1. The (ING) Variation in Hawai‘i English of O’ahu and Big Island Speakers
Noella Handley
M.A. Student in Linguistics
*Special Thanks to Dr. Katie Drager

2. Introduction [ɪŋ] [ɪn] “standard” Examples: going speaking anything
“non-standard”
Examples: goin’
speakin’
anythin’
Realization of the ending differs

3. (ING) as a Sociolinguistic Variable
Highly studied variable
Seen across English Speaking world:
Australia New Zealand
Canada Scotland
England United States
Ireland

4. (ING) as a Sociolinguistic Variable
Labov (1966)
Famous study of social variation in New York City
Alveolar variant associated with lower class speakers, and informal speech
Velar variant associated with higher class speakers, and formal speech
Trudgill (1974)
Norwich, England
Even higher class people use the alveolar variant some of the time
Studied as an indicator of social and geographic difference
This is not an exhaustive list – just some examples and highlights

5. (ING) as a Sociolinguistic Variable
Labov (2001)
Southern States English, Northern England English, and Scots English unique because alveolar variant used almost exclusively, even in formal speech
Hazen (2006), (2008)
Use of alveolar variant in Appalachian English, especially West Virginia
Campbell-Kibler (2010)
Listeners sensitive to at least some of this variation during perception
This is not an exhaustive list – just some examples and highlights

6. A Historical View of (ING)
Long history of diachronic change
Lass (1992): Began as two different suffixes in Old English
-[ɪŋ] – Verbal-Noun Suffix
-[ende] – present participle
-[ende]: final [e] reduced to a schwa through sound changes, then nd cluster simplified to produce -[ɪn] by the fifteenth century
Anne Houston argues that the variation continues from these different forms

7. A Historical View of (ING)
Houston (1985): Geographic split between the different variants
-[ɪŋ] in the South of England
-[ɪn]in the North of England
Hazen (2008): Both endings became orthographically merged due to orthographic standards being developed by printing houses in London in southern England.
Speakers may have begun to “correct” their pronunciation of the present participle based on orthographic standards

8. Source: Labov 1989

9. A Historical View: Vowels
Houston (1985) and Woods (1978)
Variation in vowel before the nasal – [ɪ], to schwa, even a high tense [i]
A preceding vowel before the coronal nasal in –[-ind] may have allowed it to be heard more as a velar

10. Research Question
Is this variation present in Hawai‘i English? If so, what is the distribution?
Is there a difference between speakers from O‘ahu and the Big Island (Hawai‘i)?

11. Hawai‘i English Variety of English used in Hawai‘i
NOT the same as Pidgin – Pidgin is a creole language in Hawai‘i, it is a distinct language
This study looks at Hawai‘i English, not Pidgin

12. Data Collection
Sociolinguistic interviews from the SOLIS Corpus of Hawai‘i English
Pseudonym
Age
Gender
Island
Gare 21 M
Big Island (Hawai’i)
Jimmy Lambert 34
Big Island (Hawaiʻi)
Fiatuina 22 F
MsWaimea 20
Abcde
O'ahu
Rachel
LanceBaptiste 24
Edward
All listed Hawaiian as main ethnicity (all listed multiple ethnicities), all are born and from Hawaii

13. Coding 573 tokens were extracted from the sociolinguistic interviews.
Data was coded for:
Realization of the nasal: velar or alveolar
Word class
Preceding and following sound
Position in sentence
Preceding and following stress
Social factors (age, gender, ethnicity, Hawaii Born, Island)

14. Excluded Tokens Words with cut off endings
Extremely phonetically reduced tokens
Example: gonna from going to
Words with cut off endings
One syllable nouns such as thing that do not vary in realization
47 tokens removed
526 tokens analyzed

15. Analysis Word Class and Island (O‘ahu versus the Big Island (Hawai‘i))
Percentages of the velar and the alveolar
these were the important factors

16. Word Class
Because the distinction between /ing/ and /in/ has roots in suffixes marking two different word classes, verbal-noun and present participle, it follows that word class may be grammatically conditioning. This study follows Hazen (2008) in using the word classes of Progressive, Gerund-Participle, Adjective, Gerund, and Noun, and adds the categories of Adverb and Preposition to account for words phonetically ending in (ING) falling in those categories.

17. Results

18. Word Class
Consistent with Hazen (2008) – progressive and gerund-participle are words classes with highest rates of alveolar variant.
Adverbs specifically have alveolar variants a third of the time – specifically the phrase growing up

19. Island
Speakers from O’ahu had a higher rate of the alveolar variant than speakers from the Big Island

20. Island
Large variation among the different speakers from the same island of use of the alveolar variant.
However: O’ahu had only one speaker with use at or under 10% of the time, while the Big Island had 3

21. Discussion Evidence of phonetic variation in (ING) in Hawai‘i English.
Similar to the variation observed in the English of other regions.
Why does O‘ahu have a higher rate of usage?
Economic and social hub of the islands, probably influence from other dialects.
Geographic distance of Big Island

22. References
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. (2010). The Effect of Speaker Information on Attitudes Toward (ING). Journal of Language and Psychology, 29(2),
Hazen, Kirk. (2006). IN/ING Variable. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.). (Vol 5. pp ). Boston: Elsevier.
Hazen, Kirk. (2008). (ING): A Vernacular Baseline for English in Appalachia. American Speech, 83(2),
Labov, William. (1989). The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change, 1,
Labov, William. (1966). The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Trudgill, Peter. (1995). Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society (3rd ed.) New York: Penguin Books.