Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:51 pm Post subject: The development of English accents
around the world. I often see movies where the American rebels are portrayed with a modern American accent, in sharp contrast to a British accent on the part of the red coats. But I find myself wondering if this is an accurate portrayal of historical realities. Was the accent of the American colonies already so different from that of the motherland in the 1700s?
And I like to compare which regional accents, or "dialects" for the linguistically inclined, are the most similar to each other. For instance, I find that Australasian accents sound quite similar to working class British accents. I also find that Australian/New Zealand/South African accents sound the most similar to British ones, while Canadian/American accents sound like the most distant.
When did the sharp division between southern-American and northern-American accents take place, or begin to develop? Were they already so different that by the time a Virginian like George Washington took command of the continental army, the Yankee northerners would sound very different? _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
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Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 1:00 pm Post subject: Re: The development of English accents
Porthos wrote:
(...) accents, or "dialects" for the linguistically inclined (...)
An accent is essentially (and solely) a pronunciation pattern considered irrespective of possible variations in syntax and vocabulary. For instance, a Southern-French coeval reading aloud a Fable written by La Fontaine (a Northerner who died 312 years ago) will use a specific dialect (which primarily is a revolved chronolect that no longer exists), which therefore cannot be his own, and yet utter the Fable following a 21st-century phonology prevalent in Southern France. In other words, that locutor is able to resort to a dialect no longer in use anywhere while shaping his utterance according to a twice non-related accent : North vs South and 17th vs 21st century. This shows that accent and dialect are indeed two different things and not, as you seemed to hint, only two different labels intended to name a single reality according to whether you are a layman or a specialist.
A dialect can be an accent *AND* and the syntactical and lexical variations accompanying the phonological variations. In theory, a dialect could also boil down to specific grammar and lexic with no major phonological variation attached to them ; sound variations often come with variations affecting other linguistic features, though.
A dialect can be an accent *AND* and the syntactical and lexical variations accompanying the phonological variations. In theory, a dialect could also boil down to specific grammar and lexic with no major phonological variation attached to them ; sound variations often come with variations affecting other linguistic features, though.
So "accent" is an accepted term in the linguistic community you're saying? Because a lot of people will label a regional accent as a distinct dialect soley because of the phonological differences, no matter how slight or subtle. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
Difficulty and ambiguity arise because although accentual variation and phonological variation are two different things, they usually intermingle.
Phonemes like /t/ or /e/ are phonological units. Speech comprises consonants as /t/ and vowels as /e/, which are the smallest meaning-modifying segments that spoken language is made of. So basically phonemes are segmental features so that phonology is essentially segmentable. In other words, articulated speech may be parsed into discrete units called vowels and consonants.
What is known as accent may be two things, the first one being stress — as in word stress, sentence stress, group stress etc — and the second one being the way phonological and prosodic variations do combine to form what is first distinctively identified and then called a regional accent (l'accent du Midi for instance — or les accents du Midi to be more accurate). It's the unique combination of a certain prosody and specific phonematic (and phonetic) features that is leading people to call accent A or B a speech pattern associated to area A or B. Stricly speaking, however, prosodic variation only — to keep it simple — should determine what an accent is, to the exclusion of phonological and phonetic variation. And to that extent you were right in pointing that stricto sensu regional accent and regional dialect should not be equated. That said, accents are made of prosodic and phonological variations just like dialects are made of syntactical, lexical and phonological variations.
Prosody (among other things) is what distinguishes an accent from a dialect. Conversely, phonology and phonetics are what an accent and a dialect may share in common. Now we've seen that phonology is a system based on segments or units called phonemes. Prosody, however, is described as a set of suprasegmental features, which means that intonation, melody, breath, rhythm, modulation, pitch contour (etc) cannot be analysed phonematically, not even predictively distributed with respect to how phonemes happen to occur within the spoken chain.
Difficulty and ambiguity arise because although accentual variation and phonological variation are two different things, they usually intermingle.
Phonemes like /t/ or /e/ are phonological units. Speech comprises consonants as /t/ and vowels as /e/, which are the smallest meaning-modifying segments that spoken language is made of. So basically phonemes are segmental features so that phonology is essentially segmentable. In other words, articulated speech may be parsed into discrete units called vowels and consonants.
What is known as accent may be two things, the first one being stress — as in word stress, sentence stress, group stress etc — and the second one being the way phonological and prosodic variations do combine to form what is first distinctively identified and then called a regional accent (l'accent du Midi for instance — or les accents du Midi to be more accurate). It's the unique combination of a certain prosody and specific phonematic (and phonetic) features that is leading people to call accent A or B a speech pattern associated to area A or B. Stricly speaking, however, prosodic variation only — to keep it simple — should determine what an accent is, to the exclusion of phonological and phonetic variation. And to that extent you were right in pointing that stricto sensu regional accent and regional dialect should not be equated. That said, accents are made of prosodic and phonological variations just like dialects are made of syntactical, lexical and phonological variations.
Prosody (among other things) is what distinguishes an accent from a dialect. Conversely, phonology and phonetics are what an accent and a dialect may share in common. Now we've seen that phonology is a system based on segments or units called phonemes. Prosody, however, is described as a set of suprasegmental features, which means that intonation, melody, breath, rhythm, modulation, pitch contour (etc) cannot be analysed phonematically, not even predictively distributed with respect to how phonemes happen to occur within the spoken chain.
I would myself prefer to define "accent" in terms of subjective perception of another dialect's phonology in its entirety, rather than trying to define it in terms of solely some particular aspect of a dialect's phonology such as prosody.
I say "subjective" because the term "accent" is generally used to describe just that - an individual's subjective perception of another individual's speech with respect to how it sounds. This is further shown by how an individual may describe themselves as being "accentless", especially if their own dialect is not stigmatized in any way and they have no attachment to it. This is unlike the notion of "dialect", which is attached to simply where one is from rather than any subjective judgement of one's speech.
So, you mean that (in english) accent is capable to be accepted / not accepted in different types of society, but dialect isn't such a judged (criticised) thing?
In other languages dialects can be negatively judeged also when they are only regional ones (not social class). So, what i mean is that there is subjectivity in the judgement of this dialect(s) also. An example is Limburgs dialect in the Netherlands: amny people in the other regions of Holland make limburgers to be stigmatised based on their regional (dialect) speech.
Also, if a person will look to describe an accent /dialect, of coures the person will initially compare it with their native one. I suppose that only if the person is linguist then will there be less (or possibly without) subjectivity because they look with certain points to analyse.
I'm not linguist and I didn't learn about linguistics, but I can't see how can there be not subjectivity with accent and dialect!! Evidently, Porthos looks very subjectively and Benjamin prefer to be objective but I anticpate that the most of poeple will think as Porthos, because the fact is that how you speak will get judged, so in other words, get subjectively perceived.
I hope you cna undertsnad my message LOL !! I'm veyr tired and will go to pack my things now for my jounrey to London (it's tomorrow) Bye.
This is further shown by how an individual may describe themselves as being "accentless", especially if their own dialect is not stigmatized in any way and they have no attachment to it.
Agree. That's a very valid instance of subjectivity regarding accents.
Travis wrote:
This is unlike the notion of "dialect", which is attached to simply where one is from rather than any subjective judgement of one's speech.
Agree again.
Travis wrote:
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
But why *subjective* perception ?
I say "subjective" because the term "accent" is generally used to describe just that - an individual's subjective perception of another individual's speech with respect to how it sounds.
However, accents are also perceived as objective features and recognised as such by people in droves (including some who may well claim not to be accentless).
I say "subjective" because the term "accent" is generally used to describe just that - an individual's subjective perception of another individual's speech with respect to how it sounds.
However, accents are also perceived as objective features and recognised as such by people in droves (including some who may well claim not to be accentless).
People often think of them as if they were objective, and large groups of people can have similar perceptions of such, yes, but this makes them fundamentally no less subjective underneath it all. Saying that someone has a particular accent is simply saying that is how one perceives their speech, as opposed to saying that someone speaks a particular dialect pins someone's speech down to a particular speech variety that can be treated less subjectively than a mere perception of someone's speech.
Not in my view. If you take the example of a Fable by La Fontaine — a Northern-French author who lived in the 17th century — read by a 20yo accented Southerner, the accent will be recognised at once by *any* native Francophone. Not that every French-speaker will be able to tell you if that was a Provençal, Gascon or Langudedocian accent but all of them will know for sure it's un accent du Midi. And yet the speech uttered by that 20yo accented Southerner reciting the Fable will follow the lexical and syntactical patterns of a Northern dialect (17th-century literary classic French), which is also a chronolect no longer in use. But there's more to it. Not only Northerners living in 2007 will spot the Meridional accent : so will Southerners, too. In other words, your being accentless or not has no practical consequence on your ability to identify actual accentual features. So the objectivity vs subjectivity opposition is not operational here.
The hic — because there is one of course ! — is that phonological (or purely phonetic) variation will always intermingle with accentuation.
I'm sorry I can't find any example in English. But for our Francophone audience who may be aware of the presidential election, think of Gérard Schivardi — a "small" candidate who is a Narbonese of Italian extraction. You can hear him speaking here(wait a few seconds for him to pop up on the screen). Schivardi's accent is what you would hear if you asked him to read, say, the † EU constitutional draft treaty † (paix à son âme).
Not in my view. If you take the example of a Fable by La Fontaine — a Northern-French author who lived in the 17th century — read by a 20yo accented Southerner, the accent will be recognised at once by *any* native Francophone. Not that every French-speaker will be able to tell you if that was a Provençal, Gascon or Langudedocian accent but all of them will know for sure it's un accent du Midi. And yet the speech uttered by that 20yo accented Southerner reciting the Fable will follow the lexical and syntactical patterns of a Northern dialect (17th-century literary classic French), which is also a chronolect no longer in use. But there's more to it. Not only Northerners living in 2007 will spot the Meridional accent : so will Southerners, too. In other words, your being accentless or not has no practical consequence on your ability to identify actual accentual features. So the objectivity vs subjectivity opposition is not operational here.
The matter here is that individuals are reading something aloud using the phonology of their own dialect even if the morphology and syntax of that which they are reading does not correspond to that of their own native dialect. It is this layer of phonology which is being recognized by other individuals.
What makes all this subjective, though, is that individuals' perceptions of other individuals' speech will almost always be subjective in one way or another, linguistic analysis aside. People will perceive other individuals' speech in relation to their own speech or in relation to some prestige variety, rather than perceiving how individuals' speech sounds in objective terms, as individuals in general do not perceive others' speech as, say, linguists would.
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
The hic — because there is one of course ! — is that phonological (or purely phonetic) variation will always intermingle with accentuation.
It is not that the two will "intermingle", but simply that the perception of others' phonologies by the average person itself is subjective.
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
I'm sorry I can't find any example in English. But for our Francophone audience who may be aware of the presidential election, think of Gérard Schivardi — a "small" candidate who is a Narbonese of Italian extraction. You can hear him speaking here(wait a few seconds for him to pop up on the screen). Schivardi's accent is what you would hear if you asked him to read, say, the † EU constitutional draft treaty † (paix à son âme).
Practically English-speaker who is reading aloud from formally written material would fall under this, save maybe Huge Grant and the Queen.
Americans have probably always sounded fairly similar through the years, Porthos, because it's actually the English who have made some drastic changes in the years since we were colonized -- RP didn't exist back them, with its strange A's and its R-dropping.
Not saying NO change has taken place in American accents since them, because that would be silly, but I'm betting that our former compatriots would not have sounded very unusual to us. _________________ An apple a day....
Americans have probably always sounded fairly similar through the years, Porthos, because it's actually the English who have made some drastic changes in the years since we were colonized -- RP didn't exist back them, with its strange A's and its R-dropping.
Not saying NO change has taken place in American accents since them, because that would be silly, but I'm betting that our former compatriots would not have sounded very unusual to us.
See, I always used to assume that the the mother country's dialect would be more conservative, but it's often the inverse. Portugal's dialect made some drastic leaps in phonology, while Brazil remained more conservative. And in the 1700s, it was likely that most British people did not drop their 'r's. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
That's usually how it works -- colonies are more conservative, mother countries more innovative.
Works the same way in biology -- isolated pockets of organisms exhibit less variation, while larger groups have more. The isolated pockets are simply more likely to have been founded by only a few individuals, and only have the traits of those few founders to work with -- a fraction of the traits found in the larger population.
And new trends in one place aren't necessarily repeated in the other -- as was the case with the emergence of RP. _________________ An apple a day....
The matter here is that individuals are reading something aloud using the phonology of their own dialect even if the morphology and syntax of that which they are reading does not correspond to that of their own native dialect. It is this layer of phonology which is being recognized by other individuals.
That phonematic layer indeed, and the prosodic layer, too.
Travis wrote:
What makes all this subjective, though, is that individuals' perceptions of other individuals' speech will almost always be subjective in one way or another, linguistic analysis aside.
Yes, almost.
Travis wrote:
People will perceive other individuals' speech in relation to their own speech or in relation to some prestige variety, rather than perceiving how individuals' speech sounds in objective terms, as individuals in general do not perceive others' speech as, say, linguists would.
It depends. In the French South, there are at least four families of "Southern accents", which are generally called the Southern accent in the North while Southerners will be able to spot at once one Southern accent from the other one. Since all Southern accents are deemed to be outside the pseudonorm's phonematical field (just like most of Northern accents are — in passing), it is possible to perceive a variety (phonology, prosody, accent...) without calibrating any uttered speech through a standard (pseudonormal French in this case), that is therefore not functioning as a pivot for speech.
However, most people are likely to ascribe a certain value to any speech they hear (regardless, of course, of the meaning conveyed), whatever close or related to theirs it may be, as you said. But this is not always the case, especially if people are used to interact with locutors with different accents, phonologies or prosodies.
That's usually how it works -- colonies are more conservative, mother countries more innovative.
Not really. You have been pretty 'innovative', to be charitable, with how you spell your words. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
Shoot, read some original texts in old or middle English. Everybody was determined to be innovative back then, and no one wanted to spell like their neighbor....sorry, neighbour ... or is it nayeboure?
Spelling wasn't written in stone even when the US broke away from Great Britain -- if you read the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution and other writings of the day, you can see spellings that we don't use any more in either country.
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I'm veyr tired and will go to pack my things now for my jounrey to London (it's tomorrow) Bye.
