Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

history and varieties of english weeks 8-10 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - rhoticity in american english
        1) an r-ful (or "rhotic") pronunciation: New
        York
        2) an r-less (or "non-rhotic") pronunciation: New Yawk
        • When the English colonies were founded in America, the prestige pattern in England was to pronounce all r's.
        • During the 18th century, the prestige form in England developed the r-less pronunciation that is still standard in many English dialects today, and is in fact the prestige pattern.
        • On the Atlantic seaboard, in continual contact with England, this prestige form was widely adopted as well, so that port cities such as Boston, New York, Charleston (South Carolina), and Savannah (Georgia) developed an r-less prestige pattern, as did British colonies settled later than the Americas, such as South Africa and Australia.
      - philadelphia never developed this pattern, and maintained the r-ful pronunciation all along, probably due to the large proportion of Scots-Irish immigrants, whose dialect was strongly rhotic.
        
        scots-Irish: emigrated to the U.S. from Ulster (Ireland) in 18th and 19th c.; had originally moved from Scotland in 17th c. (Ulster scots)
        
        also,PIN-PEN merger
        A conditioned merger of /i/ and /e/ before nasals, as in pin-pen, him- hem, since-sense, etc.
      - some areas resisted r-lessness: Appalachian region (South) and Western New England.
        
        Resistance linked to settlement patterns and social factors.
        
        Appalachian region settled by Scots-Irish
        
        Westward migration spread inland, r-ful dialects became dominant in American English.
        
        R-ful speech is displacing traditionally r-less varieties (e.g., Boston, NYC, South).
        
        WWII marked a shift in social perception favoring rhoticity on the East Coast.
        
        O’Cain (1972): Charleston showed increasing rhoticity, except possibly in the upper class.
        
        Baranowski (2007): Rhoticity now widespread in Charleston across all classes, except some older speakers.
        
        Similar rhotic shift observed in other Southern areas.
      - the low back merger: Merger of /o/ and /oh/, as in Don and
        dawn, cot and caught, etc.
        • An unconditioned merger: lack of distinction before all consonants, though it usually first occurs before nasals.