En[dj]uring [ʧ]unes or ma[tj]ure [ʤ]ukes? Yod-coalescence and yod-dropping in the<i>Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database</i>

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In a corpus compiled from the notes in John Walker's pronouncing dictionary (first edition 1791), Trapateau (2016) found that the most frequently occurring evaluative term used was vulgar. In Walker's dictionary, vulgar is defined as ‘plebeian, suiting to the common people, practised among the common people, mean, low, being of the common rate; publick, commonly bruited’ (1791, s.v. vulgar). The frequency of this term in Walker's critical notes suggests that the role of his dictionary was to warn against unacceptable pronunciations as well as to provide an account of acceptable or, to use Walker's second most frequent term, polite ones. In this article, I discuss some of the pronunciations labelled vulgar by Walker and other eighteenth-century authors and argue that, far from dismissing such evidence as prescriptive, we should consider the role played by Walker and his contemporaries in the enregisterment of stigmatised variants and varieties.

Section: ‘Vulgar’ Pronunciationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ‘Vulgar’ Pronunciationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Practised among the common people’: ‘vulgar’ pronunciations in eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionaries

Beal¹

2023

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“…The authors did not work in isolation, and their influence on each other is clear; for example, Walker frequently compares his recommended pronunciations to those advocated by other writers, while Jones named his dictionary Sheridan Improved . Two editions of Jones’ dictionary were included in ECEP because in the third, he distances himself further from some of those pronunciations advocated by Sheridan (1780) (see Beal, Sen, Yáñez-Bouza & Wallis 2020). The authors themselves had varied occupations: Perry, Scott and Buchanan were schoolteachers; Sheridan, Walker and Kenrick had worked in the theatre; while Jones and Spence had worked in the book production and distribution trade.…”

Section: The Ecep Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

“…All of Wells’ lexical sets are covered by the database, thus allowing users to interrogate relevant sound changes such as Pre-Fricative Lengthening in the bath and cloth sets, the foot/ strut split, or variation in diphthongs such as face and goat . Wells’ original sets are supplemented by five further ones to cover contemporary consonantal variation such as h -dropping, yod-dropping, yod-coalescence and /hw/ ̴ /w/ ̴ /h/ variation ( deuce, feature, heir, sure, whale sets) (see Beal, Sen, Yáñez-Bouza & Wallis 2020). ECEP converts each author's idiosyncratic pronunciation notation into its IPA equivalent, and also includes any metalinguistic commentary provided.…”

Section: The Ecep Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

Using theEighteenth-Century English Phonology Database(ECEP) as a teaching resource

Wallis¹

2020

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This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.

“… 2 [juː] was still treated as a diphthong by many grammarians in the CNG (see also Beal et al 2020b for the development of yod).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Representations of phonological changes ingoatand /r/ in theCollection of Nineteenth-century Grammars(CNG)

Wiemann¹

2023

This article presents an analysis of vowels in the goat set and /r/ in the Collection of Nineteenth-century Grammars (CNG) (cf. Anderwald 2016). My central questions concern the extent to which grammarians provide evidence for early diphthongisation in goat words and for changes in the distribution of /r/ variants in nineteenth-century prestige accents. I furthermore evaluate how far grammars are suitable as a source for researching historical sound changes. I show that monophthongs are the most frequently proposed variants for goat and are often referred to as ‘improper diphthongs’. Some diphthongal descriptions exist for words in open syllables, before /l/ and before plosives in words like know, soul and boat respectively. Concerning the distribution of /r/, I show that most grammars continued to propose two sounds, which were almost exclusively described as ‘rough’ or ‘trilled’, and ‘smooth’ or ‘soft’. However, some grammarians also argued for /r/ having only one sound in all positions and complete post-vocalic /r/ absence. Overall, the grammars in the CNG display a considerable amount of what I assume to be copying from scholars such as Walker (1791) and Murray (1795). Thus, I argue that great care is required when attempting to infer phonological changes from nineteenth-century grammars.