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Vowel Contrasts in a Saskatchewan English Dialect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Walter Lehn
Walter Lehn*
Affiliation:
The American University at Cairo
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Extract

Although generalizations about Canadian versus American or British English are still premature, the series of articles by Avis, Gregg, et al seems to suggest two: (1) that Canadian English “is neither American nor British, but a complex different in many respects from both…;” and (2) that “Canadian English is not so uniform as it is often made out to be”. This article is a brief contribution to the above-mentioned series and presents some evidence in support of both-assertions.

The primary source of the data on which this study is based is the writer’s idiolect. Geographically this can be identified as Central Saskatchewan, specifically the rural area surrounding the village of Herschel which lies about twenty miles west of Rosetown, and about one hundred miles southwest of Saskatoon.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 1959 , pp. 90 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1959

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References

1. Avis, Walter S., “Speech Differences along the Ontario-United States border,” JCLA 1 (October 1954): 13–18 Google Scholar, 1 (March 1955): 14–19, and 2 (1956): 41–59; Gregg, R. J., “Notes on the Pronunciation of Canadian English as spoken in Vancouver, B. C.,” JCLA 3 (1957): 20–26, 78–83Google Scholar. See also the bibliographies on Canadian English by Avis, in JCLA 1 (October 1955): 19–20 Google Scholar, 2 (1956): 82, 3 (1957): 97, and 4 (1958): 107–8. Of some interest is also the chapter on dialects by McDavid, R. I. Jr., in Francis, W. Nelson, The Structure of American English (New York, 1958)Google Scholar, according to which (p. 527) Canadians live in rather than on a street. This error is apparently due to uncritical reproduction of an unfortunate typographical error in the tabular summary in Avis, , “Speech Differences.” JCLA 1 (March 1955): 19 Google Scholar; cf. the discussion by Avis on p. 18.

2. Avis, , “Speech Differences,” JCLA 2 (1956): 55.Google Scholar

3. Hamilton, Donald E., “Notes on Montreal English,” JCLA 4 (1958): 79.Google Scholar

4. Trager, George L. and Smith, Henry Lee Jr., An outline of English structure (Norman, Okla., 1951)Google Scholar. See also the review by Sledd, James in Language 31 (1955): 312–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Hill, Archibald A., Introduction to Linguistic Structures (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

6. For a definition and discussion of this much-misunderstood term see Hockett, Charles F., A Manual of Phonology, pp. 18–21 (Baltimore, 1955).Google Scholar

7. JCLA 5 (1959): 9.

8. These symbols are from Hockett, op. cit., pp. 45–6.

9. Gregg reports no /t d/ contrast: ‘The distinction between posttonic, intervocalic [t] and [d] has been lost in natural Van. speech” JCLA 3 (1957): 25. On the other hand, Allen, , JCLA 5 (1959): 21 Google Scholar. reports a voiceless/voiced contrast for the southern midwest area. Avis, for southern Ontario, JCLA 2 (1956): 54–5, and Drysdale, for eastern Newfoundland, JCLA 5 (1959): 30, both report the occurrence of “voiced t,” but are not explicit on the matter of contrast. See also Lehraann, W. P., ‘A Note on the Change of American English /t/,” American Speech 28 (1953): 270–5.Google Scholar

10. The question has been asked UCLA 4:62) “why the so-called ‘barred eye’ should be kept apart from the various other allophones of /ə/.” For my data, this is like asking why the initial stop in pin should be recognized as distinct from the other allophones of /b/. In both instances the answer is clearly the same: because they are in contrast; e. g., roses /róWZɨZ/ and Rosa’s /rÓWZəZ/.

11. Hockett, A Course in Modern Linguistics (New York, 1958), says: “shone apparently has /ó/… in much of Canada” (p. 345). In my materials shone does not have the vowel of gonna, but rhymes with dawn, gone, and lawn.

12. Spellings of these examples, in columns from left to right, are: will, will ya, wool, well, hull, so long, Hal, wall; bill, below, bull, bell, dull, gal, ball; pin, minute, pen, pun, gonna, pan, pawn; pimp, pimple, gem, pump, pamper, pomp; pit, pretty (adv.), put, pet, putt, pat, pot; gist, just (adv.), pushed, jest, just (adj.), passed, lost; big, sugar, wood, beg, bug, bag, bog; sitting, atom, bosom, extinguish, bottom, so long, ballet, October.

13. The phonetic similarity of the pre- and postvocalic glides of hot and ma is partly obscured by the classification of h as a voiceless glottal spirant; e. g., Kurath, Hans, “The binary interpretation of English vowels,” Language 33 (1957): 111–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, states that the “distinctive feature [of /h/] is friction” (p. 111), and that the features of “tongue and lip position” are allophonic (p. 114). Many phoneticians, however, classify the initial glide of hot etc. as a voiceless vowel and regard friction, if any, as a redundant feature; see, e. g., Pike, Kenneth L., Phonetics, pp. 70–1, 76–7 (Ann Arbor, 1943)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; similarly Jones, Daniel, An Outline of English Phonetics 6th ed., § § 777–8, 782 (New York, 1940)Google Scholar, Heffner, R. M. S., General Phonetics, pp. 150–1 (Madison, 1950)Google Scholar and Hockett, Manual, pp. 33, 158.

14. Gleason’s /H/ (Introd. to Descriptive Linguistics, New York, 1955) and Hockett’s /ˇ/ (Course in Modern Linguistics) instead of /h/ for the third semivowel, although perhaps justifiable in an elementary textbook, are no better solutions. They violate both of the criteria specified above.

15. See, e. g., Avis, , “Speech Differences,” JCLA 2 (1956): 42 Google Scholar, and Gregg, , “Notes,” JCLA 3 (1957): 24 Google Scholar. For an interesting discussion of this problem see Joos, Martin, “A Phonological Dilemma in Canadian English,” Language 18 (1942): 141–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. The requirement of no overlapping has been demonstrated by acoustic phonetics to be unrealistic; see Hockett, Manual, pp. 208–11, and Hill, op. cit., pp. 51–2.

17. The fact that the names Eiffel and Faust are both borrowings is not relevant here. What is relevant is that they occur as reported above. Diachronically speaking, earlier /ay aw/ must each have had two positional variants, higher ones before voiceless and lower ones before voiced consonants; as evidence note the alternation now in, e.g., house, houses /həws/ /háwzɨzA or knife, knives /nəyf/ /náyvz/. The difference between these variants was phonologized, and they were brought into contrast, through (1) sound change — voicing of intervocalic, posttonic /t/, and (2) borrowing which introduced items such as Faust. That these borrowings were not reshaped phonetically can probably be taken as evidence that the system now permitted the lower diphthongs before voiceless allophones as (or, perhaps, because) it had already (probably earlier) permitted the higher diphthongs before voiced allophones of /t/.