SEL3053: Analyzing Geordie Lecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch

1. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch The English spoken in Tyneside by Geordies is one of the many dialects of the language both in the UK and throughout the world. This lecture first defines what is meant by a dialect, then outlines the factors in dialect formation, and finally sketches the development of the Tyneside dialect within the historical framework provided by Lecture 2.

2. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 1. The nature of dialects The theory of generative grammar says that humans have an innate, genetically determined language faculty, and that every individual who grows up normally in a community learns to speak and understand the language of that community. Humans use language to communicate their mental states: when two individuals communicate successfully using this medium, that is, when they understand one another, they speak the same language, and when they fail to understand one another they speak different languages. As of 2009, SIL Ethnologue catalogued 6909 living human languages worldwide (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language) .

3. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 1. The nature of dialects Observation of language use throughout the world has shown that there is typically variation of usage to greater or lesser degrees within any language community. More specifically: No two humans speak exactly the same language. Each of us has a version of the language that is sufficiently similar to the versions of others in the language community to make communication possible, but that differs in the details of pronunciation, range of vocabulary, and syntactic structuring of utterances. Such individual versions of any given language are called idiolects.

4. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 1. The nature of dialects Idiolects are typically not spread randomly in a community but tend to occur in clusters. Such clusters of very often spatial in the sense that speakers in different geographical regions share characteristic idiolectic features --the idiolects of speakers in the north-east of England, for example, are similar to one another but differ from those of speakers in, say, east London. Clusters may also be determined by other factors such as class, education, and age. Such clusters are called dialects. When two dialects diverge to the degree that they become mutually incomprehensible, they become different languages. Italian and French were, for example, originally dialects of Latin, but over time the growing divergence between them made them separate languages.

5. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects Central to generative linguistics is the concept of Universal Grammar (UG), a set of rules or mechanisms that endows humanity with its linguistic capability, as noted. That grammar is genetically determined, just as the shape of the human body and the ability to walk upright are genetically determined, and is thus the same in all humans, that is, it is universal. If UG exists, however, why are there different languages? Why don't all humans speak the same language?

6. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects The generally-accepted answer is that each individual's UG is parameterized by his or her linguistic environment. A child that grows up in a Spanish-speaking community learns Spanish because the phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of the Spanish that it experiences as it matures parameterize its UG, and endow the child with a Spanish version of UG, or, in shorthand, a Spanish grammar, which it will use all its life. What, therefore, is a parameter?

7. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects By way of an answer, consider the following analogy. You are buying a new car Brand X, and the salesman gives you a list of options --engine size, automatic or manual  gearbox, different colours, etc. Applying this analogy to UG and the existence of different languages, the UG corresponds to the basic Brand X design, the individual language --here Spanish-- corresponds to your particular combination of options, and the options themselves are the parameters. Parameters are, therefore, just pieces of information that specify modifications to some object, be it a car or UG. The sounds, the words, the syntax of the language spoken in a child's environment provide the information --the parameters-- that transform its UG into the grammar of that particular language.

8. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects So far so good. What was said above explains how UG can be parameterized by different languages. But that assumes the pre-existence of different languages: if UG really is genetically endowed and universal, how did different languages ever get going in the first place? Why did we ever stop speaking Universalese? The answer here is that we live in an imperfect and  constantly changing world, and that this has made the development of different languages inevitable.

9. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects To see what this means, let's start with another analogy. Most people have played the game 'Chinese whispers', where a reasonably large number of people arrange themselves in a circle, and a designated person starts the game by saying something to his neighbour on the left. That neighbour then repeats what was said to her own left neighbour, and so on around the circle. When the message reaches the start person again, s/he reports it. Typically, the message will be garbled beyond recognition. Why?

10. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects One of the people in the circle might have a very quiet voice, or another might speak very quickly, so that their neighbours don't quite catch what they said, and compensate by passing on what was probably said. Alternatively, someone might have a hearing problem, or not be paying attention, and so on. The point is this: the environment is full of potential error --it's what an engineer might call a noisy channel, where information is often garbled by noise (in a broad sense) to greater or lesser degrees.

11. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects Now imagine two villages separated by a mountain. Both speak the same language. The warlord of village A, who rules by terror, dies and is replaced by someone even worse who, in addition, has a slight speech defect, so that the sound [p] comes out of his mouth rather like the very similar sound [k]. His flunkies, wishing to live, adopt his pronunciation so as not to embarrass him. Their children hear that pronunciation and parameterize their UG with [k]. After a few generations, the [p] has become [k] for all speakers in village A. One day the men of village A cross the mountain and attack village B, where everyone still has the [p] / [k] distinction. If village A wins, the inhabitants of B might well adopt the pronunciation of the conquerors because of their prestige.

12. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects The moral? The original warlord's speech defect, part of the general real-world noisy channel, gave rise to a phonetic variant. Sociological factors then generalized that variant to the local community and, possibly, further afield, resulting in a dialect. These are the sorts of environmental factors that make language change inevitable, and account for the rise of different dialects and ultimately languages. It's not difficult to think of others --a class-conscious adoption of a 'refined accent', for example, or association of a particular way of speaking with a high-profile celebrity.

13. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects We arrive, then, at a situation in which numerous environmental factors, such as the shape of articulatory organs, sociological circumstances, and geography, drive language change. Variants come and go constantly. Some are not generally adopted and disappear again more or less quickly, while others are adopted and become environmental parameters for the next generation. As parametric differences multiply in different ways in different parts of a linguistic community, dialect speakers find it increasingly difficult to understand one another, and eventually they speak different languages. And so on for ever and ever.

14. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects What sorts of dialectal language variation are there? Phonetic and phonological change Humans are capable of making and hearing a wide range of sounds with their articulatory and auditory systems, and the world's languages use different though substantially overlapping subsets of these sounds for linguistic communication. In German, for example, the gutteral [χ] sound is extensively used, as in the name of the composer Bach (pronounced [baχ]), but it is not used at all in most varieties of British English, where 'Bach' is pronounced [bak]. Conversely, German speakers do not use the fricative [Þ], extensively used in English (ie, 'thank').

15. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects Phonetic and phonological change The linguistic subdiscipline of phonetics studies the physical characteristics of speech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived by humans; historical phonetics describes and compares the evolution of sounds in individual languages and groups of languages over time. Phonology differs from phonetics in that it studies not the detail of the physical sounds used by speakers of a given language, but how these sounds are organized into a system of what might, as a first approximation, be called 'significant' sounds in the language.

16. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects Morphological change The sounds of a language are organized into words, and the morphology of a language is the system by which this is accomplished. In English, for example, the sequence [s] + [t] + [r] is very common, as in 'string', 'straight', 'strive' and so on, but [d] + [t] + [r] is never used --no English words begin 'dtr...'. The morphology of a language also includes the systematic ways in which words and pieces of words can be combined with one another. In English, for example, some words can be combined to produce a new one --'light' + 'house' = 'lighthouse', but others can't --for example 'easily' and 'cat' can't be joined to make 'easilycat'. Historical morphology studies the way in which the morphological systems of languages evolve over time.

17. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects Lexical change The lexicon of a language is its dictionary --the list of words that the language contains. The lexicon is always changing. New words enter the language as the need for them arises --'internet', 'email'-- and others go out of use because they're no longer needed. A few people might know what a 'harrow' is, but how many people recognize 'galliot' (a small sailing boat)? Historical lexicography studies the lexical evolution of languages.

18. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects Syntactic change Syntax is the system within a language that governs the way in which words are ordered in that language. It's clear enough to everyone that words can't be strung together any old way -- the sentence 'a saw the with man I telescope' makes no sense at all, and the ordering of the words 'bites', 'man', and 'dog' is crucial: 'dog bites man' means one thing, 'man bites dog' another, and 'bites man dog' leaves it unclear who bit whom. Like all the types of change we have seen so far, the syntax of a language changes over time. The 17th-century version of the Lord's Prayer, for example, has 'not lead thou us into temptation', which we would never say today; the current version of this is: 'do not lead us into temptation'.

19. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 2. The formation of dialects Semantic change Meanings of words change to greater or lesser degrees over time. English and German developed in different directions from the same early language, and eventually became mutually incomprehensible (see below). Because of this, they have many features in common: English 'hound', German 'Hund', the English alternation 'gives' / 'gave', German 'gibt' / 'gab', and so on. The early language had a word for servant that, in German, developed into 'knecht', which retains its original meaning, but in English it became 'knight', which means just the opposite.

20. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English The successive cultures that established themselves in the North-East spoke a variety of languages. This section surveys the effect of these languages on the Tyneside dialect as it is spoken today. We have no knowledge of what language or languages the Stone-Age and Bronze-Age inhabitants of the region spoke in prehistory, and therefore no way of determining whether anything of those languages survives in the present day. None has ever been found.

21. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English The first British languages we know about, and the ancestor of the languages spoken here today, were and are Indo-European. In the 16th century, European travellers to the East began to notice certain similarities between their own languages and those of the countries as far afield as India. That they might all share a common ancestor was first proposed in 1786 by Sir William Jones, an English jurist and student of Eastern cultures. He thus launched what came to be known as the Indo-European hypothesis, which served as the principal stimulus to the founders of historical linguistics in the 19th century.

22. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English This hypothesis was, in essence, that virtually all western European languages, some Middle Eastern ones, and those of Northern India all descended from a common language which could be reconstructed by studying their resemblances. In the course of the 19th century, this hypothesis is developed by historical linguists (including the Grimm brothers, of fairy tale fame) who became known as 'neogrammarians'. Their work continues to be refined to the present day. On the basis of the work so far, the Indo-European family of languages has become very extensive; the following trees show these languages and their interrelationships (taken from: http://www.danshort.com/ie/iecentum.htm

23. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English

24. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English

25. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English Where this common language was first spoken has long been controversial, but many Indo-Europeanists now believe that is was somewhere in western central Asia, perhaps Turkestan.

26. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English From there, this language was disseminated over many centuries westwards into Europe, and south and south-eastwards into Persia / Iran and India. Timing is even more controversial --one estimate that most experts would at least allow as a possibility is that the dissemination began about 6000 years ago, that is, c.4000 BC.

27. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English The Indo-European hypothesis was based on comparison of older languages like Gothic, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, which showed that similarities among words with similar meanings were so systematic that it could not be coincidental --such similarities could only be explained by postulating common descent from the same ancestor-language. Consider, for example, the words for the numbers 1-10 in a range of some early Indo-European languages, each representing one of the main Indo-European language subfamilies (for a complete list, see zompist.com):

28. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English

29. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English Given the pretty much unrestricted choice of words for the numbers in principle --Latin for 8 could, for example, be 'cloaca', or Old Irish for 1 'epscop'-- it's clear that these word-forms for the numerals are related despite differences of detail. Note also that the differences of detail are not random. In the rows for 2 and 10, for example, where all the other languages have initial 'd', Gothic has 't'.

30. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English Linguists look for regularities like this as clues to the development of language subfamilies and specific languages from the Indo-European parent language. By looking at a wider range of evidence, it turns out that the 't'/'d' alternation in this instance is not a coincidence, but one of the main ways in which the Germanic languages differ from other Indo-European ones. Thus, where Latin has 'dens', Gothic has 'tunthus', and Modern English 'tooth', and where Latin has 'ducere', Gothic has 'tiuhan', meaning to lead or to pull (as in Modern English 'tug'). It is by investigating regularities like this that linguistics have been able to reconstruct the essential features of the Indo-European parent language and the development of its descendants.

31. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English 2.1 Celtic The Celts in Europe and in Britain spoke a branch of Indo-European which is, unsurprisingly, called 'Celtic', and which has existed in the British Isles from the final few centuries BC to the present day. Celtic continues to be spoken in Scotland and Wales until the present day, but has had relatively little influence on English. Many place-names and river names are Celtic or have Celtic elements. The North-East has its share of these. The river names Tyne, Tees, Derwent, Esk, and Humber, for example, are all Celtic. - Some words have come into English from Celtic. Whiskey, from Celtic uisce, 'water', is an example.

32. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English 2.2 Latin In the first century AD the Romans incorporated Britain into their empire and remained until about 400 AD. Evidence of their presence can still be seen throughout the country; here in the north-east we have numerous Roman fortifications and, of course, Hadrian's Wall. Despite the Roman's prolonged presence, however, they had little discernible linguistic influence on the English spoken in the UK today. This may seem a surprising statement, since even a cursory examination of contemporary English reveals a large number of words of Latin origin: administration, interim, agenda, and so on. These came into English many centuries after the Roman Empire had vanished, however, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

33. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English 2.3 Anglo-Saxon Between the fifth and seventh centuries the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain and occupied most of what is now England, that is, not Scotland or Wales; present-day Cumbria and Cornwall remained outside the Anglo-Saxon sphere initially, but were gradually assimilated. The Anglo-Saxons brought their own language with them, the ancestor of modern English (of which more below), and this gradually supplanted Celtic in the Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence. North-East England was one of the first Anglo-Saxon settlement areas, and Celtic began to disappear quite early on there.

34. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English 2.3 Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxon settlers brought with them a Germanic language which is the ancestor of the present-day Scandinavian languages, Dutch, German, and of course English. We know what this language, Old English, was like because a fairly extensive range of texts in Old English survives. An example can be seen here. Over the course of the many centuries since then, Old English changed, as all languages do. Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English versions of the Lord's Prayer exemplify the progression:

35. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English

36. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English  The language that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them was not a single standard one, but was from the beginning differentiated into dialects. As the invaders settled, these became regional varieties: Kentish in Kent, West Saxon in Wessex, Mercian in the West Midlands, and Northumbrian in the North-East. These regional varieties diversified over the centuries and yielded a rich dialect landscape. Here in the North-East an important influence on this diversification was Hiberno-English. History of Hiberno-English Irish migration to the North-East during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

37. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English The dialect landscape of Britain has only recently begun to erode on account of globalization and the prevalence of various electronic media. The North-East or Geordie dialect remains one of the strongest, though, because it represents a well-defined regional identity of which Geordies are proud. Anyone encountering Geordie for the first time is struck by how different it is from 'standard' English, and this difference is due to two main factors: 1. Phonetics: Geordie dialect sounds unlike any other variety of English, and takes some getting used to before it is comprehensible. 2. Vocabulary: There are many words in Geordie that occur in no other English dialect; see for example any of the printed or online dictionaries.

38. SEL3053: Analyzing GeordieLecture 3. North-East English dialect: historical sketch 3. The development of Tyneside English This module is concerned with the phonetics of Geordie, mainly because it has been relatively little studied, and there are new things to discover.