The Cambridge History of the English Language Volume 5 Part 4 doc

English in Ireland

earlier period. Illustrated below are old and new consonantal alternations

from this period (see Hogan 1927; Irwin 1935: 164ff.; Henry 1958;

Bliss 1979).

Major consonantal variations, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

1 elision of <g> {lejnthe ' length', streinthen ' strengthen')

2 loss of final <d> {brone ' brand', greyons ' greyhounds')

3 (w/v) alternations {dewidit 'divided', wirgen 'virgin', wometted

' vomited'; vit' with', vilt' wilt')

4 (th/d) or <(t) alternation [trone 'throne', wordy 'worthy';

oathes ' oats', theII' tell')

5 (C) and related spellings (Jbme 'whom', furle 'whirl', faat

' what\phit 'with')

6 <(s/sh) alternation {sheldom ' seldom', shuche ' such ',firsht' first';

sullynges ' shillings', sow'd' showed')

7 <ch/sh) alternation {chylver = shylver 'silver'; porsh 'porch',

shaine' chain')

8 (sh) spellings for historical [d3] {shantleman 'gentleman',

shudge 'judge')

As with the Forth and Bargy dialect, the characteristic Irish English

of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries appears to show only a partial

adoption of the vowel shifts and splits associated with general Modern

English. Spelling evidence for the reconstruction of syllabic phonology

in this period is difficult to interpret, given the diversity of text types and

the influence of perception on the depiction of Irish speech by non-Irish

writers. Irwin (1935) and Bliss (1979), for example, show different

interpretations of the <aa) spellings common in literature from this

period. These spellings may be grouped as (a) aafter 'after', phaat

'what', waanity 'vanity', (b) plaash 'place\faash 'face', naame 'name',

alternating with tawke 'take' andplaushes 'places', and (c)graat 'great',

shpaaking 'speaking', alternating with bate 'beat' and spake 'speech',

where groupings roughly represent ME /a/, /a:/ and /e:/ respectively.

For Irwin (1935: 152-4), the <aa) spellings of groups (a) and (b)

suggested a merger under [a:], with group (c) simply showing an

overextension of literary convention arising partly from developments

in England. For Bliss (1979: 208ff.), however, a more complex set of

mergers and reanalyses is suggested. In either case, the use of a vowel

such as /a:/ in FACE words does not appear as part of modern Irish

English apart from the Forth and Bargy items as indicated above.

Jeffrey L. Kallen

While the evidence of <ea> spellings to suggest either /e:/ or the

more modern /i:/ in this period is equivocal, the failure of historical /i:/

to diphthongise in Ireland appears characteristically in the data: note

preyd'pride', reepe 'ripe' and deereful'direful' from non-artistic texts of

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in addition to dramatic

representations such as creesh 'Christ' and leek 'like' (Irwin 1935: 157).

Similarly, while Irwin (1935: 157-9) suggests that ME /o:/ appears to

have followed the Great Vowel Shift pattern in raising to /u:/ no later

than the early sixteenth century in Ireland (cf. bloud 'blood', /using

'losing'), spellings such as hue 'how', shoowre 'sour' and fundation

'foundation' suggest that ME /u:/ had not undergone diphthong￾isation at a comparable time.

Among the miscellaneous phonological developments which may

also be mentioned here are the lowering of ME /i / to /e / and the raising

of/e / to /i/ . Irwin (1935: 161-2) notes the first change in sixteenth￾century documents, as in ventadge' vintage', Lessmore' Lismore' and brege

'bridge', while Bliss (1979: 203) understood the second process as a

forerunner of modern Irish English, citing spellings such as min 'men',

gitt 'get' and Use 'else'. Characteristics not unique to Irish English but

generally seen to demonstrate the dialectal affinities of English in Ireland

at this time also include the frequent favouring of <ar) spellings in

words such as sarvant' servant' and clarge' clergy' (see Braidwood 1964:

54) as well as the apparent retention of [w] before [r] in sixteenth-century

wourytyng 'writing', worytten 'written' (Irwin 1935: 174-5).

Bliss' (1979) material displays several distinctive morphological

characteristics, yet it is difficult to know the extent to which these

features constitute genuine aspects of the grammar of Irish English

rather than stereotypical language-learning phenomena. Most notice￾able here is variation in the use of plural marking (Joot(e)s, mans, gooses vs

sheldrens, mens, plural seeps' sheep'), the loss of past-participle morphemes

(rob' robbed', undoo ' undone', break' broken'), and the loss of pronouns

as in Vashe soe hot is cou'dno quench/Deflame '... that he could not quench

the flame' (for commentary on pronoun loss see Guilfoyle 1986).

Despite the widespread use of these and related features in literary

writing, the lack of these elements in other works of the time makes the

interpretation of the literary evidence inconclusive.

Syntax characteristic of Irish English begins to emerge in this period.

The use of after as a marker of tense/aspect is perhaps the most

noticeable characteristic, yet it is one for which modern usage may

obscure the nature of historical developments. (Rather than suggest a

172

English in Ireland

rigid distinction between tense, modality and aspect, I follow Dahl

(1985) by referring to ' TMA categories' more generally in the following

discussion.) Shadwell's I will be after reconciling thee from 1681 (Bartley

1954: 130) appears to be the earliest example of after as a TMA marker;

this construction becomes characteristic of representations of Irish

speech during the eighteenth century. In Shadwell's usage and in most

of the examples in the texts of Bliss (1979), after is used in a sentence

which refers to a future state of affairs, typically marked with the modal

verb will. In modern Irish English, however, TMA-marking after is a

perfective marker and never takes a future sense (I'm after missing the bus

'I have missed the bus'; see section 4.3.3 below).

Though Bartley (1954: 130) tends to dismiss uses of after with future

reference as mistakes by writers unfamiliar with genuine usage, Bliss

(1979: 302—3) saw the frequency of these uses as suggesting an

independent sense of after in early texts. Kelly (1989) has suggested that

after may have had a regular status as a future marker, relying for her

position not on the rather complicated analogy with Irish prepositions

advanced by Bliss (1979), but on related uses of after signalling intention

or imminence of action found in other English dialects. In Kallen

(1990), it is suggested that the early Irish English use of after in sentences

referring to future or non-actual states of affairs arises from the merger

of inherent features of English after with universal principles of TMA

systems under conditions of language contact and variability. The

modern restriction of after to perfective uses is thus seen as a sort of

decreolisation in which the variable range of significance for after is

limited in accord with the demands of the English TMA system.

The Irish use of do as a verbal auxiliary apparently becomes perceived

as distinctive at some time in the eighteenth century (see also section

4.3.3). Auxiliary uses of do are well documented in general English for

this period (see Visser 1969—73) and the choice of using do, at least in

Shakespearian drama, appears to have been conditioned by both

linguistic and sociolinguistic factors (see Salmon 1965). The abundant

use of auxiliary do in some representations of Irish speech suggests a

caricature, as in the following passage from John Michelburne's 'Ireland

preserved' (Bartley 1954: 111):

By my fait, Dear joy, I do let de Trooparr ly wid my wife in de bad, he

does ly at de one side and myself ly at de toder side, and my wife do lye

in de middle side; for fen I do go out to work in de cold morning, to

thrashe my Corne, he doth cover her, and keep my wife fery faarme,

and she does leave to get up, and look after de House, and fen de

Jeffrey L. Kallen

Trooparr do get up, he does go and bring home de Seep and de Muck

['pig', Ir. muc], and de Shucking Pigg, and we do Eat togeder.

Lexical items coming into Irish English between the sixteenth and

eighteenth centuries are mostly of Irish origin, though some terms have

English or obscure origins. Some, such as grey merchants 'merchants

going out in Irish dress' and callodor, evidently a Dublin name for a

person in charge of the death cart in times of plague (cf. call-o-door), show

only local or short-term use (see Irwin 1935: 213ff.). Many Irish terms

could be listed from this period, including bother ' deafen' or ' bewilder

with noise' (cf. Ir. bodhar 'deaf'), cosher denoting 'feasting' of a

traditional type, and kerne, galloglass and rapparee, all terms connected

with soldiering: see Bliss (1977a) and lexicographical references in

section 4.3.3.

4.3.3 English in modern Ireland

Difficulty arises in tracing the transition from early modern to today's

Irish English. Non-literary texts of the eighteenth century generally

show the influence of standardised spelling and syntax similar to that of

England, while realism is largely lost in conventional representations of

Irish characters on stage. Despite some indications from eighteenth￾century dictionaries and prescriptive works (e.g. Sheridan 1780, 1781;

Walker 1802 [1791]), it is not until the development of more realistic

literary portrayals and the beginning of systematic dialect study in the

nineteenth century that a picture of spoken Irish English becomes

available.

The dialectological record which is examined here points to complex

relationships between Ulster English and the English of the rest of

Ireland. Three commonly accepted categories of Ulster English will be

referred to (see Adams 1964b, Harris 1984a for details): Ulster Scots, the

most clearly related lexically and phonologically to Scots (found

primarily in Antrim, north-east Down and part of Derry and Donegal);

South Ulster English, the variety most similar to Irish English outside of

Ulster (typical in south Armagh, south Monaghan, north Cavan, south

Fermanagh and south Donegal); and Mid-Ulster English, generally seen

to combine influences from the other two varieties (found in Antrim,

including Belfast, south Tyrone, north Monaghan, north Fermanagh

and part of south Donegal). For geographical discussion and maps, see

Milroy (1981) and Harris (1984a, 1985a). These labels should not be

English in Ireland

taken to suggest predominance of one variety over another in any given

area: local migration and language history militate against the es￾tablishment of zones of dialectal exclusivity on a wide scale (see

Braidwood 1964). Moreover, the positing of well-defined dialect

boundaries in Ulster does not imply either a total cleavage between

northern and southern varieties or uniformity in the south. Although

Ulster Scots shows the greatest divergence from other varieties of Irish

English, South and Mid-Ulster English share many features with

southern Irish English, and there is no evidence to support the

suggestion (see Barry 1982: 110) that southern Irish English is more

uniform than that of Ulster.

General characteristics of Irish English which demonstrate something

of its historical development, either in a comparative or more local

context, include the following: (1) the retention of historical /r/ in all

positions; (2) the use of non-velar /I/ in all positions, counterbalanced

in some locations by a tendency to use velarised [1] noted by Wells (1982)

and Harris (1985a); (3) retention of the historical /hw/-/w/ contrast,

sometimes lost in Mid-Ulster English (see Harris 1984a); (4) traditional

use of monophthongs /o(:)/ and /e(:)/ in words of the GOAT and FACE

set; and (5) the use of epenthetic [a] in clusters consisting of a liquid

followed by a nasal in word-final position, as in ['Mam] film, ['haram]

harm, ['lirjkabn] Lincoln, etc. Feature (4) shows variation in so far as

diphthongisation of the /ou/ and /ei/ type is found throughout Ireland

today, while Milroy (1981: 77) demonstrates that in Belfast, at least,

other diphthongs such as [ew

a] and [ra] may also represent /e/. Feature

(5) may be related to processes cited in section 4.3.1; it was also noted in

the eighteenth century (Walker 1802 [1791]; see also Irwin 1935) and

may be related to common metatheses such as ['madran] modern,

f'sAdSaran] southern, ['psetran] pattern, and so on. This feature is not

unique to Ireland, though the lexical incidence of it may differ from that

found elsewhere.

Significant vowel patterns in Irish English include the potential

merger of words such as meat, sea and decent with mate and say in the FACE

category using /e:/ rather than the /i:/ of fleece, sleep, keep, etc. A full

discussion of the potential for a three-way distinction between meat, meet

and mate, the theoretical implications of various merger possibilities,

and the diachronic shift from historical [e:] in meat to [i:] is found in

Harris (1985a). For data concerning the distribution of [e:] and [e] in

meat words in rural Ireland, see Henry (1958: 110-11); for docu￾mentation in Dublin, note Bertz (1987).

Jeffrey L. Kallen

Though Barry (1981c, 1982) suggests that southern Irish English

differs from Ulster English in merging words of the PRICE and CHOICE

sets with an unrounded diphthong, the actual dialect record does not

support such a simple generalisation. While mergers have been reported

in the south under unrounded vowels such as [ei] and [Ai] (Nally 1971)

and [a + i] or [ai], rounded diphthongs such as [QI] are also found, and

the PRICE/CHOICE distinction may be preserved in various ways. The

distribution of lexical items in either set, however, may differ within

Ireland and from the distribution found elsewhere (see Henry 1958;

Wells 1982; Bertz 1987). In conservative Ulster Scots, sensitive to the

Scottish vowel-length rule often referred to as Aitken's Law (see Aitken

1981), Early Scots /i:/ gives rise to modern [ai] in the so-called 'short'

environments (e.g. ripe, guide, mice, line, wild), while [ere] is favoured in

'long' environments as seen in five, tire, trial, tie and //a/(Harris 1985a:

27-8). Lexical distribution and the effects of other sound changes,

however, mean that these two diphthongs are not in simple comp￾lementary distribution; moreover, one may note Scottish-type lexical

realisations as in the use of [i:] in die and [st] in blind. Southern Ulster

English, on the other hand, has a radically different system, basically

using [ai] in my, etc. and [ai] in words of the boy type. For details, see

Harris (1985a: 20ff.).

Independent Irish development of the ' FOOT-STRUT ' split in general

English (Wells 1982: 196-9) becomes evident in the eighteenth century

and today illustrates the variation possible within a single area of Irish

English phonology. Though there are still diverging views on the

historical sequence of development in the FOOT-STRUT split (see Harris

1990 for a review), it may be roughly assumed that the basic pattern for

this split involves five lexical categories, the first three of which stem

from ME /o:/ while the others arise from ME /u/: (1) the mood group

with modern /u:/; (2) blood lowering to /A/ ; (3) good raised and

shortened to /u/ ; (4) the cut group also undergoing lowering to /A/ ;

and (5) put now realised with /u/. Scottish developments have taken a

different path, as Braidwood (1964: 57) points out, with the consequence

that Early Scots /o:/ may now be realised with [i] or [e:]. This pattern is

found in conservative Ulster Scots, for which Harris (1985a: 20) notes

cool and foot with [i], contrasting with [A] in words of the cut type.

Generally in Ulster English, but not in the south of Ireland, the

potential distinction between mood and good words may be lost, in that

both word sets use the high central vowel [«]. The mood class in the

south, I have noted, may include words taking [u] in many other

176