Intonational variation and change in York English

Sam Hellmuth; Ciara Farrelly

Intonational variation and change in York English

Language and Linguistic Science

Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review

Abstract

The variety of English spoken in the city of York, UK, is of sociolinguistic interest due to the ‘recycling’ of traditional dialectal forms such as Definite Article Reduction (‘to t’pub’) and Past-Reference ‘come’ (‘I come home late last night’) by younger (typically male) speakers. This is despite the fact that – in the same apparent time studies based on the York English Corpus (‘YEC’) – middle-aged speakers (aged 50-70) used these forms less than older speakers (>70), so these patterns had previously appeared to be falling out of use. In this paper we first argue for the existence of a distinctive ‘Yorkshire rise-fall’ nuclear contour, which is sufficiently different in form and distribution from rise-fall contours reported for other varieties of British English that it can be characterised as a traditional (prosodic) feature of Yorkshire dialects. We then explore whether the observed patterns of variation in lexical-grammatical variables are mirrored in variation and change in use of this distinctive Yorkshire rise-fall nuclear contour, in apparent time, via qualitative analysis of a data subset from YEC.

Original language	English
Publication status	Accepted/In press - 6 Sept 2021
Event	1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI) 2021 - University of Southern Denmark (SDU) , Sonderborg, Denmark Duration: 6 Dec 2021 → 9 Dec 2021 https://event.sdu.dk/tai2021

Conference

Conference	1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI) 2021
Abbreviated title	TAI2021
Country/Territory	Denmark
City	Sonderborg
Period	6/12/21 → 9/12/21
Internet address	https://event.sdu.dk/tai2021

Access to Document

TAI York English [named]Other version, 362 KBLicence: CC BY-ND

Cite this

@conference{143e553269f04bc9824477dd0fa6cc6e,

title = "Intonational variation and change in York English",

abstract = "The variety of English spoken in the city of York, UK, is of sociolinguistic interest due to the {\textquoteleft}recycling{\textquoteright} of traditional dialectal forms such as Definite Article Reduction ({\textquoteleft}to t{\textquoteright}pub{\textquoteright}) and Past-Reference {\textquoteleft}come{\textquoteright} ({\textquoteleft}I come home late last night{\textquoteright}) by younger (typically male) speakers. This is despite the fact that – in the same apparent time studies based on the York English Corpus ({\textquoteleft}YEC{\textquoteright}) – middle-aged speakers (aged 50-70) used these forms less than older speakers (>70), so these patterns had previously appeared to be falling out of use. In this paper we first argue for the existence of a distinctive {\textquoteleft}Yorkshire rise-fall{\textquoteright} nuclear contour, which is sufficiently different in form and distribution from rise-fall contours reported for other varieties of British English that it can be characterised as a traditional (prosodic) feature of Yorkshire dialects. We then explore whether the observed patterns of variation in lexical-grammatical variables are mirrored in variation and change in use of this distinctive Yorkshire rise-fall nuclear contour, in apparent time, via qualitative analysis of a data subset from YEC. ",

author = "Sam Hellmuth and Ciara Farrelly",

year = "2021",

month = sep,

day = "6",

language = "English",

note = "1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI) 2021, TAI2021 ; Conference date: 06-12-2021 Through 09-12-2021",

url = "https://event.sdu.dk/tai2021",

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TY - CONF

T1 - Intonational variation and change in York English

AU - Hellmuth, Sam

AU - Farrelly, Ciara

PY - 2021/9/6

Y1 - 2021/9/6

N2 - The variety of English spoken in the city of York, UK, is of sociolinguistic interest due to the ‘recycling’ of traditional dialectal forms such as Definite Article Reduction (‘to t’pub’) and Past-Reference ‘come’ (‘I come home late last night’) by younger (typically male) speakers. This is despite the fact that – in the same apparent time studies based on the York English Corpus (‘YEC’) – middle-aged speakers (aged 50-70) used these forms less than older speakers (>70), so these patterns had previously appeared to be falling out of use. In this paper we first argue for the existence of a distinctive ‘Yorkshire rise-fall’ nuclear contour, which is sufficiently different in form and distribution from rise-fall contours reported for other varieties of British English that it can be characterised as a traditional (prosodic) feature of Yorkshire dialects. We then explore whether the observed patterns of variation in lexical-grammatical variables are mirrored in variation and change in use of this distinctive Yorkshire rise-fall nuclear contour, in apparent time, via qualitative analysis of a data subset from YEC.

AB - The variety of English spoken in the city of York, UK, is of sociolinguistic interest due to the ‘recycling’ of traditional dialectal forms such as Definite Article Reduction (‘to t’pub’) and Past-Reference ‘come’ (‘I come home late last night’) by younger (typically male) speakers. This is despite the fact that – in the same apparent time studies based on the York English Corpus (‘YEC’) – middle-aged speakers (aged 50-70) used these forms less than older speakers (>70), so these patterns had previously appeared to be falling out of use. In this paper we first argue for the existence of a distinctive ‘Yorkshire rise-fall’ nuclear contour, which is sufficiently different in form and distribution from rise-fall contours reported for other varieties of British English that it can be characterised as a traditional (prosodic) feature of Yorkshire dialects. We then explore whether the observed patterns of variation in lexical-grammatical variables are mirrored in variation and change in use of this distinctive Yorkshire rise-fall nuclear contour, in apparent time, via qualitative analysis of a data subset from YEC.

M3 - Abstract

T2 - 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI) 2021

Y2 - 6 December 2021 through 9 December 2021

ER -