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Leeds Studies in English New Series XXX 1999 Dialectal Variation in English: Proceedings of the Harold Orton Centenary Conference 1998 Edited by Clive Upton and Katie Wales Leeds Studies in English School of English University of Leeds 1999 Leeds Studies in English New Series XXX © Leeds Studies in English 1999 School of English University of Leeds Leeds, England ISSN 0075-8566 Leeds Studies in English New Series XXX 1999 Dialectal Variation in English: Proceedings of the Harold Orton Centenary Conference 1998 Edited by Clive Upton and Katie Wales Leeds Studies in English School of English University of Leeds 1999 Leeds Studies in English Leeds Studies in English is an annual publication from the School of English, University of Leeds, England. It is an international refereed journal publishing articles on Old and Middle English literature, Old Icelandic language and literature, and the historical study of the English language. Editorial Board: Catherine Batt, Editor Pam Armitage Elizabeth Baldwin Paul Hammond Joyce Hill, Chair Rory McTurk Peter Meredith Oliver Pickering Mary Swan Andrew Wawn Notes for Contributors Contributors are requested to follow the Style Book of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 5th edition (London: 1996). The language of publication is English and translations should normally be supplied for quotations in languages other than English. Each contributor will receive twenty offprints. Contributions from the UK should be accompanied by a large stamped addressed envelope; those from overseas should be accompanied by a large self-addressed envelope and the appropriate value of International Reply Coupons. All contributions should be sent to: The Editor, Leeds Studies in English, School of English, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, England. Reviews Copies of books for review should be sent to Catherine Batt at the above address. Contents Editorial Preface vii Front Rounded Vowels in Northumbrian English: the Evidence of The Orton Corpus Kurt Rydland 1 The Leeds Corpus of English Dialects - Project Juhani Klemola and Mark Jones 17 The Phonetic Data Base Project (PDP): a New Tool for the Dialectologist Willy Elmer 31 Parallel Lines Through Time: the Confusing Case of She Merja Black 59 Explanations of Sound Change: Contradictions Between Dialect Data and Theories of Chain Shifting Robert Stockwell and Donka Minkova 83 The Phonology of Definite Article Reduction Mark Jones 103 The East-West New England Dialect Boundary: Another Look at the Evidence Lawrence M. Davis, Charles L. Houck and Veronika K. Horvath 123 Attitudes Towards British English Dialects in the 19th Century Manfred Gorlach 137 Scots Language Attitudes and Language Maintenance Caroline Macafee and Briege McGarrity 165 Glottals Past and Present: a Study of T-glottalling in Glaswegian Jane Stuart-Smith 181 Dialect Recognition and Speech Community Focusing in New and Old Towns in England: the Effects of Dialect Levelling, Demography and Social Networks Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams 205 English Intonation in the British Isles Kimberley Farrar, Esther Grabe and Francis Nolan 243 The First SuRE Moves: Early Steps Towards a Large Dialect Project Paul Kerswill, Carmen Llamas and Clive Upton 257 The Future of Dialectology William A. Kretzschmar, Jr 271 Editorial Preface The autumn of 1996 marked a fresh beginning for English language studies in Leeds: a new Chair in English Language was taken up by Professor Katie Wales from the University of London; and Dr Anthea Fraser Gupta from Singapore, and Dr Catriona McPherson from Edinburgh were appointed to lectureships. There is no doubt that the three of them had been attracted to Leeds in no small part by the prestige and fame of Professor Harold Orton and his team and of the Survey of English Dialects (published 1962-71). Katie Wales in particular was delighted to find that Stanley Ellis, principal fieldworker, was an 'honorary lecturer'; that Dr Clive Upton, who had worked with Harold Orton, was a visiting lecturer, and about to embark on a new national survey; and that Leverhulme Trust finance was about to be spent on editing the Survey's original surviving recordings in machine-readable form (by Dr Juhani Klemola, temporary lecturer, and Mark Jones). The very month she was appointed Katie Wales realised the significance of the year 1998: the centenary of Harold Orton's birth (1898-1975); and the (approximate) half-centenary of the institution of the Survey. So the idea of a celebratory international conference took shape, culminating in a 3-day event in March 1998 with over 70 participants from all over Europe and North America, including many of Orton's former colleagues and fieldworkers, as well as Harold's own daughter, Betty Borthwick. As Stanley Ellis reminded us at the conference dinner, the SED remains the only systematic nation-wide dialect survey ever to have been completed in England. The aim of the conference, however, was not only to remember Harold himself, and to take stock of past achievements in English dialectology, but also to highlight current research projects in urban as well as rural dialect studies, English English as well as 'global' English: providing a rapprochement between dialectology and sociolinguistics; between diachronic and synchronic perspectives; theory and empirical research. The papers selected from the conference proceedings for this volume hopefully reflect a vigorous variety of perspectives and approaches. What is noteworthy is that time and again the SED and its related publications continue to be cited, in ever expanding fields. As Stanley Ellis also reminded us at the conference: 'Harold has a lasting memorial in the existence of the Survey, which, still, 30 years after his death, provides material that scholars will use and enlarge on for further work. He knew he was drawing a firm base line from which to build future studies.' Editorial Preface We wanted also to look forward to the next millennium, to future developments in dialectology. As some of the papers in this volume reveal, there is no doubt that dialectology, like other linguistic disciplines, is benefitting considerably from electronic technology: and how Harold Orton himself would have welcomed that! He would also have delighted in the media interest which the conference attracted: from interviews with almost every local radio station in the country, to the BBC's World Service, television and national broadsheets. At the end of this millennium accents and dialects have lost none of their popular appeal: if anything, non-academic interest has increased. It is even more important, therefore, that dialect studies should continue and flourish, to provide an informed and accurate picture to the community at large of variation in English. The actual fourteen papers selected for publication here comprise four main groupings. The first group of three papers draw upon the 'Orton corpora': namely, Orton's own Northumbrian Corpus (Kurt Rydland); and the Orton-Dieth SED corpus. The papers of both Klemola/Jones and Willy Elmer show just how the SED and related materials have adapted well to the electronic age. The second grouping of four papers draws upon existing holdings of well-established dialect data, to provide fresh insights: Merja Black and Stockwell/Minkova from a diachronic perspective, Mark Jones and Davis/Houck/Horvath from a synchronic perspective, the latter looking again at LANE data. The third group, Manfred Gorlach and Macafee/McGarrity, are concerned with attitudes to dialects, past and present. The final group comprise studies of urban dialects, non-traditional data (Jane Stuart-Smith; Kerswill/Williams); and also new studies with new methods (Farrar/Grabe/Nolan; Kerswill/Llamas/Upton). The volume concludes with a timely look at the future of dialectology, by William Kretzschmar. We would like to thank Anthea Fraser Gupta and Catriona McPherson for their invaluable help in preparing this volume for publication. Katie Wales and Clive Upton vui Front Rounded Vowels in Northumbrian English: the Evidence of The Orton Corpus Kurt Rydland Abstract This paper examines the phonological properties and the historical development of Northumbrian front rounded vowels of the types [0(:)] ([0(1)3]) and [ce(:)l ([ce(:)a]), with special reference to the material of the Orton Corpus. While studies based exclusively on the Survey of English Dialects regard these vowels as two phonemes, or perhaps one, the present paper demonstrates that they constitute three phonemes, /0:/,/oei/and/ce/ (or hf), two of which have back as well as front realisations (/0:/ = [0: ~ 0:] etc.; /ce/ = [ce ~ 3] etc.). In terms of lexical incidence, I01I occurs typically in the standard lexical set GOAT, while /ce:/ as well as /ce/ (hf) appears chiefly in LOT and CLOTH. Special features of lexical incidence in the Orton Corpus include the use of l0il (in North Tynedale) and /ce:/ (at most localities) in some subsets of THOUGHT. The paper also offers explanations of the historical development of Northumbrian front rounded vowels. Lass's (1989) suggestion that they may have developed as an approach to the southern GOAT vowel is accepted in general as regards [0(:)], but is otherwise rejected. Instead, it is shown that all three main types, [0(:)], [ce:] and [ce], may have developed by various native processes, one of which is contextual, while two are context-free. At the same time, it is recognised that the use of front rounded vowels in the Orton Corpus and the Survey of English Dialects owes a great deal to the influence of external norms of pronunciation. 1. Introduction 1.1 Front rounded vowels (FRVs) are a prominent and well-known feature of Kurt Rydland traditional Northumbrian speech. In the Basic Material of the Survey of English Dialects (SED), they appear typically in such words as coat [k0:t, k0'3t, k03t, korst, kce:3t] (~[ko9t,ko3t]),/ox [fceks, fecks, foe:ks] (~[foks, foks]) and off [cef, cef, ce:f] (~[of, of]) (Orton and Halliday 1962-63: IV.5.11, VI.14.5-6, IX.2.13), that is, in words belonging to the standard lexical sets GOAT, LOT and CLOTH as defined by Wells (1982).
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