Raymond Hickey

Coronal segments in Irish English

One of the most salient differences between Irish English and Standard English (in the sense of Received Pronunciation, Gimson, 1980:89 ff.) lies in the realization of coronal segments. I use this term in the standard sense of Chomsky and Halle (1968:304) and intend it to be understood as a convenient means of referring to several groups of sounds which happen to have in common that they all involve the raising of the point or blade of the tongue from a putative neutral position. In using this term I do not necessarily pledge my support to its effectiveness in phonological description (see 3.1 below for a discussion of distinctive features with reference to Irish English). Precisely what segments are involved here will be clear from the remarks below. Before starting however, a word on the term Irish English is called for: by it I mean the variety of English spoken in the Republic of Ireland (on this see Barry, 1982:101 ff.) as the phenomena which I will be discussing are either not at all or only partially found in the variety of English spoken in Northern Ireland (consider the realizations of / t /and / d / discussed below which are unique to the Republic). Furthermore I have allowed myself the generalization Irish English although there is considerable variety in the English spoken in the Republic of Ireland. But the term Irish English is used in a fairly restricted sense here: it refers to urban middle-class speech. This excludes contact Irish English (in the areas officially designated as a ‘Gaeltacht’ (Irish-speaking area) in which both Irish and English are spoken), rural Irish English and lower class urban English. References to, and comments on these latter varieties are labelled specifically as such.

Areal features of the anglophone world

The present volume seeks to unite the research of a range of scholars working on features of non-standard, vernacular English which show an areal distribution, i.e. which cluster geographically across the world. The volume is concerned with dialect input, innovations among varieties of English andthe areal diffusion of features among varieties. These and similar issues form the central focus of the volume.

The dialects of Irish : study of a changing landscape

The book offers an easy-to-grasp overview of forms of modern Irish within a general linguistic framework. Based on recordings of more than 200 speakers (accessible as supplementary material on the accompanying DVD), the book demonstrates the vitality and breadth of the present-day language. Maps and tables allow easy orientation among the varieties of modern Irish.

Developments and change in Dublin English

At the very latest since the seminal work of Labov in the sixties the standard wisdom on the locus for language change is that it is to be found in the lower classes, specifically in the lower middle classes (Labov, 1972:122ff.). While it is true that the possibility of change from above (from the more prestigious middle classes) is not excluded a priori it is not given much attention and usually regarded as being due to the influence of a standard variety on a vernacular. The intention of the present article is to look at a complex of changes from above which in the opinion of the present author is of general relevance in its motivation and in the light it throws on metropolitan language use. It also challenges the view that changes from above ‘are introduced by the dominant social class, often with full public awareness’ and that ‘normally, they represent borrowings from other speech communities that have high prestige in the view of the dominant class’ (Labov, 1994:78). The case in point here is the English of the capital of the Republic of Ireland, Dublin. Here a number of changes have taken place in the past and a major one is occurring at the present which quite clearly originate in the speech of the educated classes of Dublin. This change does not enjoy the public awareness which is predicated of change from above and it does not have its origin in borrowings from another speech community. To anticipate the conclusion, the present author maintains that the changes in the past and that in contemporary educated Dublin English serve the function of increasing the distance between popular and middle class speech in Dublin. The linguistic behaviour which results in this distancing can be labelled local dissociation and constitutes a specific type of language change. It is socially plausible as distancing oneself from the lower classes of one’s native city is something which happens in non-linguistic spheres. The reason why Dublin English is particularly suited in establishing this tendency is that the changes which it has undergone and is undergoing in the educated sector of the city do not represent an approximation to any form of standard (British) English. Hence the conclusions drawn from the data analysed below cannot be dismissed on the grounds of a putative standardisation of Dublin English. To begin the present discussion allow me to sketch in brief the development of English in the capital.1

Sound change and typological shift: Initial mutation in Celtic

In the course of the development of Celtic a system of phonetic sandhi phenomena were functionalized and have come to be central to the morphology of all the present-day Celtic languages. These phenomena are seen here in direct relation to the loss of inherited inflectional endings and as an attempt to compensate for the attrition of the morphology. The result has been a typological realignment which has been maintained despite later changes which shifted the system somewhat. By examining a number of parallel cases the position of the Celtic languages, particularly Irish, is put into perspective.

Syllable onsets in Irish English

This study is intended to present a unified discussion of a number of phenomena which are different in Irish English (hereafter IrE) and Received Pronunciation (hereafter RP) as described in Gimson (1980:89ff.). It is also designed to show that these phenomena are in fact related to each other, not only due to their position in syllable nuclei but also on the level of phonological abstractness. The first phenomenon concerns the sequence which developed from Middle English /iu/ and /eu/. In both of these diphthongs the first element developed into a voiced palatal continuant losing its vocalic character, and yielding finally the sequence /ju:/ (Dobson 1968:705ff., Welna 1978:224). The frequency of this sound in French loan-words and the fact that Middle English /u:/ had been shifted first to /qu/ and later to /au/ as a result of the Great Vowel Shift seems to have led to /ju:/ standing as the pronunciation of the letter u and to be used as the English rendering of any later loan-words containing long /u:/. It also affected the pronunciation of the /u:/ sounds of loans established in Middle English, for example university with initial /u:/ (from Old French universite, Onions 1966:961). The dating of the collapse of /eu/ and /iu/ can be given as mid 16th century, interpreting the orthoepic evidence of Bullokar who confirms in a rhyme that they were pronounced the same (Dobson 1968:802) and the merger was complete by the mid 17th century when it probably had developed from /iu/ to /ju:/. The importance of these considerations for the issue at hand is to establish that /ju:/ was the pronunciation of the Middle English diphthongs at the time of the most extensive Anglification of Ireland in the 17th and early 18th century (Bliss 1979: 19ff.). The remarks below refer to present-day IrE and to the variety of it which I term urban middle class. This general designation, while without validity for many areas of IrE phonology such as the realization of stressed vowels, can be permitted here because the peculiarities of IrE described below are found in all varieties of IrE with the sole exception of contact IrE (that of the ‘Gaeltacht’ or Irish-speaking areas) and of course of Ulster which is radically different from the English of the Republic of Ireland. In present-day IrE long /u:/ occurs after /j/. This means that RP /(-)juq/ does not exist in IrE. The reason is that IrE has maintained /r/ post-vocalically in all varieties and in all positions (all vowels that occur before word-final /r/, when stressed, are also long):

Areal Sound Patterns: From Perceptual Magnets to Stone Soup

Linguistic areas are geographic regions where languages share characteristics as a result of language contact and not as a consequence of shared inheritance, general linguistic tendencies, linguistic universals, or chance.1 Though there is controversy over the precise set of grammatical characteristics that can spread via language contact (see Campbell, this volume), recognition and study of linguistic areas in the modern era continues to reaffirm that sound patterns can and do spread in this way (Boas 1911, 1920, 1929; Trubetzkoy 1939; Emeneau 1956; Heath 1978; Aikhenvald 2002). Given this general outline, we can define areal sound patterns as in (1).

The Dublin Vowel Shift and the historical perspective

The present contribution is concerned with examining a major change in the English spoken in the city of Dublin, a change currently in progress and which has become evident to the author in investigations of present-day Irish English over the last decade or so. I have given it the working title the Dublin Vowel Shift and will present details in the course of this article which will hopefully show that it is of comparable status to other major attested vowel shifts in the history of English and that it has a significance which goes beyond any local interest in the pronunciation of Dublin English. To all appearences the Dublin Vowel Shift is something which started less than 20 years ago and has not yet reached phonological stability. In essence this externally motivated change involves a retraction of diphthongs with a low or back starting point and a raising of low back vowels. Specifically, it affects the diphthongs in the TIME and TOY lexical sets and the monophthongs in the COT and CAUGHT lexical sets.

The sound structure of modern Irish

The Sound Structure of Modern Irish contains essential information about the phonology of modern Irish along with many analyses of general linguistic issues. A major focus of the book is on a typological comparison between Irish and a number of other languages which have functionalised such phenomena as palatalisation and/or initial mutation.

Weak Segments in Irish English

The varieties of English spoken in southern Ireland are noted for the reduction in the articulation of alveolar segments, chiefly /t/. This has a long history and is amply attested in the textual record. Vernacular speech in the capital Dublin shows alveolar stop lenition to a more considerable degree than do less regionally bound varieties of Irish English. This lenition is clearly organised as a cline on which lenited segments increase in sonority. The precise manifestation of lenition depends on syllable position, being disfavoured in onsets but also in covered positions such as immediately before stops. There are also manner restrictions on lenition prohibiting it before /s/ because sequences of two fricatives are not legal. On the cline of lenition there are different realisations and the extent to which a variety shows these depends on its degree of vernacularity. The range is from non-lenition (faithful representation of segments from the lexical input) to deletion of segments. There are furthermore lexicalised instances of advanced lenition which occur in the supraregional variety of English in Ireland which normally only shows the first stage of lenition, i.e. frication of stops with the retention of all other articulatory features. In this contribution both a phonetic analysis of lenition and a consideration of the external factors (degree of vernacularity) which determine the range of lenition is offered.