Late Modern English vowels

It is apparent that the mid central vowel [ :], which occurs only in stressed syllables in contemporary English is relatively new in the English language. According to Wells (1982), this vowel exists in Modern English as a result of ‘NURSE Merger’; a phonological process where the Middle English vowels /i/, / / and /u/ became centred, and then later merged into the single mid-central vowel /ə/ before the pre-consonantal /r/ (Wells, 1982: 137-138). This development as observed by Wells (1982) started in the northern and eastern dialects of English in the 15^th century. But it had later spread to London in the 16^th century, and to the precursor RP in the 17^th century (Wells, 1982).

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Its present spellings ۦir/yrۧ and ۦur/orۧ, as he claims, came from the Middle English spellings ‘er’ and ‘ear’ respectively. The words ‘virtue and ‘firm’ which are believed, had [ r] rather than [ir] were, for instance, spelt ‘vertue’ and ‘ferm’. The merged and coalesced /ə/, is however, said to have coalesced with /r/ to yield an r-coloured vocoid, but as it was claimed, subsequently lost its r-colouring in some accents of English. So in contemporary GenAm English, words such as ‘heard’, ‘herd’, ‘stirred’, ‘bird’, and

‘word’ have / r/ while RP has / ː/. It is important to note that the changes in these vowels as stated earlier occurred differently in different dialects. Several Northern dialects share the lowering and centralization of the short /u/ and / /, and also short /i/

and /ɪ/, but do not share the split to / / and / /. For instance, Yorkshire varieties have been noted to have / / still in e.g. ’put’ and ‘sun’. Again, many English accents, such as the Scottish and Irish did not undergo the Merger and so ‘lack the NURSE vowel as a distinct phonological entity’ (Wells, 1982: 138). Even many accents where the merger occurs, are believed, have no distinction between the merged vowel and the sequence of the STRUT plus /r/, thus the pairs of words such as ‘furry-hurry’ /f ːri - h ri/ in RP will be pronounced /f ri- h ri/ in GenAm.

As reported, several words that had short vowels in the Middle English still have their length in present day English. However, changes in the distribution of words have brought a huge difference in the vowels in different sets of words, such that, the Middle English words that had long vowels, now have different long vowels. Words such as

‘kind’, ‘dye’, ‘like’, etc., although had /i:/ in Middle English, are now found in words like ‘green’, ‘serene’, ‘queen’, while ‘kind’, ‘dye’, ‘like’, etc. now have the diphthong /ai/ which were earlier found in Middle English ‘day’, ‘plain’, etc. Similarly, the Middle English vowels /o:/ was found in ‘boot’,‘food’,‘root’, and /u:/ in ‘loud’,‘out’,‘down’, but these same words ‘loud’,‘out’,‘down’ now have the diphthong /au/ (see McMahon, 2006). The process of smoothing still persists in different varieties of English. For instance, some Southern American varieties of English is believed to lack the off-glide in [aɪ]; thus the phrase, ’mywife’, is pronounced [ma waf]. The process as summarized in McMahon (2006: 168) is thus:

Middle English Late Modern English

time [ti:m] /taɪm/

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green [gre:n] /gri:n/

break [bre:k] /breɪk/

name [na:mə] /neɪm/

day [dai] /deɪ/

loud [lu:d] /laud/

boot [bo:t] /bu:t/

boat [bɔːt] /bo t/

law [lau] /lɔː/

Thus altogether, there are 24 vowel phonemes; 12 monophthongs, seven short (/ɪ, e, , ə, , æ, ɒ/) and five long (/iː, ɔː, uː, aː, ː/); eight diphthongs: /ɪə, eə, ə, eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ, e , a / and additional five triphthongs: /eɪə, aɪə, ↄɪə, ə ə, a ə/ in the present day English.

Obviously, there is no huge difference between modern English monophthongs and those of E e. One therefore expects E e speakers of English to readily speak the RP vowels /ə/ and /e/. But this is not the case. There is a great disagreement, for example, over the phonemic status of these vowels /ə/, /e/ and / ː/ in Ghanaian English (GhE), in the Ewe language and even in the British Standard English. One of the earliest works,

‘Ghanaian English’ by Sey (1973) reported a non-existence of the RP schwa in Ghanaian English. Sackeyfio (1996) made a similar report but added that GhE lacked the RP vowel /ə/, and so was substituted with [ :]. Also A lɔ-E e, as she observed, did not pronounce the RP /ə/ and /e/, and so substituted [eɪ] for /e/ while [a:] and [ɔː] were used in place of /ə/. Lomotey (2010) made a similar observation about the lack of /ə/ sound in the speech of 66 participants she investigated from four ethic groups in Ghana, including E e speakers. Although she agreed that the sound /ə/ existed in E e, she was not sure why none of her Ewe participants could not pronounce the schwa vowel.

Koranteng (2006), on the other hand, identified 32 cases of the use of the RP [ə] out of 110 words of the RP /ə/ she examined. Adjaye’s (2005) results included /ə/ and /e/

as part of the sounds used by E e speakers of English contrary to Sackeyfio and others.

In the Ewe language, scholars are not sure which of the three vowels /e/, /ə/ or / /, is the underlying segment. The three vowels are thus in free variation, their choice depends purely on which part of the dialect region one comes from. Interestingly, English phoneticians are also divided over the phonemic status of /ə/ and / ː/. One group

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believes that the vowel schwa /ə/ is an allophone of / ː/ in unstressed syllable; both of them are in a complementary distribution. In English /ə/ occurs only in unstressed syllables, while / ː/ occurs only in stressed syllables. The opposers of this view believes that /ə/ cannot be an allophone of / ː/ since both of them have different distributions.

For Christopherssen (1956), Africans have the tendency of substituting [a] for final [ə], so, instead of [entə], they will produce [enta]; placing equal stress on both syllables;

hence there is no stress alternation. The observations made by Sey (1973), Adjaye (1987) and Bobda (2000) support the fact that Africans, particularly Ghanaians, do not speak the RP schwa vowel [ə]. According to Sey (1973), Fante (an Akan dialect) speakers of English use / / in place of /ə/, as he said ‘…in some areas, particularly Cape Coast, the RP /ə/ is very often pronounced as /ε/ (p59)’. The practice of substituting the phonological features of one’s first language (L1) for the features of a second language (L2) appears to be well investigated. For Yankson (1971: 22), any sounds that a Ghanaian language lacks are non-existent in Ghanaian English.

Many writers therefore argue that the difficulty in producing the English phonemes by the L2 learners is due to differences in the sound systems of the two languages.

Others believe that the problem may stem from the differences in the distributions of the sounds of the two languages. But I bear to differ, this is not the case of E e and English since there is a great deal of similarity between the vowel systems of the two languages. In as much as it is possible for L2 speakers to learn to perceive new L2 vowels in a native-like manner, it is also possible for adult learners to establish new non-native phonetic categories (Flege, 1995). This interesting debate made me to choose these vowels as the variables for my current investigation. Because I believe that some of the methodologies used in arriving at these results are deficient. Most of these studies depend on auditory analysis which is mainly impressionistic, and also on dialectological approach, which focuses on a small number of speakers in a community.

These results are, therefore subjective, and so lend themselves to various forms of debates. A social stratification of the speakers, coupled with spectrographic analysis of the individual vowels, might produce a more objective result and offer a new perspective into understanding the phonological system of GhE.

33 Chapter Three: Literature Review

3.1. Introduction

This chapter discussed two major issues that specifically helped us to understand the results and consequently drew our conclusions. The chapter is divided into two sections:

empirical and theoretical sections. The first part, the empirical section, involves an evaluation of studies that are related to the topic under investigation. A review of the empirical studies brings to the fore the existing knowledge on the current field of study.

It also relates the current study to the larger on-going dialogue in the literature, filling in gaps in the previous studies. It is, therefore, a discussion of the findings and ideas of some other researchers, authors and professionals within variation studies including social network studies and studies in the field of phonetics and phonology. Though a review of related literature is an evaluation of other research works, this review also included a theoretical review, which forms part of section two. The theoretical review outlines the framework of the study, and how it helps us delineate the work, and its importance in understanding the results and drawing conclusions from the analysis.

3.2. The empirical review