Regional variation of pronunciation in the south-west of England

p> We can distinguish at least three distinctly different types of gender marking along the continuum from most overt to most covert. The most overt involves the marking of gender in the morphology of the noun itself, as in
Swahili (Lyons 1968:284-6). Near the middle of the overt-covert continuum we could place the marking of gender in adnominals such as adjectives and determiners. At or near the covert end of the scale we find the marking of gender in pronominal systems.

During all three main historical stages of the English language (OE,
ME, ModE) one has been able to assign nouns to three syntactic classes called MASCULINE, FEMININE and NEUTER. However, throughout the recorded history of English this three-way gender marking has become less and less overt. In OE all three types of gender marking were present. But even in OE the intrinsic marking (by noun inflections) was often ambiguous in that it gave more information about noun declension (ie paradigm class) than about gender (ie concord class). The least ambiguous marking of gender in OE was provided by the adnominals traditionally called demonstratives and definite articles. In addition, gender ‘discord’ sometimes occurred in OE, in that the intrinsic gender marking (if any) and the adnominal marking, on the one hand, did not always agree with the gender of the pronominal, on the other hand. Standard ME underwent the loss of a three-way gender distinction in the morphology of both the nominals and the adnominals. This meant that
Standard ModE nouns were left with only the most covert type of three-way gender marking, that of the pronominals. Hence we can assign a Standard
ModE noun to the gender class MASCULINE, FEMININE or NEUTER by depending only on whether it selects he, she or it respectively as its proform.

During the ME and Early ModE periods the south-western (here called
Wessex-type) dialects of England diverged from Standard English in their developments of adnominal and pronominal subsystems. In particular, the demonstratives of Standard English lost all trace of gender marking, whereas in south-western dialects their OE three-way distinction of
MASCULINE/FEMININE/NEUTER developed into a two-way MASS/COUNT distinction which has survived in some Wessex-type dialects of Late ModE. The result in
Wessex was that the two-way distinction in adnominals such as demonstratives and indefinites came into partial conflict with the three- way distinction in pronominals”. (№18, p.31-32)

- Nowadays in the south-western dialects the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are used instead of a noun: e.g. My ooman put her bonnet there last year, and the birds laid their eggs in him. (= it)

Wurs my shovel? I aa got’im; him’s her. (= Where is my shovel? I’ve got it. That’s it.)
- In the south-western dialects objects are divided into two categories:
1) countable nouns (a tool, a tree), and the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are used with them
2) uncountable nouns (water, dust), and the pronoun ‘it’ is used with them.

The pronoun ‘he’ is used towards women.

3.3 Numerals.

In south-western dialects the compound numerals (21-99) are pronounced as: five and fifty, six and thirty.

In Devonshire instead of ‘the second’ ‘twoth’ is used (the twenty- twoth of April).

3.4 Adjectives.

In all dialects of the south-west -er, -est are used in the comparative and superative degrees with one-, two- and more syllabic adjectives: e.g. the naturaler the seasonablest delightfuller (-est) worser - worsest (Dw.)

- The words: ‘gin’, ‘an’, ‘as’, ‘nor’, ‘till’, ‘by’, ‘to’, ‘in’, ‘on’ are used instead of ‘than’ in the comparative forms: e.g. When the lad there wasn’t scarce the height of that stool, and a less size on (= than) his brother…;

That’s better gin naething;

More brass inney (= than you) hadd’n;

It’s moor in bargain (= more than a bargain).

- The word ‘many’ is used with uncountable nouns e.g. many water / milk

- The word ‘first’ is often used in the meaning of ‘the next’: e.g. The first time I gang to the smiddie I’ll give it to him.

Will you come Monday first or Monday eight days?

3.5 Pronouns.

- The forms of the nominative case are often used instead of the forms of the objective case and vice versa: e.g. Oi don’t think much o’ they (= of them).

Oi went out a-walkin wi’ she (= with her).

Oi giv ut t’ he (= it) back again.

Us (= we) don’t want t’ play wi’ he (= him).

Har (= she) oon’t speak t’ th’ loikes o’ we (= us).

When us (= we) is busy, him (= he) comes and does a day’s work for we (= us).

- The pronoun ‘mun’ (‘min’) is used in those cases, when in the literary language ‘them’ is used: e.g. put mun in the house gie mun to me

I mind (= remember) the first time I seed mun.

- ‘Mun’ is also used instead of ‘him’, ‘it’ e.g. let min alone it would sarve un right if I telled the parson of mun

- Instead of ‘those’, ‘them’ is used: e.g. I mind none of them things.

Give us them apples.

Fetch them plaates off o’ th’ pantry shelf.

- In the south-western dialects at the beginning of the sentenu the personal and impersonal pronouns are often dropped.

- “Whom” is never used in the south-western dialects. Instead of it

‘as’ / ‘at’ is used: e.g. That’s the chap as (or what) his uncle was hanged.

The man’ at his coat’s torn.

- The nominative case of the personal pronouns is also used before

‘selves’: e.g. we selves (Somerseshire, Devonshire)

- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ is used in the south- western dialects as: ‘this’, ‘this here’, ‘thease’, ‘thisn’,

‘thisna’.

- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘that’ is used in the south- western dialects as: ‘thatn’, ‘thickumy’, ‘thilk’: e.g. I suppose I could have told thee thilk.

- ‘Those’ is never used in the south-western dialects.

“thir’ ans” is used instead of it.

3.5.1 Demonstrative adjectives and pronouns in a Devonshire dialect.

I’d like to give not only the grammatical description of adjectives and pronouns in the south-western part of England, but the pronunciation of demonstrative adjectives and pronouns found in the dialect of south zeal, a village on the northern edge of Dartmoor. Martin Harris made his research work in this field:

“The analysis is based on a corpus of some twenty hours of tape- recorded conversation, collected in the course of work for a Ph.D. thesis, either in the form of a dialogue between two informants or of a monologue on the part of a single informant. The principal informant, Mr George
Cooper, has lived for some eighty-five years in the parish, and has only spent one night in his life outside the county of Devon.

For the purposes of this chapter, only one phonological point needs to be made. The /r/ phoneme is retroflex in final position, and induces a preceding weak central vowel [?] when occurring in the environment /Vr/,
(thus [V?r]), when the /V/ in question is /i:/ or /?/. (These are the only two vowels relevant within this work.). The transcription used for the actual forms should not give rise to any further problems. In the case of the illustrative examples, 1 have decided to use a quasi-orthographical representation, since the actual phonetic/phonemic realization is not directly relevant to the point under discussion. The prominent syllable(s) in each example are illustrated thus: “.

The relative frequency of these forms is shown in Table 2.
|Adjectives |
|Singular |% |Plural |% |
|/рi:z/ |13 |/рejz/ |23 |
|/рis/ |11 |/рi:z/ |2 |
|/рi:z ji:r/ |9 |/рejz ji:r/ |7 |
|/рis ji:r/ |2 |/рi:z ji:r/ |4 |
|/рat/ |15 |/рej/ |49 |
|/рat р?r/ |3 |/рej р?r/ |2 |
|/рi-ki:/ |43 |/рi-ki:/ |10 |
|/рi-ki: р?r/ |4 |/рi-ki: р?r/ |3 |
| |100 | |100 |
|Pronouns |
|Singular |% |Plural |% |
|/рis/ |10 | | |
|/рi:z/ |4 | | |
|/рis ji:r/ |2 | | |
|/рis ji:r ji:r/ |25 |/рej/ |100 |
|/рat/ |22 | | |
|/рat р?r/ |2 | | |
|/рat р?r р?r/ |34 | | |
|/рi-ki:/ |1 | | |
| |100 | | |

The paradigm as outlined in Tables 1, 2 presents few morphological problems. The two pairs of forms /рi:z/ and /рis/ and /рejz/ and /рi:z/ do, however, need examination. In the singular of the adjective, the two forms
/рi:z/ and /рis/ are both frequent, being used mostly in unstressed and stressed position respectively. However, some 30 per cent of the occurrences of each form do not follow this tendency, so it does not seem profitable to set up a stressed: unstressed opposition, particularly since such a division would serve no purpose in the case of /рat/ and /рi-ki:/.
With the ‘first compounds’, the form /рi:z ji:r/ outnumbers /рis ji:r/ in the ratio 1 in the adjective position.

When functioning as a pronoun, /рi:z/ is rare as a simple form and never occurs at all either within a first compound (although ‘first compounds’ are so rare as pronouns that no generalization can usefully be made, see Table 2) or within a ‘second compound’, where only /рis ji:r ji:r/, never /рi:z ji:r ji:r/, is found. Thus /рis/ seems to be more favoured as a pronoun, and /рi:z/ as an adjective; this, of course, is only a tendency.

In the plural, the position is more clear-cut. The normal adjective plurals are /рejz/ and /рejz ji:r/, which outnumber /рi:z/ and /рi:z ji:r/ by a large margin (see Table 2). Such cases of the latter as do occur may perhaps be ascribed to Standard English influence, since /рi:z/ is clearly used normally as a singular rather than a plural form. The absence of any reflex of /рejz/ as a plural pronoun is discussed below.

The other forms present little morphological difficulty. There is only one occurrence of /рi-ki:/ as a pronoun, although as an adjective it almost outnumbers /рi:z/ and /рat/ together, so it seems to belong primarily to the adjectival system. The normal singular pronouns are either the simple forms or the ‘second compounds’, the ‘first compounds’ being most unusual.

In the plural of the adjective, the simple forms are much more frequent than their equivalent ‘first compounds’, whereas in the plural of the pronoun, there is apparently only the one form /рej/. The status of this form is discussed below.

The following are examples of those demonstatives which are not further discussed below. The uses of /рat/ as a singular adjective, of /рi- ki:/ as a singular or plural adjective, and of all the pronouns are fully exemplified in the syntactic section, and thus no examples are given here.

/рi:z/

I come down “here to live in this little old “street.

Well; “this year, I done a bit “lighter.

Now “this season, tis “over.

This was coming “this way.

/рis ji:r/

There’s all this here sort of “jobs going on to “day.

I was down “there where this here “plough was up “here.

Iрejzl

These places be alright if you know where you’m “going to.

They got to pay the “wages to these people.

I do a bit of “gardening . . . and likes of all these things.

/рej/

What makes all they “hills look so well?

Where “Jim was sent to, they two “met.

“They won’t have all they sort of people up there.

Tell “Cooper to “shift “they “stones “there.

We may now turn to the functions of those forms whose uses are identifiably different from those of Standard English.

The most striking feature of the demonstrative system is that, in the singular adjective system at least, there is apparently a three-term opposition /рi:z : рat : рi-ki:/, in contrast with the two-term system of
Standard English. It seems fair to say that the role of /рi:z/ is similar to that of 'this' in Standard English (but see note on /рi:z ji:r/ below), but any attempt to differentiate /рat/ and /рi-ki:/ proves extremely difficult. There are a number of sentences of the type:

If you was to put “that stick in across “thicky pony . . . where the two forms seem to fill the same function. The virtual absence of
/рi-ki:/ from the pronoun system, together with the fact that /рi-ki:/ is three times as frequent as /рat/ as an adjective, would suggest that /рi- ki:/ is the normal adjectival form in the dialect, and that /рat/ has a greater range, having a function which is basically pronominal but in addition adjectival at times. This is further supported by the fact that when presented with sentences of the type:

He turned that “hare “three “times and “he caught it. the informant claimed that /рi-ki:/ would be equally acceptable and could indicate no distinction. Thus there are pairs of sentences such as

I used to walk that there “two mile and “half.

You'd walk thicky “nine “mile. or again

That finished “that job.

I wouldn’t have “thicky job.

There are certain cases where either one form or the other seems to be required. In particular, /рat/ is used when actually indicating a size with the hands:

Go up and see the stones “that length, “that thickness. while /рi-ki:/ is used in contrast with /t?-рr/, where Standard English would normally use ‘one’ or ‘the one’.

Soon as they got it “thicky hand, they’d thruck(?) it away with the
“tother.

In the adjective plural, the contrast between /рi-ki:/ and /рej/ is not a real one, since /рi-ki:/ is found only with numerals.

I had thicky “eighteen “bob a “week.

I expect thicky “nine was all “one “man’s sheep.

When presented with /рi-ki:/ before plural nominals, the informant rejected them. It would therefore be preferable to redefine ‘singular’ and
‘plural’ in the dialect to account for this, rather than to consider /рi- ki:/ as a plural form; this would accordingly neutralize in the plural any
/рi-ki:/:/рat/ opposition which may exist in the singular.

In the pronominal system, there is only one occurrence of /рi-ki:/:

My missis bought “thicky before her “died (a radio).

It is true that most of the occurrences of /рal/ as a pronoun do not refer to a specific antecedent, e.g. I can’t afford to do “that, but there are a number of cases where /рat/ does play a role closely parallel to /рi- ki:/ above.

As “I was passing “that, and “that was passing “me (a dog).

As there are no other examples of /рi-ki:/ as a singular pronoun, either simply or as part of a ‘first’ or ‘second compound’, and no cases at all in the plural, it seems fair to say that any /рat/:/рi-ki:/ opposition is realized only in the singular adjective, and that here too it is difficult to see what the basis of any opposition might be. A list of representative examples of /рat/, /рat р?r/, /рi-ki:/ and /рi-ki: р?r/ is given below, in their function as singular adjectives, so that they can easily be compared.

/рat/

All they got to “do is steer that little “wheel a bit.

You’d put in “dynamite to blast that stone “off.

Us’d go “in that pub and have a pint of “beer.

/рat р?r/

I used to walk that there “two mile and “half.

Good as “gold, that there “thing was.

/рi-ki:/

All of us be in “thicky boat, you see.

‘Thicky “dog’, he said, ‘been there all “day?’

Stairs went up “there, like, “thicky side, “thicky end of the wall.

Thicky place would be “black with people . . .

I travelled thicky old road “four “ year . . .

What’s “thicky “little “place called, before you get up “Yelverton?

Thicky field, they’d “break it, they called it.

He was going to put me and Jan “up thicky night.

“Never been through thicky road “ since.

/рi-ki: р?r/

Jim Connell carted home thicky there jar of “cyder same as he carted it “up.

We got in thicky there “field . . .

The morphological status of /рi:z/ and /рis/ as singulars, and of
/рejz/ and /рi:z/ as plurals has already been discussed. Syntactically, their use seems to correspond to Standard English closely, except in one important respect: the ‘first compound’ forms are used in a way similar to a non-standard usage which is fairly widespread, in the sense of ‘a’ or ‘a certain’.

/рi:z ji:r/

He’d got this here “dog.

You’d put this here great “crust on top.

The ‘first compound’ is never used as an equivalent to Standard
English ‘this’, being reserved for uses of the type above, although there is another form /рi:z . . . ji:r/, which is occasionally used where
Standard English would show ‘this’, eg Between here and this village “here like.

In the plural, an exactly parallel syntactic division occurs between
/рejz/ (cf Standard English ‘these’) and /рejz ji:r/.

These here “maidens that was here . . .

I used to put them in front of these here “sheds.

They got these here “hay-turners . . .

In all the above examples, the ‘first compounds’, both singular and plural, refer to items which have not been mentioned before, and which are not adjacent to the speaker; they are thus referentially distinct from the normal use of Standard English ‘this’.

Although we can fairly say that /рi:z/ and /рejz/ are syntactically distinct from their equivalent first compounds, what of the other adjective compounds /рat р?r/, /рi-ki: р?r/ and /рej р?r/? There seems to be no syntactic division in these cases between them and their equivalent simple forms, so it is perhaps not surprising that Table 2 shows them to be without exception much less common than /рi:z ji:r/ and /рejz ji:r/, which have a distinct syntactic role. Forms such as

Us got in thicky there “field and

Good as “gold, that there “thing was. do not seem any different from

Us “mowed thicky little plat . . . and

He turned that “hare “three “times . . .

There is certainly no apparent correlation with any notional degree of emphasis.

In the case of the singular pronouns, the ‘first compounds’ are extremely rare, cf.

He done “well with that there. (/рat р?r/)

He went out “broad, this here what’s “dead now. (/рi:z ji:r/).

The basic opposition here is between the simple forms and the ‘second compounds’ /рis ji:r ji:r/ and /рat р?r р?r/. Here the syntactic division is fairly clear: the second compounds are used in certain adverbial phrases, particularly after ‘like’, where the demonstrative refers to no specific antecedent:

Tis getting like this here “here.

I’ve had to walk home “after that there there. and also, with reference to a specific antecedent, when particular emphasis is drawn to the item in question.

I’ve had the “wireless there, this here “here, for “good many years.

One of these here “crocks, something like that there “there.

In all other cases, the simple forms are used.

“This was coming “this way.

Then he did meet with “this.

That’s “one “bad “job, “that was.

/рat/ is used particularly frequently in two phrases, ‘likes of that and ‘and that’.

He doed a bit of “farmering and likes of “that.

I got a “jumper and that home “now.

The last question is one of the most interesting. Is there really only one form /рej/ functioning as a plural pronoun? At first sight, this would seem improbable, given that there is a plural adjective form /рejz/ and that the 'this':'that' opposition is maintained elsewhere in the system.
However, all attempts to elicit such a form failed, and there is at least one spontaneous utterance where, if a form /рejz/ did exist as a pronoun, it might be expected to appear:

There’s “thousands of acres out there would grow it better than they in “here grow it.
Taking all these factors together, we tentatively suggest that the opposition ‘this’:’that’ is neutralized in this position, even though this seems rather unlikely, given the adjectival system.

But there is another point. It is in fact difficult to identify occurrences of /рej/ as demonstratives with any certainty, because the form is identical with that of the personal pronoun /рej/ (Standard English
‘they’ or ‘them’).

We may observe at this point that in the dialect, the third plural personal pronoun forms are /рej/ and /?m/. The first form is used in all stressed positions and as unstressed subject except in inverted Q-forms; the second is used as the unstressed non-subject, and as the unstressed subject in inverted Q-forms. Thus we find:

/рej/

“I had to show the pony but “they winned the cups.

I could chuck “they about.

That’s up to “they, they know what they’m a”bout of.

They’d take ‘em back of your “door for half-a-crown.

/?m/

They expect to have a “name to the house, “don’t ‘em?

Where do ‘em get the “tools to?

That was as far as “ever they paid ‘em.

I stayed there “long with ‘em for more than a “year.

When considering /рej/, we find a series of utterances such as the following in which a division between personal and demonstrative pronouns would be largely arbitrary.

I could “throw ‘em. chuck “they about.

“They in “towns, they go to concerts,

Us finished up with “they in ...

They do seven acres a “day, now, with “they.

There is “they that take an “interest in it.

I could cut in so straight (as) some of “they that “never do it.

Although, following the system of Standard English, we have so far differentiated between /рej/ as a stressed personal pronoun and /рej/ as a demonstrative pronoun, it is clearly more economical, in terms of the dialectal material, to consider the two functions as coalescing within one system: STRESSED /рej/; UNSTRESSED /?m/. This system would operate in all positions where Standard English would show either a third person plural personal pronoun, or a plural demonstrative pronoun. Similarly, there is a dialectal system STRESSED /рat/ UNSTRESSED /it/ in the third person singular, where the referent is abstract or non-specific, in that /рat/ never occurs unstressed nor /it/ stressed. Thus in contrast to the last example above, we find:

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Regional variation of pronunciation in the south-west of England

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