Re: accents

From: Brian M. Scott (b.scott_at_csuohio.edu)
Date: 03/29/05 

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 12:39:30 -0500

On 29 Mar 2005 06:53:31 -0800, Iain
<iain_inkster@hotmail.com> wrote in
<news:1112108011.915368.159090@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:

[...]

> Standard Written English has scarcely evolved at all since
> it ended its function as a method of medieval sound
> recording, but spoken English hath.

This is false. Standard written English has changed
noticeably in my reading lifetime (~50 years) and enormously
in the last 400 years, say. For instance, the everyday
passive progressive construction -- 'The house is being
built' -- is a major innovation of the last 250 years or so.
As recently as the mid-18th century that sentence was
impossible: the passive progressive only arose in the late
18th century (and was condemned at the time). But never
mind detailed analysis of the differences; just look at
Early Modern texts. For instance:

   The several Climates of the World, have influenced
   the Inhabitants with Natures very different from one
   another. And their several speeches bear some
   proportion of Analogy with their Natures. The
   Spanish and the Spaniard both are Grave, the Italian
   and th' Italians Amourous, the Dutch as boisterous
   as the Germans, and the French as light as they
   themselves are. But the moderate Clime of England
   has indifferently temper'd us as to both: and what
   excess there is in either, must be attributed to the
   accession of something Foreign.
   
Even getting rid of the old-fashioned capitalization and
replacing <th'> by <the> and <termper'd> by <tempered>
wouldn't obscure the obvious fact that this is not the
standard written English of today, or even of the 20th
century. (It's from 1676.)

> Don't you think that if Standard Written English didn't
> exist, spoken English would have evolved further beyond
> recognition? [...]

No. Sometimes linguistic change is very rapid, sometimes
it's quite slow, and so far as I'm aware, no one has
demonstrated any connection with writing.

> Writing is an axiom reminder than the /t/ sound at the end
> of "chased" has the same semantic function as a written
> "-ed" -- our mental image of the "-ed" distinguishes
> "chased" from "chaste" in our minds.

No, the context does that.

> I always feel, when listening to linguists, that they
> underestimate how integral text is to spoken English.
> Even an illiterate person may be speaking a language kept
> in check by writing, via school curricula, publishers,
> etc.

Standard English spelling was designed for a pronunciation
profoundly different from that of any modern English
variety; it hasn't kept pronunciation from continuing to
change, any more than it's kept syntax from changing.

[...]

Brian

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