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 [e w 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 English in Ireland varieties (e.g., book, hook, brook, cook, cooker, Tootsie, cookie) and for at least some speakers may merge with undiphthongised /u:/ rather than /au/ in pouch and possibly other words. In addition to the vowels associated with southern English or Scots, Irish English makes extensive use of a vowel intermediate between [o] and [A], described by Wells (1982: 422) as 'mid centralized back somewhat unrounded' and generally transcribed as [5]. This vowel is usually, though not exclusively, found in the STRUT category, potentially including both words of the blood and cut type. The Irish assignment of words to the STRUT group with [A] contrasting with assignment to the FOOT group with [u] as in England is noted by Walker (1802 [1791]: 16), who lists nine words (most with preceding labials) in which Irish English [A] contrasts with usage in England: bull, bush, push, pull, pulpit, cushion, pudding, foot, and put. (See also Sheridan 1780.) In contemporary Irish English, most of Walker's list could be realised with [A] or [u] and possibly with [o]. Henry (1958: 153-4), for example, demonstrates considerable variation in this area. In south-west Leitrim, bush and pluck appear with a slightly centralised version of low and advanced [u] in Henry's transcriptions [buj] and [pluk], while birds, turnips and double appear with [5], transcribed by Henry as [bordz], ['tornaps] and [dobl]. In Westmeath, on the other hand, uncentralised low and advanced [u] appears in turf [turf], birds [burdz], etc., while buck, thumb and wool appear in the mood class with [u] and the vowel [5] is not listed. In Ulster, the /u/-/u/ neutralisation and other factors yield a different, if related, configuration. For the Ulster Scots dialect of Braid, Co. Antrim, Henry (1958 : 153—4) lists cut, lugs, bushes and much with [o], while school, how, house, too, cow and good, are all roughly united under [Y] or [«]. In Belfast vernacular, Harris (1985a: 150-1) distinguishes three lexical classes: a BOOT class with categorical /«/ [boot, food,good), a BUT class categorically taking /o/ {but, cud, blood), and a PUT/FOOT group in which [«] and [o] may alternate according to sociolinguistic or other factors (put, foot, full, look, pull, took, butcher, shook). (See also Milroy & Milroy 1978: 25-7.) The most significant consonantal variations in Irish English centre around the realisation of general English /t, d, 0,6/ and palatalisation processes affecting in particular alveolar and velar consonants. The dental/alveolar group is discussed here in detail, with palatalisation treated primarily as it relates to this group. A broad generalisation, often taken as indicative of the north-south 177 Jeffrey L. Kallen dialect division in Ireland (Barry 1981c; Harris 1985a), sees [0] and [5] regularly only in Ulster, with southern varieties typically using the non- strident affricates [t9] and [dd] or alveolar and dental stops. A strict dialect separation, however, is not indicated: Henry (1958:122-3) notes the variable use of [t9] and [d8] across his nine Ulster dialect points, while the fricatives [9] and [3] are also noted for some speakers in southern urban varieties (see Wells 1982; Hickey 1986). Phonological oppositions may be maintained in the absence of [9] and [5] with a dental/alveolar distinction as in [t h m] thin vs [t h m] tin (Wells 1982: 428-9). Yet fricatives may appear in the position of historical stops, particularly before /r/: Henry (1958: 124-5) notes [drcri] dry, ['prehiz] praties 'potatoes', etc. in Ulster as well as southern ['wD9ar] water, [aQa '6rum] of the drum and ['lahad 'bDhamz] lotted bottoms. (Dental realisations for /t/ before /r/ are also widely reported, though evidently declining at least among some younger speakers: see Milroy & Milroy 1978.) Glottal varieties of /t/ in Dublin include [?] (Bertz 1987) and [h] as in ['d^xkah] jacket, [(h)wah] what?'and ['skaerlah] scarlet ' embarrassed' in my observation. The lenition of /t/ and, less commonly, /d/ to an alveolar fricative has been noted since the nineteenth century (Hume 1878) and is also found in Irish English speech in Newfoundland (Clarke 1986). The lenited segments are represented here by [{, d] (Wells 1982: 429); for further discussion and suggested transcriptions see Henry (1958: 123), Barry (1981c: 68), Conrick (1981: 73), Harris (1984a: 130), Hickey (1984: 235) and Bertz (1987: 45). Henry (1958:123-7) shows the lenited segments to be well distributed geographically, although he sees them concentrated in south Leinster and the midlands: note ['g^tam] get him (Co. Cavan), [did] did (Co. Mayo), [ble: 3 t, 'blertan] bleat, bleating (Co. Clare), where Henry's [t] = [tj and [d] = [d]. While Barry (1981c) sees the absence of final lenited stops as a defining characteristic of Ulster English, Harris (1984a: 130) points out that despite the general lack of final [tj in Ulster, intervocalic position may yield an intraregional distinction in which Mid-Ulster English shows a voiced flap in pity, etc. while southern Ulster English uses the lenited [£] in this position. Neutralisation of the tin/thin opposition may occur in several ways: (1) overlapping of realisations, as in [ta>tj] thatch, [wi'dout] without vs [h] or [t9] in letters and [t] or [t9] in butter (Henry 1958: 123-7); (2) dentalisation before /r/ resulting in homophones such as [tri:] tree, three or ['briidar] breeder, breather (Wells 1982: 431), although dentalisation is generally blocked before a morpheme boundary so that, for example, 178 English in Ireland matter contrasts with fatter (Harris 1984a: 130); and (3) loss of dentalisation before alveolars such as /I, s/ (e.g. [kits] faiths, fates) for speakers who would otherwise use [t] or [t9] in words of the thin group (Wells 1982: 431). Palatalisation processes also complicate the distribution of dental, alveolar and velar segments. Words of the tune, Tuesday type showing [t J ] in many non-Irish varieties most often show [tJ] in Irish English; Irwin (1935: 422) dates this development to the eighteenth century. The use of palatalised [k] and [a] rather than palatalised alveolars was early noted by Burke (1896: 698) in spellings such as ' opportkunity' and 'forkune' to characterise the speech of Meath, Kildare and Carlow; cf. similar data from Antrim (Henry 1958: 127-9) and Westmeath (Nally 1971). Palatalisation of velars (e.g. [kjart] cart, [k j ap] cap) is also widely noted (described by Henry (1958: 115) as 'a Northern and Eastern feature fading to the West and South') and may be compared with an inverse use of alveolars as in [tlutj] clutch, ['tle' B nanz] cleanings and [tlamp] clamp (Henry 1958: 129). Salient features of Irish English syntax include (a) systems of clause conjunction and embedding, (b) the use of topicalisation and clefting, (c) a variety of prepositional and adverbial constructions, and (d) a distinctive set of TMA markers. These features are generally taken to demonstrate either affinities to other English dialects or the influence of an Irish-language 'substratum': the following discussion simply des- cribes the most commonly cited elements, while section 4.4 addresses the substratum question. Material cited below under '(JK)' is taken from my fieldwork in Dublin. Co-ordinate structures such as He wouldn't give me a penny an' he rotten with money (Burke 1896: 787) or The si%e of er and she barking! (JK) are widely reported in works on Irish English, while embedded clause types often noted are illustrated by You would wonder what colour was the horse (Shee 1882: 372), I wonder was the horse well bred (Hayden & Hartog 1909: 938), What's the cause you didn't go ? (Henry 1957:123), They laughed at you in a way that you' d nearly turn against the Irish language (Lunny 1981:139), and to show them pictures and see is there any difference between the deaf children and the others (JK). Topicalisation and related phenomena have been examined in detail by Filppula (1986). Filppula points out that topicalisation in Irish English may fulfil a variety of discourse functions such as contrast, reassertion and specification (e.g. Cold as ever it were; In splints it would Jeffrey L. Kallen come off, where splints refers to an established topic; and In some building he is working with the couple of weeks ' for a couple of weeks', respectively) in addition to the emphatic function usually ascribed for English (as in Aye, in the middle of the night they'dprobably arrive). By comparison with a British English corpus and with the use of intuitive judgements and geographical analyses, Filppula (1986) further establishes that the range of topicalisation types and frequency of topicalisation in discourse is greater in Irish English than in the British data, and that within Ireland the use of this device appears to increase in inverse proportion to the amount of time over which English has been spoken in a given locality. Among the many prepositional and adverbial structures which have been commented on in dialect studies may be noted the following: (1) the use of on as a dative of disadvantage {When the rent was doubled on me (Shee 1882: 373); I bought an ice cream and she rubbed it in my hair on me (JK); and in various possessive uses (There's no loss on him 'he has nothing to complain about', What's on you? 'what's the matter with you?' (Henry 1957: 148)); (2) prepositional marking of possession (The body is very small with a crow 'A crow's body is very small' (Henry 1957: 133); / scalded the hand o meself'my hand' (JK); It was a custom by them to go out on Christmas Eve' their custom' (Lunny 1981:140)); (3) other prepositional uses (He's dead now with many ayear ' for many a year' (Lunny 1981: 139); He's in his chest 'bare chested', She's in her health 'healthy' (Henry 1957: 146)); and (4) the use of in it to denote general existence, as in There are no horses in it (van Hamel 1912: 286), There's a good wind in it, today (Ni Ghallchoir 1981: 157-8), and Is there any jeans in it? 'available' (JK). Distinctions of tense and aspect in Irish English, referred to in their earlier stages in section 4.3.2, have been widely noted since the nineteenth century. The use of habitual markers to denote recurrent or generic states of affairs and the variety of means for marking a perfective TMA category have received particular attention and are discussed here. Habitual or generic time categories may be grammatically marked in Irish English in three ways: (1) inflected do, (2) inflected be, and (3) inflected do plus non-finite be. Geographical distribution for these forms is unclear. Bliss (1984a), Guilfoyle (1983) and Harris (1984b) have associated inflected be forms with Ulster, while Dublin-based studies (Kallen 1986,1989; Bertz 1987) show no such realisations. Yet inflected do has been reported throughout Ireland, while data from Co. Meath (Henry 1958: 133) and Co. Dublin (O'Neill 1947: 264) also reveal inflected be. Henry's (1957) Roscommon study and Todd's (1984) Ulster survey show all three realisation types. 180 [...]... Irish English Much of the political history of Ireland is reflected in the ideological status attached to the English and Irish languages The foundation of organisations such as the Gaelic Society in 1807 and the subsequent development of a national Irish -language movement (see 6 Murchii 19 85) coincided with political movements for Irish independence to the extent that the language policy of the independent... Westmorland in the west to the north and East Ridings of Yorkshire in the east, often including part of Lincolnshire but excluding the old kingdom of Bernica in Durham and Northumberland' (19 85: 269) We shall see in the section on Ellis' classification of English dialects that the north-western part of the north is not only 'exceptional' from the viewpoint of Scandinavian vocabulary but there are other characteristics,... stemmed less from his love of philology than it did from his desire to eradicate provincialisms from the language of his young scholars Gil lists the following six dialects, with the caveat that he ' does not know all the idioms of these': the general, the northern, the southern, the eastern, the western and the poetic (1619:102) Gil does not explain the geographical boundaries of these, which suggests... Counterbalancing the deprecation of Irish English are both the historical view that the English- speaking peasantry of Ireland possessed an English ' superior' to that of their English counterparts (see Dinely quoted above, Bush 1769: 34- 6, and Edgeworth 1 848 [1801]: 150 ) and a belief in the greater expressive power of Irish English Writers such as J M Synge, Lady Gregory, W B Yeats and others in the 'Irish... some kind of general idea of where these varieties could be heard However, he does say that his own home county, Lincolnshire, is part of the north This squares with Puttenham ( 158 9), who appears to regard northern Lincolnshire as part of the north Gil goes on to discuss the main characteristics of each of these dialects He says that in northern English both is beath, and attests thus the northern failure... none of these treatments benefits from the linguistically motivated research of recent years Bliss (1972b) offers a glossary of Irish English in the work of J M Synge, while Wall (1986) examines James 1 94 English in Ireland Joyce's work (see also Kallen 1987) Reminiscent of the observations of Milroy (19 84) and others, Wall (1990) discusses the apparent lexical similarities between Irish and other English. .. characteristics, too, that distinguish it from the rest of the north Kolb (19 65) shows that the Scandinavian belt can also be seen from the distribution of Scandinavian words in present-day dialects This is another indication of the conservatism of northern English. 6 As an illustration of how well Ray covers the northern vocabulary of his day, a representative sample of common northernisms was collected 203 Ossi... representation of Irish English in satirical or stereotyped portrayals and the rejection by others of Irish English as a valid medium of expression The estimation of Dublin vernacular by Krause (1960:2 34 -5) in discussing the works of O'Casey is illustrative: Most Irishmen, but particularly the proud and garrulous people of the Dublin slums, have an instinctive love of word-play Their characteristically... 38 80 52 20 10 0 10 15 40 55 50 30 79 90 20 10 1 0 13 43 54 40 33 17 three phonetic values in the realisation of/ k, g/ before /ar/ in words such as car and care These realisations (velar [k, g], palatal stop [kg], and velar plus glide [kj, g1]) demonstrate the importance of style shift and sex-linked variation no less than any other factors (data based on O'Neill 1987: 23 -5; see also Pitts 19 85, Milroy... government established after the partition of Ireland in 1921-2 was firmly orientated towards the support of the Irish language Though complicated by political and economic considerations (see Commins 1988; Tovey 1988), policy in the Republic of Ireland is reflected in the comments of a 19 65 White Paper {Athbheochan 19 65) : The Irish language is an integral part of our culture Down the centuries it has moulded . in Irish English Much of the political history of Ireland is reflected in the ideological status attached to the English and Irish languages. The foundation of organisations such as the Gaelic. 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. 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