Northern English Dialect Research Articles

The Conservative North – the Phonological Makeup of Northern English Features

The Northern English dialect has always been a source of curiosities and many contrasts, boggling the mind of linguists who would wish to confine it within some limits of linguistic definitions. Starting from its Old English forefather, Northumbrian, onwards, the Northern dialect has proved to be both influential and resistant to external influences. Its borders defy clear categorization as understood by clear-cut variables, providing more for a fuzzy and volatile framework of relations among different Northern varieties. This is somewhat justified by the very nature of the Northern speech which seems to be a product of as much the history as the culture and tradition so deeply rooted in the hearts of Northerners. Against the backdrop of folklore and popular myths surrounding the local varieties, the Northern tongue has developed its unique features based on two contrasting linguistic trends in morphology and phonology. Among those, one can observe strong innovative and influential tendencies in the area of morphology and much resistance to changes or external influences in terms of phonology. It seems particularly surprising that the phonological analysis of the Northern dialect will very often appear to be an analysis of the dialect of the past with many characteristics having remained unaltered since the old times and being now a symbol of pride and affinity for a particular social group. The aim of this article is to investigate some of those phonological relics, trying to “establish historical continuities” and relating the today’s forms to the past. The analysis will include both vowels and consonants, focusing predominantly on such concepts as the retention of [U], lack of diphthongization, lack of palatalization, rhoticity, and the cluster [xw], and it will involve textual examples from modern times backwards. The results of such a study should present a reliable picture of the Northern dialect, which, despite its morphologically innovative nature proved earlier, is characterised by conservative and traditional phonological values, adding colour to the Northerners’ speech and ensuring its special status within the English dialectal family.

The Rhubarbarian’s Redress: Tony Harrison and the Politics of Speech

Taking up the persistent question of poetry’s sociopolitical capacities by considering how Harrison’s poems depend on the power of local speech, this article examines how they cast his working-class northern English dialect in meter and rhyme as a way to scrutinize social hierarchies. Marshaling various forms of speech, including his own vernacular, into traditional patterns of poetry, Harrison interrogates classist notions about nonstandard speech and its relation to that tradition while exploring the disturbances produced by class separation. Where poetry scholarship in general and Harrison scholarship in particular often place demotic registers in opposition to traditional verse forms, this article argues that it is precisely the working relationships Harrison finds between verse forms and speech forms that upend hierarchies in his poetry, making new music out of local parlance.

The Innovative North – the Morphosyntactic Makeup of Northern English Features

The purpose of the article is to show the Northern English dialect as a complex creation dependent on various geographical, cultural and social factors responsible for its fluidity and changeable nature. Its strong tendencies towards developing new linguistic solutions are considerably manifested in the morphological and syntactic system which since the very beginning has been subject to alternations, sometimes affecting even other English dialects. The analysis of such areas as nominal and verbal inflection, pronouns, definite articles, auxiliaries, and irregular verbs, makes it tempting to notice certain regular patterns aimed at introducing modern, more economical and thus improved linguistic models. The character and motivation of these novel creations is at times perplexing and calls for arguments not only from historical linguistics, but also geographical and perceptual dialectology as well as functional and evolutionary theories. What is beyond any doubt, however, is that as a result of those new solutions the Northern dialect has become a special sociolinguistic construct whose specific morphosyntactic makeup reveals a unique and innovative dimension defining the North both of the past and of today.

Pre-R Dentalisation in Scotland

Pre-R Dentalisation (PreRD), the dental pronunciation of /t/ and /d/ before /r/ and /ər/, is a well-known feature of English varieties throughout Ireland. PreRD is often accompanied by an /r/-Realisation Effect (RRE), whereby /r/ is pronounced as a tap after the dentalised consonant, and a Morpheme Boundary Constraint (MBC), such that PreRD is blocked by Class 2 morpheme boundaries. Although an Irish origin for PreRD has been suggested, the presence of PreRD, the RRE and the MBC in northern English dialects in a form nearly identical to what is found in Ireland suggests that the origins of PreRD lie instead in English in Britain. The possible existence of PreRD in Scotland is suspected, but definitive evidence for PreRD, the RRE and the MBC there has never been published. In this article, I provide the first detailed analysis of these features in Scotland, using unpublished data collected as part of theLinguistic Survey of Scotland. It will be seen that there is substantial evidence for PreRD, the RRE and the MBC in Scots dialects. The presence of these features in Scotland has important consequences for their history in Britain, and confirms the British origin of PreRD in Ireland.

Cotqueans, Poultry-Gropers, Dish-Clouts

Si j’avais un mari, je le dis,Je voudrais qu’il se fit le maitre du logis;Je ne l’aimerais point, s’il faisait le jocrisse.(Moliere, Les Femmes savantes (1672), V, 3, 5–8)‘Instruct your grandmother...

Interaction of social and linguistic constraints on two vowel changes in northern England

AbstractThis paper focuses on the way that local social indexicality interacts with principles of vowel change. A combination of real and apparent time data from the northern English dialect of York indicate fronting of tense back vowels in thegoatandgooselexical sets, and diphthongization of traditionally monophthongal mid-vowels in thefaceandgoatlexical sets. The latter process of change, a northward diffusion of more prestigious southern forms, has been noted for some other northern English dialects, but has not been described acoustically in published work. We show that these two vowel changes have different social meanings in the community. As is the case in previous studies,goatandgoosefronting is not strongly associated with different speaker groups in the community. Monophthongal realizations offaceandgoat, on the other hand, are strongly associated with the speech of the local community, especially working-class speech. The results align with predictions of Labov's (1994) principle III of vowel change in that they show thatgoosefronting precedesgoatfronting. However, we argue that a full understanding of the trajectories of change requires attention to social indexical properties of these variants as well. In particular, the scarcity of fronted variants of monophthongalgoatis explained as a consequence of local indexing of such forms.

Pre-R Dentalisation in northern England

Dental pronunciation of alveolar consonants before /r/ and /ər/ is a well-known feature of traditional varieties of Irish English. ThisPre-R Dentalisation(PreRD) has a number of intriguing linguistic properties, in particular an associated /r/-Realisation Effectand aMorpheme Boundary Constraint. It is less well known that PreRD is (or perhaps was) also a feature of a number of English varieties outside Ireland, particularly in traditional northern English dialects. This article analyses dialect data from northern England in order to determine the nature of PreRD there and its historical relations with the phenomenon in Irish English. In addition, it explores the phonological complexities of PreRD in light of the loss of rhoticity in traditional northern English dialects.

The functional and social reality of discourse variants in a northern English dialect: I DON'T KNOW and I DON'T THINK compared

This paper explores the functional and social meanings of the formal variants of the expressions I DON‟T KNOW and I DON‟T THINK. The qualitative analysis of the data shows that I DON‟T KNOW and I DON‟T THINK are highly routinized discourse formulae that perform multiple interpersonal and textual functions. The quantification of their phonetic and grammatical variants across function, age and gender reveals that the occurrence of non-localised and localised variants of I DON‟T KNOW and I DON‟T THINK is conditioned by different parameters. Non-localised variants show function-specific patterning: variants of I DON‟T KNOW pattern with broad functional categories; variants of I DON‟T THINK reflect fine-grained functional differences at a micro-level of analysis. Localised variants, by contrast, do not carry a functional load but evince orderly social heterogeneity. The results demonstrate that social variation in discourse extends beyond differential frequencies and strategic uses of discourse markers (DMs) to their formal encoding, and that function plays an important role in accounting for patterns of formal variation in discourse. The paper argues for a fuller integration of qualitative methods in the study of language variation and change in discourse, and calls for the form and function of discourse variables to be studied in greater detail.

The Socio-poetic Soundscape of Geraldine Monk

THOUGH WELL-EDUCATED, Geraldine Monk decided quite consciously not to let education smooth over or erase texture of her Lancashire accent and local dialect. In an interview with Leonard Schwartz, she comments that when come over to America it's not evidently clear that actually speak with a very broad northern English working-class accent. A lot of people think talk Queen's English, which amuses me greatly, and it's very very nice to be away from England, people think talk posh, which don't. I've never got rid of my accent, because realized that wanted to use it. So think in that way it's almost a political statement--that might be educated, but I'm not going to betray where come from and my class background. Monk thus creates in her work a socio-poetic soundscape where place and class and gender are matters of rhyme, quantity, pitch, and pronunciation. Both physical dimensions and mutability of as sound units are highly important in her poetic practice I do love sound of words she notes to Schwartz, the way you can manipulate them, and tie them in knots--and kind of malleability and physicality of word is very important, as well as sense of it, connotation, denotation of it Her sound ranges from musical playfulness of a piece like 'Angles (with its fractured words, percussive finale, and references to musical terms) to daily journal pieces like Sky Scrapers sequence (luxuriating in Lancashire diphthongs, speech rhythms, thick consonantal clusters, and slowed syllables) to intense, sensuous, and political articulations of Interregnum and Escafeld Hangings that grab us by neck and rattle our bones. To insist on speaking in a manner labeled accented in privileged arena of literature (traditionally open only to wealthy classes) is immediately to establish a cultural space that acknowledges social realities, including reality of gender-based or class-based marginalization and whitewashing by normative, schooled modes such as BBC or CBC or Oxbridge English. Monk's defiance has a precedent in poetry of John Keats, who as part of Cockney School of Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, was vilified for his low-birth accent and liberal politics. In whitewash of page, Keats's accent is mostly forgotten, but Monk has taken pains to score her work so that reader can't avoid it, as in lines Mary Queen of Scots banged-up in slimmer in Sheffield. // Lizzy mi Luv call off yr creepsy guards (Airport Security, Escafeld 27; see also recording on CD track 9). Or following from Katherine Hewit Replies: E was newt budda Jimmy-bum-licker. E lived down't lane in a big owse wi iz porky fatted fingers drippin rings and blottin copy after nervous copy--and for what? A right royal smile? The patronising smirk of ultimate noble birth to charm iz drab and impotent circle (Interregnum) Interregnum and Escafeld Hangings explore compellingly voices of condemned women--in first case voices of so-called witches (but actually very poor and disadvantaged people) and their associates who were hanged at Pendle Hill in 1612, and in second case voice of imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots. By extension these texts explore condemnation of all women to second-class status; in these texts, however, women speak back to power structure that imprisons them, just as Monk's northern English dialect challenges southern English power structure represented by Queen Elizabeth II. Men and women in her cotton-mill town of Blackburn, Monk recalls, actually spoke different dialects: Generally speaking women spoke more slowly and deliberately than men because they spent their days word-miming and lip-reading in deaf-out of weaving sheds. …

Pragmatic and historical aspects of Definite Article Reduction in northern English dialects

We inquire into Definite Article Reduction (DAR), a phenomenon known to characterize northern English dialects. For this research we collected data from speakers at the North Yorkshire/Lancashire border. While previous studies have largely addressed DAR from a phonological perspective, we examine whether DAR is conditioned by other linguistic factors. The pattern we identify is that speakers show DAR most frequently when they refer to something (i) that is in their immediate environment (situational reference), (ii) that was just mentioned in the conversation (anaphoric reference), or (iii) that is known to the hearer (shared knowledge). We note that these uses correspond to the pragmatic category of “givenness/familiarity”, and may also be associated with the notions “near/close”. We speculate on the emergence of DAR in the North of England, drawing on evidence from the historical record regarding the development of the definite article from the demonstrative paradigm and the contact situation with Scandinavian.

The origin of Definite Article Reduction in northern English dialects: evidence from dialect allomorphy

The phenomenon of Definite Article Reduction (DAR) is the realization of the definite article in northern British English dialects in a range of vowel-less forms, usually written t' in literature. The origin of DAR is assumed to be the assimilation of the initial fricative of the Middle English definite article þe to produce a te form, a sound change recorded for many dialects of Middle English. This article examines the validity of this hypothesis by analysing the distribution of fricative allomorphs in the modern dialects in comparison with the details of the Middle English change. The predicted distribution of fricative forms is not found at most localities, indicating that the development hypothesis is incorrect, but the available data are too scanty to suggest an alternative model.

Constructing a Medieval Genealogy: Roland the Father of Tristan in Castleford's Chronicle

Constructing a Medieval Genealogy:Roland the Father of Tristan in Castleford's Chronicle Caroline D. Eckhardt and Bryan A. Meer The predominant narrative "fact" about the knight Tristan, from the twelfth-century French poems of Béroul, Thomas, and Marie de France to Wagner's opera and beyond, is his love for Iseult, wife of his uncle King Mark: their tragic tale has become one of medieval literature's lasting contributions to the storehouse of European legend. The deaths of the two lovers, in particular, have long aroused a remarkable and perhaps morbid fascination, which Denis de Rougemont associates with a fundamental death-wish embedded deep within the Western imagination (34-42). In the early thirteenth century, the prologue to Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan declares that the lovers' death is bread to the living, "und ist ir tot der lebenden brot" (line 240), a formulation that risks parody of the Eucharist; while in the Renaissance epic Orlando Innamorato, Boiardo epitomizes this fascination when he describes the lovers' last moments as sweet and joyful, "dolce et felice" (II.xxvi.2), because they died together in the same instant, entwined in each other's arms, hand in hand and heart to heart. The Liebestod music from Wagner's opera (1859), in a very different medium and century, testifies to the persistent appeal of the motif, and even Matthew Arnold's revisionist poem "Tristram and Iseult" (1852) dwells upon the same dramatic entanglement of love and death. For all its force, however, this concept of Tristan is not the only one to be found in medieval texts. The purpose of this paper is, first, to [End Page 1085] point out the presence of a rather different Tristan in a little-known work called Castleford's Chronicle and, second, to consider its genealogical implications. Written in the fourteenth century in a northern English dialect, Castleford's Chronicle is a massive, sprawling verse narrative in twelve books. Like many other medieval chronicles, it offers a multi-layered blend of fact and fiction, commonplaces and curiosities, memory and prophecy. Surviving in a single manuscript copy, it was not printed as a whole until 1996; thus its thousands of lines of Middle English verse have only recently become fully available to scholars.1 Along with much material that is routine, this text includes a number of surprises, one of which is discussed here. In nearly 40,000 lines of octosyllabic couplets the chronicle recounts what is, in general, the traditional medieval construction of the history of Britain, a cultural narrative told many times in Latin, French, and English, and sometimes in Welsh and other tongues. This widely distributed narrative sometimes begins with an origination-episode in which the island's first inhabitants are a group of sisters who murder their husbands and are expelled from their home in ancient Syria. There follows—or the accounts that omit the sisters begin with—the legend of the "Trojan descent," which asserts that Aeneas's descendant Brutus was the founder of civilization in Britain in the aftermath of the fall of Troy. As it continues, this history or story commingles the careers of fictional heroes such as Arthur and Lear with the reigns of the actual rulers of Britain, ending, in different versions, at various points before and after the Norman Conquest. The manuscript of Castleford's Chronicle ends with events of the year 1327, when Edward II has been removed from England's throne and imprisoned, but before he is murdered. In this text the only notice of Tristan occurs in Book IX, in a brief but puzzling passage that follows a description of Irish demands for tribute during the Saxon period: Now, quiles Adulf diademe bare,Cessede þe strife fore euermar.oru Rolande son, a knight, Tristreme,.at trauailde for Kyng Mark, his heme,Northumbre broght of sorow and site,Of seruage to be claimede quite. (28,788-93) (At this time, while Adulf bore the diadem, the strife permanently ceased through Roland's son—a knight, Tristan, who worked on behalf of his uncle King Mark [and] brought Northumbria out of its sorrow and anguish, to be released [lit., quit-claimed] from servitude.) [End Page 1086...

Shielings in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland: Prehistory to the Present

AbstractShielings and the shieling system belong to a widespread European custom often defined within the term ‘transhumance’, a specific form of cattle-herding culture involving the summer pasturing of cattle on upland grazings. The shieling system has survived into the present day in Norway, in the northern provinces of Sweden, to a certain extent in Finland, and in many areas of the highlands of Central Europe. It was well known in Britain and in the other North Atlantic Islandssuch as Iceland.The term ‘shieling’, deriving from the Old Scots and Middle English schele (whose etymology may be partly Norse) and also occurring in Northern English dialect, has been used both for the summer pastures and also for the buildings erected on them.

Celtic Lenition in English Nicknames

IN ANARTICLEwritten a number of years ago,l I demonstrated that certain English nicknames and proper names, and even some words otherwise unexplainable were to be accounted for by the apparently once widespread substitution of initial h for initial r in the names Richard (giving Hick), Robert (Hob), and Roger (Hodge). I believe I established that this occurred in northern English dialects, specifically Northumbrian, because of the uvular r once prevalent in those dialects; and I showed that this fact had widespread implications. In the course of that investigation I also became intrigued with nicknames which substitute initial p for initial m: Peg for Meg, Polly for Molly, and at least one other. The h for r alternation is, of course, no help with these. Can an explanation be found? I think so, but I have for some time been looking in vain for conclusive evidence. I believe the time has come to present what I have found out as a theory for discussion, out of which something concrete may be established. I am substantially convinced that we must look for our answer to the mutations found in Celtic languages. If it be asked why we should look to Celtic languages for the explanation of forms in English, I would answer that Welsh was (and still is) widely spoken in a large part of Britain; Ireland was predominantly Irish-speaking (though with much bilingualism, of course) until the Famine; and Gaelic was once the predominant language north of the Highland Line. There is some evidence, also, that in the area of northwest England known as 8trathclyde Celtic was once spoken.2 In other words, opportunities for influence on English by Celtic languages were plentiful during most of the history of English. Welsh initial mutation is, it seems to me, the only process that can explain howMeg (fromMargaret) can become Peg. In the Welsh language, the initial consonant of a word can be altered by the word which precedes