Postvocalic /r/ as an Index of Integration into the BEV Speech Community

Myhill, John

doi:10.2307/454818

Cited by 35 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Work by Myhill (1988) on postvocalic \r\ is useful for illustrating this point. He examined \r\ production in two groups of speakers of African American English: those with frequent contact with mainstream culture and those without.…”

Section: Characterstics Of Saae and Swementioning

confidence: 99%

Nonmainstream Dialect Use and Specific Language Impairment

Oetting

McDonald

2001

J Speech Lang Hear Res

162

121

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Most work looking at specific language impairment (SLI) has been done in the context of mainstream dialects. This paper extends the study of SLI to two nonmainstream dialects: a rural version of Southern African American English (SAAE) and a rural version of Southern White English (SWE). Data were language samples from 93 4-to 6-year-olds who lived in southeastern Louisiana Forty were classified as speakers of SAAE, and 53 were classified as speakers of SWE. A third were previously diagnosed σs SLI; the others served as either age-matched (6N) or language-matched (4N) controls.The two dialects differed in frequency of usage on 14 of the 35 coded morphosyntactic surface patterns; speakers of these dialects could be successfully discriminated (94%) from each other in a discriminant analysis using just four of these patterns. Across dialects, four patterns resulted in main effects that were related to diagnostic condition (SLI vs. 6N), and a slightly different set of four patterns showed effects that were related to developmental processes (4N vs. 6N). More interestingly, the surface characteristics of SLI were found to manifest in the two dialects in different ways. A discriminant function based solely on SAAE speakers tended to misclassify SWE children with SLI as having normal language, and a discriminant function based on SWE speakers tended to misclassify SAAE unaffected children as SLI. Patterns within the SLI profile that cut across the two dialects included difficulties with tense marking and question formation. The results provide important direction for future studies and argue for the inclusion of contrastive as well as noncontrastive features of dialects within SLI research. Keywords dialect; specific language impairment; morphosyntaxIn a recent publication, Tager-Flusberg and Cooper (1999) summarize the comments of participants from an NIH-sponsored workshop that focused on the study of specific language impairment (SLI). The participants included experts in the fields of SLI and other developmental disorders such as autism, learning disabilities, and dyslexia. As part of the report, the authors highlight important study topics to help guide future research. One of the recommendations listed in the report is the development of constructs that are important for defining SLI in individuals who come from many language, cultural, and dialect backgrounds.The goal of the current work is to begin, at an exploratory level, to extend the study of SLI to two nonmainstream dialects of English. Although the grammatical profile of SLI has been explored in a wide range of languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, and even Inukitut (an Eskimo- NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptAleut language) (Leonard, 1998), the study of SLI within nonmainstream varieties of these languages has been nonexistent. A primary reason for this has been limited knowledge on the part of researchers about the developmenta...

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Section: Characterstics Of Saae and Swementioning

confidence: 99%

Nonmainstream Dialect Use and Specific Language Impairment

Oetting

McDonald

2001

J Speech Lang Hear Res

162

121

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“…Comparing the current overall rhotic deletion rates to other contexts of variable rhotic deletion in the US, the current overall frequency is considerably higher than the 13% deletion rate for white speakers from New Hampshire (Nagy and Irwin, 2007), similar to the 51% deletion rate for Southern speakers-via the LAGS database, collected in the 1960's and 70's (Schonweitz, 2001)-, yet much lower than both the 62% deletion rate for black and white Bostonians (Nagy and Irwin, 2007) and the 60% deletion rate for Black English Vernacular speakers in Philadelphia (Myhill, 1988). In New Zealand, a region considered typically non-rhotic, a pan-New Zealand study of rural speakers demonstrates a 91% deletion rate (E. Gordon, Campbell, Hay, Maclagan, Sudbury and Trudgill, 2004).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Past studies have found the following external social factors to have significant ties to the rate of /r/ deletion: age, sex, ethnicity, degree of formality, integration into standard AmE speaking communities, regional background, socio-economic status and occupation (Labov, 1972;Myhill, 1988;Feagin, 1990). These are discussed in Section 4, below.…”

Section: Social Constraints On (R)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Word-final /r/ tokens before a vowel-initial word-that is, prevocalic (r) tokens-are excluded in Labov (1966), but included in several other studies (Agnihotri and Sahgal, 1985;Myhill, 1988;Sharma, 2003) because "[i]n many languages, final consonants which are otherwise deleted are sometimes preserved when the following word beings with a vowel" (Myhill, 1988:208). However, the same study finds no significant differences in (r) deletion rates across following word-boundary-plus-vowel, consonants and glides.…”

Section: Bird)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…her, bird, while the latter are separately analyzed (Labov, 1966: 50 (Harris, 2006: 2); following word-boundary-plus-vowel-termed 'linking r'-which provokes rmaintenance (Downes, 1998: 146); preceding vowel quality (Harris, 2006); and /r/'s status as a rhotacized schwa nucleus (e.g. in bird) (Myhill, 1988;Feagin, 1990) Labov, 1989). Meanwhile, the target word's lexical class has not demonstrated any relationship to /r/ deletion (Nagy and Irwin, 2007).…”

Section: Linguistic Constraints On (R)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Postvocalic (r) in urban Indian English

Chand

2010

EWW

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Native varieties of World Englishes can shed light on competing local and international language ideologies and alignments with different standards, while quantitative variationist methods permit dialect internal analysis of structural variation without direct reference to external standards, by focusing on internal linguistic and social constraints. Contributing to these endeavors, this study examines variation in postvocalic (r) deletion in Indian English (IndE), uncovering rhotic patterns which are significantly influenced by, and illuminate, distinct urban Indian sociolinguistic alignments. The results also demonstrate that IndE is diverging from both its British colonially influenced past, and from modern internationally prestigious English varieties, through real and apparent time analysis. This analysis focuses on the larger sociolinguistic milieu of IndE emergence and evolution, offering a nuanced response to superficial and oftentimes categorical IndE grammars. Further, studying native speakers offers a counterpoint to L1 contact explanations for IndE stabilization and evolution in the postcolonial context.

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References

2002

The Development of African American English

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Postvocalic /r/ as an Index of Integration into the BEV Speech Community

Cited by 35 publications

References 9 publications

Nonmainstream Dialect Use and Specific Language Impairment

Nonmainstream Dialect Use and Specific Language Impairment

Postvocalic (r) in urban Indian English

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