The Variability of Current World Englishes

Eugene Green, Charles F. Meyer

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9783110394917
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Faces of English explores the phenomenon of increasing dialects, varieties, and creoles, even as the spread of globalization supports an apparently growing uniformity among nations. The book's chapters supply descriptions of Jamaican English in Toronto, English as an L2 in a South African mining township, Chinese and English contact in Singapore, unexpected, emergent variants in Canadian English, and innovations in the English of West Virginia. Further, the book offers some perspective on internet English as well as on abiding uniformities in the lexicon and grammar of standard varieties. In the analyses of this heterogeneous growth such considerations as speakers' sociolinguistic profiles, phonological, morpho-syntactic, and lexical variables, frequencies, and typological patterns provide ample insight in the current status of English both in oral and electronic communities. The opening chapter presents a theoretical framework that argues for linguistic typology as conceptually resourceful in accommodating techniques of analysis and in distinguishing the wide arrays of English found throughout the globe. One clear function for Faces of English is that of a catalyst: to spur studies of diversities in English (and in other languages), to suggest approaches to adapt, to invite counterargument and developments in analysis.

Part 1

Methodological issues in distinguishing varieties

Caroline R. Wiltshire

New Englishes and the emergence of the unmarked

Caroline Wiltshire, Department of Linguistics, University of Florida, Box 115454, Gainesville, FL 32611-5454, USA, e-mail: [email protected]

1 Introduction¹

New Englishes, for the purpose of this paper, include those of Kachru’s Outer and Expanding circles, or the ESL and EFL varieties; these share in common that they result from contact between English and some other language(s), rather than being generally transmitted from and to monolingual English speakers. Phonologists have a longstanding interest in whether and to what extent other contact induced languages such as creoles share properties regardless of the languages involved, and more recently vernacular varieties of English and New Englishes have been added to that discussion (e.g., Filppula, Klemola and Paulasto 2009, Kortmann et al. 2004, Mukherjee and Hundt 2011). Similarly, second language acquisition research suggests that there may be some patterns of acquisition regardless of the structure of the learners’ first language (L1), such as voiceless obstruents appearing in coda positions before voiced (e.g., Broselow et al. 1998). In all these cases, such observations and questions lead to a discussion of what properties can be claimed to be universally unmarked settings of the language faculty (or “bioprogram” in Chambers 2004).

With the recent increase of detailed phonetic and phonological descriptions of new and emerging Englishes, we are now in a better position to begin evaluating hypotheses about the emergence of the unmarked in New Englishes, both outer and expanding circle. Such descriptions includes work on acoustic phonetics of vowel systems, both of the New English and of the substrate/L1 language(s), and detailed descriptions of consonant reductions. At least for phonetics and phonology, we can begin to address the following questions:

1. Are these generalizations about shared properties true (i.e., within the categories of creoles, vernaculars, L2s, New Englishes)?
2. Are the generalizations within the categories similar across categories?

And if yes to the both of the above,

1. 3. Do they reflect the Emergence of the Unmarked? Or are they only the reflections of other properties or factors, such as functional properties grounded in the physical phonetic system, the effect of language contact, or the structure of the specific languages involved?

Phonological markedness has been applied both to segments in an inventory and to sequences of segments in larger structures, such as syllables, and has been based on evidence from cross-linguistic typology, phonetic simplicity, and implicational relationships (Trubetzkoj 1969, Jakobson 1968, Maddieson 1984). In this paper, I focus on the phonetics and phonology of New Englishes, and explore commonalities in vowel inventories and word-final consonants and consonant clusters in various New Englishes. In each case, New English varieties take steps towards reducing markedness found in the inner circle, established, Englishes, although in some cases potential transfer from a substrate complicates the interpretation of these reductions as purely markedness-driven. Thus, this paper explores to what extent the descriptive data compiled from New Englishes tend to support the claim that these New English varieties reveal the emergence of the unmarked, finding that when markedness can be separated from substrate influences and transfers, New Englishes indeed show a preference for the unmarked.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Sections 2 and 3 provide brief overviews of New Englishes and markedness, respectively, Section 4 looks at vowels and vowel systems in New Englishes, while Section 5 examines word-final consonants and consonant clusters. Section 6 provides conclusions and suggestions for future research.

2 New Englishes

Like creoles, New Englishes by definition result from contact, in this case between speakers of some established variety of English and speakers of another language; like vernaculars, New Englishes may lack a clear norm, at least during their earlier stages of formation; and like L2 acquisition, New Englishes may display patterns or sequences common to the acquisition of a new language.

Schneider (2007) traces the development of Postcolonial Englishes primarily in terms of contact, and rather than treating each variety as idiosyncratic, focusses on working out a theory of a “uniform developmental process, shaped by consistent socio-linguistic and language-contact conditions, [which] has operated in the individual instances of relocating and re-rooting the English language in another territory” (2007: 5). In the early stages, transfer of features from the substrate (“dominated group”, 2007: 99) affect the local use of English, while mechanisms of spoken vernaculars and contact-inducing change, including second language acquisition strategies, are all involved in the rise of a new local norm which becomes a standard. Combined with transfer from a first language (L1) or substrate languages², New Englishes thus represent a complex context for language change.

In the Vernacular Universals approach, Filppula, Klemola, and Paulasto (2009) explore the idea that there are features in common in vernaculars and New Englishes because both types of language are “non-standard”, free from some of the external pressures which influence standard varieties. In the absence of these pressures, we might expect to see the emergence of the “bioprogram” (Chambers 2004). For at least some researchers, this means we expect the unmarked to emerge in vernaculars, New Englishes, and any other aspect of language use which can avoid the pressures of standardization. Among the vernacular universals proposed Chambers (2004) are the reduction of consonant clusters and final obstruent devoicing, to be discussed below.

While monolingual, native dialects generally have clearly established norms to guide learners, New English varieties often arise in communities with few if any native speakers, leading to a great deal of variability in input for learners and a lack of a clear norm. Sharma (2012) draws a model to distinguish the acquisition of foreign language vs. an indigenized Second Language, such as many New Englishes are:

Figure 1. Model from Sharma (2012: 585, figure 1)

In acquiring a foreign language, the target is usually or always a native target, complete with established norms which are exemplified by native speaker input, while the acquisition of an indigenized second language begins with a native target language input, but replicates itself with non-native input after the target language speakers have left. Götz and Schilk (2011), while noting that there are parallels between EFL and ESL in terms of acquiring a second language, also recognize,

as Sridhar & Sridhar (1986) point out, the second language acquisition process of speakers of indigenized varieties of English (to use their terms) differs in various points from the second language acquisition process of EFL-learners. In the case of ESL-speakers, neither are target norms automatically native-speaker norms, nor is the main function of the variant NS-NNS-speaker communication, but to a much larger extent NNS-communication within the respective community across a large scope of inner-community functions (cf. Sridhar & Sridhar 1986: 5–7).

(Götz and Schilk 2011: 80)

Contact-situations and a lack of standards/norms have thus been proposed to lead to universals in language form, and these universals bear some resemblance to markedness. Likewise, SLA research has proposed that markedness as well as transfer is involved in the development of interlanguage (e.g. Eckman 1977, Gass 1979). Under the second language learning conditions that have historically defined New Englishes, markedness might determine sequences for the order of acquisition of forms or constructions, relative difficulty in acquiring certain constructions, and preferred structures for transfer from the first language (White 1989: 121–38). With all these factors favoring a lack of markedness in the development of New Englishes. I now turn to a closer look at what is meant by markedness.

3 Markedness

While markedness has a long history in phonology (Trubetskoy 1939/1969, Jakobson 1968), its defining characteristics are rarely agreed upon. Generally, markedness as used in phonology refers to the status of certain sounds, features, or structures as more complex, uncommon, or unnatural than others; the presence of a marked sound in a language’s inventory should also imply the presence of less marked sounds. For most researchers, the value of a sound, feature, or structure as marked or unmarked is treated as a universal, though some proposals for language-specific variations exist as well (Lass 1975). In Optimality Theory, the strength of markedness within a particular language is also variable, based on constraint ranking.

Some approaches focus on the phonetic and functional point of view, such as Hayes and Steriade (2004), who explore the idea “that knowledge of Markedness constraints stems from knowledge of phonetic difficulty” (2004: 17), both in production and in perception. They propose a deductive approach to determining what should be considered marked, using ease of articulation or enhancement of perceptual cues in context as factors motivating markedness. An example is the perceptibility of voicing contrasts word-finally, which is phonetic and processing-related (Steriade 2001).

Generative phonological theories usually approach markedness more inductively, and understand it to be an abstract property of phonological grammar. Moravcsik and Wirth (1983) provide a list of criteria used as diagnostics of markedness, including, as most relevant to phonology/phonetics, typological implication, neutralization, overt marking, frequency across languages, language-internal distribution, and availability to child learners. Rice (2007) also offers a list of characteristics, divided more or less into the phonological (neutralization, epenthesis, assimilation, deletion, coalescence) vs. the phonetic (naturalness, complexity, frequency, stability, implication, articulatory and perceptual), while de Lacy (2006) takes an approach focused on the role of markedness in phonological competence and eschews all diagnostics that are complicated by performance factors. For his approach, this means that markedness is determined/evidenced by purely phonological behaviors, such as neutralization and epenthesis, while acquisition and SLA are too complicated by additional factors to provide clear evidence of markedness status.

Whether markedness is an internal abstract property of grammar or an external functionally motivated property, I focus here on descriptive generalizations that are agreed upon under either interpretation.³ As noted above in Section 2, it has been claimed that markedness effects are apparent in situations of contact, vernaculars, and second language acquisition. Given that all three apply to the learning conditions of New Englishes, I expect that markedness effects might be apparent in the orders of acquisition of the sounds and structures of English, although complicated by the interaction with L1 substrates, as unmarked structures often happen to be present in L1s or substrates as well (Plag 2002, Sharma 2009). As will be shown, a distinction between transfer and universals is intractable in some cases but resolvable in others.

Markedness has been applied to combinations of features within segments and combinations of segments within larger structures, such as syllables. Below I examine two kinds of examples, one focused on feature combinations and segments in an inventory and the other on segments within syllables, to evaluate the operation of markedness in New Englishes: vowel inventories (Section 4) and word-final conso...

Table of contents

• Topics in English Linguistics
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Methodological issues in distinguishing varieties
• Part 2: Studies of features in particular contexts
• Index