Definite article reduction

Last updated

Definite article reduction (DAR), in linguistics, is the use of a vowel-less form of the definite article the in Northern dialects of England English, for example in Yorkshire dialect. DAR is often represented by dialect spelling with an apostrophe: t' or th' .

Contents

DAR is found in most traditional Northern English varieties and even some North Midlands dialects; however, the dialects of Northumberland, northern County Durham and northern Cumberland are not affected by DAR.

History

DAR has been recorded in textual form since 1673, and the orthographic representations "t'" and "th'" occur in literature (such as in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights ) and are frequently encountered in the media. The historical origin is unclear. Links with Middle English te forms of the article remain unproved.

A similar usage of an article with a consonant "t'" can also be found in Modern Dutch and in the West Frisian language off the north Netherlands coast. In these languages, "t" clearly derives from the neuter definite article (Dutch het and West Frisian it) because the Dutch and Frisian masculine and feminine singular as well as plural definite article de cannot become "t").

The family name "Huis in't Feld" exists in Dutch, meaning "house in the field". Claims of that being phonetically similar to DAR remain to be verified experimentally. In Cumbria, a voiceless alveolar plosive (the English t sound) occurs and may have some superficial similarities to realizations in West Frisian and Low German, but the glottal and the glottalised DAR variants that are found elsewhere in the DAR area and across Yorkshire present a very different realisation. Jones (2002: 342) comments that no contact explanation with other varieties of Germanic is required (or could be supported on the basis of available evidence) to explain DAR as the development of DAR involves common cross-linguistic patterns of change (stopping of dental fricatives, change of plosive to glottal) that occur in unrelated languages and so they have a purely phonetic origin.

Phonetics

The phonetic forms of DAR are very varied. The "th'" form suggests a voiceless dental fricative realisation, usually voiceless [θ] (as in thin), and is restricted to the western parts of the DAR area (Lancashire and Cheshire). It also occurred widely across northern and central Staffordshire in earlier dialect surveys (Jones 2002). Sporadic forms similar to DAR were reported to occur in localities in Berkshire, Sussex and Essex and also in Aylesham, in Kent, because of the large influx of miners from Northern England to work in the Kent Coalfield. [1] The "t" form suggests a voiceless alveolar plosive [t] or a voiceless dental plosive realisation [t̪], as in tin, but also serves to represent a 'glottal' form. The glottal form is most widely encountered and is typical of the Yorkshire dialect. In southern County Durham, the definite article is traditionally reduced to [t], as in Cumbrian, but may also be voiced to [d]. [2] [3] Some dialects may show more than one phonetic form, but the conditioning factors for such variation are unknown. It seems that unvarying glottal forms are most widely found now (2005). Variation with a full form the is also common.

Speakers of other forms of English often find it difficult to hear, especially the 'glottal' forms that affect the pitch and duration and voice quality of surrounding words and sounds in subtle ways. This often leads to claims that the article is absent, but this is rarely the case. True absence of the article may occur in the east of the DAR area, in and around Kingston upon Hull.

Instrumental acoustic work in 2007 showed that DAR speakers use very subtle differences in the quality and timing of glottalisation to differentiate between a glottal stop occurring as an allophone of final /t/ in a word like "seat" and a glottal stop occurring as the form of the definite article in otherwise identical sentences (compare "seat sacks" and "see t' sacks"). [4] Speakers of DAR dialects therefore appear to have (put somewhat simplistically) two kinds of glottal stop: one for DAR and one for word-final /t/.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allophone</span> Phone used to pronounce a single phoneme

In phonology, an allophone is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.

A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German ; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh. This turbulent airflow is called frication.

In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including ⟨R⟩, ⟨r⟩ in the Latin script and ⟨Р⟩, ⟨p⟩ in the Cyrillic script. They are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by upper- or lower-case variants of Roman ⟨R⟩, ⟨r⟩: ⟨r⟩, ⟨ɾ⟩, ⟨ɹ⟩, ⟨ɻ⟩, ⟨ʀ⟩, ⟨ʁ⟩, ⟨ɽ⟩, and ⟨ɺ⟩. Transcriptions for vocalic or semivocalic realisations of underlying rhotics include the ⟨ə̯⟩ and ⟨ɐ̯⟩.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pharyngealization</span> Articulation of consonants or vowels

Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.

In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.

The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the 'th' in think. Though rather rare as a phoneme among the world's languages, it is encountered in some of the most widespread and influential ones. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨θ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is T. The IPA symbol is the Greek letter theta, which is used for this sound in post-classical Greek, and the sound is thus often referred to as "theta".

Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can be modified by phonation. Contrastive implosives are found in approximately 13% of the world's languages.

In English, the digraph ⟨th⟩ represents in most cases either one or the other of two phonemes: the voiced dental fricative and the voiceless dental fricative. Occasionally, it stands for or the cluster. In compound words, ⟨th⟩ may be a consonant sequence rather than a digraph.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High German consonant shift</span> Series of sound changes affecting some West Germanic languages

In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probably began between the 3rd and 5th centuries and was almost complete before the earliest written records in High German were produced in the 8th century. From Proto-Germanic, the resulting language, Old High German, can be neatly contrasted with the other continental West Germanic languages, which for the most part did not experience the shift, and with Old English, which remained unaffected.

Doubly articulated consonants are consonants with two simultaneous primary places of articulation of the same manner. They are a subset of co-articulated consonants. They are to be distinguished from co-articulated consonants with secondary articulation; that is, a second articulation not of the same manner. An example of a doubly articulated consonant is the voiceless labial–velar plosive, which is a and a pronounced simultaneously. On the other hand, the voiceless labialized velar plosive has only a single stop articulation, velar, with a simultaneous approximant-like rounding of the lips. In some dialects of Arabic, the voiceless velar fricative has a simultaneous uvular trill, but this is not considered double articulation either.

In linguistics, assibilation is a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is a form of spirantization and is commonly the final phase of palatalization.

The Sikkimese language, also called Sikkimese, Bhutia, or Drenjongké, Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke and Denzongke, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman languages. It is spoken by the Bhutia in Sikkim, India and in parts of Koshi, Nepal. It is the Official Language of Sikkim, India. The Sikkimese people refer to their own language as Drendzongké and their homeland as Drendzong. Up until 1975 Sikkimese was not a written language. After gaining Indian Statehood the language was introduced as a school subject in Sikkim and the written language was developed.

This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of the English language which concern consonants.

Th-stopping is the realization of the dental fricatives as stops—either dental or alveolar—which occurs in several dialects of English. In some accents, such as of Indian English and middle- or upper-class Irish English, they are realized as the dental stops and as such do not merge with the alveolar stops ; thus, for example, tin is not a homophone of thin. In other accents, such as varieties of Caribbean English, Nigerian English, Liberian English, and older, rural, or working-class Irish English, such pairs are indeed merged. Variation between both dental and alveolar forms exists in much of the working-class English speech of North America and sometimes southern England. It is also common for babies and toddlers, who are still learning to talk and/or haven't fully grown their front teeth capable of producing the Th sound. Th-stopping occurred in all continental Germanic languages, resulting in cognates such as German die for "the" and Bruder for "brother".

The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences:

This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the West Frisian language.

References

  1. ↑ Welcome to the north! New Dialect Formation in Kent's 'Sunshine Corner'. David Hornsby. Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society 2016, pp.44-56.
  2. ↑ Orton, Harold (1933). The phonology of a south Durham dialect: Descriptive, Historical, and Comparative. London: Keagan Paul Trench Trubner. p. 18.
  3. ↑ Transactions of the Philological Society. 1870–72: 86. 1872.{{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  4. ↑ Jones, Mark J. (2007). "Glottals and grammar: Definite article reduction and morpheme boundaries" (PDF). Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics (12).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.