hickey 2003b), has been used. This corpus consists of some 80 texts spread across the history of Irish English from the early 14th century down to the 20th century. There are different texts represented in the corpus. For the present investigation, narrative prose and drama were the focus of particular attention. These text types are those where vernacular features appear most readily and hence are of value when tracing feature change and loss. In the tables given in the discussion below the dates for the latest attestations were determined by examining the text types just mentioned. More information on A Corpus of Irish English can be found in Hickey (2003a) and on the dedicated website www.uni-due.de/CP. The statistical analysis of the findings was done using the author’s own Corpus Presenter software, contained in Hickey (2003a) with the latest version available through the website. Features lost since the 18th century1 The history of Irish English can be divided into two periods, an early one which began in the late Middle Ages and continued until the 16th century and a second period which began around 1600. The features of the early period were by and large replaced from the 17th century onwards. Some phonetic traces of English from the first period (before 1600) can, however, be seen in colloquial Dublin English today (Hickey 2005). Features of a phonological nature, e.g. vowel values which contrasted in the sound system of Irish English, were generally aligned to those of English in England by the 18th century.