Re: Does accent change intrinsically?

From: Iain (iain_inkster_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/17/05 

Date: 17 Mar 2005 02:14:31 -0800

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Iain wrote:
> >
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > Iain wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Would accent change alone, independent of social mobility and
social
> > > > restructuring, immigration, language change, etc? Various
British
> > > > accents are inconclusive but the young Australian accent
suggests that
> > > > it might.
> > >
> > > Language is always changing. What do you mean by "accent"?
> >
> > I suppose the boundaries are fuzzy. The silent H at the beginning
of
> > "honour" could be construed as a bit of French accent left over
from
> > 1066, rather than an actual aspect of the language.
>
> ?? There is no /h/ in <honour>; it's only spelled with one.

That was the question I raised -- the line is blurry and depends
largely on a sort of reference point. How long does something have to
have to be ommitted before it ceases to become standard? The answer is
not "when a minority of people use it". I once pointed out that just as
regular long skirts in the U.K. are rareish, they are still a cultural
reference point for normality, etc, so if fashion changes in the
future, there is a *chance* of it returning to long(er) skirts(even
though it may not). This seems like a lost cause where things like the
H in honour are concerned, but that was also true about the "t" in
"often", until Victorian times when literacy increased sharply, and "of
/t/ en" was reconsidered as "polished" speech. Even an illiterate
person probably recognises "ishoo" as being a tongue-friendly version
of "isyoo"(as Princess Diana said it), even though most people say
"ishoo". For as long as there is an underlying sense of normality, that
is considered(usually curricularly) as the standard form of the
language itself, even if it's rarely adhered to. So I suppose we are
talking about English on a slightly synthetic level.

> > But since you ask, by "language" I mean to involve the retention of
the
> > identity of phonemes, but by "accent" I mean change in the sound,
> > length and emphasis of the phonemes, and amount of neutralisation
into
> > shwas, if, like in English, shwa isn't part of the language itself.
>
> ?? Why do you suppose shwa isn't part of the English language itself?

It is of accent.

I nev'r say it. English and Americans say "'rly"; I in Scotland say
"early".

I tell an Englishman that my surname is Inkster, and he immediately
converts the /er/ sound into a shwa, even though he never heard the
word before(this would be meaningless if the word was "g*i*rl" because
he may remember it is three phonemes: g/shwa/l). This is illustration
of accent as opposed to language. He might have an English version of
my /o/ and /e/ but we don't have our own versions of each other's shwa
phonemes (both the Scots and English sometime use shwa sounds, but they
do not share the same phoneme in words). Our common "legend" or
"language" doesn't agree on shwa as an identifyable phoneme -- The
sound is there, but it sorts itself out via accent.

Hence what I mean by shwa not being part of the language, in the
capacity of language as legend we use to decipher sound.

When a Chinese man has an /er/ sound in his name, an Englishman renders
it as shwa -- again it's accent.

> > The background to my question is the apparent fact that because
accent
> > changes gradually, it invariably corresponds with migration and
> > changing social conditions.
>
> Except that it doesn't. Ranjit mentioned the RP change of final /I/
to
> /I/; in the US, the Northern Cities Shift is mucking about with the
> vowels about as much as the Great Vowel Shift did 600 years ago, and
> everyone but linguists is totally oblivious to it, and communication
> isn't impaired in the least.

But you cannot use real-world examples because I'm talking about a
hypothetical cultural "freeze". Look at the subject title. The
pronunciation of "fifties" that was mentioned, may well be due to
changing social conditions, media, etc.

Most of the time British accent change hints of interchange, rather
than solitary change, which is the topic of my question.
Reconstructions I've heard of Elizabethan English accent, I would
describe as "miscellaneous British Isles". I wouldn't notice if I heard
it from a Top of the Pops presenter.

> > My question is, if these things did not change, would accent change
> > nonetheless?
>
> My answer is, how could it not?

See above. Short answer, I don't know whether it would or wouldn't.

~Iain

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