The Velar Nasal in thing and think : Evidence from Thomas Spence's (1775) Pronouncing Dictionary for the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The history of the velar nasal phoneme involves two stories: the emergence of /ŋ/ as an independent phoneme, as in thing /θiŋ/, and variation between velar and alveolar nasal pronunciations in the context of unstressed <-ing>, as in loving /'lΛviŋ/–/'lΛvin/. The latter has been the object of study in English (historical) phonology and dialectology (e.g., , , , ). The former, however, received little attention until the final decades of the eighteenth century, when Thomas Spence first coded the velar nasal with a separate notation system in The Grand Repository of the English Language (1775). Spence's is one of the eleven pronouncing dictionaries from which the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database ( ECEP ) draws its data. The current paper reports on the methodological steps adopted in order to compile a new consonant lexical set for the study of the velar nasal phoneme /ŋ/, labeled thing and further subdivided into two subsets to account for the combination of the nasal consonant spelled <n> and a voiced /g/ or voiceless velar plosive /k/ consonant ( thing and think ). The selection of example words is based on the inventory of dictionary entries in The Grand Repository , then contrasts Spence's entries with other pronouncing dictionaries in ECEP and narrows down the list according to diverse linguistic parameters such as word-position, stress, part of speech, and number of syllables. The compilation of the lexical set thing will thus facilitate research on the incidence and distribution of the velar nasal phoneme in the history of English. This in turn will add to the body of research underlining the value of evidence drawn from pronouncing dictionaries and will contribute to fostering the "phonological turn" that has been growing in historical linguistics over recent decades.