articulatory setting
Just as each
language has a unique set of phonemes (distinct
sounds), so too each group of speakers has a preferred position for the vocal
organs, particularly the tongue and the lips but including also the soft palate
(which allows the air from the lungs to escape through the nose, thus producing
nasalisation) and the jaw. The preferred setting can, in part, account for
dialectal differences. Scots and Canadians have more lip-rounding than
Australians or Londoners. Irish speakers form the consonants /t, d, l, r, s, z/
with the tip of the tongue against the teeth, producing the dental quality
often associated with Irish speech. Speakers in southern England form the same
sounds with the tip of the tongue touching the ridge behind the upper teeth and
many speakers from India pronounce these sounds with retroflexion, that is,
with the tip of the tongue curling towards the hard
palate. Some
speakers from Liverpool and from the American Mid-West have a nasal quality in
their speech, resulting from a tendency to speak with the soft palate lowered.
It is rare for such articulatory differences to cause misunderstandings but
they are enough to mark one group of speakers out from another.
The most frequently occurring sounds in a language and the means of
their articulation help to determine the position of the mobile organs in the
mouth, the jaw and possibly even the body when speaking. One will always sound
foreign in one’s pronunciation of a
language if one does not adopt the articulatory setting of its native speakers.
See: phoneme,
phonetics, pronunciation, shibboleth.
as
As is used in a variety of ways in
English: 1 in comparisons:
I like him as
a person, but as a teacher he’s
a disaster.
He admires you
as much as I/me. She is as tall as I/me.
In the second
example, the choice of pronoun is significant. Selection of ‘I’ implies:
He admires you as much as I
admire you.
whereas ‘me’
implies:
He admires you as much as he
admires me.
In the third
example it is stylistically but not semantically significant. Many grammarians
have insisted that since Latin took the same case before and after BE, English
should do the same. This reasoning overlooks the parallelism of such patterns as:
He is taller
than I am. He is taller than me.
He arrived
before I did. He arrived before me.
It is, however, conventional to use the
nominative case after BE in formal contexts.
2 to describe the role or function of a
nominal:
The doctor used his scarf as a
rough bandage. I have worked as a waitress for many years.
3
to indicate that two actions occurred simultaneously:
We sang as we went along.
4 to
suggest a reason. In this context as can
often be replaced by since or because:
As he was the
only person with access to the room, suspicion naturally fell on him.
5
In very formal styles as can be followed by inversion:
She was a
suffragette, as were most of her
friends.
The expressions as if and as though are also used in comparisons and are interchangeable, but as if is slightly less formal:
You behaved as if/though you
were mad.
It looks as if/though it
could rain.
Often, in formal contexts, ‘were’
is used in dependent clauses, particularly if the comparison is extravagant or
unreal:
He looked as
if/though he were about to burst.
She looked at
me as if/though I were a Martian.
In less formal circumstances,
‘was’ is used and is perhaps gradually ousting ‘were’. In colloquial speech like is sometimes used instead of as if/though:
She looks like she’s seen a ghost.
but this structure should be
avoided in writing.
As regards is a focusing device often used in business or legal
correspondence:
As regards your request
of July 15…
Similar in function but
indicating varying degrees of formality are the words and phrases
about, concerning, regarding, with reference to and with regard to.
See: comparison and contrast, conditional, subjunctive.
aspect
As well as temporal
distinctions which are made overt in the verb
phrase, English makes distinctions relating to the continuity or
non-continuity of an action:
I was walking home when we met. (emphasises continuity)
I walked home.
and the completion or
non-completion of an action:
I have read that book. (i.e. I have finished it)
I read that book last night. (but may not have finished it)
Aspect is the term
applied to these distinctions. In English, two types of aspect are clearly
marked: Progressive/Continuous Aspect, which
involves the use of BE+a present participle:
I am singing in the rain.
I was laughing at the time.
and Perfect Aspect, which involves HAVE+a past
participle:
He has painted the whole house.
He had painted the door by nine o’clock.
The progressive and the perfect
can be combined:
She has been looking for her
dream house for ten years. She had been
looking for a dream house for years.
The so-called ‘Historic Present’
as in:
So I goes up to him, he turns to me and I says to
him…
has occasionally been described as
‘narrative aspect’.
See: verb phrase.
aspiration
The term aspiration is used to describe a sound that is produced with
audible breath. The symbol used to indicate this is a raised ‘h’ following the
aspirated sound:
 |
In English, /p, t, k/ are always
aspirated when they occur in word-initial position:
The aspiration
disappears and the distinction between /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/ is effectively
lost when /p, t, k/ follow /s/:
 |
See: pronunciation.
assimilation
In normal
speech, adjacent sounds often affect each other so that they become more alike
and thus less of an effort to produce. In slow, careful speech, for example, London Bridge
is
pronounced but, in casual speech,
the final nasal in ‘London’ becomes an m, under the influence of the b in
‘bridge’.
Assimilation may be partial as when n changes to m under the
influence of b. If n had changed to b then the assimilation would have been complete in that adjacent sounds would
have become identical. Complete assimilation of nasals often occurs when we
have a cold:
come back→ 
ten dogs→
The direction of the influence can also be indicated.
1
The term regressive
or anticipatory assimilation
indicates that a sound changes under the influence of a following sound. Thus,
when:
ten pence→/tεm pεns/
the first sound in ‘pence’ has
modified the last sound in ‘ten’.
2
In progressive
assimilation, a sound changes under the influence of a preceding sound.
Thus when:
Bridge Street→ 
the last sound in ‘bridge’
influences the first sound of ‘street’ causing the s to be pronounced sh.
3
In reciprocal
assimilation, two sounds influence each other. The tags can’t you, don’t you,
won’t you often involve reciprocal assimilation in casual speech when the
t and the y blend into /t∫/, thus:
don’t you→ 
See: accent,
pronunciation.
assonance
Assonance involves the repetition of vowel sounds in words or
stressed syllables:
vine and hide
It is always involved in rhyme:
see and flee
seen and green
although, as
illustrated in the second example, rhyme can also involve the repetition of the
final consonant. Assonance is a characteristic of verse and of some descriptive
prose. Dylan Thomas exploits its potential in such lines as these from ‘On the
Marriage of a Virgin’:
Waking alone
in a multitude of loves when morning’s light Surprised in the opening of her
nightlong eyes
His golden yesterday asleep upon the iris
And this day’s sun leapt up the
sky out of her thighs Was miraculous virginity old as loaves and fishes…
Assonantal patterns are
found in waking and day’s; alone, opening, golden, old and loaves; multitude, loves and sun; and light, surprised, nightlong, eyes, iris, sky and thighs. Unintentional assonance can be
distracting and should be avoided in ordinary prose.
See: alliteration,
sound symbolism.
Australian English
Australia has
a population of approximately 15 million, and as the majority of its mother-
tongue speakers of English are of British origin, the varieties of English in
Australia share many features with
Britain. Many of the Aboriginal Australians live in Northern and Western
Australia and speak both an Aboriginal mother tongue and an English- derived
pidgin. Some have adopted a creole English as a mother tongue. Since the end of
World War II, settlers have come to Australia from several Western European
countries, India and the Pacific. These groups have acquired Australian English and their children’s
linguistic behaviour differs little from that of other Australian-born children.
Because of the small population, the relative classlessness of
Australian society and the homogeneity of the original settlers, Australian
speech is less differentiated than the speech of any other English-speaking
community of comparable size. This is not to claim that there is no regional or class differentiation in
Australia. Clearly, there is. A Queenslander can spot the difference between
his own usage and that of a speaker from Perth or Adelaide; Black and White
speakers are sharply differentiated; and working- class Australians are as easy
to separate from their middle-class contemporaries as in any other anglophone
area. Nevertheless, class and regional differences are fewer in Australia than
in the UK or the USA.
Phonology
Three
overlapping sound systems are recognised for Australian English, ‘Cultivated’, ‘General’
and ‘Broad’. The phonology described
below is based on ‘General Australian’. 1 Australian English is non-rhotic and the consonant system
approximates closely to Received
Pronunciation (RP), with three exceptions: there is a tendency for the dark
l in
words
like milk and pull to be realised as a vowel:
or even
there is some aspiration on /t/ in
word-final position:
/bath/—bat
and word-final /z/ is sometimes
devoiced to /s/, causing ‘letters’ to sound the same as ‘lettuce’.
2 Australian
English has the same number of vowel contrasts as RP but the realisation and
distribution of vowels are different. The following features are widespread:
(a) the
long monophthong /i/ tends to be diphthongised so that we often hear:
for beat
(b)
the long back monophthong
/u/ is centralised and often diphthongised,
producing: 
or
for
goose
(c) the
vowel sound in words like hard, laugh,
pass is realised as a long central vowel.
(d) the
diphthongs in here, there and sure tend to be monophthongised.
(e) the diphthong 
in words like tail is lowered and realised by many as 
the vowel sound in RP tile. Partly because of the shift
from 
to 
/, the diphthong in words like high often becomes 
and 
(f) the
short monophthongs in get and hat are closer than in RP so that the
Australian vowel in hat is similar to
the RP vowel in get and the
Australian vowel in get is similar to
/e/.
(g) the unaccented endings -ed,
-est, -es and -ness have the
schwa vowel 
and not the 
of RP. This difference is very
significant and can result in such misunderstandings as Australian patted and villages sounding like RP pattered
and villagers. In addition, the
past participle -n in flown, grown and shown is often realised as
 |
Australian English sounds closer
to UK than to US norms and the pronunciations that most clearly reveal an
Australian’s origins are those of words like hard, patted, railway.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of British settlers
was not adequate for the new environment and so it was extended in three main ways:
1
Words were borrowed from Aboriginal languages
for animals:
kangaroo koala
wallaby
birds:
budgerigar
currawong kookaburra
trees and plants:
boobialla burrawang
place names:
Geelong Wollongong
and weapons:
boomerang woomera
Relatively few Aboriginal words
have entered International English.
2
New compounds were made:
backblocks (sparsely inhabited area far from the city)
bush-fire/horse/hut/lawyer
gum tree
3
Words were used with modified meanings:
brush (impenetrable
thicket of shrubs) creek (small
river, as in the USA) forest land (grass
and not trees) mob (flock, herd)
sheila (woman)
Australia has
its own range of colloquial language. G’day
(good day) is the usual greeting and dinkum
meaning ‘genuine’ is a widely-used compliment. Australians (both men and
women) tend to use a number of -ie/o abbreviations:
Aussie, Brissie/Brizzie (Brisbane), cossie (swim suit), metho (Meths drinker), nasho (national
serviceman), Pommie (unflattering
name for someone from England), rego (car
registration), shrewdie, smoke-o (tea
break) and wharfie (docker/longshoreman).
And like English speakers thoughout the world, Australians have adopted many US
words and expressions.
Grammar
The grammar of
Australian English reflects the educational background of a speaker. The
written language of an educated Australian is indistinguishable from that of an
educated English person. Working-class Australian English reflects many of the
characteristics of working-class English throughout the world:
1 the tendency to reduce the number of
verb forms:
I
do I done I have done I see I seen I have seen I go I went I have went
2 the use
of them as a plural demonstrative
adjective:
Gimme them boots.
3
the tendency to distinguish between you (singular) and youse /juz/ (plural).
Many Australians also use but at the end of a sentence:
I like him but.
I didn’t do it
but.
as a sentence modifier, equivalent to though. This usage is also found in New
Zealand and in northern Britain.
The description above applies to mother-tongue speakers of English and
not to the majority of Aboriginal people, many of whom speak a pidginised or
creolised English. Since the eighteenth century, two types of Pidgin English
have been used in Australia:
1 Aboriginal Pidgin English, probably dating back to the earliest
contacts between settlers and the original Australians. An 1828 sample of this
is:
All gammon white fellow pai-alla cabon gunya me tumble down white
fellow. (It
was all lies that the whites spoke in the court house that I killed a white.)
2 South Pacific
Pidgin English, confined mainly to the sugar-cane plantations of Queensland in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but now found also in Northern
Australia and the Torres Straits. A recent sample of this pidgin is:
Im bin hitim mi long an. (He hit me with his hand.)
Pikanini i go krai. (The child will cry.)
