Masaryk University Faculty of Arts



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Aitken’s Law

The Scottish vowel length rule, also known Aitken’s Law after its discoverer, professor Aitken, is probably the most characteristic Scottish rule. This law, originating in the sixteenth century, governs the exact realisations in different phonetic and morphemic environments of long or non-high short vowels.

The general rule is that ‘a vowel is phonetically short unless it is followed by #, a voiced fricative, or /r/, in which case it is long’ (Wells, 1979, p. 400).

Thus there is a short vowel in bead, pronounced [bid], and the duration is similar to the vowel in bid [bid] and bed [bɛd]. Similarly, mood [mʉd] rhymes with good, both words having short but close [ʉ]. 

Vowels are long in morpheme-final position, or in the environment of following /v, ð, z, r/ (this applies to all vowels except /ɪ/ and /ʌ/ which are always short). Thus there are long vowels in key [kiː], two [tuː], stay [steː], know [noː]; and in words such as sleeve [sliːv], smooth [smuːð], maze [meːz], pour [poːr], Kerr [kɛːr], Oz [ɔːz].

This long duration is also retained if a morpheme-final vowel is followed by a suffixal /d/, as in agree#d [əˈgriːd]. However, a vowel before a final /d/ belonging to the same morpheme is short, as greed [griːd]. Hence there is a phonetic contrast between the two types of word with final /d/, those which are morphologically simple and those which contain a word-internal #. Few pairs which are bearing phonetic distinction are listed below:

need [nid] knee#d [niːd]

brood [brud] brew#ed [bruːd]

staid [tod] stay#ed [toːd]

bad [bad] baa#d [baːd]

toad [nod] gnaw#ed [noːd]

Some other speakers also show signs of apparently autonomous length contrasts in other environments, for example leek [lik] vs. leak [liːk], vane [ven] vs. vain [veːn], creek [kreːk], choke vs. joke, made vs. maid, badge vs. cadge. (Wells, 1979, pp. 400-401)

Since changes were described in historical context, the characteristic features of Standard Scottish English from a diagnostic point of view follow. The classification of Wells’ (1982, pp. 400 onwards) analysis of SSE, enriched by examples from Abercrombie (1979) is used.


  1. Monophthongs

ʉ The absence of a phoneme /ʊ/ is the most important characteristic of the Scottish vowel system. The vowel of foot words merges goose words; hence there are homophones such as pull—pool, full—fool, look—Luke, and rhymes such as good—mood, foot—boot, puss—loose, wool—tool, woman—human, pudding—brooding. This lack of phonetic opposition between /ʊ/ and /u/ is characteristic that seems virtually resistant to any alteration in the speech of anglicized Scots.

ɔ - o This phoneme is common to many ScE speakers. It is used for words of lot, thought and cloth type and gives homophones of the type cot—caught, knotty—naughty, don—dawn, not—nought. Even though some speakers do distinguish /ɒ/ and /ɔ/, they still use in certain lot words, for instance yacht, wash, watch, squad, squash, and lorry.

a - ɑ As far as open vowels are concerned, SSE has just a single phoneme /a/ (which could be written /ɑ/ as well) to palm, trap, bath, and start words, e. g. badbalm. Similarly to [ɔ] vs. [o], some speakers can also make the distinction between [a] and [ɑ], which is probably most readily found following nasal, for example, Sam [sam] distinct from psalm [sam]. In addition, back [ɑ] is found in the environments __#, __r#, and __rC (bra, car, farm), and sometimes also before a fricative (calf, path, mass, vast).

Abercrombie (1979) claims that an implicational relationship holds between these three optional vowel oppositions /u-ʊ, ɔ-ɒ, a-ɑ/: contrastive /ʊ/ implies the presence of contrastive /ɒ/, and contrastive /ɒ/ implies the presence of contrastive /ɑ/, but not the reverse.



ɛ - ɛ̈ This vowel is sometimes called ‘floating’ vowel because it is not an integral part of any Scottish vowel system, or sometimes ‘Aitken’s Vowel’ because it was him who discussed first its phonetic quality. This fairly centralised vowel is probably determined geographically, since it is commonly found in the west of Scotland, in the Borders, in Perthshire and sometimes in Edinburgh for example. This vowel has no equivalent in RP, it is not considered as forming part of the Basic system, and it appears to occur only in stressed syllables. Where present, /ɛ̈/ occurs in words such as bury, devil, earth, clever, jerk, eleven, heave, next, shepherd, twenty.

ɪ In kit words, the quality of /ɪ/ is – in an educated Scottish accent – much the same as in RP. In more popular accents it may be considerably opener and/or more retracted. Its phonetic quality also varies geographically.

ə The analysis of unstressed vowels, as often, presents problems. In many places where RP has, it seems correct to regard Scottish English as having /ɪ/ or /ɪr/, for example pilot [ˈpaelɪt], letter [ˈlɛtɪr]. It will be recalled that Scottish /ɪ/ is in any case often very [ə]-like. Yert many speakers make a consistent distinction between except and accept, etc., so that these must be phonemicized as /ɪk-, ʌk-/ respectively. In final position, an opener vowel is usual; this commA vowel may be analysed as /ʌ/, too. There is a consistent distinction between commA and lettER: manner—manor ̟/ˈmanɪr/ vs. manna ̟/ˈmanʌ/.

e The final vowel in happY words is perhaps most typically /e/ in Scotland, so that lady is /ˈlede/, studded /ˈstʌdid/ differs from studied /ˈstʌded/.

  1. Diphthongs

price words Many speakers of ScE have two perceptibly distinct diphthongs in price words. One, phonetically, is [aˑe], the other [ʌi] (or in working-class speech, [ɛ̈ɪ]). There are several minimal pairs such as tied vs. tide, sighed vs. side, spider vs. wider, which are not identical in morphological structure: tie#d, tide; sigh#ed, side; in the third pair, there is also a difference of syllabication, spid$er, wid$#er. These examples are further instances of length variation in accordance with Aitken’s Law. These two diphthongs are virtually in complementary distribution.

The first, [ae] is used in the environments finally and before a voiced fricative or /r/, thus buy, high, alive, prize, fire [ˈfaer ̴ fae.ɪr] (some people say [fair] for fire in the north-east). It is also used in morpheme-final position before an ending or suffix, as in tri#ed, shy#ness; and in syllable-final position in words such as diet [ˈdae.ɪt], iron [ˈae.rn̩], pilot, tiger, python.

The other diphthong [ʌi] is used elsewhere, namely before tautosyllabic /v/ in inflected noun plurals, by analogy with the singular form where is regular before /f/: thus sometimes wives [ˈwʌivz], because of wife [ˈwʌif]; five knives [ˈfʌev nʌivz].

From previous, it can be claimed a phoneme split has occurred in Scottish English.



mouth words The vowel of mouth has no tendency to split into two phonemes, but there is considerable sociolinguistic variability, with quality ranging from a high-status [aʉ] to [oʉ] to a popular [ʉː]. This variation correlates in Glasgow clearly with social class. The investigations have shown that in those areas where Scots dialect is spoken alongside ScE, individual speakers usually have both possibilities of mouth words, [ʉ] for Scots and [ʌʉ] for English. This [ʉ] in mouth is a well-known Scotticism outside Scotland and is familiar in such stereotyped Scottish pronunciations as ‘hoose’ for house.

choice words In the case of choice words, the usual pronunciation involves the diphthong here written /ɒɪ/, which ranges phonetically over [ɒɪ ~ ɔɪ]. Where it occurs in the non-final position, some speakers use [ʌɪ] instead, thus merging pairs such as vice—voice. Another possibility is to have instead of a diphthong a disyllabic sequence of /o/ plus /ɪ/, thus boy [ˈbɒ.ɪ], voice [ˈvo.ɪs] (with the same sequence as lowest). This phenomenon occurs in the informal utterance of Gerry Watson.

face and goat words The face and goat vowels are generally monophthongal, though diphthongal realizations are spreading presumably due to English influence. In particular, [oʊ] for /o/ is now not uncommon.

      1. Consonants

Accents of English do not differ much in their consonant systems. The Scottish system remained conservative by retaining the velar fricative, /x/, which is not possessed by any other accent of English. The use of /x/ is restricted to proper names (Tulloch /ˈtʌlʌx/, Auchtermuchty /ˈɔxtɪrˈmʌxte/, Strachan, Buchan), in loan-words from Gaelic (loch), and to some names of Greek of Hebrew origin spelled with ch (technical /ˈtech-/, patriarch /-rx/, epoch). Another item retained is [ʍ], which is preserved only in few instances, like weasel in south-east Scotland.

  1. Rhoticity, /r/

Standard English generally has poses restrictions on the combination of segments to combine with each other and it can be said that most of the combinations of sounds that do not comply, are normally found difficult to pronounce by native speakers. In this respect, SSE shares most of the structural constraints of RP. However, SSE contains a restriction that is unique to other accents of SE. This feature is called Rhoticity. All accents of SE can be divided into two classes depending on where the phoneme /r/ occurs in words (without reference to the way of phonetic realisation). If /r/ can occur only before a vowel, and not before a consonant or before a pause, this accent is called non-rhotic; the majority of RP speakers in Britain are non-rhotic. On the other hand, when an /r/ can occur just as well before a consonant or a pause as before a vowel and thus behaves as any other consonant, then this accent is called rhotic. Rhotic accents are – in addition to SSE – for example GenAm or most Canadian accents.

Furthermore, /r/, it is necessary to describe its realization in more detail. The first of the three most usual realizations of /r/ is an alveolar tap, [ɾ], particularly associated with within-word environments V__V and C__V (sorry, agree), and the other two are an alveolar or retroflex approximant, [ɹ] or [ɻ], associated with the environments V__C and V__# (word, care).

There are some other characteristics which can be found in SSE, though the reader must bear in mind that they are subject of further regional or social differences and as such will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4.


  1. Plosives

As opposed to RP, where plosives in the initial position are pronounced with aspiration, SSE pronounces /p, t, k/ with little or no aspiration; the place of articulation or /t/ and /d/ can be either dental or alveolar. When /t/does not occur in the initial, it is a subject of T Glottalling, thus words like sentimental are pronounced [ˈsɛnʔɪˈmɛnʔl]. Some speakers, who glottal /t/ may also add a glottal reinforcement to /p/ and /k/ in the same environment, thus purple is pronounced [ˈpʌrpʔl]. T Glottalling can be heard in Robert Martin’s informal utterance.

  1. Voicing Assimilation

Voicing assimilation is an interesting phenomenon occurring time to time in ScE (Wells, 1979, p. 412), which can be observed for example in most valuable being transcribed as [ˈmoz ˈvaljəbl]. The elision of the /t/ of most can be found in virtually all accents of English; but the change from [s] to [z] under the influence of the following voiced /v/ can be found only in Scotland and few other territories.

  1. Fricatives

Although SSE does pronounce [θ] and [ð] in the same way as RP does, there are dialects of ScE where these fricatives do miss completely or certain words, where the pronunciation differs from RP. Namely, words although, though, thither are generally pronounced with [θ] instead of [ð].

    1. Prosodic Features

All accents, of all languages, have characteristic features of intonation, rhythm and voice quality. Since these features are the least investigated aspects of SSE and there is not very much of importance to be said about them.

      1. Pitch, Intonation

‘Pitch’ makes differences of tone in tone languages /r/, where a syllable or word consisting of the same segmental sequence has different lexical meanings according to the pitch used with it (e.g. in Chinese). Outside tone languages, pitch also makes differences of intonation whereby different pitch contours produce difference of attitudinal or discoursal meaning (discoursal here refers to the way successive chunks of utterances are linked together). However, in SSE pitch does not play an important role.

While tone is a feature of syllables of words, ‘intonation’ is a feature of phrases or clauses. Some combination of the features of pitch, length and loudness will also produce accent, whereby particular syllables are made to stand out from those around them. (Cruttenden, 2008, p. 51).

Rising tones are reported for many northern cities, for example in Glasgow (Cruttenden, 2008, p. 289). Apart from Glasgow, another pattern involves a series of falls, one on each accented syllable and another on the last accented syllable. Variation in the height of the peak may arise: for statements such accented syllables have high fall and high fall, for wh-questions high fall and mid fall, and for yes-no questions mid fall and high fall (Wells, 1982, p. 415).


      1. Rhythm

Cruttenden (2008) understands the term ‘rhythm’ as the ‘extent to which there is a regular ‘beat’ in speech’ (p. 52). According to Abercrombie (1979, p. 82), it is certainly one of factors which differentiate accents. RP (as well as all accents spoken in Britain) is spoken with what is known as a stress-timed rhythm, which means that the stressed, or salient, syllables tend to recur at roughly equal intervals of time (which distinguishes them from the syllable-timed rhythm of many other languages, where all the syllables recur at roughly equal intervals of time). The distinct rhythm of SSE is audible in Scottish music in what is known as ‘Scottish snap’: in two-syllabic words such as table, the first syllable is short and the second is long.

    1. Paralinguistic Features

Pause – has the most common interruptive effect, in the intonation system ‘it is one of the indicators of an intonational phase boundary, but at the other times functions as a hesitation marker’ (Cruttenden, 2008, p. 52). Cruttenden (2008) adds that this hesitation marker tends to be rather filled than silent. In RP, filled pauses are generally filled with [ə] or [m], whereas Scottish English uses [e:] (p. 52).

  1. Sociolinguistic Features

The way people speak is one of the factors influencing the first impression which listeners perceive either knowingly of unconsciously, and which helps them to identify the speakers. Eliza Doolittle, the main character of Pygmalion, alters her accent and thus she confuses the people she interacts with. Within the limitation of accents and dialects, countless alterations are possible according to speakers’ occupation, gender, age, residence, education and social status of the speaker.

    1. Geography and Mobility

Throughout history, there were attempts to promote a uniform language which would be spoken all over the Britain. It is not subject of this thesis to evaluate whether these efforts were successful or not, but for purposes of this work it is possible to claim that the variability of language in Scotland is relatively high.

As Coulmas (2004) says, these are the dialects which show a speaker’s regional origin (p. 18); accents can operate even on a much finer scale. Graphically, it is possible to draw a boundary line, an ‘isogloss’, on a map to distinguish the geographical distribution of a particular linguistic feature. An isogloss can mark a boundary of two distinctive dialects or accents if such a sharp division does exist. For instance, an isogloss can be drawn in areas near the Scottish-English border to divide the area where rhotic accents are spoken from those where non-rhotic accent prevail (Wells, 1982, p. 11).

As far as the differences between accents rural and urban are concerned, Wells (1982) presents the fact that rural accents tend to be slower in tempo – whereas urban accents tend to be faster and more up-to-date in terms of sound changes in current progress. The slow tempo of a rural accent can be perceived especially in utterances of Robert Martin.

The territorialmobility of Scottish population has been very high (considering e.g. the highland clearances; or mobility caused by relocating for work) which either helped to spread the Scottish variety, or often resulted in a complete assimilation of Scottish speakers.



    1. Social and Economical Class

The connection between language and social class has existed in Britain for many centuries. In a broader context, the language of Scotland was given a lower position in comparison to Standard English, which was associated with higher education and higher upper-middle classes (Wells, 1982, p. 14).

As far as Scottish accents are concerned, Aitken (1979) finds the working-class rather conservative, maintaining the traditional Scotish practice, whereas the middle-class is seen as more progressive, innovating in an anglicising direction (p. 102). This thesis goes with Well’s (1982) assumption that the speech can be considered to be the best indicator of social class (p. 15).

Besides, Wells (1982) finds a connection between class and the geographical factors. He states that working-class accents exhibit a great regional variation whereas RP spoken by the highest class shows nearly no variation at all (Wells, p. 14)


    1. Age and Gender

The age plays a role either in shaping the language, or in the form which is used by the individual. First awareness of language is nediated by parents and by the family. As the child grows, the pressure of peers increases and the child acquires the basic vernacular accent as well as basic evaluative norms. Especially adolescent speech is characteristic for the use of substandard, dialectal, and vernacular forms (Coulmas, 2004, p. 60).

According to Downes (1998), after the sixteenth year of age, the production of prestige forms usually begins (p. 225). Adults are perceived as the norm guard, and the society exerts pressure on them to conform to existing norms. Downes (1998) also noticed that with growing age the speech of adults becomes less dialectal and converges towards the standard. The use of standard is frequent between the ages 25 and 60 and it reaches its peak about the age of forty, during the working ages. Then there is a tendency to abandon the standard in favour of the vernacular, caused by the decreasing pressure of societal norms or willingness to conform.

Gender alsodetermines the way of speaking. One example of a study for all: Macaulay and Trevelyan, who analysed the speech of Glaswegians in 1970s, found out that in almost all cases women had fewer of the forms overtly stigmatized than men in the same social class (as cited in Wells, 1982, p. 416).

Downes (1998) describes some cases (unfortunately not a single of them originates is Scotland) where gender was the first stimuli to an increased usage of a vernacular phenomenon in certain areas. Since women were more likely to be employed and thus their mobility increased, they participated in spreading the innovation: backing of /a/.



    1. Code-Switching

According to Coulmas (2004), code-switching is a process of shifting between two different codes, where the code can be a language or a variety of a language.

Crystal (1991) presents three examples of code-switching: the switch between two languages made, for instance, by bilingual people, switch between regional and standard forms of a language, or between occupational and domestic varieties.

In other words, ‘speakers adjust their speech behaviour to a particular social circumstance’ (Coulmas, 2004, p. 18). This theory proved true in a survey, carried out by Reid in 1970s, on eleven-year-old children in three Edinburgh schools of different status in formal and informal contexts (reading-passage, interview, and group-interaction styles). The results suggested that the speech of the children varied sharply not only with social class but also with contextual style (Wells, 1982, p. 416).


    1. Innovations

The language of the Scots has gone through many changes. They resulted from the prolonged contact of the two sides of Scottish speech tradition, which dialect-switched from Scots to English or style-drifted across the range of Scottish speech. Scots learned to replace the distinctive and provincial native items of word-form, vocabulary and idiom and the more obtrusively native Scots rules of grammar with a lot of new word-forms and new words. (Abercrombie, 1979, p. 99)

Much was said about the innovations in the speech of the Scots. Yet it is still not fully understood how regional variation in speech arises. Wells (1982) presents two distinct theories of how changes spread:

The ‘wave-theory’, which was formulated by a German linguist Schmidt in 1892, visualizes linguistic changes spreading across the country like waves of meteorological fronts. Different innovations spread at different speed and perhaps different directions, so that the areas covered by different innovations do not coincide. The result of successive waves is a network of isoglosses (p. 13).

However, the other theory, presented by Trudgill in 1974, claims that ‘innovations are seen as typically spreading from cities to towns, and from larger towns to smaller towns, leaping over the intervening countryside, which is the last to by affected’ (Wells, 1982, p. 13).



    1. Utterances

By the term ‘utterance’, ‘a stretch of speech about which no aasumptions have been made in terms of linguistic theory’ is meant (Crystal, 1991, p. 367).

Abercrombie (1965) distinguishes three main types of spoken language: reading aloud, monologue and conversation (the right column); yet other concepts do distinguish more. Downes’ (1998) distinguishes four types off utterances (the left column) to which four concrete activities (the middle column), introduced by Chambers and Trudgill (1980), can be assigned:

Casual casual speech conversation

Careful formal speech monologue

Reading reading passage style reading aloud

Formal world list style



      1. Informal Utterance

It is typical of the conversation that the tempo is highly variable and pauses tend to occur unpredictably between two grammatically connected words rather than at the end of a sentence which is more likely to be shown by the intonation. (Abercrombie, 1965, p. 6)

      1. Formal Utterance

The main characteristics of spoken prose are a highly standardized intonation pattern, the evenness of tempo, and the pauses, which are closely related to the grammatical structure of the sentences and thus predictable (Abercrombie, 1965, p. 7).

It seems that one of side-effects of formal speech when spoken by those of lesser education is hypercorrection. A ground for this thesis is Downes’ (1998) investigation. He found out that in more formal styles, the /r/ score for the lower middle class rapidly increases and, crossing over, is higher that of the upper middle class in the most formal.



  1. Fieldwork and Recordings

    1. Introduction

This part of the thesis is devoted to investigation into utterances uttered by native speakers of Scottish English.

      1. Recordings, Interview

The audio materials were collected during the fieldwork in the summer 2010 in Perth, Scotland. All recordings which were analysed are included on a CD (Appendix at the end of this thesis).

Since the purpose of this thesis is to compare formal and informal utterances, the aim of the writer of this thesis was to collect materials that could be classified as formal and informal.

To achieve this, the informants were asked to read a two-paragraph-long passage of The Chronicles of Narnia first, and then they were asked to speak shortly about their lives.

Since monologue is not regarded an informal utterance (Abercrombie, 1965, p. 7), the interview was conducted in an informal way. The informants were asked additional questions and encouraged to speak without hesitation and spontaneously. The informants were not given the question beforehand to elude the artificiality of answers and potential modifications of the locution as much as possible. Thus these conversations are typical for their unfinished sentences, fumbling of words, and hesitation words.



      1. Informants

During the collecting of audio materials, twenty informants were interviewed and recorded. For the purpose of this thesis, four of them were chosen and their speech was analysed. These four were chosen according to three criteria: age, gender, and accent, in order to provide a variety of materials which could be compared.

      1. Locality

Since Scottish English was much influenced by the Scots in the past, it is possible to divide Scotland into four regions according to the dialects of Scots which were spoken in those regions. This division, based on Figure 2 (General Register Office for Scotland, 2005) and Grant’s scheme, who divided Scots into four main groups, each with several subdivisions (as cited in Johnston, 1997, p. 437) is as follows:

Insular region (Shetland and Orkney Islands)

Northern region (Grampian region, Morayshire, Black Isle, Caithness)

Central region (Fife/Perthshire, Forth Estuary, Industrial West, Scottish Borders)

Southern region (Dumfries and Galloway)

All the informants were chosen, in accordance to this division, from the Central region. All of them were living in Perthshire at the time of the interview, and none of them have lived outside Central region in their life.

Figure 2: Scottish Regions Shown Against Council Areas (General Register Office for Scotland, 2005)




    1. Text Passage

The text passage was retrieved from children’s book The Chronicles of Narnia written by C. S. Lewis. The author of this thesis had assumed that a children’s book easily accessible to the people would be the best source because of the undemanding language and familiar vocabulary. However, this assumption proved to be false. A word comprised in the text appeared unknown to all informants. The problematic word promontory, pronounced [ˈprɒm.ən.tri] in RP and [ˈprɑː.mən.tɔːri] in GenAm, meaning ‘a narrow area of high land that sticks out into the sea’ (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2008). It is the opinion of the author of this thesis that utterances were not affected in a negative way by this unfamiliar word. Therefore, exactly the part of the text passage is analysed to allow the comparison of how each informant pronounces this term.

Yet there was another reason this choice: the book itself could serve as a suitable starting point for subsequent conversation and the theme could have provoked a discussion.

The text passage from Lewis (1998): Chronicles of Narnia. Prince Caspian:

The shore that they were walking on drew nearer and nearer to the opposite shore, and as they came round each promontory the children expected to find the place where the two joined. But in this they were disappointed. They came to some rocks which they had to climb and from the top they could see a fairway ahead and – ‘Oh bother!’ said Edmund, ‘it’s no good. We shan’t be able to get to those other woods at all. We’re on an island!’ (p. 15)



    1. Transcription and Analysis

Following pages are devoted to transcriptions and analyses of particular speakers. Firstly, the informant is characterized briefly. Secondly, transcriptions of recordings are presented. Thirdly, the analysis of these recordings is introduced.

      1. Typical local features of the language in Central Scotland

As it was said before, Central region comprises of Fife/Perthshire, Forth Estuary with Edinburgh as the largest city, Industrial West with Glasgow being the largest city, and Scottish Borders.

Wells (1982) describes in the Accents of English specifics of Standard Scottish English and its accents in a detail; since the SSE was discussed in Chapter 3, only the features characteristic for to Perthshire and Glasgow will be mentioned now.

The quality of /ɪ/ in kit words ranges from [ɪ] to [ʌ], including various intermediate possible qualities, in Glasgow.

In working-glass speech of the Glasgow area there is a partial nurse merger thus words like dirt, hurt, bird and word fall together, having the vowels /ʌr/, and words like pert or heard retain /ɛr/.

T-Glottalling of non-initial /t/ is characteristic of the central lowlands of Scotland. In Glasgow and Edinburgh, /ʔ/ is used for /t/ before an unstressed vowel of a word boundary according to social class, social context and sex.


      1. Transcription in RP

Table 6

Transcription in RP

*ðə ʃɔː ðæt ðeɪ wə ˈwɔː.kɪŋ ɒn druː ˈnɪə.rər ənd ˈnɪə.rə tu ði: ˈɒp.ə.zɪt ʃɔː|

The shore that they were walking on drew nearer and nearer to the opposite shore,

ənd əz ðeɪ keɪm raʊnd iːtʃ ˈprɒ.mən.tr̩i ðə ˈtʃɪl.drən ɪk.ˈspek.tɪd tu faɪnd ðə pleɪs weəɹ ðə tuː dʒɔɪnd|

and as they came round each promontory the children expected to find the place where the two joined.

*bʌt ɪn ðɪs ðeɪ wə ˌdɪs.əˈpɔ.ɪn.tɪd

But in this they were disappointed.

*ðeɪ keɪm tu səm rɒks wɪtʃ ðeɪ həd tu klaɪm ən frəm ðə tɒp ðeɪ kʊd siː ə ˈfeə.weɪ ə.ˈhed ənd|

They came to some rocks which they had to climb and from the top they could see a fairway ahead and -

əʊ ˈbɒ.ðəɹ | sed ˈ*ed.mənd | ɪts nəʊ ɡʊd|

‘Oh bother!’ said Edmund, ‘it’s no good.

*wi ʃɑːnt bi ˈeɪb.l̩ tu ɡet tu ðəʊz ˈʌ.ðə wʊdz əˈt ɔːl|

We shan’t be able to get to those other woods at all.

*wɪəɹ ɒn ən ˈaɪ.lənd|

We’re on an island!’

      1. Robert Martin

Robert Martin is a sixty-seven-year-old fieldworker, who was born in Perth. His parents were farmers and he has been living in rural area all life. He has not finished his primary education and started to work in a very young age. Now he is retired and lives in Balbegie by Perth. He is interested in Scots history, language and literature, and he recites Robert Burns’ poetry on annual Robert Burns Suppers.

Table 7


Robert Martin – Formal

*ðə ʃɔːr ðet ðeɪ wɛɾ ˈwork.ɪŋ ɒn druˑ ˈni.rər ənd̥ ˈni.rər tʉ ðɪ ɔ.pə.sɪt ʃor|

The shore that they were walking on drew nearer and nearer to the opposite shore,

ʌnd ʌz ðeɪ keɪm raʉnd itʃ ˈprɒ.mɒ.nə.tr̩i ðə ˈtʃɪl.dɾən ɪk.ˈspek.tɪd tu fʌɪnd ðə pleɪs weə ðə tʉ dʒoɪnd|

and as they came round each promontory the children expected to find the place where the two joined.

bət ɘn dnəs ðeɪ wɛr dɪs.əˈpoɪn.tɪə

But in this they were disappointed.

*ðeɪ keɪm tʉ sʌm rɒks wɪtʃ ðeɪ həd tʉ klʌɪm ənd from ðə tɔp ðeɪ kəd siː ə ˈfɛɾ.wɛr ə.ˈhɛd ʌnd

They came to some rocks which they had to climb and from the top they could see a fairway ahead and -

*ɔ ˈbra.ðər | sed ˈ*ed.mənd | ɪts nəu ɡud

“Oh bother!” said Edmund, “it’s no good.

*wɪ ʃɑːnt bi ˈeɪb.l̩ tʉ ɡet tʉ ðiːz ˈʌ.ðər wudz əˈt ɔːɫ

We shan’t be able to get to those other woods at all.

*wɪɾ ɔn ən ˈʌɪ.lənd

Were on an island!”

Table 8

Robert Martin – Informal

*and| | ðɛ̈rz lɔʔ v ðəm ðeːr həz ˈnʌm.bərz ɔn ðeɪr hʌʉs | ə ˈɫɔ.jər ˈprʌi.vɪt | ðɛr nɔʔ əʉnd baɪ ðə ˈkʌʉn.sɫ | bə ɪn hənə ð ˈkəʉn.səɫ bɔust ɛnə | ɛn ə skiːm ɛz wi kɔːl ɪʔ | ˈðe.əɫ bi itʃ hʌʉs ɛnd̯ ə ˈhʌʉs.hɔʉɫd iːtʃ hav ə ˈnʌm.bər | laɪk ðat |

And, eh, there’s a lot of them there has numbers on their house, a lawyer private, they’re not owned by the council, but in here the counsel bounced an, an a scheme, as we call it, there’ll be each house and a household each have a number, like that.

*ɛr aɪ lɪvd̯ | aʒ ði end əv ðə striːt ə.ˈbʌv ən ðə ˈkɔːr.nər həz ɡoʔ ə saɪn ʌp ˈseɪɪŋ *ɡriːn *rəɔʉd | ˈnʌm.bɜrz̯ | sɔˑ ˈme.ni tu sɔ ˈme.ni |

Where I live, at the end of the street above in the corner has got a sine up saying Green Road: numbers: so many to so many.

*ənd wʌn saɪd əv̥ ðə striːt ɪs ˈiːv.n̩ ˈnʌm.bərəz̯ | ˈtwen.t̯i tʉ | ˈtwen.ti fɔr | ˈtwen.ti sɪks | ənd wʌn saɪd əv̯ ðə striːt ɪs ˈiːv.n̩ ˈnʌm.bərəz̯ | ˈtwen.t̯i tʉ | ˈtwen.ti fɔr | ˈtwen.ti sɪks | ði ˈʌ.ðər saɪds̬ | wʌn | tʉː | e | wʌn | θriː | fʌɪv ənd wɔ ˈʌ.ðər ðɛr | eː | ɔːd ən ˈiːv.n̩ fər ðə ˈnəm.bər |

And one side of the street is even numbers: twenty two, twenty four, twenty six; the other side’s one, two, e, one, three, five and what other there, ehm, odd and even for the number.

Overall, his speech can be characterized as slow which is typical for rural accents. There is no significant difference between the formal and informal utterance as far as the tempo is concerned.

Both utterances include [ɫ] a velarized variety of /l/ and in both phoneme /u/ is predominantly realized as centralized [ʉ]. The realisation of vowels is consistent in both utterances as well.

What distinguishes the two utterances is T glottalling which occurs only in the informal utterance. The formal utterance also lacks the hesitation sound [e:], which is typical for Scottish English.

Robert pronounces the word promontory as a three-syllabic word: [ˈprɒ.mɒ.nə.tr̩i].



      1. Patricia Margaret Williams

Patricia is a sixty-seven-year lady, who was born in Glasgow and moved to Perthshire in her forties. She comes from a working-class family. She completed her apprenticeship there and then she worked as a book-binder in Glasgow. Now she is living in Alyth by Perthshire.

Table 9


Patricia Margaret Williams – Formal

ɔn dʒu nɪɝ dɻu ˈnɪə.rə ʌnd ˈnɪə.rəɹ tu ð̈̈ɛ ˈɔ.pə.sɪt ʃɔːɾ |

The shore that they were walking on drew nearer and nearer to the opposite shore,

ənd ʌz ðeɪ keɪm rəund itʃ ˈprɔ.mə.təri̩ ðə ˈtʃɪl.dɻən ɪk.ˈspek.tɪd tu fʌɪnd ðə pleɪs wɛɻ ðə tuː dʒɔːɪnd̥ |

and as they came round each promontory the children expected to find the place where the two joined.

*bʌt ɪn ðiː ɜn ðɪs ðeɪ wɛr ˌdɪs.əˈpo.ɪn.tɪd |

But in this they were disappointed.

*ðeɪ keɪm tu səm rɔks wɪtʃ ðeɪ hɛd tʉ klʌɪm |

They came to some rocks which they had to climb

ənd frɔm ðə tʰɒp ðeɪ kʰud siː ə ˈfɛr.wei a.ˈhed ən a hed ənd |

and from the top they could see a fairway ahead and –

*oʊ ˈbrʌ.ðər | seːd ˈ*eˑd.mənd | ɪts nəʊ ɡʊd |

“Oh bother!” said Edmund, “it’s no good.

*wi ʃɑːʔt bi ˈeɪb.ɫ tʰu ɡet tʰu ðiːz ˈʌ.ðɝ wʊdz aˈt ɔɫ |

We shan’t be able to get to those other woods at all.

*wɪr ɔˑn ə ˈaɪ.lənd̥ |

We’re on an island!”

Table 10

Patricia Margaret Williams – Informal

*aɪ juːstʰu lɪ̆v ɪn ə ˈtʰeː.nə.mənt | *aɪ wəs bɔn ɪn ə *ʌɪ wəz brɔː ʌp ɪn ə ˈteː.nə.məntʰ |

I used to live in a tenement, I was born in a – I was brought up in a tenement.

*ə ˈteː.nə.mənt s ʌ haɪ ˈbɪl.dəŋ bɪf fɔː flats ĕn ˈme.bi θri ˈpip.ɫ ɪn iːtʃ flat |

A tenement is a high building with four flats and maybe three people in each flat;

an | eːm | ðem nɒt moɾ əv ðəu nəu bə ðaːt wəs ˈ*ɡlaːs.ɡoʊ |

and, ehm, them not much of them done now but that was Glasgow –

wʌn ə ðə ˈbɪ.ɡɪs ˈsɪ.tɪs ɪ̆n ˈ*skɔːt.lənd̥ | ɪs tʰiː ˈbɪk ˈsɪ.ti ʌp təɝˌ*a.bə.ˈdiːn |

one of the biggest cities in Scotland, it’s the biggest city up to Aberdeen.

*ɔ wĕl | wi jʊzd tu pleɪ ɪn ðə striːts lʌɪk ðə hʌid̯ ən siːk | and̯ | eː | kɪk ðə kaːn | ən wi juːs̯ tu pleɪ pʰiːvə | əʒ ju kɔɫ ˈhɒp.skɒtʃ nəʊ ɔɾ ˈbeːdz |

Oh well, we used to play in the streets like the hide and seek and, e, kick the can, and we used to play peever, as you call hopscotch now or beds.

Since Patricia is a very talkative person, both utterances are very fast and it is not easy of an unskilled listener to follow her speech. Both utterances have the same realisations of vowels and consonants and both contain aspirated plosives /p, t, k/.

In the informal utterance there is one instance of intrusive /r/, in [təɝˌ*a.bə.ˈdiːn]. In addition to this, she uses the same hesitation expression as Robert [e:].

She pronounces promontory as a three-syllabic word [ˈprɔ.mə.təri̩], thus still differently to RP.


      1. Gerry Watson

Gerry Watson is a fifty-five-year-old sales manager from Perth. He was born and raised in Glasgow and both of his parents are of middle-class origin. He has lived there 43 years and then he moved with his family to Perth for the sake of the business. According to his own words, he loves playing golf and reading second-hand books which have a ‘history’.

Table 11


Gerry Watson – Formal

*ðə ʃɔːɾ ðət ðeɪ wər ˈwɔːk.ɪŋ ɒn dɽuː ˈni.ɾəɾ ən̥ ˈni.rə tu ðɪ ˈɒ.pə.sɪt ʃɔːɾ |

The shore that they were walking on drew nearer and nearer to the opposite shore,

*ən ɛz ðeɪ keɪm rʌʊnd iːtʃ ˈpʰɾɔ.mə.tə.ɾi ðə ˈtʃɪɫ.drən ɪk.ˈspɛˑk.tɪd̥ tə faɪnd̥ ðə pʰɫeɪs weə ðə tuˑ ˈdʒɔ.ɪnd̥ |

and as they came round each promontory the children expected to find the place where the two joined.

*bə ɪn̥ ðɪs ðeɪ wəɾ ˌdɪs.əˈpoɪn.tɪd |

But in this they were disappointed.

*ðeɪ keɪm tu sʌm rɔks wɪtʃ ðeɪ hɛd tu klaɪm |

They came to some rocks which they had to climb

ənd̥ frəm ðə tɔp ðeɪ kə siː ə ˈfɛɾ.wɛɻ ə.ˈhɛd and |

and from the top they could see a fairway ahead and –

*o ˈbɔ.ðɛr | sɛd ˈ*ɛd.mənd | ɪts nou ɡʉd |

‘Oh bother!’ said Edmund, ‘it’s no good.

*wi ʃaːnt̥ bi ˈeɪb.ɫ tu ɡet tu ðouz ˈʌ.ðɛr wudz əˈt ɔˑɫ |

We shan’t be able to get to those other woods at all.

*wɪr ɔn ən ˈaɪ.lənd̥ |

We’re on an island!’

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