DOCSLIB.ORG

Quantifier Float and Wh-Movement in an Irish English James Mccloskey

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Quantifier Float and Wh-Movement in an Irish English James Mccloskey Quantifier Float and Wh-Movement in an Irish English James McCloskey TheEnglish of northwestern Ireland allows quantifier float of aprevi- ouslyundocumented kind in wh-questions.The quantifier all, though construedwith a fronted wh-pronoun,may appear in apositionconsid- erablyto the right of that pronoun. It is argued that all so stranded marksa positionthrough which a wh-phrasehas passed or in which a wh-phraseoriginates. The construction then provides visible evi- dencefor intermediate derivational stages. This evidence is used to developa newargument for successive cyclicity and to argue for overt objectshift in English and for an originsite for subjects strictly within VPandbelow the object shift position. Keywords: quantifierfloat, wh-movement,successive cyclicity, object shift,verb raising, VP-internal subjects 1ALocalEnglish Thisarticle examines part of thesyntactic system of alocalvariety of English —avarietyspoken inan areawest and east of theriver Foyle in the northwest of Ireland. The area includes at least Derry city,the Inishowen peninsula, southeast Donegal, and the westernmost parts of counties Tyroneand Derry. At therisk of sacrificingaccuracy for brevity,I willcall the English(es) spoken in this area WestUlster English. WestUlster English is close to the east Ulster variety (called BelfastEnglish )describedin theimportant body of workon dialectsyntax developed by Alison Henry.The twovarieties are, however, distinct in numerousways —phonological,morphological, andsyntactic. In particular, the phenomenon considered here does not occur, as far asI know, inBelfast English. 1 Iwouldlike to dedicate thisarticle tothe memory ofmy teacher Lee Baker,who, among many other things, was thefirst, I believe,to dotheoreticalwork on the syntax of anIrish variety of English(Baker 1968:66). Thanksto Sandy Chung, Norbert Hornstein, and Jason Merchant for comments onearlier versions.The research reportedon here grew outof conversations with Cathal Doherty. An early versionwas presentedat NELS26 (Harvard andMIT). Versions were alsopresented to audiences at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, the University of California,Berkeley, and Cornell University. I am especially gratefulto three reviewers for LI forproviding unusually thoughtfuland useful critiques of an earlier version.The article was preparedwith the help of research fundsfrom the Academic Senate oftheUniversity of California, Santa Cruz. 1 West Ulster Englishis, or was, mynative dialect. The observations presented here, however, derive from work with15 speakers inall (directlyor byproxy).I am particularlygrateful to Brian McCloskey, Martin McCloskey, Elizabeth McCloskey,Cathal Doherty, Frank McGuinness, Jonathan Allison, John Dunnion, Elaine Brotherton, Mary McLaughlin, BillyRobinson, Da ´ith´õ Sproule,Ciaran Tourish,and Paul McGill for their help. Thanks also to Karen Corriganand to AlisonHenry for their help in delineating the geographical range of thefeature. Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 31, Number 1,Winter 2000 57–84 q 2000 bythe Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology 57 58 JAMESMCCLOSKEY Workingon localvarieties of Englishis adifficultbusiness (see, e.g., Henry 1995:12 –15). Thestigmatization that nonstandard varieties are subjected to makes it even more difficult than itusually is to establish reliable data. Luckily, though, the syntactic features I willdiscuss here havenot, as far asI know,been noticed before— by linguists, by speakers, or bythe guardians ofpurity. Since the features have escaped notice, they have also escaped condemnation. Many speakers,in fact, express surprise when it issuggested to them that the features in question are nota partof ‘ ‘Standard’’ English.This fact has the happy consequence for thelinguist that at leastsome of thedifficulties that usually make working on nonstandard varieties so fraught do notapply in the present case. 2ThePhenomenon Thebasic observations can be quicklymade. Most varieties of English(although not all, it seems) allowquestions of thekind shown in (1). (1) a.What all did you get t for Christmas? b.Who all did you meet t whenyou were inDerry? c.Where all did they go t for theirholidays? Suchquestions differ from thosein (2) inimplicating that the answer is a pluralityand in insisting onan exhaustive, rather than a partial,listing of themembers of theanswer set. (2) a.What did you get t for Christmas? b.Who did you meet t whenyou were inDerry? c.Where did they go t for theirholidays? Inaddition to (1), though, West Ulster English allows (3). (3) a.What did you get all for Christmas? b.Who did you meet all when you were inDerry? c.Where did they go all for theirholidays? Thequantifier all in(3a– c) isconstruedwith the interrogative pronoun and not with the subject. Thatis, the examples in (3) aresynonymous (completely so, as far asI havebeen able to tell) withthose in (1). 2 Therelationship between the wh-pronounand its associated quantifier is indicatedin (3) bymeans of underlining, a notationaldevice that I willadopt throughout. The effectoccurs in both matrix and embedded questions. (4) a.I don’t rememberwhat all I said. b.I don’t rememberwhat I saidall. Iwilloccasionally refer tothe construction exemplified in (3) and(4b) as wh-quantifierfloat. 2 Why all and how all are bothimpossible. I suspectthat this must ultimately reflect thespecial denotationalproperties of why and how. Szabolcsiand Zwarts (1993)argue that how is anelement thatranges over domains whose elements exhibita partialordering; who,what, where, and when rangeover individual domains. For why, see theirfootnote 14. When all seems tobe marginally possible. Q - F L O A T A N D W H -MOVEMENTINANIRISHENGLISH 59 Thepurpose of thepresentarticle is to usethis construction as a probeto investigateproperties of (long) wh-movementand to explore some aspects of clausal organization. 3 Basics Wh-quantifierfloat bears a clearfamily resemblance to quantifierfloat of themore familiar sort, illustratedin (5). (5) Thechildren must all have gone to bed. Themajor difference between (5) and(4b) is that in theformer theDPconstruedwith all occupies anA-position, whereas in the latter it occupies an A ¯ -position. Twoprincipal ways of understanding the syntax of quantifier float have emerged in recent years.One originates in workby Sportiche (1988) and was developedsubsequently by himand byothers(Giusti 1990, Shlonsky 1991, Sportiche 1996, Merchant 1996). It holds that (5) derives from arepresentationin which thechildren and all form aconstituent.The other takes all to be anadjoined adverbial element that has the special property that the constituent it adjoins to mustcontain a trace(Klein 1976, Williams 1980, Kayne 1984:chap. 4, Dowtyand Brodie 1984, Miyagawa1989, Doetjes 1992, Baltin 1995, Torrego 1996, Bobaljik 1995, 1998, Morzycki 1998). Iwilldevelop an approachof thefirst type here— atleast for wh-quantifierfloat —justifying itas the discussionproceeds. Whether this approach is also right for themore familiar A-movement casesis a differentquestion, which I willconsider (but only very briefly) in section 7. Saywe beginwith the assumption that who,what, where, and when arepronouns and that theinternal structure of, for instance, who all isanalogousto that of they all. FollowingPostal (1974:111)and Koopman (1999), we mightalso assume that as (6) illustrates,the order [pronoun quantifier]derives from astructurein which the quantifier precedes the pronoun. (6) a. DP b. DP DPj DPj D DP D DP they who all tj all tj Given(6), phraseslike who all havean internalstructure in which a certainambiguity of factoriza- tionwill hold in anypotential application of wh-movement.The lower DP ( who)of(6b)evidently bears a wh-feature.It should therefore be able to undergo wh-movement.But from thegrammati- calityof (1), we knowthat movement of the entire phrase who all alsoresults in successful checkingof the wh-feature.Let us for presentpurposes take the traditional view that this is possiblebecause the wh-featureis instantiated both on the specifier who andon the dominating DP (who all), as in (7). 60 JAMESMCCLOSKEY (7) DP [wh] DPj [wh] all tj who If otherconditions are met, then, both (1) and(3) shouldbe possible. Prominent among these ‘‘otherconditions’ ’ arethe locality requirements on movement. In the theory of localityof move- mentdeveloped in Chomsky 1995:311, 1998:38, a targetK maynot attract an element b if there isanelement a closerto Kthan b ,whichcould enter into a legitimatefeature-checking relation ifraisedto K.‘‘Closeness’’ isdefinedin termsof asymmetricc-command: a iscloserto K than b ifK c-commands a , a c-commands b , and b doesnot c-command a .Bythisdefinition, neither oneof thetwo wh-DPs of(7) iscloser to thetarget of wh-movementthan the other, since neither c-commandsthe other. Both should, then, be accessibleto C. 3 Viewedin this general light, (3) isa grammaticalviolation of Ross’ s (1967)Left Branch Constraint.The question arises why (3) isnotpossible in allvarieties of English.I willreturn to thisissue. Note, though, that the phenomenon now falls within the known range of syntactic variation,since we knowthat some languages permit extraction of a wh-specifier,stranding the head,and that some do not (Ross 1967, Bresnan 1976, Uriagereka 1988, Chomsky 1995:263, Aissen1996, Chung 1998:255 –257,308 –313,Kennedy and Merchant 1998). 4 Finally,I shouldpoint out that examples such as (3) havecertain very distinctive prosodic characteristics.The sequences get all in (3a), meet all in (3b), and go all in(3c) are prosodic unitswhose most prominent element is theverb.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Dialects in Contact Language, Resulting for New Towns and at Transplanted Varieties of Research Into Example from Urbanization and Colonization
    1 observe and account for (he Directs in Contact is an aliempt to a language have on one influence mutually intelligible dialects Of examines UngttistM another when they come into contact, h and argues th.it accommodation in faee-to-face interaction Dialects in of longer-term accommodation is crucial to an understanding features, the phenomena: the geographical spread of linguistic development of 'interdialect* and the growth of new dialects. border areas and Peter Trudgill looks at the development of dialects in Contact language, resulting for new towns and at transplanted varieties of research into example from urbanization and colonization. Based on draws important English. Scandinavian and other languages, his book linguistic data. I'll f theoretical conclusions from a wide range of Science at the Universitj of Peter Trudgill is Professor in Linguistic I Geographical Reading. His books include On Dialect: Social and Blackwell series Perspectives (1983) and he is the editor of the Language in Society. In the same series Pidgin and Creole Linguistics Peter Mtihlhausler The Sociolinguistics of Society Ralph Fasold Also from Basil Blackwell On Dialect* Social and Geographical Perspectives Peter Trudgill m is not available in the USA I, ir copyright reasons this edition Alfred Stieglitz. photogravure (artist's Cover illustration: 77k- Steerage, 1907. by collection. The proof) from Camera Work no. 36. 1911. size of print. 7)4 reproduced by k.nd Museum of Modern An. New York, gilt of Alfred Stieglitz. is permission Cover design by Martin Miller LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY Dialects in Contact GENERAL EDITOR: Peter Trudgill, Professor of Linguistic Science, University of Reading PETER TRUDGILL advisory editors: Ralph Fasold, Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University William Labov, Professor of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania 1 Language and Social Psychology Edited by Howard Giles and Robert N.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origins of Epenthesis in Liquid+Sonorant Clusters in Mid-Ulster English
    The origins of epenthesis in liquid+sonorant clusters in Mid-Ulster English Warren Maguire University of Edinburgh [email protected] Mid-Ulster English Originated in contact between English, Scots and Irish in the 17th and early 18th centuries As a result of the Plantations of Ulster and subsequent settlements and movements (Bardon 2011, Braidwood 1964, Corrigan 2010, Robinson 1984) Irish spoken by the native Irish, though this was the beginning of a long language shift, completed by the mid-20th century in NIr, with areas of native Irish still surviving in Donegal See Harris (1985) for a phonological overview of MUE English, Scots and Irish input to MUE MUE is an English dialect of a Midland type (with retention of many archaic features; closely related to the ancestor of Standard English) • various phonetic features, core phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis Input from Scots is obvious at all linguistic levels • quality and quantity (SVLR) of vowels, lexical distributions of certain vowels, various morpho-syntactic features, numerous lexical borrowings Input from Irish to MUE is less clear • most place-names, some dialect words, a number of morpho-syntactic patterns (though alternative explanations are possible for some) • the influence of Irish on the phonetics/phonology of MUE is less obvious, despite numerous claims that this or that feature has its origin in Irish • one of the most promising (and generally assumed) candidates is Epenthesis in liquid+sonorant clusters Epenthesis in Irish English A well known, stereotyped feature of IrE • film [ˈfɪləm], farm [ˈfaɹəm], (corn [ˈkɔɹən], girl [ˈɡɛɹəl]) Almost always ascribed to Irish influence: • e.g.
    [Show full text]
  • Diplomsko Delo
    UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA Oddelek za prevodoslovje DIPLOMSKO DELO Lidija Poto čnik Maribor, 2012 UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA Oddelek za prevodoslovje Graduation Thesis IRISH ENGLISH: VOCABULARY AND PRONUNCIATION Diplomsko delo IRSKA ANGLEŠ ČINA: BESEDIŠ ČE IN IZGOVORJAVA Mentorica: Kandidatka: red. prof. dr. Nada Šabec Lidija Poto čnik Maribor, 2012 Lektorica slovenskega povzetka: Polonca Kolenc Ozimic, profesorica slovenš čine in sociologije What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my mentor, prof. dr. Nada Šabec for all her help, guidance, and advice. I would also like to thank her for giving me opportunity to hand out the questionnaire to her students. I would like to thank prof. dr. Michelle Gadpaille and prof. dr. Victor Kennedy for giving me opportunity to carry out the survey among their students. I would also like to thank my family for their support, help, and encouragement during my studies and while writing this graduation thesis. IZJAVA Podpisana Lidija Poto čnik, rojena 31. 5. 1988, študentka Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Mariboru, smer prevajanje in tolma čenje angleš čina in geografija, izjavljam, da je diplomsko delo z naslovom Irish English: Vocabulary and Pronunciation pri mentorici red. prof. dr. Nadi Šabec, avtorsko delo. V diplomskem delu so uporabljeni viri in literatura korektno navedeni; teksti niso prepisani brez navedbe avtorjev. Lidija Poto čnik Maribor, 14. 12. 2012 ABSTRACT English is a world language. In UK, USA, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand it is spoken as a first language.
    [Show full text]
  • Irish English for the Non-Irish
    Irish English for the non-Irish The sections of this text have been extracted largely from Raymond Hickey 2014. A Dictionary of Varieties of English. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, xxviii + 456 pages with some additions from the research website Variation and Change in Dublin English. The sections consist of (i) all definitions concerning Ireland, (ii) those involving Dublin, (iii) those involving Ulster / Northern Ireland and (iv) various entries for specific features which are particularly prevalent in Ireland. Ireland An island in north-west Europe, west of England, which consists politically of (i) the Republic of Ireland and (ii) Northern Ireland, a constituent part of the United Kingdom. The island has an area of 84,000 sq km and a total population of just under 6.5m. Geographically, the country consists of a flat central area, the Midlands, and a mountainous, jagged western seaboard and a flatter east coast with Dublin, the largest city, in the centre of the east and Belfast, the main city of Northern Ireland, in the north-east. The main ethnic groups are Irish and Ulster Scots. There speakers of Ulster English in Northern Ireland but they do not constitute a recognisable ethnic group today. TRAVELLERS are a sub-group in Irish society but do not constitute a separate ethnicity. Before the arrival of Norman and English settlers in the late twelfth century Ireland was entirely Irish-speaking. In subsequent centuries both French and English established themselves, the latter concentrated in towns on the east coast. The linguistic legacy of this is an archaic dialect area from Dublin down to Waterford.
    [Show full text]
  • Varieties of World Englishes
    This document is downloaded from DR‑NTU (https://dr.ntu.edu.sg) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Varieties of world Englishes Bolton, Kingsley 2006 Bolton, K. (2006). Varieties of world Englishes. In Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru and Cecil L. Nelson (eds), The handbook of world Englishes. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK. 289‑312. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/96189 https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470757598.ch17 © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Downloaded on 04 Oct 2021 04:39:47 SGT 17 Varieties of World Englishes KINGSLEY BOLTON 1 Introduction The concepts of language variety and variation lie at the heart of the world Englishes enterprise, not least because many researchers in this field have identified their interests as the study of "varieties of English," "localized varieties of English," "non-native varieties of English," "second-language varieties of English," and "new varieties of English." The issue of linguistic variety is also central to both traditional dialectology and contemporary linguistics, where it is often subsumed into the study of language variation and change. The notion of world Englishes, in its turn, may be seen as having both a wider and narrower application. The wider application of the concept subsumes very many different approaches to the study of English worldwide (including varieties-based studies) ranging from the Celtic Englishes of Britain, through diverse varieties in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa to English in Europe and Asia, and also involves the study of· discourse and genre in those contexts where English is regarded as a second or foreign language. The narrower application of the term, however, refers to schools of thought closely associated with the Kachruvian approach, many of which are discussed in the other chapters to this volume.
    [Show full text]
  • African American Vernacular English Erik R
    Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 450–475, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00029.x PhonologicalErikBlackwellOxford,LNCOLanguage1749-818x©Journal02910.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00029.xAugust0450???475???Original 2007 Thomas 2007 UKThecompilationArticles Publishing and Authorand Linguistic Phonetic © Ltd 2007 CharacteristicsCompass Blackwell Publishing of AAVE Ltd Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of African American Vernacular English Erik R. Thomas* North Carolina State University Abstract The numerous controversies surrounding African American Vernacular English can be illuminated by data from phonological and phonetic variables. However, what is known about different variables varies greatly, with consonantal variables receiving the most scholarly attention, followed by vowel quality, prosody, and finally voice quality. Variables within each domain are discussed here and what has been learned about their realizations in African American speech is compiled. The degree of variation of each variable within African American speech is also summarized when it is known. Areas for which more work is needed are noted. Introduction Much of the past discussion of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has dealt with morphological and syntactic variables. Such features as the invariant be (We be cold all the time), copula deletion (We cold right now), third-person singular -s absence (He think he look cool) and ain’t in place of didn’t (He ain’t do it) are well known among sociolinguists as hallmarks of AAVE (e.g. Fasold 1981). Nevertheless, phonological and phonetic variables characterize AAVE just as much as morphosyntactic ones, even though consonantal variables are the only pronunciation variables in AAVE that have attracted sustained attention. AAVE has been at the center of a series of controversies, all of which are enlightened by evidence from phonology and phonetics.
    [Show full text]
  • Intra-Lingual Translation: Irish English-Standard English
    Intra-lingual Translation: Irish English-Standard English Richard Wall Universitp, of Calgary Abstract The focus of this article is problems inherent in intra-lingual translation between two varieties of English, Irish English and Standard English. The genesis and relationship between the two principal forms of English in Ireland, Hiberno-English and Ulster English, are explored along with the various ways in which both differ fiom Standard English. Evidence is provided of the fact that the geographic proxirnity of Ireland to Britain leads some critics and editors to underestimate the extent and implications of the differences between Irish English and Standard English. For example, the substitution of the Standard English word fostering for the highly pejorative Hiberno and Ulster-English foostering (< Irish, fústar) in James Joyce's Ulysses has been a source of confusion for editors and critics from its publication in 1922 to the present. The most obvious and serious problem facing anyone attempting to decode the language of Irish literature in English is the absence of a comprehensive dictionary of the English of Ireland. The article explores the complex socio-political reasons for this absence and concludes with an evaluation of eleven specialised glossaries and dictionaries which have been published shce 1986, with particular emphasis on A Concise Ulster Dictionary. In After Babel, George Steiner observes: "On the inter-lingual level, translation will pose concentrated, visibly intractable problems; but these same problems abound, at a more covert or conventionally neglected level, intra-lingually" (1975, 47). My focus is problems inherent in intra-lingual translation between two varieties of English, Irish English and Standard English, with particular ernphasis on glossaries and dictionaries.
    [Show full text]
  • Writing from the Margins: Donegal English Invented/Imagined Carolina P
    Writing from the margins: Donegal English invented/imagined Carolina P. Amador-Moreno 1. Introduction The English language was established in the north of Ireland with the Plantations, which caused significant waves of emigration from the neighbouring island. The linguistic geography of this area is characterised by its complex dialect source pattern (see Adams (1958, 1971; Gregg 1972; and Barry 1980). Traditionally, the speech of this part of Ireland has been divided into three different dialect areas: Ulster Scots, which is spoken in the north-east (Antrim, north Down, and parts of Co. Derry and Donegal); Mid-Ulster English, which comprises the Lagan valley, Tyrone, north Monaghan, north Fermanagh and some coastal areas of Donegal; and South Ulster English, which is spoken in the south of the province and which is sometimes overlooked in research dealing with Northern Irish English. This distribution, mainly based on vowel-length typology, originally had more to do with the phonological level (see Gregg 1972, Wagner 1958, and Harris 1984) but it is still useful as a description of the three main regional dialects extant in Ulster. To avoid creating terminological confusion that might render further discussion unintelligible, in this essay these terms will all be considered as part of what is called Northern Irish English (NIrE), that is, the English of the nine counties in the province of Ulster. The English of county Donegal is considered as a variety of NIrE, due to the fact that it shares key features with the English of this area (see Harris 1985a, Hickey 2004, Hickey 2007: 142, and McCafferty 2007).
    [Show full text]
  • A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova
    A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ADVANCED A Historical Phonology of English Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language – Advanced General Editor Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Edinburgh Editorial Board Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington) Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam) Rochelle Lieber (University of New Hampshire) Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh) Donka Minkova (UCLA) Edgar W. Schneider (University of Regensburg) Katie Wales (University of Leeds) Anthony Warner (University of York) TITLES IN THE SERIES INCLUDE: Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English Hans Lindquist A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova A Historical Morphology of English Dieter Kastovsky Grammaticalization and the History of English Manfred Krug and Hubert Cuyckens A Historical Syntax of English Bettelou Los English Historical Sociolinguistics Robert McColl Millar A Historical Semantics of English Christian Kay and Kathryn Allan Visit the Edinburgh Textbooks in the English Language website at www. euppublishing.com/series/ETOTELAdvanced A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova © Donka Minkova, 2014 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10.5/12 Janson by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3467 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3468 2 (paperback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3469 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 7755 9 (epub) The right of Donka Minkova to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • Pitch and the Projection of More Talk
    This is a repository copy of Pitch and the projection of more talk. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/111827/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Walker, G. orcid.org/0000-0001-5022-4756 (2017) Pitch and the projection of more talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50 (2). pp. 206-225. ISSN 0835-1813 https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2017.1301310 This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Research on Language and Social Interaction on 08/06/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/08351813.2017.1301310 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Pitch and the projection of more talk 1 This is the author’s final version of an article to be published in Research on Language and Social Interaction (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hrls20/current), expected to appear in volume 50, issue 2 (2017).
    [Show full text]
  • Dialect Variation and Change Among Twice Migrants : a Sociophonetic Study of the East African Indian Community in Leicester, UK
    Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2015 Dialect variation and change among twice migrants : a sociophonetic study of the East African Indian community in Leicester, UK Rathore-Nigsch, Claudia Abstract: Dialect Variation and Change Among Twice Migrants: A Sociophonetic Study of the East African Indian Community in Leicester, UK by Claudia Rathore-Nigsch Abstract Recent years have seen a notable increase of sociolinguistic interest in the varieties of English found in the Indian diaspora, one of the major migratory movements of the modern period. The present study is a sociophonetic investigation of the English spoken by East African Indians in Leicester, a community of South Asian twice migrants who settled in Britain via East Africa in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It contributes to the field in two ways. On a descriptive level, it adds to the existing knowledge by providing insight into patterns of dialect variation and change in an Indian diasporic context that has not been investigated yet. On a theoretical level, it explores the potential of double diaspora situations, an under-researched type of contact setting, to improve our understanding of the linguistic consequences of migration and contact. Secondary diaspora situations are of considerable interest to sociolinguistic research as they raise the question of how such complex migration patterns affect the varieties of English spoken by immigrant communities. More specifically, does contact with the dialects, languages and cultures of three different societies lead to linguistic outcomes that differ from those found in primary diaspora situations? The present study investigates this question by examining variation in the production of one consonantal variable, postvocalic /r/, and three vocalic variables, FOOT, STRUT and NURSE, in a group of first- and second-generation migrants.
    [Show full text]
  • Irish English: a Current Account of Northern and Southern Dialects
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación Irish English: a current account of Northern and Southern dialects Macarena Núñez López Grado en Estudios Ingleses September 2015 Supervisor: Esther Gómez Lacabex Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana y Traducción e Interpretación ABSTRACT Every realisation of speech differs amongst the speakers of a given language. There are many factors that could possibly affect this, such as, age, gender and social background as well as geographical factors, among others. Indeed, the phonology of the same language may present different characteristics throughout the different places in which that language is spoken. In the case of English -with its international language status, we can find many varieties spoken all over the word, which include, among other linguistic aspects, different pronunciation traits. In the present essay, a synchronic description of the phonology of present Irish English will be given. As the Irish language has had influence on Irish English pronunciation, in the first part of the essay a historic account of how English became the language spoken nowadays in the island will be presented together with a phonological account of Irish English in the north of the country and Irish English in the south. A transcription of the speech of two Irish people from those two areas of the island will then be analysed with the purpose of determining which phonetic-phonological aspects characterize each accent they exhibit. The results of the study show that both participants use features from their respective varieties.
    [Show full text]