CENTRE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND STUDIES TOTAL OF 10 PAGES ONLY MAY BE XEROXED (Without Author's Pennission) 1WO ISLAND DIALECTS OF BONAVISTA BAY, NEWFOUNDLAND by © Linda M. Harris A thesis submitted to the school of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Linguistics Memorial University of Newfoundland March 2006 St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador Library and Bibliotheque et 1+1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de !'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-19365-5 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-19365-5 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a Ia Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par !'Internet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve Ia propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni Ia these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a Ia loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur Ia protection de Ia vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ant ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans Ia pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. ••• Canada ABSTRACT This study examines the conservative dialects of English used by speakers who grew up on two island groups in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland. The 16 participants (eight males and eight females) had spent their early lives on either Deer Islands or Flat Islands, and at the time of interviewing in 2001, ranged in age from 78 to 93 years. Males and females proved to be very similar in their speech patterns, and only slight differences were found between the two groups of islands. This thesis describes the distinctive phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical features of these dialects. The first settlers of Bonavista Bay were almost exclusively of Southwest English ancestry, and this work investigates the extent to which dialectal features of that main source area have survived in the language of these contemporary speakers. As expected, both island varieties revealed a mixture of conservative Southwest England features with typical Newfoundland innovations. 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all those who participated in this project and who took the time to talk to me about life on the Islands. Without you there would be no study. I also wish to thank my supervisors, Dr. Sandra Clarke and Dr. Harold Paddock. Your willingness to share your knowledge and experience, your attention to detail, and especially your unending patience have made what was, I am sure you will agree, an arduous task, if not enjoyable, at least as painless as possible. I regret, however, that I cannot say I did the same. My sincere thanks to Colleen Porter, secretary extraordinaire for the Department of Linguistics. Your help and support has been invaluable. Finally to my friends and family, especially to my mother, for your encouragement and support over the life of this project, my deepest appreciation and thanks. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................... 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ii LIST OF TABLES ................................................ vi LIST OF FIGURES . vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .....••.........•.................. Vll1 1. INTRODUCTION . 1 1.0 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH DIALECTS . 1 1.1 NEWFOUNDLAND . 3 1.2 THE CURRENT STUDY . 5 1.2.1 The communities . 6 1.2.2 The participants . 12 1.2.3 The methodology . 15 2. PHONOLOGY ......................................... 18 2.0 INTRODUCTION & TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS . 18 2.1 VOWELS ...................................... 22 2.1.1 KIT /DRESS . 22 2.1.2 TRAP /BATH . 26 2.1.3 LOT /CLOTH/THOUGHT . 29 2.1.4 FOOT /STRUT . 34 2.1.5 FLEECE . 38 2.1.6 FACE ..................................... 40 2.1.7 GO.-\T .................................... 44 2.1.8 GOOSE ................................... 47 2.1.9 PRICE/CHOICE ............................. 50 2.1.10 MOUTH ................................... 54 2.1.11 NEAR/SQUARE . 56 2.1.12 ST.-\RT .................................... 59 2.1.13 NORTH/FORCE ............................. 62 2.1.14 CURE .................................... 65 111 2.2 CONSONANTS . 68 2.2.1 Pre-vocalic h onsets: Deletion and insertion . 68 2.2.2 Fricative voicing [f 9 s J] . 72 2.2.3 TH stopping . 7 4 2.2.4 Ambisyllabic stop voicing . 77 2.2.5 Ambisyllabic stop glottalization . 80 2.2.6 Post-vocalic /-vocalization . 82 2.2.7 Consonant cluster simplification .............. 84 2.2.8 Metathesis . 87 2.2.9 R-dropping ............................... 89 3. MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX ......................... 91 3.0 INTRODUCTION . 91 3.1 VERBS . 91 3.1.1 Past forms . 92 3.1.2 Verbal agreement . 98 3.1.3 Lexical versus auxiliary have and do . 102 3.1.4 Non-past forms of the verb be . 107 3.1.5 Perfect aspect . 108 3.2 PRONOUNS . 110 3.2.1 Pronoun exchange . 110 3.2.2 Grammatical gender ....................... 116 3.2.3 Other pronominals . 118 3.3 NOUNS . 120 3.3.1 Noun phrases and the definite article ......... 120 3.3.2 Grammatical number phrases . 121 3.3.3 Associative plurals . 122 3.4 PREPOSITIONS . 123 3.5 ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS ..................... 128 3.6 DOUBLE NEGATIVES ........................... 129 4. LEXICON . 130 4.0 INTRODUCTION . 130 4.1 FREE CONVERSATION . 130 4.2 THE QUESTIONNAIRE . 133 I Landscape . 134 II Flora and Fauna . 135 III The Fishery . 139 IV Kitchen Gardening . 144 lV V The Premises ............................. 145 VI Food ................................... 148 VII Home and Family Matters .................. 150 VIII Various Attitudes and Activities ............. 152 IX Miscellaneous . 154 5. CONCLUSIONS ....................................... 155 5.0 INTRODUCTION . 155 5.1 PHONOLOGY . 155 5.2 MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX . 156 5.3 LEXICON . 159 REFERENCES 161 APPENDIX A: ITEMS IN THE LEXICAL QUESTIONNAIRE . 178 APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT RELEASE FORM . 181 APPENDIXC:VOWELDATA .................................. 182 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Informant designations and information .................... 13 Table 3.1 The personal pronoun system in Carbonear (Paddock, 1966) . 111 Table 3.2 The Bonavista Bay pronoun system from the current study ..... 112 Vl LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Map of Newfoundland showing Bonavista Bay . 7 Figure 1.2 Map of Bonavista Bay showing Flat Islands and Deer Islands . 8 Vl1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS c Consonant ccs Consonant cluster simplification COED Concise Oxford English Dictionary DI Deer Island(s) DNE Dictionary of Newfoundland English (2nd ed.) EModE Early Modem English FI Flat Island(s) GVS Great Vowel Shift GenAm General American (after Wells) LAE The Linguistic Atlas of England ME Middle English ModE Modem English n noun NfldE Newfoundland English NS Non-standard OE Old English OED The Oxford English Dictionary RP Received Pronunciation SCE Standard Canadian English SED Survey of English Dialects SES Socioeconomic status StdE Standard English sw Southwestern v verb v vowel V111 1. INTRODUCTION 1.0 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH DIALECTS The dialects of English have been remarked on from early times. As Chambers and Trudgill (1980:16) point out, Trevisa, as far back as 1387, commented on the north/ south dialect continuum within England. However, it was not until the latter half of the 19th century that detailed dialect studies were undertaken and published by, among others, Ellis (1889) and Wright (1898, 1905). The late 19th and the 20th centuries saw an increase in the number of publications dealing with British regional dialects. Many of these studies were sponsored by the English Dialect Society, with the ultimate aim of producing a dialect dictionary of regional English. Ellis (1889), Dartnell and Goddard (1894/1991), Wright (1898), and Halliwell (1901) contributed just a few. Southwest England has a long tradition of dialect study, including Carew (1602/1953), Elworthy (1877, 1886), Barnes (1886), Hewett (1892), Dartnell and Goddard (1894/1991), Widen (1949), Orton and Wakelin (1967), Wakelin (1975, 1986), Fischer (1976), Ihalainen (1976, 1985, 1991a, b, 1994), Rogers (1979), and Attwell (1987). Along with studies of individual regions, the major efforts of Orton and Dieth (1962) in conceiving of and carrying out the Survey of English Dialects 1 (henceforth SED) during the 1950s have yielded a large body of knowledge on the linguistic features of regional British English. This has led