English Pronunciation through the Ages

Raymond Hickey, WS 2019/20 Department of Anglophone Studies University of Duisburg and Ess1en Pronunciation -what it is and how we acquire it -

2 The goal of this seminar is to introduce students to the history of English pronunciation both in the Britain Isles (England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) and around the world since the colonial period (after 1600). The way one pronounces one’s native variety of a language is a quintessential part of one’s identity and hence the examination of how varieties are spoken is key to our understanding of speakers’linguistic behaviour.

3 How and what we say

Most of the time when we speak we think not of how to say something (e.g. pronounce the words or arrange a sentence) but rather of what we want to say (the meaning of an utterance).

4 What we can understand

Within our native language we have an extraordinary ability to grasp what is being said to us or around us. We can understand men and women, children and adults, speakers of our own variety of language and those of different dialects.

We can furthermore adjust for tone of voice and rate of delivery, all of this in real time while effortlessly following the meaning of what is being said.

5 When speaking we make unconscious decisions about how to pronounce sounds

6 7 8 Variation in Pronunciation

There are very slight differences in the way in which speakers pronounce their language. The differences merge into each other across time and space. Nonetheless, one can recognise regions where certain features are concentrated; clusters of features are then identified as varieties of a language. In today‘s world linguistic variation in cities is particulary significant and an important trigger for language change.

9 How dowe acquire the pronunciation of our native language?

10 Infants and young children are exposed to a continuous phonetic stream and must make sense of this by working out the systemic structure which underlines this stream of sounds.

11 The phonetic stream and mental phonological representations

N.B: Phonetics deals with actual sounds, phonology is the sound system of a language and we have a mental map of this system in our brains for our native language. 12 A closer look at sound production

The tongue moves horizontally and vertically to produce sounds. In addition the lips may be rounded (for back vowels) or unrounded (for front vowels). 13 14 The vowels of a particular language are always a subset of possible sounds (here: Modern English)

15 16 The basis for phonology

The mental representation of sounds as phonological units is the basis for all languages. These building blocks (phonemes) are the elements from which to construct units (words). 17 The basis for phonology

Children generate phonological knowledge by segmenting the phonetic stream they hear around them, then abstracting the segments they recognise and assigning these to systemic units on a mental level. This allows children to create new sentences with the sounds which others recognise as part of their native language.

18 Variation, interpretation and language change

In the first few years of life children analysethe phonetic stream they hear around them. Variation in this stream can cause the children to interpret sounds differently from the way their parents did this in the preceding generation. Along with changes determined by socio- linguistic factors in later life, this is a major source of change in a language.

19 What are the pathways of language change?

20 When we grow older we can alter our pronunciation in order to (i) accommodate to others or (ii) to dissociate from others

Accommodation Dissociation

21 How is language change transmitted? By face to face contact between speakers.

22 The historical background to English

23 The Germanic languages today

24 TheThe ssooururccee areasareas ofof GermanicGermanic trtriibesbes whowho camecame toto EnglandEngland inin thethe mimiddddlele ofof thethe 55tthh cencentturyury AAD.D.

25 26 Dialects of

West Saxon (south of the River Thames) Kentish (in the are of present-day Kent) Mercian (in the central and eastern part of England) Northumbrian (north of the River Humber) Scots (in the lowland area of present-day Scotland)

Because of common linguistic features, Merician, Northumbrian and possibly Scots are often grouped together as Anglian. 27 The dialects of Old English

28 England during the Viking period

Invasions start at the end of late 8th century, first plunderings, later settlement in Scotland and the north of England

29 30 TheThe DDananelawelaw

During the Viking period the territory of England was divided into a Scandinavian and a West Saxon sphere of influence. The former was known as the Danelaw. In this region the greatest influence of the on the Old English was felt. Many Scandinavian placeanames are attested in the north of England.

31 Open page of Beowulf manuscript

32 On the right you see the opening lines of Beowulf. Click on the speaker symbols below to hear sections of the text spoken in what we assume was the West Saxon pronunciation of Old English.

First section

Second section

Third section

33 England at the time of the Norman Invasion (1066)

William the Conqueror 34 The Battle of Hastings (Sussex) in 1066

35 36 Middle English

After the invasion of England by the Normans in 1066, the West Saxon 'standard', which was waning anyway due to natural language change, was dealt a death blow. Norman French became the language of the English court and clergy. English sank to the level of a patois (an unwritten dialect). With the loss of England for the French in 1204 English gradually emerged as a literary language again. For the development of the later standard it is importantto note (1) that it was London which was now the centre of the country and (2) that printing was introduced into England in thelate 15th century (1476 by Caxton). This latter fact contributed more than any single factor to the standardisationof English. It is obvious that for the production of printing fonts a standard form of the language must be agreed upon. This applied above all to spelling, an area of English which was quite chaotic in the pre-printing days of the Middle English period.

37 Middle English dialect areas

38 The dialects of Middle English

The dialectal position of Middle English is basically a continuation of that of Old English. The most important extralinguisticfact for the development of the Middle English dialects is that the capital of the country was moved from Winchester (in the Old English period) to London by William the Conqueror in his attempt to diminish the political influence of the native English.

NORTHERN This dialect is the continuation of the Northumbrian variant of Old English. Note that by Middle English times English had spread to (Lowland) Scotland and indeed led to a certain literary tradition developing there at the end of the Middle English period which has been continued up to the present time (with certain breaks, admittedly). Characteristics. Velar stops are retained (i.e. not palatalised) as can be seen in word pairs like rigg/ridge; kirk/church.

39 The dialects of Middle English

KENTISH This is the most direct continuation of an Old English dialect and has more or less the same geographical distribution. Characteristics. The two most notable features of Kentish are (1) the existenceof /e:/ for Middle English /i:/ and (2) so-called "initial softening" which caused fricatives in word-initial position to be pronounced voiced as in vat, vane and vixen (female fox).

SOUTHERN West Saxon is the forerunner of this dialect of Middle English. Note that the area covered in the Middle English period is greater than in the Old English period as inroads were made into Celtic-speaking Cornwall. This area becomes linguistically uninteresting in the Middle English period. It shares some features of both Kentish and West Midland dialects.

40 The dialects of Middle English

WEST MIDLAND This is the most conservative of the dialect areas in the Middle English period and is fairly well-documented in literary works. It is the western half of the Old English dialect area Mercia. Characteristics. The retention of the Old English rounded vowels /y:/ and /ø:/ which in the East had been unrounded to /i:/ and /e:/ respectively.

EAST MIDLAND This is the dialect out of which the later standard developed. To be precise the standard arose out of the London dialect of the late Middle English period. Note that the London dialect naturally developed into what is called Cockney today while the standard became less and less characteristic of a certain area and finally (after the 19th century) became the sociolectwhich is termed Received Pronunciation. Characteristics. In general those of the late embryonic Middle English standard.

41 Some figures from Chaucer‘s Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1399)

42 The opening lines of by read by an actor in an accent which is assumed to be that used at Chaucer‘s time (late 14th century).

43 TheThe invinveennttionion ofof prprinintingting

44 The introduction of printing to England

Printing was introduced to England in 1476 by William Caxton. This led to an increasing regularisation of orthography and morphology.

45 MMajajoorr lliinguisticnguistic dedevveeloloppmentsments aatt thethe outoutssetet ofof tthhee EarlEarlyy MMododernern PeriodPeriod

46 TheThe GreGreaatt VowelVowel ShiftShift

The major change to affect the sound system of Middle English is that which resulted in a re-alignment of the system of long vowels and diphthongs which is traditionally known as the Great Vowel Shift. Essentially long vowels are raised one level and the two high vowels are diphthongised. The shift took several centuries to complete and is still continuing in Cockney (popular London speech). The shift of short /u/ to a lower vowel as in present-day southern English but, which began in the mid 17th century, is not part of the vowel shift.

47 48 49 TheThe chrchroonologynology ofof recentrecent ssooundund changeschanges

50 TudorTudor EnglandEngland (16th(16th century)century)

51 52 53 54 Contemporary writers of Shakespeare

Christopher Marlowe Ben Jonson Edmund Spenser

55 56 57 Title page of the Authorized Version of the Bible, the so-called King James Bible (1611)

58 TheThe qquuestionestion ofof aa standardstandard fforor EnglEngliishsh

59 16th and 17th century authors concerned with standard pronunciation

John Hart (d. 1574) in An orthographieof English (1569) offers a reformed spelling of English so that ‘the rude countrieEnglishman’can speak the language ‘as the best sort use to speak it’.

George Puttenham (d. 1590) in The arte of English poesie comments that ‘After a speachis fully fashioned to the common vnderstanding, & accepted by consent of a whole countrey& nation, it is called a language’. He then proceeds to mention that he regards the prime form of this language as ‘the vsuallspeachof the Court and that of London and the shires lying about London within lx. mylesand not much aboue’

About a century later, Christopher Cooper in his Grammaticalinguae anglicanae (1685) stated that he regarded London speech as ‘the best dialect’, the ‘most pure and correct’, but he was quite liberal towards variation: ‘Everyone pronounceththem (words) as himself pleases’.

60 The Augustan age

The early to mid 18th century was a period during which satire flourished in England (and Ireland). The main authors are Joseph Addison (1672- 1719), John Dryden (1631-1700), Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) and the Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667- 1745), the latter being particularly concerned with questions oflanguage and entertaining generally conservative views on language change. The term Augustan is derived from the comparison of this age to that of the Roman Emperor Augustus under whose reign Horace, Ovid and Virgil flourished, authors who the latter-day English writers also admired.

61 62 The rise of lexicography in the 18th century

The middle of the 18th century sees the rise of the novel (initially in epistolary form) and the publication of the first major lexicographical work, the monolingual dictionary Dictionaryof the English language (1755) by Samuel Johnson which was a model for all future lexicographers. (Johnson drew on the dictionaries of Nathaniel Bailey - such as the Universal etymological English dictionary (1721), with some 40,000 entries, and the DictionariumBrittanicum (1730) -for the word list he used in his own).

63 Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer and lexicographer. Johnson was a major critic and scholar who was known both for his brilliant conversation and the quality of his writing. As a man of letters his influence on literature in his day and later periods was considerable. His significance for linguistics lies in the fact that he compiled the first major monolingual dictionary of English, his Dictionary of the English language (1755), which was a model for all future lexicographers.

64 65 66 The legacy of Samuel Johnson Johnson’s dictionary became the standard work of English lexicography because of its range, objectivity and use of quotations from major authors to back up definitions given. It was not until over a century later that it was superseded by the dictionary which was to become the Oxford English Dictionary.

67 PrescPrescrriptiviiptivissmm inin EEnglnglaandnd

68 English in 18th century Britain

The rise of prescriptivism and the development of the standard of English in 18th-century Britain: Dictionaries, grammars and works on elocution (the art of public speaking, later of accepted pronunciation) appeared in the second half of the 18th century. They were intended to fix the public usage of English. Some of these works are shown in the following table and more information on four of the major authors is given below.

69 Robert Lowth (1710-1787)

Author of a normative grammar A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) which achieved great popularity for the manner in which it made recommendations for grammatical usage, something which was interpreted as very prescriptive, even though this may not have been intended as such. Lowthwas professor of poetry in Oxford and later bishop of Oxford and of London (as of 1777). 70 Sheridan, Thomas (1719-1788) Irish writer, born in Dublin and educated in London and Dublin. He was first an actor and is the author of a farce The Brave Irishman; or Captain O’Blunder (1743; published 1754). Later he became a travelling expert on elocution. Sheridan produced ACourseof LecturesonElocution (1762), ARhetorical GrammaroftheEnglishlanguage (1788) and A GeneralDictionaryoftheEnglishLanguage (1780) in which he gives guidelines for the correct use of English.

71 Sheridan was firmly rooted in the ‘complaint tradition’of English writing and lamented the state of British education in his day. But he was also a manipulator who generated linguistic insecurity among his readers then offered relief in his many prescriptive regulations. This type of strategy can be found among prescriptivists to this very day.

72 73 Sheridan A General Dictionary of the English Language (1780)

74 75 Walker, John (1732-1807) A Londoner and prescriptive author of the late 18th century, best known for his Criticalpronouncing dictionary (1791) which enjoyed great popularity in its day.

76 Just as Samuel Johnson had saught patronage for his dictionary from Lord Chesterfield (Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1694-1773), Walker appealed to the famous actor David Garrick (1717-1779) for similar support for his dictionary. Both authors did this by dedicating the plan for their respective dictionaries to their would-be patrons.

77 78 79 The legacy of Sheridan and Walker

Did the strictures of Walker or Sheridan influence the later pronunciation of non-local British English? The answer to this question must be ‘no’. In some cases Walker, as opposed to Sheridan, favoureda form which was later to become default in English, e.g. merchant for marchant. But this did not happen because of Walker’s opinion on the matter.

In many respects, Walker was swimming against the tide of language change. His insistence on maintaining regular patterns of pronunciation across the language (his ‘analogy’) and, above all, his view that the spoken word should be close to the written word, meant that he favouredarchaic pronunciations. His view that syllable-final /r/ should be pronounced was already conservative in his day. In many of his statements he does, however, accept change although he might not have agreed with it.

The legacy of both Sheridan and Walker should be seen in more general terms. Even if their individual recommendations were not accepted by standard speakers of British English, both were responsible for furthering general notions of prescriptivism. And certainly both contributed in no small way to the perennial concern with pronunciation which characterises British society to this day. 80 The English concern with pronunciation

Pronunciation in English is a yardstick of one‘s language. More than European countries, the English judge the standardness of someone’s speech by its phonetics. The ideal which arose during the 18th century and established itself in the 19th century was that one’s speech was not to betray where one came from, i.e. regional accents were frowned upon.

81 Self-appointed authorities on English

Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) was an English lexicographer whose principal work is A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926; later revised by Sir Ernest Gowersin 1965). This is a loosely structured commentary on English usage and style. Together with his brother he also wrote The King’s English (1906).

82 English in the 19th century

83 (1845-1912) Walter William Skeat (1835-1912) major English philologist of the 19th major English lexicographer of the century 19th century

84 19th century to the present

More than in any other European country England is marked by an emphasis on standard pronunciation. The type of pronounciationknown today as Received Pronunciation (after Daniel Jones) or under other less precise epithets such as The Queen’s English, Oxford English, BBC English, etc. is a sociolect of English, that is, it is the variety of English spoken by the educated middle classes, irrespective of what part of England they may live in. In the nineteenth century and into this century as well, this accent of English was that fostered by the so-called public schools (private, fee-paying schools) which were the domain of the middle class. It is also the variety which foreigners are exposed to when they learn ‘British English’.

85 The codification of Received Pronunciation

86 Daniel Jones (1881-1967) major English phonetician of the 20th century

87 88 89 The Oxford English Dictionary

90 A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles

A proposal was made by Richard Trench in 1857 to the to design a new dictionary which would serve as a definitive work on the vocabulary of English with complete historical coverage. The Scotsman James Murray (1837-1915) became the main editor (see inset on right). The first letter was published as a volume in 1888 and all the 12 vols were completed in 1928. A thirteenth supplement volume came out in 1933 (after which it was called the Oxford English Dictionary published by Oxford University Press. The twenty-volume second edition appeared in 1989 (this is also available electronically). Work on a much expanded third edition is underway at present.

91 James Murray (1837-1915), main editor of the Oxford English Dictionary

92 Various book versions of the Oxford English Dictionary

93 94 95 96 Electronic versions of the Oxford English Dictionary

97 98 99 100 The Dialects of English

101 Dialects of English

The dialects of present-day English can be seen as the continuation of the dialect areas which established themselves in the Old English period. The dialectal division of the narrower region of England into 1)a northern, 2) a central and 3) a (subdivided) southern region has been retained to the present-day. The linguistic study of the dialects of English goes back to the 19th century when, as an offspinof Indo-European studies, research into (rural) dialects of the major European languages was considerably developed. The first prominent figure in English dialectology is Alexander Ellis (mid-19th century), followed somewhat later by (late 19th and early 20th century). The former published a study of English dialects and the latter a still used grammar of English dialects at the beginning of the present century. It was not until the Survey of English Dialects, first under the auspices of EugenDiethand later of Harald Orton, that such intensive study of (rural) dialects was carriedout (the results appeared in a series of publications in the 1950's and 1960's).

102 Dialects of English (continued)

Dialect features The main divide between north and south can be drawn by using the pronunciation of the word but. Either it has a /u/ sound (in the north) or the lowered and unrounded realisationtypical of Received Pronunciation in the centre and south. An additional isogloss isthe use of a dark /l/ in the south versus a clear /l/ in the north. The south can be divided by the use of syllable-final /r/ which is to be found in the south western dialects but not in those of the south east. The latter show 'initial softening' as in single, father, think with the voiced initial sounds /z-, v-, 'eth'/ respectively.

103 English dialects (present-day)

104 Varieties of English around the World

Dark blue regions: English as a first language Light blue regions: English as a second language 105 Regions of the Anglophone World

Students should be aware of the main regions / countries of the English-speaking (anglophone) world. As part of the course, we will be looking different accents of English across these regions, how they arose and the variation within the regions today. So acquaint yourselves with the regions of the anglophone world.

106 Spread of English in colonial period

107 Division of the anglophone world by hemisphere

108 Division of the anglophone world by region

109 Dialect regions of the United States

110 Dialect regions of Canada

111 Anglophone locations in the Caribbean

112 Groups of anglophone pidgins and creoles

113 English in present-day Africa

114 English in South Asia and South-East Asia

115 English in the south-west Pacific region

116 English in Hawaii (including Hawaiian Pidgin)

117