英語短-A語音學歷史
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[编辑] Trap-bath分裂
「Trap-bath分裂」是指在英格蘭英語口音“trap”和“bath”這兩個英文字中間的/a/音的元音分裂過程。這個過程發生於英格蘭南部，所以亦影響了英語標準音、 美國的波士頓口音及南半球的澳洲英語、新西兰英语、南非英語等口音。現時近代英语的音素/æ/在特殊程況下被延長了，並慢慢演化成為father的/ɑː/音。(Wells 1982: 100–1, 134, 232–33)
In this context, the lengthened vowel in words such as bath, laugh, grass, chance in accents affected by the split is referred to as a broad A (also, in Britain, long A). Phonetically the vowel is a long back [ɑː] in Received Pronunciation (RP); it is a fronter vowel, [ɐː] or [aː], in some other accents, including many 澳洲英語 and 新西兰英语 accents, and it may be a rounded [ɒː] in 南非英語.
In accents unaffected by the split, these words usually have the same vowel as words like cat, trap, man, the short A or flat A.
The sound change probably occurred during the late 18世纪 in southern England, and changed the sound of [æ] to [ɑː] in words in which the former sound appeared before [f, s, θ, ns, nt, ntʃ, nd, mpl], leading to RP [pɑːθ] for path and [sɑːmpl] for sample, etc. The sound change did not occur before other consonants; thus accents affected by the split preserve /æ/ in words like cat. See the 語音變化 section below for more details on the words affected.
[编辑] 英倫諸島之重音
The presence or absence of this split is one of the most noticeable differences between different accents of 英格蘭英語. An 同言綫 runs across the Midlands from the Wash to the 威爾士 border, passing to the south of the cities of 伯明翰 and 萊斯特. North of the isogloss, the vowel in most of the affected words is usually the same short [a] as in cat; south of the isogloss, the vowel in the affected words is generally long. (Gupta 2005)
There is some variation close to the isogloss; for example in Brummie most of the affected words have a short [a], but aunt usually has a long vowel. Additionally, some words which have /æ/ in most forms of 美国英语, including half, calf, rather and can't, are often found with long vowels in northern England.
In some West Country accents of 英格蘭英語 where the vowel in trap is realized as [a] rather than [æ], the vowel in the bath words was lengthened to [aː] and did not merge with the /ɑː/ of father. In those accents, trap, bath and father all have distinct vowels /a/, /aː/ and /ɑː/. (Wells 1982: 346–47).
In some other West Country accents, and in many forms of 蘇格蘭英語, there is no distinction corresponding to the RP distinction between /æ/ and /ɑː/.
[编辑] 南半球重音
Evidence for the date of the shift comes from the Southern Hemisphere accents, those of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
In Australian English, there is generally agreement with southern British in words like path, laugh, class. But before N+consonant, as in dance, plant, most Australians use a flat A (aunt and can't are exceptions and are invariably pronounced with [ɐː]). Phonetically the broad A is [ɐː]. In Australia there is variation in the word castle, both pronunciations are commonly heard. For more information, see the table at Australian English phonology.
South African and New Zealand accents have a similar distribution of sounds to RP.
[编辑] 北美重音
Most accents of American English and Canadian English are unaffected by the split. The main exceptions are parts of New England (see Boston accent), where the broad sound can be used in some of the same words as in southern England, such as can't, aunt, ask, bath etc. Of these, the one in widest use is aunt; those who speak this way find calling a close relative "ant" jarring, and say that it's spelled differently from that word.
A related, but distinct, phenomenon is the phonemic æ-tensing in the accents of New York and Philadelphia.
[编辑] 語音變化
The change did not happen in all eligible words. It is hard to find a clear reason why some changed and others did not. Roughly, the more common a word the more likely that the change from flat /æ/ to broad /ɑː/ took place. It also looks as if monosyllables were more likely to change than polysyllables. Here are some examples from RP, to illustrate the variety:
- Broad /ɑːf/ in half, calf, laugh, laughter, shaft, raft, after
- Flat /æf/ still in baffle, raffle, Taffy, Aphrodite, kaftan
- Broad /ɑːθ/ in path, bath, and /aːð/ in paths, baths, rather
- Flat /æθ/ in mathematics, maths, Cathy, and /æð/ in fathom, gather
- Broad /ɑːs/ in class, pass, mast, past, master, plaster, castle, mask, task
- Flat /æs/ in ass (donkey), crass, mass (amount), classic, pastel, asp, Aston, Asquith
- Broad /ɑːnt/ in aunt, plant, can't, advantage
- Flat /ænt/ in ant, banter, cant (slang), scant, mantle
- Broad /ɑːns/ in dance, chance, advance, answer
- Flat /æns/ in ransom, cancer, Anson
There are some words in which both pronunciations are heard among southern speakers:
- Greek elements as in telegraph, blastocyst, chloroplast
- the prefix trans-
- the words mass (church service), chaff, lather
Use of broad A in mass is distinctly conservative and probably rare now. The other fluctuations are both common, but with further complications. While graph, telegraph, photograph can have either, graphic, graphology always have flat A. The broad A is more likely when the s is voiceless (thus transfer [trɑːnsfɜː], transport [trɑːnspɔːt]) than when it is voiced (thus translate [trænzleɪt], trans-Atlantic [trænzætlæntɪk]).
[编辑] Bad-lad分裂
The bad-lad split is a phonemic split of the Early Modern English short vowel phoneme /æ/ into a short /æ/ and a long /æː/. This split is found in some varieties of English English and Australian English in which bad (with long [æː]) and lad (with short [æ]) do not rhyme. (Wells 1982: 288–89, 596; Horvath and Horvath 2001; Leitner 2004).
The phoneme /æ/ is usually lengthened to /æː/ when it comes before an /m/ or /n/, within the same syllable. It is furthermore lengthened in the adjectives bad, sad, glad and mad; family also always has a long vowel, regardless of whether it is pronounced as two or three syllables. Some speakers and regional varieties also use /æː/ before /g/, /ŋ/, /l/ and/or /dʒ/; such lengthening may be more irregular than others. Lengthening is prohibited in the past tense of irregular verbs and function words and in modern contractions of polysyllabic words where the /æ/ was in an open syllable. Lengthening is not stopped by the addition of word-level suffixes.
Note that British dialects with the bad-lad split have instead broad /ɑː/ in some words where an /m/ or /n/ follows the vowel. In this circumstance, Australian speakers usually (but not universally) use /æː/, except in the words ‘aunt’, ‘can’t’ and ‘shan’t’, which have broad /aː/.
Daniel Jones noted for RP that some speakers had a phonemic contrast between a long and a short /æ/ which he wrote as /æː/ and /æ/, respectively. Thus, in An outline of English phonetics (1962, ninth edition, Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons) he noted that sad, bad generally had /æː/ but lad, pad had /æ/. In his pronouncing dictionary, he recorded several minimal pairs, for example bad /bæːd/, bade /bæd/ (also pronounced as /beɪd/). He noted that for some speakers, jam actually represented two different pronunciations, one pronounced /dʒæːm/ meaning 'fruit conserve', the other /dʒæm/ meaning 'crush, wedging'. Later editions of this dictionary edited by Alfred C. Gimson, dropped this distinction.
Commonly also in these accents, can 'able to' is /kæn/, whereas the noun can 'tin' or the verb can 'to put into a tin' is /kæːn/; this is similar to the situation found in æ-tensing in some varieties of American English. Australian speakers who use ‘span’ as the past tense of ‘spin’ also have a minimal pair between /spæːn/ ‘to span’ (the bridges /spæːn/ the river) and /spæn/, the past tense of ‘spin’ (the ball /spæn/). Various other minimal pairs can be created in the slang speech of social groups as /æg/ meaning ‘agriculture’ vs /æːg/, a La Trobe University–specific term referring to the part of the Uni known in full as the Agora.
Apart from Jones and Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961; Springfield, Mass: G. & C. Merriam), where /æː/ (or rather, the American "tense æ") is noted as a secondary pronunciation and written with aaə, dictionary makers have never shown a difference between these varieties of the historical /æ/. In the 11th (2003) edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which is derived from the Third unabridged, the distinction is discussed in an introductory section on pronunciation but ignored elsewhere in the text. The editors justify their decision by maintaining that "this distinction is sufficiently infrequent that the traditional practice of using a single symbol is followed in this book" (p. 34a).
[编辑] æ-的拉緊式
In the sociolinguistics of English, æ-tensing is a process that occurs in some accents of North American English by which the vowel [æ] is raised and lengthened or diphthongized in various environments. The realization of this "tense æ" varies from [æ̝ˑ] to [ɛə] to [eə] to [ɪə], depending on the speaker's regional accent. The most common realization is probably [eə] (that is, a centering diphthong with a starting point closer than the vowel [ɛ] as in dress); that transcription will be used for convenience in this article.
[编辑] 于北美"中-亞特蘭大"地區之音素 æ-的拉緊式
In 費城 and 纽约市, the tense /eə/ is a separate phoneme from /æ/, since certain minimal pairs can be found:
- can /keən/ 'metal container' vs. can /kæn/ 'be able'
- halve /heəv/ vs. have /hæv/
In these accents there has thus been a phonemic split. Nevertheless, the distribution between /æ/ and /eə/ is largely predictable in the Philadelphia and New York regions: In Philadelphia, tense [eə] occurs in closed syllables before the /n/, /m/, /f/, /θ/, and /s/, as well as the words mad, bad, and glad. In New York, tensing occurs in all those environments as well as before voiced stops and /ʃ/. Lax [æ] usually occurs before /ŋ/, /l/, and voiceless stops, and also usually occurs in open syllables regardless of the following consonant.
| Tense /eə/ | Lax /æ/ | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| man | /meən/ | hang | /hæŋ/ |
| ham | /heəm/ | pal | /pæl/ |
| laugh | /leəf/ | lap | /læp/ |
| bath | /beəθ/ | bat | /bæt/ |
| glass | /gleəs/ | manage | /mænɪdʒ/ |
The main exceptions to the above generalizations are:
- When a vowel-initial word-level suffix is added to a word with tense /eə/, the vowel remains even though it has come to stand in an open syllable:
- mannish has /eə/ like man, not /æ/ like manage
- classy has /eə/ like class, not /æ/ like classic
- passing has /eə/ like pass, not /æ/ like passive
- When a polysyllabic word with /æ/ in an open syllable gets truncated to a single closed syllable, the vowel remains:
- caf (truncation of cafeteria) has /æ/, not /eə/ like calf
- path (truncation of pathology) has /æ/, not /eə/ like path 'way, road'
- Mass (truncation of Massachusetts) has /æ/, not /eə/ like mass
- Function words and irregular verb tenses have lax /æ/, even in an environment which would usually cause tensing:
- and (a function word) has /æ/, not /eə/ like sand
- ran (an irregular verb tense) has /æ/, not /eə/ like man
The phoneme /eə/ is also used in these accents before intervocalic /r/ in words like dairy and Mary and in non-rhotic varieties of these accents in words like square and scarce (which rhymes with glass for many non-rhotic speakers).
The phonemic tensing of æ is similar to the broad A phenomenon of certain other dialects. The environment of broad A overlaps with that of æ-tensing, in that broad A occurs before voiceless fricatives in the same syllable and before nasals in certain environments; and both phenomena involve replacement of the short lax vowel /æ/ with a longer and tenser vowel. However, the "broad A" is lower and backer than [æ], while the result of æ-tensing is higher and fronter.
It is also related to the bad-lad split of some Southern British and Australian dialects, in which a short flat /æ/ is lengthened to [æ:] in some conditions. The most significant differences from the Philadelphian system described here are that bad-lad splitting dialects have the broad A phenomenon, so the split can't occur there; that 'sad' is long; and that lengthening can occur before /g/ and /l/. See that article for more information.
[编辑] 非音素之 æ-拉緊式
In accents that have undergone the Northern cities vowel shift, the phoneme /æ/ is raised and tensed in all environments, to [eə] or even higher.
Most other dialects of American English display an /æ/ which is raised and tensed in some environments and lower and laxer in others, without splitting it into two contrasting phonemes as the New York and Philadelphia accents do. Geographically the most widespread is the "nasal system", in which /æ/ is raised and tensed to [eə] exclusively before nasal consonants, regardless of whether there is a syllabic or morphemic boundary present. The nasal system is found variously in speakers of the southern Midwest, northern New Jersey, and Florida, among other regions, but it is most prominent—that is, the difference between the two allophones of /æ/ is greatest, and speakers with the nasal system are most concentrated—in eastern New England (see Boston accent).
More widespread among speakers of the Western United States and southern Midwest is a "continuous" system. This resembles the nasal system in that /æ/ is usually raised and tensed to [eə] before nasal consonants, but instead of a sharp divide between high tense [eə] before nasals and low lax [æ] before other consonants, allophones of /æ/ occupy a continuum of varying degrees of height and tenseness between those two extremes, with a variety of phonetic and phonological factors interacting (sometimes differently in different dialects) to determine the height and tenseness of any particular example of /æ/. For some speakers with continuous systems, particularly in Canada and the northern and northwestern United States, a following /g/ tenses an /æ/ as much as or more than a following nasal does; in much of Minnesota and Wisconsin, this extends to the point that /æ/ actually merges with /eɪ/ before /g/, so that flag rhymes with plague.
In the Southern United States, the pattern most characteristic of Southern American English does not employ æ-tensing at all, but rather what has been called the "Southern drawl": /æ/ becomes in essence a triphthong [æjə]. However, many speakers from the South have the nasal æ-tensing system described above, particularly in Charleston, Atlanta, and Florida, and speakers from New Orleans have been reported to have a system very similar to the phonemic split of New York,
[编辑] 參見
- Phonological history of the English language
- Phonological history of English vowels
[编辑] 參考文獻
[编辑] trap-bath分裂
- Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3).
- Gupta, A. F., Baths and becks, English Today 81, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp21-27 (2005).
[编辑] bad-lad分裂
- Horvath, Barbara M. and Ronald J. Horvath. (2001). Short A in Australian English: A geolinguistic study. In English in Australia, ed. D. Blair and P. Collins, 341–55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Leitner, Gerhard. (2004). Australia's Many Voices, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-018194-0 (vol. 1), ISBN 3-11-018195-9 (vol.2).
- Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3).
[编辑] æ-拉緊式
- Benua, L. 1995. Identity effects in morphological truncation. In Papers in optimality theory, ed. J. N. Beckman, L. Walsh Dickey, and S. Urbanczyk. UMass Occasional Papers 18. Amherst: GLSA, 77–136.
- Ferguson, C. A. 1972. "Short a" in Philadelphia English. In Studies in linguistics in honor of George L. Trager, ed. M. E. Smith, 259–74. The Hague: Mouton.
- Kahn, D. 1976. Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA. Reproduced by the Indiana University Linguistics Club.
- Labov, W. 1966. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
- Labov, W. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Labov, W. 1981. Resolving the Neogrammarian controversy. Language 57:267–308.
- Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3110167468.
- Trager, G. L. 1930. The pronunciation of "short a" in American Standard English. American Speech 5:396–400.
- Trager, G. L. 1934. What conditions limit variants of a phoneme? American Speech 9:313–15.
- Trager, G. L. 1940. One phonemic entity becomes two: The case of "short a". American Speech 15:255–58.
- Trager, G. L. 1941. ə ˈnəwt on æ ənd æ˔ˑ in əˈmerikən ˈiŋgliʃ. Maître Phonétique 17–19.
- Wells, J. C. 1982. Accents of English. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
