English Accents & Dialects, Fifth Edition Answers to in-text exercises

Chapter 4
1. Fill in the gaps in the following:

(a) Typically, speakers in the north of England do not distinguish between pairs of words like
look and luck, having the vowel / ʊ / in both. However, other (particularly older) speakers in
northern cities such as Liverpool, Bradford, Middlesbrough, and Newcastle have / uː / in look
but /ʊ/ in luck.

(b) In northern English accents, the words brass and plant are pronounced with the vowel /a/.

(c) In most of the north of England, the final vowel of words like city is / ɪ /. Exceptions to
this are Liverpool, Newcastle and Carlisle.

(d) Post-vocalic /ɹ/ survives in the South-west of England, central Lancashire, Scotland, and
Ireland.

(e) Scottish speakers make no distinction between pull and pool, between cot and caught, or
between Pam and palm.

(f) While /h/ is variably absent in most regional accents in England and Wales, it is retained
in the North-east of England, including the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

2. Describe the use of [ʔ] in different parts of the British Isles.

In RP and many other accents, [ʔ] may precede /p t k tʃ/ in syllable coda position,
‘reinforcing’ them, e.g. in cups, got, six, watch. This process is also known as glottalization.
In most British Isles accents, including RP, glottal stop may replace /t/ where /t/ precedes
another consonant across a syllable boundary — as in, for example, atlas, shotgun, Gatwick,
sit still (this is known as glottalling or glottal replacement). [ʔ] can also be a realization of
/p/ and /k/ in words and phrases like upbraid, soup bowl, bookcase, back garden, etc., where
the place of articulation of the following consonant matches that of /p/ or /k/. Glottal stops
may also be inserted to mark a syllable boundary when the following syllable is vowel-initial
(e.g. in place of linking or intrusive /ɹ/), or in utterance-initial position preceding a vowel. In
non-standard accents, and increasingly in RP, [ʔ] is used word-finally (e.g. who’s that), and
intervocalically (e.g. butter, shut up).

Non-standard varieties of British Isles English allow glottal stops to occur in a wider variety
of contexts than is the case in RP. They are commonest in the speech of younger urban
working-class speakers. Some phonological contexts favour glottal stops more than others;
the context is which they are most frequent is word-finally pre-consonantally (e.g. that man),
and the least favouring context is word-internally pre-vocalically (e.g. better).

Glottal reinforcement of /p t k/, especially intervocalically, occurs in several accents (e.g. in

north-east England, East Anglia, Northern Ireland, north-east Scotland). In north-east
England, insertion of glottal stop in hiatus contexts (e.g. clear of) may be used instead of

copyright © 2012 Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt Published by Routledge
English Accents & Dialects, Fifth Edition Answers to in-text exercises

linking /ɹ/, and glottal reinforcement of /f/ can be heard (e.g. in sulphur, Sophie). In
Tyneside English, glottalling of /t/ may be heard in pre-/ɹ/ contexts in which glottal stops
are not possible in other varieties, e.g. Patrick, metro, petrol. In Middlesbrough English, [ʔ]
may be used in place of intervocalic /p/ and /k/ (e.g. paper, walking). The latter is also
possible in working-class London English.

In Bradford English, devoicing of /d/ to [t] preceding a voiceless consonant (as in e.g.
Bradford, red paint, etc.) means that glottalling of /d/ is possible, albeit indirectly. In a
similar way, where final /θ/ is stopped to [t] in working-class London English, the resultant
[t] may potentially be glottalled.

3. In what ways does the pronunciation of the sound(s) represented in spelling by <ng>
in the words singer and breaking vary in the British Isles?

In all non-standard varieties of British Isles English, the standard variant [ŋ] varies with [n] in
words ending in the morphemes –ing (e.g. breaking, running) and –thing (e.g. something,
everything). The same is true in words and place-names in which the morphological structure
is obscure (e.g. ceiling, Ealing, Dorking). The so-called ‘velar nasal plus’ sequence, /ŋɡ/,
occurs in the West Midlands, Liverpool, Manchester, Lancashire, and other parts of north-
western England. In these areas, singer is /ˈsɪŋɡə/ rather than /ˈsɪŋə/. Conversely, finger in
central Scotland may be /ˈfɪŋəɹ/. A variant [ŋk] can be heard in London and south-eastern
England, and in Bristol and other parts of the South-west, in –thing words (but not –ing
words). Note that in monomorphemic /ŋ/-final words such as sing or wrong, /ŋ/ is never [n],
but /ŋɡ/ is normal in these words in north-western England.

4. Where are you likely to hear the word beautiful pronounced without /j/?

East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk, and parts of Essex and Cambridgeshire).

copyright © 2012 Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt Published by Routledge