33.1741, Review: English; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Okrent (2021)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1741. Mon May 16 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1741, Review: English; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Okrent (2021)

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Date: Mon, 16 May 2022 14:19:29
From: Anke Lensch [anlensch at uni-koblenz.de]
Subject: Highly Irregular

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36790037


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2772.html

AUTHOR: Arika  Okrent
TITLE: Highly Irregular
SUBTITLE: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Anke Lensch, Universität Koblenz-Landau

SUMMARY

Okrent’s book provides an all-encompassing and detailed overview of how
earlier stages of the English language and language change can explain many
present-day English irregularities. To Okrent, any exception to a rule or
seemingly unusual form is an irregularity. According to her, irregularities
are “everywhere … At every level of language, from spelling to vocabulary to
grammar to word order meaning” (page 9). Each chapter is subdivided into
several subsections, and each of the sections zooms in on a specific
phenomenon by presenting and contextualizing several carefully selected
examples. By grouping similar or related phenomena together in a subchapter,
Okrent brings order to the world of irregularities in the English language. 

The first chapter introduces the reader to a first set of irregularities that
are linked to the grapheme-phoneme mismatch and some that can be attributed to
collocational preferences. All of the following chapters are ordered
diachronically, starting with the second chapter, which is dedicated to
phenomena attributed to characteristics of Old English and language contact
during the Old English period. The answer to the question that is raised in
the title of the book is provided in one of the subchapters of the second
chapter, starting on page 45. Here, Okrent provides background information
explaining “why tough, through, and dough don’t rhyme”, - despite ending in
the same sequence of letters. She first explains that the Latin alphabet was
never invented to represent English sounds and that it took several centuries
for English spelling conventions to evolve (page 45 ff.). She then draws on a
list of German words (such as “Buch”) still containing a velar fricative to
illustrate which sound used to be represented by <gh>. This is a good example
of how Okrent makes her explanations more approachable for a non-linguist
audience. Afterwards she explains why the contemporary spelling of “tough,
through, and dough” should be considered a fossil: The velar fricative is no
longer part of the standard English sound inventory and the sequence of <gh>
has thus lost its former function (cf. page 48 ff.). Okrent furthermore
demonstrates how, once the velar fricative had disappeared, the sequence of
<gh> was reinterpreted and added to other words by providing a set of examples
(such as “furlough”, “delight”, and “haughty”). Okrent also elaborates on how
present-day English differences in the pronunciation of <ou> preceding <gh>
have evolved (page 49). This subchapter, like all other subchapters, thus
provides an informative and concise account of the phenomenon and directly
related phenomena. 

The third chapter is dedicated to phenomena related to the influence of Norman
French. The subchapters in the fourth chapter discuss irregularities that are
connected to changes reflecting the consequences of the invention of the
printing press and the beginnings of modern scholarly research, the
subchapters in the fifth chapter illustrate how the influence of Late Modern
English scholarship is reflected in present-day English, and, in the sixth
chapter, some irregularities that can be attributed to processing are
presented. The final chapter briefly affirms that language change is
inevitable and natural and thus convincingly argues against prescriptivism and
artificial efforts advocating language preservation. 

As the style of the book is colloquial and journalistic rather than academic,
it is clear that the publication is not primarily aimed at an academic
readership. This is further underpinned by O’Neill’s illustrative and often
comic cartoons. Okrent skilfully invalidates popular beliefs and
misconceptions about language by contextualizing linguistic examples and by
linking them to findings of cutting-edge science in the field of historical
linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and sociolinguistics. In this way, she
challenges prescriptivist beliefs and educates her readership in a joking and
witty manner without becoming overbearing.

EVALUATION

The author meets her goal of providing an informed overview of the background
and reasons for the occurrence of irregular forms or unusual patterns. At the
same time, the book is entertaining and a light read. Okrent successfully
manages to summarize and simplify complex linguistic phenomena and to phrase
them in a way that is appealing to a readership without specialist linguistic
knowledge. This is achieved by using simple explanations and by only rarely
using linguistic terminology. Consider Okrent’s elaborations of the effect of
high frequency on irregularity: On page 64, she discusses the paradigm of “be”
to illustrate that highly frequent verbs “tend to be the most irregular of
all, and they trace back to even older patterns and ancient historical
changes”. On page 72, she shows that high frequency can furthermore lead to
the preservation of older forms by selecting the example of the conservation
of the past participles “shaven, known, spoken” and “won”. On page 105, Okrent
explains the decrease of word order flexibility attributed to the loss of Old
English paradigms due to the gradual weakening of unstressed syllables, mainly
during the Middle English period, by stating: “There was some flexibility in
the word order of noun and adjective in Old English because there were more
word endings that told you what role a word has in a sentence.” These
simplifications allow a non-linguist readership to gain a better understanding
of the complexity of language change and the background of contemporary
irregularities. 

Okrent’s book does not explicitly touch upon emerging differences linked to
the evolution of varieties of English other than British English and American
English. Okrent provides background information on differences between British
English and American English, mainly focussing on differences in spelling, as
in the subchapter “Pick a Color/Colour. Can’t We Get This
Standardized/Standardised” (starting on page 175). Providing more detail on
other varieties of English would add another facet that is a characteristic of
the English language; however, this would probably exceed the scope of the
book.

Throughout the book, Okrent does not use any IPA symbols. Some chapters, such
as “Don’t InSULT Me with That INsult” starting on page 94, show that IPA
symbols are not necessary for the discussion of stress shifts that are
connected to the contact situation of Romance and English during the Middle
English period. As illustrated in the title of this chapter, Okrent
successfully employs capital letters to represent stress differences. Using
IPA symbols might be confusing for a non-linguist readership and yet, at
times, adding IPA symbols might have improved the readability of some
passages. Thus, a brief explanation at the back of the book might have helped
to underpin descriptions such as “a sort of soft gargle we no longer use in
English” to refer to a voiced velar fricative (page 52). 

Some of the labels Okrent uses may have popular appeal, such as “barbarians”
for the first Germanic settlers on the British Isles (page 38 ff.), yet the
use of more neutral terms would be preferable. Moreover, occasionally,
historical background information Okrent mentions is not supported by
scientific evidence, e.g., to this day there is no archaeological evidence for
the claim that Anglo-Saxon settlers were “invading hordes” (page 41); rather,
to date archaeological evidence dating to the period is still scarce (cf. e.g.
Hogg 1992: 4 ff.). 

It needs to be pointed out that there is an inaccurate generalization when
Okrent draws a parallel with the German fricative sounds. Page 47 features a
list contrasting English words which used to be pronounced with a voiceless
velar fricative and these are placed in contrast to a set of German examples.
Okrent claims that Present-day Standard German “Tochter, acht, Licht, Nacht,
recht, hoch, gedacht”, and “Nachbar” still contain this voiceless velar
fricative. This is incorrect, as in present-day Standard New High German,
“Licht” and “recht” involve a voiceless palatal fricative.

The addition of references in the running text or in footnotes would further
underpin Okrent’s claims and observations, yet listing them only at the very
end of the book is more than justified since the book does not mainly target
an academic audience. All in all, the bibliography of the book is
comparatively brief, yet at the same time, Okrent’s choice of references
firmly situates her publication among recent usage-based, empirical, and
corpus-based approaches to language. Her choice of sources reflects the fact
that she is aware of recent developments in cognitive linguistics,
corpus-based research into language variation and change, sociolinguistics,
and historical linguistics. The latest publication in her list dates to 2018,
but she also enumerates sources dating to the 16th century, befitting the
topics she discusses in the subchapters.  

Overall, the book’s most notable achievement is that it provides insights into
the world of linguistics in an approachable, colloquial and yet informed
manner. Okrent (2021) is an excellent book for non-linguists with an interest
in language and language change. It is also an entertaining and light read for
linguists, and the book might appeal to undergraduate students in particular. 

This review concludes with a brief comparison with similar publications.
Okrent’s book is a highly valuable and entertaining addition to publications
primarily aimed at catering to a non-linguist audience interested in language
variation and change and language history. Thus, compared to Crystal (2004),
Okrent’s book is more informal, less detailed, but slightly more focussed,
namely on irregularities. In style and detail, Okrent (2021) is similar to
Trudgill’s (2016) collection of his weekly contributions to an East Anglian
newspaper column discussing language variation and change and language
history. While Trudgill’s (2016) subchapters often touch upon features of East
Anglian English and appear to be written from an East Anglian perspective,
Okrent’s (2021) chapters do not focus on a particular region. Both books are
embellished by illustrations, whereas the illustrations in Trudgill (2016)
display landmarks in and around Norwich, O’Neill’s (2021) cartoons are usually
caricatures underpinning Okrent’s line of argumentation. Cameron’s (2007)
publication on “The Myth of Mars and Venus”, which discusses language
variation linked to gender, is also mainly aimed at a non-linguist audience,
but in style it is slightly more academic than Okrent’s (2021) work.
Throughout her book, Cameron (2007) mentions authors and studies and, every
now and again, she also includes graphs and figures (e.g. Cameron 2007: 43).
All in all, Okrent (2021) is a refreshing and valuable contribution to the
field of publications that make ground-breaking scientific findings in the
field of linguistics more easily accessible to the general public.

REFERENCES

Cameron, Deborah. 2007. The myth of Mars and Venus. Do men and women really
speak different languages? Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Crystal, David. 2004. The stories of English. Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.

Duden. 2022. https://www.duden.de/ 

Hogg, Richard M. 1992. “Introduction” In: Hogg, Richard M. (ed.): The
Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume 1. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press. 1-25. 

Trudgill, Peter. 2016. Dialect matters. Respecting vernacular language.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Anke Lensch is a post-doc currently working at the University of
Koblenz-Landau and the University of Bonn in Germany. In 2020, she defended
her PhD-thesis on “Onlookers, passersby, sweeper-uppers, opt-outers and
dumber-downerers. A corpus-based study of English -er nominalizations.” at the
University of Mainz, Germany. The work on her thesis sparked her interest in
rule-bending phenomena that appear to challenge language principles. Her
research interests include the interface of morphology and syntax, language
variation and change, historical linguistics and cognitive linguistics.





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