806007430 LING 6406 Dr.

Ferreira

DEPARTMENT OF LIBERAL ARTS

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND EDUCATION
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES, ST. AUGUSTINE

COURSE WORK COVER SHEET

INSTRUCTIONS:

BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR SCRIPT:

1) Please complete details in Section A.
2) Sign the declaration in Section B.
3) Attach this sheet to your work when you submit it.

AFTER YOU RECEIVE YOUR MARKED SCRIPT:

4) Sign and date Section C to acknowledge that you have received your
marked work.
5) Return this sheet to your Lecturer or Tutor.

SECTION A – STUDENT AND COURSE INFORMATION

I.D. NO: 806007430

SURNAME BASARALLY FIRST NAME HASSAN

COURSE CODE, TITLE AND ACADEMIC YEAR: LING-6406-THE

PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING OF ENGLISH

ASSIGNMENT: COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE PHONOLOGICAL

FEATURES OF THREE ACCENTS OF ENGLISH, A CARIBBEAN ACCENT
AND TWO OTHER MAJOR ACCENTS OF ENGLISH
WORD COUNT: 1361

LECTURER/TUTOR: DR. FERREIRA

DATE DUE: 11/03/2011 DATE SUBMITTED: 11/03/2011

SECTION B – DECLARATION

(1) I declare that the attached work is entirely my own, and that I have not
collaborated with other students. Where I have quoted from or referred to the
opinions or writings of others, these have been fully and clearly acknowledged
in the body of the essay/coursework assignment. All works consulted have
been listed in the bibliography/references section. I have used MLA style (see
MLA Handbook).
(2) I am aware of the penalty for the late submission of work, namely 10%
per day, up to a maximum of five days.

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SIGNED: Hassan Basarally

SECTION C: COURSE WORK RETURNED

Mark: Lecturer’s signature

Date: Student’s signature

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An accent is a pronunciation that is peculiar to a region, nation or social group. Accents

refer to either the prominence given to a syllable through pitch or to pronunciation, especially that

of vowels. It is a feature that is often used to identify where an individual is from. The

phonological features of Hiberno-English, White South African English and Trinidadian English

when compared and contrasted show small differences in consonants, reduction of diphthongs,

allophony amongst vowels and changes due to phonological shifts and rules.

Hiberno- English (HE) is the English spoken in the Republic of Ireland and Northern

Ireland.1 The island’s predominant language was Irish or Gaeilage until the introduction of

English after the country’s invasion by the British. English became the official language of the

occupation government and the settlement of English-speaking Scottish Protestants increased the

amount of English speakers. As a result Irish gradually became a second language to English, as

spoke in Ireland, or HE. The Irish were deported by the British to other parts of the empire,

especially the Caribbean and Australasia and the Great Irish famine caused many to migrate to

North America. The movement of the Irish people resulted in HE having an impact on the English

that developed wherever the Irish Diaspora settled.

White South African English (WSAfE) is spoken by people of European descent in the

Republic of South Africa, i.e. the descendants of British and Afrikaans settlers. This group

constitutes the largest set of English first language speakers in the country2, the others being Black

and Indian South African English. During the Napoleonic Wars, what is present day South Africa

was annexed by the British who instituted English and Afrikaans as official languages. Increased

1
Though Northern Ireland remains under British rule it is culturally and linguistically the same as the Republic of
Ireland and will be covered in the description of HE.
2
WSAfE speakers number approximately 2 million speakers.

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British settlement caused Afrikaans to be surpassed as the language of use by government and

civil society. The apartheid regime instituted mandatory Afrikaans classes to the non-white

population who resisted it and preferred to learn English as way to bring international attention to

the racist policies of the government and as a lingua franca in a very multilingual South Africa.

After majority rule, English became one of eleven official languages and is taught in schools as a

second language and is the language of instruction in many higher education institutions and used

widely in the private and public sector.

Trinidadian English (TE) is spoken in the island of Trinidad in the Republic of Trinidad

and Tobago. Trinidad was initially a Spanish colony with a large French speaking planter class.

The island was captured by the British who instituted an English only policy in governance which

reduced the numbers of Spanish, French and French Creole speakers. Post slavery immigrants saw

English as the language of power in the territory and a mesolectal Trinidadian Creole developed.

Trinidad English is spoken solely throughout the island as a first language with small pockets of

French Creole or Patois and Bhojpuri spoken by a dwindling speech community.

Hiberno-English (HE) includes some consonants not shared by Trinidadian English. HE

also has two consonants which are not shared, the voiceless velar fricative [x] in [lɑx] and the

voiced velar fricative [ɣ] in [gælɣɔ:rəx] (Dolan, xvii). According to Adams (30), [x] occurs

only in Irish loanwords and proper names. White South African English also has the consonant

[x]. The dental stops [t] and [d] often replace the fricatives [ɵ] and [ð] e.g. [ɵɪnk] will be [tɪnk].

Therefore words such as tin and thin will be homophonous. This feature is also characteristic

marker of the Trinidadian accent. Unlike WSAfE and TE, HE has lenition. There is the lenition of

[t] to [ṱ], a capico-velar fricative as in put [pʊṱ] (Hickey, 12). This lenition or mutation in HE

only occurs word finally and in the environment of a vowel. The alveolar fricatives [s] and [z] are

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usually realised as [ʃ] and [ʒ]. There is also an intervocalic and post vocalic [h] in words that are

of Irish origin, for example the place name Drogheda [drɒhɪdə].

A salient feature of Hiberno-Irish English is that some vowels can become unrounded to

[ɑ] or [ɑ:] e.g. Rottweiler [ratwaɪǀər]. HE vowels differ in quality not length. All vowels beside

[ɪ] and [ʌ] can be either long or short in complementary distribution (Melchers and Shaw, 65).

Part of the reason is the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in which all vowels are short unless followed

by [r], a voiced fricative, and a morpheme boundary or are final in an open syllable. Generally, the

[r] is a post alveolar approximant before stressed vowels but retroflex between or after vowels.

Trills [ɹ] are present in rural areas. These features make HE rhotic. HE has many cases of schwa

epenthesis or schwa intrusion (Melchers and Shaw, 77); an example can be seen in Dublin

[dʊbəlɪn].

Like Hiberno-English, the consonants [ɵ] and [ð] in Trinidadian English are pronounced

[t] and [d] respectively. TE also exhibits the palatalisation of the velar consonants [k] and [g] to

[kj] and [gj] respectively e.g. garden [gjɑ:dɛn]. Trinidadian English, like the two other

varieties, has some phonological features from other languages present. An example is the

aspirated voiced bilabial plosive [bʰ] from the Bhojpuri word [bʰaʤi]. Unlike Hiberno-English

and White South African English, Trinidadian English has final consonant cluster reduction. This

is easily seen in the progressive aspect e.g. [faɪndɪŋ] to [faɪndɪn].

A major difference between Trinidadian English and the other varieties is the vowel [æ],

there is a merger between [æ] and [a]. This results in words like heart and hat being

homophonous and the distinction being in vowel length (Youssef and James, 328). The TE vowel

system also contains vowels that are allophonic, i.e. not distinguished. While the other varieties

will distinguish [ʌ], [ɒ], [ɔ] and [ɜ], all are merged into [ɒ]. Also [u] and [ʊ] and [ɪ] and [i] are

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merged e.g. in [ɪn] or [in] (Winer, xxi). Another merger that occurs is that [a] and [ɑ] merging

into [a], making no distinction between words such as asks and axe. Some diphthongs are reduced

to monophthongs e.g. [feɪs] to [fes]. TE also differs from the two by being non-rhotic, so the

word bar will be pronounced [ba:] instead of [baɹ].

White South African English shares [x] and [ɣ] with Hiberno-English. The velar fricative

comes from Afrikaans words and is sometimes replaced by the uvular fricative. It also has the

consonant [ɣ] like HE. However, it only occurs before a high front vowel e.g. yield [ɣɪ:ɫd]

(Bowerman, 940). [ɵ] is sometimes realised as [f] and the [h] as [ɦ], but only before a stressed

vowel. In WSAfE, the alveolar nasal [n] becomes dental [n̪] when it occurs before nasal

consonants.

White South African English is rhotic just as Hiberno-English. The [r] is either a retroflex

[ɹ] or [r]. WSAfE is also characterised by several long monophthongs. They include [i:], [ɜ:], [ɔ:]

and [ɑ:], an example is nurse [nɜ:ɹs]. WSAfE has undergone a vowel shift unlike Trinidadian

English and Hiberno-English. This shift is called the South African Chain Shift. The vowels in

the lexical set DRESS and TRAP were raised while the vowel in the set KIT was centralised from

[ɪ] to [ɣ]. Lass (113) describes it as the raising of [æ] to [ɛ] and the [ɛ] to [e] forced the [ɪ] to

centralise.

The following table summarises the major similarities and differences in the phonology of

Hiberno-English, White South African English and Trinidadian English. The varieties all have a

history of English being imposed on a territory and the resulting English displaying features very

common to each other while simultaneously retaining some local features to make it distinct.

Feature Hiberno-English White South Trinidadian

African English English
Vowels N/A N/A No [æ]
N/A Lengthening of Reduction of

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monophthongs diphthongs
Consonants Presence of [x] and [ɣ] Presence of [x] and [ɣ] Presence of [bʰ]

[ɵ] and [ð] N/A [ɵ] and [ð]

pronounced [t] and [d] pronounced [t] and [d]
respectively respectively
N/A N/A Final consonant
Cluster reduction
Diphthongs and N/A Lengthening of Reduction occurs
monophthongs monophthongs
Rhoticity Yes Yes No
Major Phonological Scottish Vowel Length South African Chain N/A
Process or Rule Rule. Shift
Table 1: Table comparing and contrasting the phonological features of Hiberno-English, White
South African English and Trinidadian English

Works Cited

Adams, G.B. “Linguistic Cross-Links in Phonology and Grammar.” Papers on Irish English. Ed.
Donall P. O’Baoill. Dublin: Irish Association of Applied Linguistics, 1985. Print.

Bowerman, Sean. “White South African English Phonology.” Varieties of English. Ed. Edgar
W. Schneider. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. Google Books. Web. 11 Mar. 2011.

Dolan. Terrance P. A Dictionary of Hiberno-English. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Ltd., 2006. Print

Hickey, Raymond. Irish English: History and present-day forms. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007. Google Books. Web. 11 Mar. 2011.

Lass, R. “South African English.” Language in South Africa. Ed. Rajend Mesthrie. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. Google Books. Web. 11 Mar. 2011.

Melchers. Gunnel and Philip Shaw, eds. World Englishes. London: Hodder Education, 2003.
Print.

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Winer. Lise, ed. Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago. Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009. Print

Youssef, Valerie and Winford James. “The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago: phonology.”
Varieties of English: The Americas and the Caribbean. Ed. Edgar W. Schneider.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. Print.