Extra-grammatical morphology: English reduplicatives

2001

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without Contents An introduction to the textbook Chapter One: Word origins 3 The affixes of English 3.1 Prefixes 3.2 Suffixes Chapter Six: Replacement rules 1 Assimilation and types of assimilation 2 Labial assimilation 2.1 Exceptions to labial assimilation 3 Voicing assimilation 3.1 Sound versus spelling 3.2 Left-to-right voicing assimilation viii Contents 11 Fossilized allomorphy 12 Gradation 2.1 Gradation in Germanic 13 Rhotacism 3.1 Rhotacism in Latin 3.2 Rhotacism in Germanic 14 Metathesis (transposition) 15 Obscure cognates: completely unpredictable allomorphy 16 False cognates 6.1 Boundary misplacement 6.2 Homophony in roots and affixes 6.2.1 Root homophony 6.3 Affix homophony 6.3.1 Phonetic rules and homophony 6.3.2 Homophony of grammatical suffixes Contents ix 6.3.3 Mixed homophony: affixes and roots 17 Pseudo-affixes 18 Semantic variation 19 Multiple derivatives-multiple meanings Multiple affixes-same meaning Chapter Nine: Semantic change and semantic guesswork 1 Terminology 1.1 Diversity of meanings 1.2 Other-onyms 2 How meanings change ("semantic change") 2.1 External forces 2.1.1 Technology and current relevance 2.2 Accidental associations 2.3 Internal forces 2.3.1 Analogy 2.4 Loss of specificity 3 The results of semantic change 3.1 Scope 3.2 Status: amelioration and pejoration 3.3 Mixed examples 3.4 Narrowing/specialization 4 Types of status change 5 Changing cultural relevance 6 Semantic guesswork

Language, 1996

Journal of Linguistics, 1997

upon Tyne As Richard Hogg points out in the general editor's preface, this volume differs from Volumes I-IV in that it does not primarily give a ' straightforward historical account ' of internal linguistic developments, but an account of separate varieties of English that differ to a greater or lesser extent from what is regarded as the mainstream. The book is divided into two parts. Part I is ' Regional varieties of English in Great Britain and Ireland ' and contains chapters on English in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, together with a chapter on the dialects of England since . Part II is ' English Overseas ', covering Australia, the Caribbean, New Zealand, South Africa and South Asia. Robert Burchfield's ' Introduction ' seems to reflect personal interests as much as it does the contents of the volume, and the account of topics raised within the chapters is rather sketchy. The topic of standard English is treated prominently, although it is not a major concern in the volume as a whole, and space is given to debates about the teaching of standard British English overseas, which are mentioned only briefly in Chapter . At times it even appears to be taking issue with comments made by the contributors, and the citations from the chapters (for example, the citation from the Irish English chapter on p. ) are not always of central interest. The introduction is not a very useful as a guide to the main linguistic questions treated in the volume. J. Derrick McClure's chapter starts with an informative account of the socio-political history of English in Scotland. Anglo-Saxon appeared in the southeast around  .., that is, at about the same time as in England, and English therefore has a continuous history in Scotland from the earliest times. The dominance of the English-speaking areas within what became the Scottish kingdom was, however, not assured until much later. As McClure points out () : at the end of the thirteenth century ' the Celtic tongue was spoken as a first or only language by at least half the population '. The emergence of Scots as a national language dates from the passing of the throne to Lowland families from  onward, after which time the conflict with Gaelic-speaking chiefs continued. The chapter continues with an account of later developments, including the increasing southern English influence in the period -.     The second half of the chapter deals mainly with the internal history of Scots in phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary, including a number of topics that have been salient recently in historical phonology, such as the Great Vowel Shift in Scots and the Scottish vowel length rule, by which vowel-length in Scots is shown to be distributed allophonically rather than phonemically. An account is also given of aspects of regional and social variation in contemporary Scots, and, quite properly, there is also much in this chapter about the distinctiveness of the Scottish cultural and literary scene. The author has accomplished a very difficult task extremely well. The history of Scots deserves much more than a single chapter in the Cambridge History. As for Wales (the subject of Alan R. Thomas's chapter), much less can be said about the historical linguistic distinctiveness of Welsh English, as it is more generally an outgrowth of English English, and the most notable feature of this chapter is its excellent sociolinguistic description. It is the history of bilingualism that stands out. In an Act of , the London government supported the translation of the Bible and Divine Service into Welsh. Although its use in religious services is one of the reasons for the survival of Welsh, Thomas (-) points out that this religious function isolated the language from the (English-based) political mainstream and had the effect of reinforcing the gulf between the Welsh-speaking peasantry and the Anglicized gentry for two centuries. The various influences that brought about the spread of English into Wales are clearly set out, and the sociolinguistic account makes full use of recent advances in our understanding of language situations of this kind. As for the linguistic features of Welsh English, these are not profoundly different from English English, especially in syntax, and this could be connected with the form that the history of bilingualism took. Although there is substratal carryover from Welsh, it is less, at some levels, than might be expected. Jeffrey L. Kallen's chapter on Irish English is a fine scholarly piece of work that brings together information from a great variety of historical, social and linguistic studies and deals with it in a careful, well-judged manner. There is dispute about the extent to which English survived in Ireland in the later medieval period, and Kallen (probably rightly) inclines to the view that it survived more vigorously than has been traditionally believed. The recession of Irish Gaelic is judiciously assessed, using census data and the comments of contemporary observers. The distinctive characteristics of Irish English are carefully described, giving full, but critical, attention to the possible substratal effects of Irish, and a clear account is given of the Hiberno-English tense\aspect system, which is of particular interest as it has similarities to developments in other varieties and differs from standard English at a deepseated level. The special characteristics of Ulster English, which has a background in Scots as well as southern English, and which was the language of the ' Scotch-Irish ' settlers in North America, are also given appropriate   attention. This is a particularly good piece of descriptive history, notable for its avoidance of sentimental positions to the effect that English is not really ' native ' to Irish people and has only been ' rented ' to the Irish (see the citation from P. L. Henry on p. ). For better or worse, English has been in Ireland for  years. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Ossi Ihalainen, whose death in  is a tragic loss to English dialectology. His chapter on English dialects since  brings together a mass of information (much of it from the nineteenth century) that is not especially well known to present day variationists and which will not otherwise be found in any single source. The author uses Trudgill's () distinction between ' traditional dialects ' and ' modern dialects '. There is much discussion of the ' traditional ' dialect areas of England (following the pioneering work of Alexander Ellis), and detailed information on divergent phonological and grammatical developments is very usefully brought together. Although it is customary to speak of the rapid recession of traditional dialects, what is more remarkable to a historian is that they survived in such divergent forms for such a long time, and Ihalainen points this out. ' Modern ' developments are also discussed. This is an original study that will be a valuable resource for historical dialectologists. Juhani Klemola's assistance at the proofreading stage is acknowledged on p. xx. Part II covers English Overseas. George W. Turner's chapter on Australian English includes a wide-ranging account of the differences between Australian and British English, and much interesting historical information. Turner notes, among many other things, that \l\ vocalisation and intervocalic \t\ flapping have been noticed. I would have liked to know more about these tendencies, as they are only too likely to be vernacular changes in progress, and research is in progress on at least one of them. Laurie Bauer's account of New Zealand English (Chapter ) goes rather more deeply into issues arising, the most general of which is the origin of New Zealand English. Despite the general respectability of the earliest British settlers (in contrast to Australia), their speech does not seem to have survived in a distinctive form, but has been overtaken by Australian English, of which New Zealand English is now reasonably described as a variety. This full treatment of New Zealand English is made possible by an upsurge of recent interest in the subject by a number of scholars, including the author himself. This has extended to an interest in Maori English, and Bauer gives an illuminating account of this, together with many other matters that are of great sociolinguistic and historical importance. Chapter , by John A. Holm, on Caribbean English, is notable for its very clear introduction on the nature of pidgin and creole languages. To generalize about the Caribbean is extremely difficult, as there have been so many influences in different areas, and the author gives a wide-ranging account of these different developments. The range of variation between 