1

Varieties of English Andrei Avram

Irish English I: Northern Irish English 1 Language situation in Northern Ireland Northern Irish English is of Scottish English origin. There are two varieties: Ulster Scots (heavily Scots-influenced) and Mid Ulster English (Harris 1991, Hickey 2008, 2009). 2 Phonology Wells (1982), Harris (1984), Trudgill and Hannah (1994), Trudgill et al. (2005), Hickey (2008, 2009), Corrigan (2010) 2.1 Vowels (1) Lexical sets (Wells 1982) Key word RP N Irish E
KIT DRESS TRAP LOT STRUT FOOT BATH CLOTH NURSE FLEECE FACE PALM THOUGHT GOAT GOOSE PRICE CHOICE MOUTH NEAR SQUARE START NORTH FORCE CURE

e
: :

a
/

u a

i: e : : u: a

i e a

o u a /

a : : : 2.1.1 Vowel length

au / i a

o u

2 The Scottish Vowel Length Rule applies to some extent (Melchers and Shaw 2003). The monophthongs /e/, /o/ and the diphthongs /i/, // are short before a sonorant or before a sonorant followed by a voiceless consonant (Harris 1984). (2) a. fate [fet] vs. fade [fe:d] b. coat [kot] vs. code [ko:d] The monophthongs //, /a/ and // are short before /p/, /t/, /k/ and // or before a sonorant followed by a voiceless consonant (Harris 1984). (3) a. bet [bt] vs. bed [b:d] b. not [nt] vs. nod [n:d] 2.1.2 MOUTH vowel There is enormous variation (Trudgill and Hannah 1994, Trudgill et al. 2005): (4) house [hs] / [hs] / [hs] / [haus] / [hs] / [hs] / [hs] 2.1.3 Unstressed vowels Unstressed vowels are less frequently reduced: (5) milkman [mlkman] 2.1.4 Absence of centring diphthongs The RP centring diphthongs do not occur: (6) a. peer [phi] b. pair [phe] c. poor [phu] 2.1.5 Epenthethis of [] in sonorant clusters (7) a. film [film] b. own [own] 2.2 Consonants 2.2.1 Stops Intervocalic /t/ may be phonetically realized as a voiced flap [d]. The sequences /tr/ and /dr/ are realized phonetically as [t] and [d]: (8) a. tree [ti:] b. drink [dk] 2.2.2 The phoneme /l/ The most frequent phonetic realization of the phoneme /l/ is clear [l], including in coda position: (9) a. mill [ml] b. milk [mlk] 2.2.3 The phoneme /r/ The phoneme /r/ is usually realized phonetically as a retroflex approximant [].

Northern Irish English is rhotic. 2.2.4 Words spelled with <wh> Words spelled with <wh> are pronounced with [] or [w]: (10) a. wet [wt] b. which [] / [w] 2.3 Intonation High Rise Terminal: Northern Irish English uses rising intonation in statements and commands. 3 Morphology and syntax Harris (1984), (Harris 1991), Trudgill and Hannah (1994), Hansen et al. (1996), McCafferty (2004), Corrigan (2006), Hickey (2009), Corrigan (2010) 3.1 Definite article (11) a. place names b. personal names c. weekdays d. season names e. month/feast names f. language names g. abstract nouns h. illnesses i. prices/rates j. branches of learning the County Clare the Doherty the Monday the summer the Christmas the English the eyesight the cold. in the year the linguistics

3.2 Personal pronouns (12) yi you sg. vs yiz / yous you pl. Mummy goes, All of yous into the living room. 3.3 Resumptive pronouns in relative clauses (13) I thought they would have put a steel door on that they couldnt have opened it. 3.4 Unbound reflexives (14) a. Myself and Jimmy McLoughlin b. John O and yourself c. There was only himself an his father an sister in it.

3.5 Who all, what all, where all as interrogatives All can float, i.e. be separated from the interrogative. (15) a. Who was all there?

4 b. c. d. Who did you meet all? What did you get all for Christmas? Where did they go all for their holidays?

3.6 default singulars (16) a. Another three was born. b. Heres the gentle breezes that blows. c. If theres terrorists on the plane, Ill talk them down. 3.7 Habitual be (17) a. He bees first in the office every day. b. She bees all pleased to get cards coming for her. 3.8 Do as habitual marker (18) A lot of them does cut them. A lot of them cut them. 3.9 Present tense as extended-now perfect (19) a. Were married 42 years. b. How long are you here? 3.10 Past tense as indefinite anterior perfect (20) Did you have dinner yet? 3.11 Perfective hot news: after + gerund (21) One of the directors here is only after ringing. resultative: with medial object construction (22) a. dynamic verb of activity (most favoured) I have my assessment written. b. dynamic momentary verb He has the paradigm licked. c. stative verb of perception I have the paradigm understood. d. stative relational verb (least favoured) They have zombies resembled. 3.12 Epistemic be to (23) He be to be an old-fashioned one. 3.13 Double modals (24) You might could find that across the street. 3.14 Multiple negation (25) I never saw nothing.

3.15 Adjectives as adverbs/intensifiers (26) a. It was dead on. b. He works for a real fancy restaurant. c. It was wild frowned upon. 3.16 Positive anymore, yet (27) a. He comes here a lot anymore. He comes here a lot nowadays [= which did not use to be the case]. b. I still have it with me yet. 3.17 Whenever to refer to a single instance (28) Whenever my baby was born, I became depressed. 3.18 For to infinitive (29) a. There was always one man selected for to make tea. b. He would try for to tell her. 3.19 Sentence-final but though (30) Ive never seen him, but. 3.20 Topicalization and focusing Topic and comment structures with see / you know (21) a. See the year my father died, L never paid a bill. b. You know a lot of people say, theyre basically just split. Left dislocation, including non-finite verb phrases (31) Out on the tiles she was when she broke her ankle. Clefting (32) a. b. c. Like (33) It was his cousin had been killed. Its very seldom youd get that in it. Its to back out of the room he done.

And the fact that he, like he would leave everything to the last minute.

3.21 Sentence-final mitigator like to mark the end of old information (34) Its just not great either like. 3.22 Quotative like (35) And I was like, All I want is an apology. 3.23 Indirect questions with inversion, but without if / whether (36) I wonder has he come.

6 3.24 Prepositions (37) Shes been living here from she was married. 4 Lexicon Trudgill and Hannah (1994), Viereck et al. (2002), Melchers and Shaw (2003), Hickey (2009) 4.1 Lexical items shared with Scottish English (38) a. ashet plate b. bairn child c. burn brook, stream 4.2 Loanwords from Gaelic (39) a. krig (< G criog) hit ones toe b. mass (< G meas respect; value) respect 4.3 Other lexical items (40) a. boke to vomit b. gunder to shout c. hoke to poke around, to dig into, to rummage d. skite to slap; to splash e. throughother untidy, messy 4.4 Semantic shifts (41) a. doubt believe b. wither to hesitate 4.5 Use of bring and take (42) You bring the children to school, and Ill take them home. 4.6 Phrases shared with Scottish English (43) a. Thats me away. Im going now. b. to go the messages to go shopping 4.7 Other phrases (44) a. He gets doing it. He is allowed to do it. b. Im not at myself. Im not feeling very well. c. It would take you to be there early. You have to be there early. d. Youre well mended. Youre looking better [after an illness].

References
Corrigan, K. 2006. Might could English be double-Dutch too?: doubling and the syntactic atlas of British Isles dialects. Paper presented at Syntactic Doubling in European Dialects Workshop, March 16-18, 2006, Meertens Institute, Amsterdam.

7
Corrigan, K. 2010. Irish English, vol. 1, Northern Ireland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Harris, J. 1984. English in the north of Ireland. In P. Trudgill (ed.), Language in the British Isles, 115-134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, J. 1991. Ireland. In J. Cheshire (ed.), English around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives , 37-50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, J. 1993. The grammar of Irish English. In J. Milroy and L. Milroy (eds.), Real English. The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles, 139-186. London and New York: Longman. Hickey, R. 2008. Irish English: phonology. In B. Kortmann, C. Upton (eds.), Varieties of English, vol. 1, The British Isles, 71-104. Berlin New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Hickey, R. 2009. Irish English. History and Present-day Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kortmann, B., Herrmann, T., Pietsch, L., Wagner, S. 2005. A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects. Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses. Berlin New York. McCafferty, K. 2004. [T]hunder storms is verry dangese in this countrey they come in less than a minnits notice. English World-Wide 25 (1): 51-79. Melchers, G. and Shaw, P. 2003. World Englishes. An Introduction. London: Arnold. Trudgill, P. and Hannah, J. 1994. International English. A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English , third edition. London: Edward Arnold. Trudgill, P., Hughes, A. and Watt, D. 2005. English Accents and Dialects. An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles, fourth edition. London: Hodder Education. Viereck, W., Viereck, K., Ramisch, H. 2002. dtv-Atlas englische Sprache. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Wells, J. C. 1982. Accents of English, vol. II, The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.