It is not my aim to write a unified history of the English
language an Ireland, since this has already been undertaken elsewhere
(e.g. Hogan 1927; Bliss 1977,1979; Barry 1982). Rather I wish to
concentrate on several specifically phonological developments which
allow us to disentangle the competing but sometimes complementary
influences exerted by Irish, English and Scots on Hiberno-English
(henceforth HE). This emphasis reflects an attempt not only to chart
the historical developments in greater detail than has been done
hitherto but also to contribute to our theoretical understanding of
phonological change. For various reasons the focus is for the most
part on northern HE. For one thing, a detailed history of southern
HE is already available (Bliss 1979). Secondly, much of my own
research has been undertaken in the north, particularly while I was
working on the project Sociolinguistic variation and linguistic change
in Belfast M Milroy et al 1983). Most importantly, however, northern
HE with its mixed linguistic heritage offers a rich and relatively
untapped source of data for investigating the extent to which dialect
contact may be implicated in phonological change. Despite the emphasis
on northern HE, I draw on comparative material from southern dialects
throughout the following pages.
It is often remarked that, in contrast to the relative
homogeneity of southern BE, the linguistic situation in the north of
Ireland is quite varied (e. g. Adams 1977: 56). In fact Adam (1973)
finds it convenient to recognise at least seven basic northern varieties
spoken in an area with a population of just under two million. This
diversity is in part a reflection of the complex interaction of Scots
and English influences in the north, in addition to the contribution
of Irish which has left its mark to varying degrees on all types of HE.
It is the Scots element in particular that distinguishes much of
northern from southern BE.
Almost everything that has ever been written on HE stresses the
supposed effects of Irish Gaelic contact with English on its development.
I take up this issue in a treatment of HE consonant phonology in Chapter 3
and give it more detailed attention elsewhere in a discussion of the
growth and structure of the HE verb phrase (Harris 1982). Although
this is clearly an important area, it has been much discussed and it
is not my intention to go over the sane ground here. Rather the focus
in this thesis is on two other aspects of language contact in the north
of Ireland. Firstly, I examine the linguistic developments that have
arisen from contact between the typologically divergent phonological
systems of English and Scots dialects. Secondly, I attempt to isolate
several changes which reflect contact between nonstandard HE and modern
standard British varieties.
In Chapter 1 I describe the main types of northern HE that can
be identified according to the different ways in which the tensions
between English and Scots influences have been resolved. The conditions
of contact are in many ways similar to those that obtained in the early
stages of British settlement in North America. It therefore comes as
no surprise to discover close linguistic parallels between certain United
States and Canadian dialects on the one hand and northern HE on the other.
These similarities also reflect the fact that the major British
colonisation of Ireland was roughly contemporary with that of. North
America. Hibernian and American dialects of English display many
common seventeenth-century features which have since been lost from
standard British varieties.
The tension between Scots and English influences in northern HE
manifests itself most clearly in the area of vowel phonology. Some
dialects display a typically English system in which vowel length is
phonemic. That is, in these varieties it is possible to identify
one subsystem of inherently long vowels and another of inherently
short vowels. In characteristically Scots dialects, on the other
hand, vowel length is to a large extent phonetically conditioned.
Between these two types lies a range of 'mixed' dialects which show
varying degrees of compromise between phonemic and positional length.
The diffusion of the English and Scots length patterns across different
dialects, vowels and phonological environments can be expressed in
term of implicational hierarchies which I set up in Chapter 2.I
also examine the phonetic facts which can plausibly be said to deternine
the order of segment-types on the hierarchies.
In Chapter 3, Iattempt a partial. reconstruction of the internal
history of the urban HE vernacular spoken in Belfast. By inspecting
present-day sociolinguistic variation for signs of change in progress
and checking the results against historical records, it is possible to
identify the main phonological developments that have occurred over the
last century or so. Comparative material from the city's rural
hinterland dialects and from the descendants of the original British
source dialects allows us to chart the continuing competition between
English and Scots linguistic features. It is also possible to offer
a fairly clear picture of the sorts of adaptive change that have been
taking place in the vernacular as a result of contact with external
standard norms.
Thanks to its conservative nature, HE provides the historical
phonologist with an invaluable store of archaic patterns of distribution
which were once current in Early Modern English but which have since
disappeared from standard varieties. Through direct observation of
this material it is possible to gain new insights into some of the
well-known problematical issues of English historical phonology. One
of these, which I take up in Chapter 4, concerns the fate of Middle
English (ME) /6: / (as in meat) in Southern Standard English. According
to some interpretations, it merged with ME /a: / (as in mate), only to
reseparate and undergo merger with ME /e: / (as in meet). Belfast
Vernacular is one of several modern dialects in which these vowels
remain three-way distinct. Comparative reconstruction of the changes
that have produced the current reflexes in these dialects contributes
to our understanding of what might have happened to M /ɛ:/ in the
Southern Standard. In addition, the results have a bearing on the
wider issue of the sorts of strategy that can be : implemented to avoid
merger during chain-shifting. In Chapter 5,1 examine the other side
of the coin. I identify different ways in which phonological merger
is achieved and suggest how these might be modelled in terms of rules
and representations. I take up the issue of falsely reported mergers
and discuss some of the theoretical and methodological implications.
It is a commonly held belief that there is a general trend
towards dialect convergence in English as a result of the standardising
pressures exerted by universal education and the media. However,
recent sociolinguistic work suggests that, while old rural dialects
may be in decline, diversification is continuing in recently evolved
urban vernaculars (see Labov 1972a: 324; 1980a: 252). A survey of
the changes that have affected Belfast Vernacular over the last 120
years or so does indeed confirm that a degree of standardisation has
taken place. However, this has been restricted for the most part to
the lexical incidence of phonemes. At the phonological level, almost
no major structural alignment with Southern Standard English has taken
place. Indeed, evidence from change in progress suggests that sane
internal innovations are actually moving in directions which run
counter to standard norm