27.3900, Disc: Re: Re: Review of 'Researching Northern English'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3900. Mon Oct 03 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3900, Disc: Re: Re: Review of 'Researching Northern English'

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Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2016 12:10:28
From: Patrick Honeybone [patrick.honeybone at ed.ac.uk]
Subject: Re: Re: Review of 'Researching Northern English'

 
Read Review: http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2947.html
Disc: Review of 'Researching Northern English':
http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3338.html
Disc: Re: Honeybone's critique of my book review:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3370.html

In defence of his review of the book 'Researching Northern English', Geoffrey
Sampson objects that my criticism of his review
(http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3338.html, published in the Linguist
List on 19th August) is down to ''some differences of academic opinion'' and
is ''ad hominem''. I do not agree.

Because I say that perceptual dialectology addresses some interesting
linguistic questions, Sampson (who dismisses that approach) assumes that I
would disagree with Trudgill's seminal taxonomisation of British English
dialects, which is done on the basis of phonological dialect features. This
does not follow. In order to fully understand English from the north of
England (or any linguistic area anywhere), we need to combine 'standard'
dialectology (such as some of Trudgill's work), research on the precise
patterning of the linguistic features found in the dialects, and also research
into how speakers (and outsiders) perceive the varieties concerned (that is,
perceptual dialectology). It is to be expected that results based on the study
of structural dialect features and those from the study of of perceptions may
not coincide, and it is interesting when that is the case.

Sampson says that it is ''nit-picking'' to point out that he mischaracterised
the linguistic features that he singled out for discussion in his review, but
I can't help thinking that it's important to be accurate. It can certainly be
useful to have a non-expert review a book, but it is fair to expect them to be
cautious when contradicting its contents. One of the features that Sampson
picked out for discussion is 'Definite Article Reduction' (DAR). This is a
feature found in many varieties of English from the north of England, giving
realisations of the definite article (such as single oral and glottal stops
and fricatives) that are unlike those found in other varieties of English,
with much written about it. My objection to Sampson's discussion of DAR in his
review was that he ignored all previous scholarship on it and criticised the
discussion in the volume on the basis of his own anecdotal experience.

Sampson unfortunately compounds the issue in his response. One of the
criticisms in his review is that the author of a chapter on Lancashire English
says that DAR can be realised by a singleton voiceless fricative. In his
response he claims that this is ''misleading'' because ''I am used to hearing
a voiced interdental fricative in this context''. The passage in the book is
not misleading. In Lancashire English voiceless fricatives are widely
recognised as a form of DAR. But, more importantly, it is generally recognised
that Northern English DAR has nothing to do with the much more widespread
phenomenon in which the vowel of the Standard English definite article can be
elided, leaving just a voiced fricative - that kind of thing is found widely
in the English speaking world, including the north of England, and is
presumably what Sampson has heard there. It is not nit-picking to recognise
that ''this 'vowel-elided' Standard English article can be distinguished from
the reduced article in the DAR sense proper. Vowel-less fricative forms of DAR
are usually voiceless'' (Rupp 2007, 217). Voiced fricative realisations are by
definition not canonical cases of DAR. It is likely, therefore, that the
anecdotal evidence that Sampson adduces is entirely irrelevant to the issue.

My main objection to Sampson's review was that ''[u]nsystematic personal
experience of linguistic features should not outweigh expert linguistic
study''. Sampson did not address this objection in his response.

REFERENCE

Rupp, Laura. 1999. The (socio-)linguistic cycle of Definite Article Reduction.
_Folia Linguistica Historica_ 28, 215-249.



Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics



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