LELA 10082

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LELA 10082

• Describing accents IV
• Case study Liverpool

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Liverpool accent

• Spoken in quite restricted area around city,
  though influences accents (due to migration!) as
  far away as Southport, Warrington,
  Chester/North Wales

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Liverpool accent

• Northern accent with no /??/ distinction, and
  typical /aA/ distribution
• But quite unlike other local accents (rural
  Lancs, Cheshire) in other respects close /i/ in
  city, diphthongs for /ei,ou/
• Said to derive from C19 migration of Manx, Scots,
  Welsh and above all Irish certainly there are
  Gaelic features in the accent
• Amazingly, ignored in 1950-61 Survey of English
  Dialects
• Actually (like most accents) there are numerous
  varieties, in particular hard, gritty vs soft,
  lyrical
• Distinctive intonation range (though more marked
  in recent years)

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Most distinctive feature

• Lenition of stop consonants
• Realisation as fricatives or affricates of /t/
  and /k/ especially, and to an extent /p/
• General lax articulation of voiced stop
  consonants /b,d,g/

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Endocentric analysis of /t/ phoneme(strongest
accent)

• If realised as s, forms homophone pairs
• sin/tin, lesser/letter, pass/pat, sri/tree,
  sop/stop, rice/rights, chance/chant
• Word-finally may be realised as h
• but bUh, what w?h
• But this is allophonic free variation, as bUs
  and w?s are also possible
• And existence of /h/ phoneme is in doubt
• Similar situation with medial
• Got a letter may be g?s?lEs?, g???lE??
• This may be incidental variation, ie using /r/
  phoneme
• Similar situation with lateral and nasal release
  
• button, bottle more likely to be heard with ?
  or s
• Glottal stop otherwise not particularly common
  feature

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Arguments against

• Many accents do make a distinction, even if /t/
  is heavily affricated
• Native intuition would recognize difference
• Though this is influenced by familiarity with RP
  and other accents
• And reinforced by the writing system
• In fact, may not even agree that eg but/bus are
  homophones
• Distribution of allophones can be described with
  reference to t in the spelling
• final h in but, what (but never in bus)
• medial r sound in got to, lot of, better (but
  never in passer, guesser)
• Glottal stop in bottle (but never in castle)

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Word list
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Narrative text

• Speaker
• Female
• middle-aged
• has lived in Liverpool all her life
• You can also hear one or two other speakers
• At least one of these is also Liverpudlian

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Things to listen out for

• Affricated stops
• x in America, weeks (000), like (009), Walker
  (012), cant drink, cant smoke (018), walking
  (018), working (038), work (047), back (059)
  etc
• s in great (016), monitor (028), straight
  sreIs (038), extra Exsr? (118)
• Realisation of /r/
• flap medially America (000) for her (037), for
  him (059), where it (108)
• tap or roll in great (016), drink (018),
  straight (038)
• Medial /t/ realised as tap what if (033), lot
  of (108), got a job (115), tara (138) (
  ta-ta)
• /h/ usually dropped her (016), hes (028), him
  (059)

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Accents Summary

• When comparing English accents, it is usual (and
  easiest) to compare with RP
• Often there are a few very striking features
  which we tend to focus on, but in reality there
  are probably lots of others, sometimes quite
  subtle
• Notice we have tried to use phonetic terminology,
  and avoid subjective comments about
  attractiveness or otherwise of accents

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Regional accents in generalKey points of
variation

• Realisation of /?/ vowel
• /a/ /A/ distribution
• Distribution of /r/ (rhotic accents)
• /u/ /U/ distinction
• /h/ phoneme (H dropping)
• Use of glottal stop
• Status of velar nasal /N/
• Use of /j/ in consonant clusters
• Long mid diphthonging

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• Distribution and phoneme status of velar nasal
  /N/
• Pronunciation of words ending in -ing
• N as an allophone of /n/
• Long mid diphthonging
• Variety in quality of diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/
• More southern accents have wider diphthongs
• Some accents have (historically older)
  monophthongs

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Accent groups of the British Isles
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CL Central Lancs CN Central north ESW Eastern
southwest H Humberside M Merseyside NE
North-east SM South Midlands WM West
Midlands WSW Western southwest
Source A. Hughes, P. Trudgill and D. Watt.
English Accents and Dialects An introduction to
social and regional varieties of English in the
British Isles. (4th edition) London (2005) Hodder
Arnold