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Australian English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

English is the primary language spoken throughout Australia.

Australian English (AusE, AuE, AusEng, en-AU ^[1]) is a major variety of the English language and is used throughout Australia. Although English has no official status in the Constitution, Australian English is Australia's de facto official language and is the first language of the majority of the population.

Australian English started diverging from British English after the founding of the colony of New South Wales in 1788 and was recognised as being different from British English by 1820. It arose from the intermingling of children of early settlers from a great variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of the British Isles and quickly developed into a distinct variety of English.^[2]

Contents [hide] · 1 Origins · 2 Influences · 3 Phonology o 3.1 Vowels o 3.2 Consonants · 4 Variation o 4.1 Sociocultural o 4.2 Regional variation · 5 Vocabulary · 6 Spelling and grammar · 7 See also · 8 References · 9 External links

[edit]Origins

Australian English began its development after the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove.

The earliest form of Australian English was first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the colony of New South Wales. This very first generation of children created a new dialect that was to become the language of the nation. The Australian-born children in the new colony were exposed to a wide range of different dialects from all over Britain and Ireland, in particular from Ireland and South East England.^[3]

The native-born children of the colony created the new dialect from factors present in the speech they heard around them, and provided an avenue for the expression of peer solidarity. Even when new settlers arrived, this new dialect was strong enough to deflect the influence of other patterns of speech.

A large part of the convict body were the Irish, 25% of the total convict population. Many of these were arrested in Ireland, and some in Great Britain. It is possible that the majority of Irish convicts either did not speak English, or spoke English "indifferently".^{[ clarification needed ]} There were other significant populations of convicts from non-English speaking areas of Britain, such as the Scottish Highlands and Wales.

Records from the early 19th century survive to this day describing the distinct dialect that had surfaced in the colonies since first settlement in 1788,^[2]with Peter Miller Cunningham's 1827 book Two Years in New South Wales, describing the distinctive accent and vocabulary of the native born colonists, different from that of their parents and with a strong London influence.^[3] Anthony Burgess writes that "Australian English may be thought of as a kind of fossilised Cockney of the Dickensian era."^[4]

Changes in the alphabet and spelling in Middle English. Middle English written records Ranez.Ru > Помощь в учебе абитуриентам и студентам > Студенту > Английский язык > История языка >
	The most conspicuous feature of Late ME texts in comparison with OE texts is the difference in spelling. The written forms of the words in Late ME texts resemble their modern forms, though the pronunciation of the words was different. In the course of ME many new devices were introduced into the system of spelling; some of them reflected the sound changes which had been completed or were still in progress in ME; others were graphic replacements of OE letters by new letters and digraphs. In ME the runic letters passed out of use. Thorn – þ – and the crossed d – đ, ð – were replaced by the digraph th, which retained the same sound value: [Ө] and [ð]; the rune “wynn” was displaced by “double u ” – w –; the ligatures æ and œ fell into disuse. After the period of Anglo-Norman dominance (11^th–13^th c.) English regained its prestige as the language of writing. Though for a long time writing was in the hands of those who had a good knowledge of French. Therefore many innovations in ME spelling reveal an influence of the French scribal tradition. The digraphs ou, ie, and ch which occurred in many French borrowings and were regularly used in Anglo-Norman texts were adopted as new ways of indicating the sounds [u:], [e:], and [t∫]. other alterations in spelling cannot be traced directly to French influence though they testify to a similar tendency: a wider use of digraphs. In addition to ch, ou, ie, and th Late ME notaries introduced sh (also ssh and sch) to indicate the new sibilant [∫], e.g. ME ship (from OE scip), dg to indicate [d з ] alongside j and g; the digraph wh replaced the OE sequence of letters hw as in OE hwæt, ME what [hwat]. Long sounds were shown by double letters, e.g. ME book [bo:k], though long [e:] could be indicated by ie and ee, and also by e. Some replacements were probably made to avoid confusion of resembling letters: thus o was employed not only for [o] but also to indicate short [u] alongside the letter u; it happened when u stood close to n, m, or v, e.g. OE lufu became ME love [luvə]. The letter y came to be used as an equivalent of i and was evidently preferred when i could be confused with the surrounding letters m, n and others. Sometimes, y, as well w, were put at the end of a word, so as to finish the word with a curve, e.g. ME very [veri], my [mi:]; w was interchangeable with u in the digraphs ou, au, e.g. ME doun, down [du:n], and was often preferred finally, e.g. ME how [hu:], now [nu:]. For letters indicating two sounds the rules of reading are as follows. G and с stand for [d з ] and [s] before front vowels and for [g] and [k] before back vowels respectively. Y stands for [j] at the beginning of words, otherwise, it is an equivalent of the letter i, e.g. ME yet [jet], knyght [knix’t]. The letters th and s indicate voiced sounds between vowels, and voiceless sounds – initially, finally and next to other voiceless consonants, e.g. ME worthy [wurði]. To determine the sound value of o one can look up the origin of the sound in OE or the pronunciation of the word in NE: the sound [u] did not change in the transition from OE to ME (the OE for some was sum); in NE it changed to [Λ]. It follows that the letter o stood for [u] in those ME words which contain [Λ] today, otherwise it indicates [o]. Middle English written records

SEMINAR 6
The Phonological System of Middle English
1

Phonetic processes in Middle English (the system of vowels) Ranez.Ru > Помощь в учебе абитуриентам и студентам > Студенту > Английский язык > История языка >
	Word Stress in ME and Early NE In OE stress usually fell on the first syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllable. Word stress in OE was fixed: it never moved in inflection and seldom in derivation. This way of word accentuation was considerably altered in the succeeding periods. The word accent acquired greater positional freedom and began to play a more important role in word derivation. These changes were connected with the phonetic assimilation of thousands of loan-words adopted during the ME period. Gradually, as the loan-words were assimilated, the word stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word. It is known as the “recessive” tendency, e.g. vertu [ver´tju:] became NE virtue [və:t∫ə]. In words of three or more syllables the shift of the stress could be caused by the recessive tendency and also by the “rhythmic” tendency. Under it, a secondary stress would arise at a distance of one syllable from the original stress. Sometimes the shifting of the word stress should be attributed not only to the phonetic tendencies but also to certain morphological factors. Thus stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowed or built in Late ME and in Early NE, which accords with the OE rule: to keep verb prefixes unstressed, e.g. present. Corresponding nouns sometimes received the stress on the first syllable: NE ΄ present n - pre΄sent v; ΄ discord n - dis΄cord v. The latter pairs of words show that the role of word accentuation has grown: word stress performs a phonological function as it distinguishes a verb from a noun. Unstressed vowels In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE, which distinguishes five short vowels in unstressed position [e/i], [a] and [o/u], Late ME had only two vowels in unaccented syllables: [ə] and [i], e.g. OE talu – ME tale [΄ta:lə] – NE tale, OE bodiз – ME body [΄bodi] – NE body. The final [ə] disappeared in Late ME though it continued to be spelt as -e. When the ending –e survived only in spelling, it was understood as a means of showing the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable and was added to words which did not have this ending before, e.g. OE stān, rād – ME stone, rode [´stone], [´rode] – NE stone, rode. It should be remembered that while the OE unstressed vowels thus were reduced and lost, new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones, as a result of various changes, e.g. the shifting of word stress in ME and NE, vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer, actor, where [er] and [or] became [ə]. Quantitative vowel changes in Early ME In Later OE and in Early ME vowel length began to depend on phonetic conditions. The earliest of positional quantitative changes was the readjustment of quantity before some consonant clusters: 1) Short vowels were lengthened before two consonants – a sonorant and a plosive; consequently, all vowels occurring in this position remained or became long, e.g. OE wild – ME wild [wi:ld] – NE wild. 2) All other groups of two or more consonants produced the reverse effect: they made the preceding long vowels short, and henceforth all vowels in this position became or remained short, e.g. OE cēpte > ME kepte [΄keptə] – NE kept. 3) Short vowels became long in open syllables, e.g. OE nama > ME name [na:mə] – NE name. In spite of some restrictions no lengthening occurred in polysyllabic words and before some suffixes, OE bodiз > ME body [΄bodi] – NE body. Qualitative vowel changes. Development of monophthongs The OE close labialized vowels [y] and [y:] disappeared in Early ME, merging with various sounds in different dialectal areas. The vowels [y] and [y:] existed in OE dialects up to the 10^th c., when they were replaced by [e], [e:] in Kentish and confused with [ie] and [ie:] or [i] and [i:] in WS. In Early ME the dialectal differences grew. In some areas OE [y], [y:] developed into [e], [e:], in others they changed to [i], [i:]; in the South-West and in the West Midlands the two vowels were for some time preserved as [y], [y:], but later were moved backward and merged with [u], [u:], e.g. OE fyllan – ME (Kentish) fellen, (West Midland and South Western) fullen, (East Midland and Northern) fillen – NE fill. In Early ME the long OE [a:] was narrowed to [o:]. This was and early instance of the growing tendency of all long monophthongs to become closer, so [a:] became [o:] in all the dialects except the Northern group, e.g. OE stān – ME (Northern) stan(e), (other dialects) stoon, stone – NE stone. The short OE [æ] was replaced in ME by the back vowel [a], e.g. OE þǽt > ME that [Өat] > NE that. Development of diphthongs OE possessed a well developed system of diphthongs: falling diphthongs with a closer nucleus and more open glide arranged in two symmetrical sets – long and short: [ea:], [eo:], [ie:] and [ea], [eo], [ie]. Towards the end of the OE period some of the diphthongs merged with monophthongs: all diphthongs were monophthongised before [xt], [x’t] and after [sk’]; the diphthongs [ie:], [ie] in Late WS fused with [y:], [y] or [i:], [i]. In Early ME the remaining diphthongs were also contracted to monophthongs: the long [ea:] coalesced (united) with the reflex of OE [ǽ:] – ME [ε:]; the short [ea] ceased to be distinguished from OE [æ] and became [a] in ME; the diphthongs [eo:], [eo] – as well as their dialectal variants [io:], [io] – fell together with the monophthongs [e:], [e], [i:], [i]. As a result of these changes the vowel system lost two sets of diphthongs, long and short. In the meantime anew set of diphthongs developed from some sequences of vowels and consonants due to the vocalization of OE [j] and [γ], that is to their change into vowels. In Early ME the sounds [j] and [γ] between and after vowels changed into [i] and [u] and formed diphthongs together with the preceding vowels, e.g. OE dæз > ME day [dai]. These changes gave rise to two sets of diphthongs: with i- glides and u- glides. The same types of diphthongs appeared also from other sources: the glide -u developed from OE [w] as in OE snāw, which became ME snow [snou], and before [x] and [l] as in Late ME smaul and taughte.

2The general framework used by ANAE for the description of North American

vowel systems is presented in this chapter. These vowel systems all show some

relatively stable vowel classes and other classes that are undergoing change in

progress. A systematic description of the sound changes will require a point of

departure or initial position that satisfies two criteria:

(1) each of the current regional vowel systems can be derived from this representation by a combination of mergers, splits, shifts of sub-system or movements

within a sub-system, and

(2) the differential directions of changes in progress in regional dialects can be

understood as the result of a different series of changes from the initial position.

Within the evolutionary and historical perspective of this Atlas, we are free to

take up any point in the history of the language as an initial position to trace

the evolution of a given set of dialects. The degree of abstraction of these initial

forms depends upon the nature and extent of the sound changes that differentiated

the dialects. If mergers are involved, the initial position will show the maximum

number of distinct forms; if splits are involved, it will be the minimum. For conditioned sound changes, such as the vocalization of postvocalic /r/, the initial position will show the undifferentiated forms, for example, /r/ in all positions. Since

chain shifts by definition preserve the original number of distinctions, the initial

representations will be identical in this respect; but if the chain shift has crossed

sub-systems, it may have introduced a different set of phonetic features in that

system and is not in that sense structure-preserving.

An initial position is an abstraction that may not correspond to any actual

uniform state of the set of dialects in question, since other intersecting sound

changes, including retrograde movements, may have been operating at an earlier

period. Its major function is to serve as the basis for an understanding of the internal logic of the patterns of change now taking place in North American dialects

and to show the relations among the various mergers and chain shifts that drive

regional dialects in different directions.

2.1. Long and short vowels

The classification of any English vowel system must begin by recognizing the

distinction between the short vowels of bit, bet, bat, pot, etc. and the long vowels

of beat, bait, boat, etc. This is not because the members of the first set are shorter

than the members of the second, though they frequently are. In some English

dialects, like Scots, the phonetic length of a vowel is determined entirely by the

consonantal environment, not the vowel class membership. But Scots, like other

dialects, is governed by the structural distinction between long and short vowel

classes, which is a product of the vocabulary common to all dialects.

English short vowels cannot occur word-finally in stressed position, so there

are no words of the phonetic form [bI, bE, ba, bo or bU]. Long vowels can occur

in such positions, in a variety of phonetic shapes. The word be can be realized

as [bi, bi:, bIi, biJ, bˆJ], etc. Thus in English, long vowels are free while short

stressed vowels are checked. It follows that a short vowel must be followed by a

consonant.

The checked–free opposition is co-extensive with the short–long distinction that is common to historical and pedagogical treatments of English, and

it is central to the ANAE analysis of North American English as well.

2.2. Unary vs. binary notation

In the tradition of American dialectology initiated by Kurath, a simplified version

of the IPA was adapted for phonemic notation, choosing the phonetic symbol

that best matches the most common pronunciation of each vowel in a particular

variety. In this unary notation, both checked and free vowels are shown as single

symbols, except for the “true” diphthongs /ai, au, oi/.

Table 2.1. Phonemes of American English in broad IPA notation (Kurath 1977: 18–19)

Checked vowels Free vowels

Front Back Front Central Back

bit /I/ /U/ foot beat /i/ /u/ boot

bet /E/ /√/ hut bait /e/ /Œ/ hurt /o/ boat

bat /æ/ /A/ hot /ç/ bought

bite /ai/ /au/ bout

A similar notation, resembling broad IPA, is found in many other treatments of

modern English, particularly those with a strong orientation towards phonetics

(Ladefoged 1993) or dialectology (Thomas 2001; Wells 1982).

Such a unary approach to phonemic notation was rejected for the Atlas on

the basis of several disadvantages. First, it is a contemporary, synchronic view

of vowel classes that differ from one region to another.

This limits its capacity

for representing pan-dialectal vowel classes that are needed for an overview of

the development of North American English. The historical connection between

modern /A/ and Middle English short-o is not at all evident from the transcription

of Table 2.1.

Second, it makes more use of special phonetic characters than is necessary at

a broad phonemic level, contrary to the IPA principle that favors minimum deviation from Roman typography.

2. The North American English vowel system

1 The concept of initial position is not unrelated to the synchronic concept of underlying form,

the representation used as a base for the derivation of whatever differences in surface forms can

be predicted by rule. An initial position is a heuristic device designed to show the maximum

relatedness among dialects as a series of historical events.

2 There are very few counter-examples to this principle. Words like her and fur are frequently

realized with final short vowels: [f√, h√]. In unstressed syllables, conservative RP used final

short /i/ in words like happy and city, but that is now being replaced by /iy/ among younger

speakers (Fabricius 2002).

3 Kurath differentiates three American systems, one of which is identical with British English. He

follows this presentation with a perspective on the historical development of these systems.12 The North American vowel system

Third, and most important, the unique notation assigned to each vowel fails to

reflect the structural organization essential to the analysis of the chain shifts that

are a principal concern of this Atlas. Though the vowels are listed as “checked”

and “free” in Table 2.1, the notation represents all vowel contrasts as depending

on quality alone.

For these reasons, the transcription system used by ANAE was based instead

on the binary notation that has been used by most American phonologists, beginning with Bloomfield (1933), Trager and Bloch (1941), Bloch and Trager (1942),

and Trager and Smith (1951). Hockettʼs (1958) textbook and Gleasonʼs (1961)

textbook both utilized a binary notation for English vowels. The feature analysis

of Chomsky and Halle (1968) incorporated such a binary analysis, and a binary

analysis of English long vowels and diphthongs is a regular characteristic of other

generative treatments (e.g. Kenstowicz 1994: 99–100; Goldsmith 1990: 212).

A binary notation makes two kinds of identification. Front upglides of varying end-positions [j, i, I, e, E] are all identified as /y/ in phonemic notation.

Similarly, the back upglides [w, u, U, o, F] are identified uniformly as /w/. Secondly, the nuclei of /i/ and /iy/, /u/ and /uw/ are identified as ʻthe same.ʼ Such an

identification of the nuclei of short and long vowels is a natural consequence of

an approach that takes economy and the extraction of redundancy as a goal. The

same argument can be extended to the nuclei of /e/ and /ey/, /ay/ and /aw/.

In the

binary system, short vowels have only one symbol, which denotes their nuclear

quality, while long vowels have two symbols. The first denotes their nuclear quality, the second the quality of their glide. There are three basic types of glide at

the phonemic level: front upglides, represented as /y/, back upglides (/w/), and

inglides or long monophthongs (/h/).

Another important generalization made by the binary system is that, at a broad

phonemic level, the traditional representation of the lax–tense difference between

short and long vowels such as /I/ vs. /i/, /U/ vs. /u/, etc., is redundant. Both /I/ and

/i/, for instance, share a high-front nucleus. The exact quality and orientation of

these nuclei differ from one dialect to another. What consistently distinguishes

them phonologically is the presence or absence of a front upglide. The vowel of bit

can therefore be represented simply as /bit/, and that of beat as /biyt/. At the phonetic level, these are often realized as [bIt] and [bit], depending on the dialect, but

at the phonemic level, the use of a special character for bit can be dispensed with.

2.3. Initial position

Table 2.2 presents the initial position of North American dialects, showing in binary

notation the maximal number of distinctions for vowels (not before /r/). Table 2.2

identifies three degrees of height and two of advancement.

The six short vowels

are accompanied by eight long upgliding vowels and two long ingliding vowels.

Rounding is contrastive only in the ingliding class.

The word-class membership

Table 2.2. The North American Vowel system

SHORT LONG

Upgliding Ingliding

Front upgliding Back upgliding

V Vy Vw Vh

nucleus front back front back front back unrounded rounded

high i u iy iw uw

mid e √ ey oy ow oh

low Q o ay aw ah

of these phonemes is illustrated in Table 2.3, with words in the b__t frame w herever pos