1/13 LELA Describing accents III Case study: Norwich

2/13 Differences between two accents 1.Differences of phoneme system Additional phoneme distinctions; “missing” phonemes 2.Differences of distribution X and RP have equivalent phonemes, but the phonetic contexts in which they occur differ 3.Differences of incidence X and RP have equivalent phonemes, but in particular words, a different phoneme is chosen 4.Differences of realisation X and RP have equivalent phonemes, but the phonetic and/or allophonic realisation differs

3/13 Norwich: “Southern” English /  /~/  /, /a/~/ A / Rural, but not rhotic Recordings © A. Hughes, P. Trudgill and D. Watt. English Accents and Dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of English in the British Isles. (4th edition) London (2005) Hodder Arnold

4/13 Word list (Hughes et al. 2004) Designed to elicit contrasts –put~putt, bee~bay~buy~boy, city~seedy, etc. Some false pronunciations: –Individual words pronounced carefully –Some phonetic features typical of individual word pronounciation, especially eg final /t/ –Contrastive words juxtaposed: brings out differences that might not be there, esp. in comparison with RP

5/13 1 pit 2 pet 3 pat 4 put 5 putt 6 pot 7 bee 8 bay 9 buy 10 boy 11 boot 12 boat 13 bout 14 beer 15 bear 16 bird 17 bard 18 board 19 city 20 seedy 21 hat 22 dance 23 daft 24 half 25 father 26 farther 27 pull 28 pool 29 pole 30 Paul 31 doll 32 cot 33 caught 34 fir 35 fern 36 fur 37 fair 38 nose 39 knows 40 plate 41 weight 42 poor 43 pour 44 pore 45 paw 46 tide 47 tied 48 pause 49 paws 50 meet 51 meat 52 mate

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9/13 Narrative text Speaker –Female –c. 50 yrs –has lived in Norwich all her life

10/13 Things to listen out for Stressed vowels much longer than unstressed vowels, giving it distinctive rhythm /h/ generally dropped in unstressed words, but present in stressed words: eg 1:18, 1:38 / IN / realised as [ In ]: something (0:00), buying (0:26), running (1:18), treating (1:18), letting (2:06), going (2:26) /ai/ phoneme realised as [  i]: I (throughout), night (0:13, 0:26, 2:12), like (0:26), buy, buying (0:26) etc. /t/ realised as glottal stop [ ? ]: forget (0:00), daughter (0:09, 2:01), at it (0:09), fruiterers (0:49), forty (1:13, 2:34), bottom (1:13), lot of (1:25), treating (1:18), dirty (1:31), letting (2:06), that, right (2:34)

11/13 No /hj/ combination: humorous (0:00) oo in spelling pronounced / U / eg room (0:16), /  / more like [ A ] first (0:04, 1:06, 1:51, 1:56), her (0:33), dirty (1:31) /a/ very open: happen (0:00), have, married (0:19), ran (0:39), had, passageway (0:56), passage (1:06, 2:31) /  / very open: opposite, was (0:39), wasn’t (1:13), but realised as /  / in off (1:31, 2:22, 2:26) /i  / realised as / E  /: here (1:01, 1:18, 2:38), hear (1:18)

12/13 /o  /~/ou/ distinction (see word list 38-39): go (0:33, 1:06, 2:34), road (0:39), Flo (1:01), going (2:26) – cf know and no in 2:28, 2:31 head pronounced /h I d/ 1:38, 1:56 / U / instead of /  / in certain words: home (1:51), Interesting intrusive R in by a bike (1:56), into a (2:38) Hint of rhotic accent? girl (0:19), erm (0:13)

13/13 Further analysis Leave it to you (if you want) to categorise features into system~distribution~incidence~realisation Endo- vs exocentric analysis Recordings © A. Hughes, P. Trudgill and D. Watt.