Received Pronunciation (RP)

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 770.

Plan

1. Dialectology

2. National pronunciation standards

3. Dialects

4. American English

Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language. English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.When combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese languages.

Dialectology is the study of dialects. Variation most commonly occurs as a result of relative geographic or social isolation and may affect vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation (accent). Dialectology as a discipline began in the 19th century with the development in western Europe of dictionaries and grammars of regional dialects. Much of the work of dialectology has consisted of gathering information about the types of variation that occur in different dialects and the construction of linguistic atlases showing patterns of distribution for a series of varying features within a language.

Such work on the geographic patterns of linguistic variation is also known as linguistic geography. It was often possible to show where one dialect ended and the next began by plotting the use of distinctive items, drawing lines around their limits of use (isoglosses) and where the bundle of such isoglosses fell together, postulating the existance of dialect boundary. Dialect boundaries are not usually so clear-cut, but the principle works well enough.

Traditional dialectological methods of this kind have more recently been supplemented by the methods of structural dialectology, which tries to show the patterns of relationship which link sets of forms from different dialects. Dialectometry is a statistical method of dialect analysis, developed in the 1970s, which measures the linguistic distance between localities in a dialect region by counting the number of contrasts in a large sample of linguistic features. The term dialectology encompasses not only dialect geography but also purely discriptive work on regional non-standard dialects. Today a good deal of dialectology is done with large databases stored on computers.

One of the “hot topics” in contemporary dialectology is establishing historical relationships between new and old varieties of English. There appeared the term “interdialect” (Peter Trudgill) that refers to the situations where contacts between two or more dialects lead to the development of forms that occured in none of the original dialects. Obvious examples of interdialect forms are provided by pronunciations which arise in dialect-contact situations that are phonetically intermediate between forms that occur in the two dialects in contact, such as contact between East Anglian English [υu] boat and London English [٨u] giving rise to [ou]. Developments of this sort have long been noted by dialect geographers as occuring in geographical dialect areas and resulting in permanent interdialect forms in transition zones. A modern British example of the same phenomenon is the usage of take away in central and southern England to refer to Chinese and other establishments from which hot food can be bought for consumption off the premises. The southern area of Britain is devided from a northen area (mostly Scotland), where the term carry out is used, by an intermediate area (part of northern England) in which the intermediate form take out is employed.

The English language is the mother tongue of several countries, such as Great Britain, the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand and the greater part of Canada. The English language is also used by the Republic of South Africa. Today all the English speaking nations have their own national variants of pronunciation and each of them has peculiar features that distinguish it from other varieties of English. It is generally accepted that for the “English English” it is Received Pronunciation; for “The American English” – “General American Pronunciation”, for the Australian English – “Educated Australian”.

The difference between language, dialect and variant is that language has its own vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation, dialects have no literally normalized form and variants possess it. Varieties or variants are Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, South African and American English.

In the 19^th century “received” was understood in the sense of “accepted in the best society”. Then it lost its local characteristics and was finally fixed as a ruling –class accent, in other words “King's English”. With the spread of education cultured people modified their accent in the direction of social standards and it was fixed as the speech of the educated class.

Daniel Jones defined this term as PSP– public school pronunciation instead of RP because boys in boarding schools tend to lose the local peculiarities in the process of studying.

Today because of its use on radio and TV within Britain RP has become the social standard. It is the form of pronunciation described in books of phonetics of British English and traditionally taught to foreigners. It is fair to mention, however, that only 3-5 per cent of the population of England speaks RP.

The first definition of RP belongs to Alexander Ellis in 1896.

“RP – is a pronunciation excepted all over the country and not widely differing in any locality as educated pronunciation of the “Court Pulpit” [PuLPiT] – кафедра, проповедники. By the end of the 19^th century this accent became the characteristics of speech of members of the upper class throughout of England.

Daniel Jones considered this pronunciation to be excellently used by the upper class and to be the most generally widely understood form.

Alexander Gimson thought that: “Social class and type of education can no longer be used as define factor in any description of standard”. But his point of view didn't receive any support.

Then Peter Trudgill expressed the idea that there is no ground for neglecting social factors. According to him RP – is non-rhotic or r-less accent (but most speakers of it do pronounce orthographic “r” word-finally before a vowel: far away.It is known aslinking “r”.

According to him `inventory of RP names 24 consonants and 12 vowels.

British phoneticians (A.Gimson, P.Trudgill etc.) estimate that nowadays RP is not homogeneous.

A.Gimson suggests that it is convenient to distinguish three main types within RP:

The linguist Honey has another classification. He divides RP into 2 groups:

Marked RP or Posh	Unmarked RP
The highest prevailing class of society speaks it. (Mostly queen and her family). Coffee Golf [f] Often Older speakers pronounce the vowel [f]. This pronunciation is currently dying out in RP and being replaced by [r].	Is characterized by a higher degree of education (teachers, announcers, actors, singers, politicians are to use this type).

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Marked RP RP local accents

(Posh)

The variants of a national language should not be confused with its regional types. There are 10 territorial (regional) types of the English language comprising such areas as the Southern English, the Northern English and the Scottish.

Dialect is any distinctive variety of a language spoken by some group of people (Robert Lawrence Trask). Dialect is a regionally or socially distinctive variety of a language, identified by a particular set of words and grammatical structures. Spoken dialects are usually also associated with a distinctive pronunciation (David Crystal). A particular style of pronunciation is an accent. In the USA an accent is considered to be one part of a dialect, while in Britain accents are considered to be independant of dialects, which are characterised by lexicon and grammar (Robert Lawrence Trask). The distinction between dialect and language seems obvious: dialects are subdivisions of languages. It is usually said that people speak different languages when they do not understand each other. But the so-called dialects of Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese) are mutually unintelligible in their spoken form. And the opposite situation occurs with Swedes, Norwegians and Danes who are generally able to understand each other, but their separate histories, cultures, literatures and political structures warrant their being referred to as different languages.

Dialects which identify where a person is from are called regional dialects. Rural dialects are often distinguished from urban dialects. Dialects are not only distributed geographically; there is a geographical mobility – people move from one place to another, taking their dialects with them. They modify them in the course of time to fit their new surroundings. Geography is only one of the relevant factors, others being social class, sex and age. Dialectologists speak of social dialects or sociolects, to refer to non-regional differences. One of the characteristics of the hierarchial social structure of a country like Britain is that social class as a determinant of speech is more important than geography. We see more geographical variations among people in the lower social classes than at the top of the social pyramid, those who passed through the public school system.

Because of the differences in sensivity to regional and social distinctions between pronunciation and other aspects of language, it is normal to make a distinction between accent and dialect, with accent referring to nothing but pronunciation and dialect referring to every aspect of the language.

Non-RP accents of England are 10 in number and may be grouped in the following way: London (Cockney), Norwich (East Anglia as well as Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, etc.), Bristol (the west of England), Pontypridd (West South Wales), Wallsall (West Midlands), Bradford (Yorkshire), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Liverpool (Merseyside), Newcastle (the North East), Edinburgh (Scotland). If we group them into larger blocks accents based on British-English standard we have English- English, Welsh English, Scottish English, Northern Ireland English.

Dialects of English differ from each other first of all in sound system. Every dialect is a local dialect: it is rooted in a particular region of the English-speaking world.

London Dialect

London dialect, Cockney is a southern accent. It has the following peculiarities: /٨/ is realized as /æ/ blood; /æ/ is realized as /ε/ or /εi/ bag; the glottal stop extremely common in Cockney is accompanying /p/ between vowels paper and representing /t/ between vowels and before pause butterfly, wet.

The contrast between /θ/ and /f/, /ð/ and /v/ is variably lost: thin /fin/, both /bouf/, bathe / beiv/. Initially /d/ or zero is more likely to be heard for /ð/: the /do/, they /ei/. “-ing” is /in/: laying, in nothing, something /ink/.

Bradford (Yorkshire)

The accent of Bradford is northern. Words like dance and daft are pronounced with /æ/. There is no distinction between pairs of words like put and putt, both having /u/. /ei/ is either a narrow diphthong or a monophthong /e: / - plate, mate.

B, d, g when precede a voiceless consonant become p, t, k – Bradford is /bræ tfod/. h is generally absent. “make”, “take” are /mεk/, /tεk/.

Edinburgh

The vowel systems of Scottish English accents are radically different from those of England.

/i/ - bee, beer, seedy, meet, meat, pit, bird, fir, city

/u/ - pull, put, boot, poor

/e/ - bay, plate, weight

/ε/ - pet, fern, there

/o/ - pole, boat, board, nose

/٨/ - putt, fur

/a/ - bard, hat, dance, daft, half, father, farther

/ai/ - buy

/au/ - bout

/oi/ - boy

The Scottish accents have preserved post-vocalic /r/: beer is /bir/.

Pairs of words such as pool/pull, caught/cot, palm/pam are not distinguished. Length is not generally a distinctive feature of Scottish vowels.

-ing is /in/; /h/ is present.

Belfast

In the Northern part of Northern Ireland speech quite similar to that in Scotland, this is where a large number of settlers to Ulster came from. In the south of the province, on the other hand, speech derived originally from that of the West Midlands and the south-west of England. Belfast speech combines features from both north and south. As in Scotland there is a post-vocalic /r/, vowels are short before p, t and k and long before other consonants.

In Belfast speech the actual realization of a vowel may vary considerably according to the sound which follows it: daft /a:/, bag /ε/.

Between vowels /ð/ may be lost, so mother may be /mo:әr/; /h/ is present; -ing is /in/.

Certain words which have /u/ in RP and other accents may have /٨/ in Belfast speech: wood /w٨d/.

South Wales (Pontypridd)

The contrast between the vowels /æ/, /a:/ is usually one length only: cat /kat/, cart /ka:t/.

There is no post-vocalic /r/, except in the speech of some native speakers of Welsh.

In words like tune, few, used we find /iu/ rather than /ju:/. This diphthong is preserved even after /r/ and /l/.

/h/ is usually absent but may be present in stressed positions: him.

/ei/ and /ou/ are narrow and may even be monophthongs /e/ and /o:/.

Only a very small percentage of the population of Great Britain is devoid of a regional accent. Regional accents are sometimes spoken of as northern or southern English, Irish or Welsh. It means that speakers of those areas have enough pronunciation features in common with each other.