Conceptual Categories in Contact

This paper explores the comparative analysis of vowel systems within British, American, and Irish English accents, examining their phonetic characteristics, historical roots, and social implications. English has evolved into numerous varieties worldwide, primarily influenced by regional and social factors. The paper focuses on Received Pronunciation (RP) in British English, General American in American English, and Supraregional Irish English in Irish English, highlighting their distinct phonological features. Rhoticity and lexical sets are examined as key aspects of variation. Differences in the pronunciation of /r/ contribute to unique phonetic landscapes, with British English exhibiting non-rhoticity and American and Irish English maintaining rhoticity. The presence of centering diphthongs in British English and vowel contrasts before /r/ in Irish and American English further distinguishes these accents. Analysis of lexical sets reveals variations in vowel quality and realization, emphasizing the dynamic nature of phonological systems across accents. By examining these differences, the paper underscores the intricate interplay of historical, geographical, and social factors in shaping linguistic diversity. Understanding these nuances is essential for appreciating the complexity of English language variations and their cultural significance.

Progressives in Irish English are categorised and described in terms of twenty basic and extended functions, determined by lexical, syntactic and pragmatic criteria. Quantitative information derived from a set of corpora is then used as the basis for historical comparisons within Irish English and synchronic comparisons with English English data. Explanations are offered for the often considerably higher frequencies of the progressive in Irish English. Extended functions are shown to be the result of subjectification and grammaticalisation. The paper concludes that the progressive in Irish English is Janus-like, incorporating functions transferred from Irish and consequently originating in Irish English, and also functions shared with British English and, by implication, world Englishes. Keywords: Irish English; ICE-Ireland; progressives; frequencies; subjectification

The study of the pragmatics of Irish English is a recent endeavour. Since its beginnings, a substantial amount of scholarship has been conducted in a cross-varietal design with the aim of highlighting shared and specific features of Irish English vis-à-vis other varieties of English. A particular focus of such variational pragmatic research has been on speech act realisations. Cross-varietal studies on apologies in Irish English remain, however, limited. The present chapter addresses this research gap in the study of apologies in Irish English. It takes a variational pragmatic approach to the study of remedial apologies, contrasting apologies in Irish English and in English English empirically using comparable data . Specifically, production questionnaire data is investigated and norms of appropriate verbal apologetic behaviour contrasted. The analysis centres on the apology strategies and modification employed across varieties and on their linguistic realisations, and a particular focus is placed on the cross-varietal use of alerters and vocatives in apologising. Findings point to the universality of apology strategies, while also revealing variety-preferential pragmatic differences. Specifically, the Irish English data reveals a higher use of vocatives, many playing a relational function in the data, and thus suggesting higher levels of relational orientation in the Irish English data relative to the English English data. In addition, a higher use of upgrading strategies and explanations, many communicating an active speaker role, is recorded in the Irish English data pointing to a comparatively higher redress of speakers’ loss of positive face.

This research examines language ideological change in the Irish context through a longitudinal analysis of variety choice in radio advertising in Ireland from 1977 to 2007. The study extends the growing body of research on variation and change in Irish English to examine this variety as it operates within the context of the genre of radio advertising. A corpus of radio ads from the years 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007 is analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of heteroglossia is applied to accent and dialect as well as genre as they relate to the ads. The analysis is based on Sussex’s (1989) ad components of Action and Comment which relate to the genre of the discourse. The corpus is analysed firstly at the inter-varietal level in relation to the range of varieties in the corpus, predominantly Irish English and Standard Southern British English (SSBE). Based on the decline of SSBE in the 1997 and 2007 sub-corpora, the second part of the analysis is at the intra-varietal level and focuses on accent sub-varieties of Irish English. The study explores the manifestation of standard and nationalist ideologies, the conversationalisation of discourse and the ideological construction of authenticity, employing a number of factors; variety choice and location in terms of ad components, the juxtaposition of prestige and vernacular varieties and sub-varieties in the ad components, indexical value of variety, and accommodation strategies including audience and referee design. Nationalist language ideologies and vernacular authenticities are reflected in the use of Irish English rather than the use of the Irish language. Standard language ideologies prevail throughout the corpus but take on a new guise in the later years in the form of prestige Irish English sub-varieties rather than SSBE. These prestige Irish English forms can be seen as a merging of nationalist and standard ideologies and of traditional establishment and vernacular authenticities. The notion of authenticity is found to be moving away from traditional conceptions and is based on more creative constructions.

The investigation of the use and functions of pragmatic markers has been a prominent topic in Irish English. Various aspects were considered, including syntactic position and sociolinguistic factors, from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives . This chapter adds another layer to the investigation of discourse markers in Irish English, namely phonetic realisation. Recent scholarship has found that different functions of lexemes can vary in terms of their phonetic realisation. Correlations between pragmatic function and phonetic realisation are thus present in different varieties of English. Most previous studies that investigate this connection between pragmatics and segmental phonetics consider like, which has probably been the most well-studied discourse marker in recent decades. This chapter broadens the scope and provides a phonetic analysis of the pragmatic marker but, which is also used in Irish English . It aims to find out whether correlations between phonetic realisation and pragmatic function that have been reported for like can also be observed for this pragmatic marker. The exploration of this aspect of communication could help us to better understand the grammaticalisation paths of non-lexical elements, and shed new light on the use and function of discourse-pragmatic elements across varieties of English.

The most common dialectal alternative to the Modern English comparative particle than is a negative form with variants such as ne, na, and nor, e.g. You’re my son – more to me nor any son (Dickens, Great Expectationsii. xx). This paper presents a detailed historical survey of this dialectal usage in varieties of British and Irish English, and offers an assessment of its regional distribution since the medieval period. The paper also investigates the possible origins of the form, first highlighting some problems of previous analyses, before comparing and contrasting the use of negation in comparative constructions in French and Insular Celtic. The evidence strongly suggests that the negative comparative particle in English should be seen as an areal feature of the British Isles, and that language contact with Celtic lies at the root of it.

In the literature, a variety of a language is, to say the least, broadly defined. Building a corpus for either a Variety or a variety of a language involves building something that is representative of a whole; therefore, the design of the corpus is of particular importance to the corpus builders. In general, the primary issue connected to corpus size is that of resources, and it is here that the corpus builder(s) may have to 'cut their coat according to their cloth'. The internal structure of a corpus refers to matters such as diversity of texts, length of texts and number of texts to include. Limerick Corpus of Irish English is a one-million-word corpus of naturally occurring spoken Irish English built to allow the description of Irish English as a Variety in itself rather than how it is similar to or different from other Varieties of English such as British English.

The current chapter is intended as an overview of the main focus of research on Irish English to date. This variety has been well served by scholars in recent decades with a flourishing of interest stemming from various approaches to analysing English in Ireland. For the purpose of presentation, this chapter is divided into various sections each of which concerns itself with a particular subarea. After these introductory paragraphs, there is a section on the early history of the variety of Irish English (Section 2.). This is followed by a consideration of the main linguistic event in the history of Ireland, the shift from Irish to English for the great majority of the population (Section 3.). In keeping with new trends in Irish English scholarship (Hickey 1999a), shared features across the country as a whole are then reviewed (Section 4.). Following on from this, there is a section on the interpretation of features, considering in particular their possible sources (Section 5.). Such reflections are relevant to the question of whether language contact or retention of dialect input are the source for features of Irish English (Harris 1991; Hickey 1995, 2006). The last section looks at recent changes in Dublin English (Section 6.) which, because of the status of the capital in the Republic of Ireland, are having a profound influence on the course of non-local varieties of English in the south of the country (Hickey 1999b).

The current chapter is intended as an overview of the main focus of research on Irish English to date. This variety has been well served by scholars in recent decades with a flourishing of interest stemming from various approaches to analysing English in Ireland. After an introduction, there is a section on the early history of the variety of Irish English (Section 2). This is followed by a consideration of the main linguistic event in the history of Ireland, the shift from Irish to English for the great majority of the population 3) . In keeping with new trends in Irish English scholarship, shared features across the country as a whole are then reviewed (Section 4) . Following on from this, there is a section on the interpretation of features, considering in particular their possible sources (Section 5). Such reflections are relevant to the question of whether language contact or retention of dialect input are the source for features of Irish English. The last section looks at recent changes in Dublin English (Section 7) which are having a profound influence on the course of non-local varieties of English in the south of the country. A summarises these developments and points to other areas of interest in the field of language studies and English in Ireland.

The aim of this paper is to show that the use of texts written in non-standard varieties of English, such as Irish English (or Hiberno-English), could be a valuable complement to language teaching and language learning. The paper concentrates on a number of linguistic features which are characteristic of this variety of English and which appear in the works of Irish writers. Special attention is paid to the work of Donegal author Patrick MacGill, and excerpts from his early novels are used as an example of Irish English writing.

This study implements an automated parser-based approach to the investigation of light verb constructions. The database consisting of ICE-GB and ICE-IRE is used to obtain qualitative and quantitative results on the use of light verb structures. The study explains and evaluates the steps employed to optimize parser output in detecting open lists of light verb constructions. It discusses the qualitative usage differences of these structures in the data between the two varieties and finds that ICE-GB favours fewer high frequency light verbs while ICE-IRE contains more diverse lower frequency light verbs and more passives. Overall, counts of light verb constructions are considerably higher than previously assumed. The projected counts suggest that attestations of light verb constructions will increase considerably if the search is not restricted to certain high-frequency light verbs as is typically done in studies employing manual or semi-automatic approaches to data collection.

Varieties of ‘Contact Irish English’ (CIE), i.e. English spoken by native Irish speakers, are often thought to display significant phonological influence from Irish (Hickey, 1986, 2007; Ó hÚrdail, 1997). However, modern systematic acoustic descriptions of CIE speech data are scarce, relative to other Irish English (IrE) varieties. This study investigates a phonological phenomenon often attributed to an Irish influence, that of epenthesis in words with liquid+sonorant coda clusters (LSCCs) e.g., in film [ˈfɪləm], in CIE spoken in the Connemara Gaeltacht, an Irish speaking region in the west of Ireland. We examine (i) the extent of LSCC epenthesis and effects of sociolinguistic factors and (ii) whether prosodic contours for epenthesized words are realized similarly to other disyllabic words in Connemara English. 314 LSCC token from sentences produced by 12 L1-Irish bilinguals and 12 English monolinguals were acoustically analysed using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2023) and IViE prosodic annotation (Grabe et al., 1998). Statistical findings indicate significantly higher epenthesis rates among bilinguals, with age, Language Profile Score (LPS) and cluster type affecting variation. Prosodically, epenthetic tokens predominantly portray low target tones L*_% (54%), particularly among women, irrespective of age. These results do not align with previous findings for prosodic realization of disyllabic words in Connemara English (Théveniaut & Herment, 2023). By providing empirical evidence, this study enhances our understanding of CIE phonology as well as the role of language contact in shaping phonetic and prosodic variation in bilingual communities.

This study examines two features of the Irish English literary dialect of William Carleton, a bilingual writer of the period when Ireland shifted to English. It addresses the issue of the validity of literary dialect via empirical comparison of the use of plural verbal -s in Carleton and in personal letters written by a close contemporary from a similar background. The result suggests considerable accuracy in Carleton’s dialect representation: he uses plural verbal -snot only in agreement with the complex constraints of the Northern Subject Rule but also in line with usage in the letters. Then the study examines Carleton’s use of the be after V-ing construction, which is typically a perfect in present-day Irish English. The future uses found in older texts are sometimes cited as examples of inauthentic literary dialect. However, like others of his generation, Carleton uses be after V-ingin both future and perfect senses. Given his social and linguistic background, his place in relation to the language shift, and the apparent accuracy with which he portrays dialect features, Carleton provides crucial support for the view that future uses arose in a language contact situation in which speakers of British English interpreted be after V-ingas a future, while speakers of Irish acquiring English intended it as a calque on an Irish perfect. As more Irish shifted to English, perfect meanings came to dominate. Carleton and his contemporaries bear witness to the middle phase of this process.

Almost 2 million people in the North and South of Ireland identify as Irish speakers and an estimated 70 million around the globe can claim Irish heritage. While Irish ancestry may be distant for many, the Irish language is active in numerous locations in the diaspora, as documented in research profiling communities across the globe (e.g. Callahan, 1994; Garland 2008; Giles 2016; Kallen 1984, 1994; Noone, 2012a; O hEadhra, 1998;O Conchubhair 2008; Walsh & NiDhuda 2015 inter alia) and evidenced by the existence of many cultural and language groups. Census figures indicate that at least25,000 people currently speak the language in Canada, the United States and Australia alone (Statistics Canada, 2013; United States Census Bureau, 2015; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012), yet very few in-depth general accounts of Irish-language use in the diaspora exist. Linguistic practices within Irish communities worldwide vary widely with regard to Irish-language use and language ideologies, with each community subject to distinct concerns, histories and discourses. As such, each has distinct possibilities for creating social and cultural meaning, possibilities that are fundamentally shaped by the socio-cultural and politico-historical contexts within which the Irish language has existed in the last 200 years. This paper investigates how the Irish language is recruited in constructions of cultural authenticity in three sites in the Irish diaspora: Boston, U.S.; Melbourne, Australia; and St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Research is based on open-ended qualitative interviews with 41 learners and speakers regarding the Irish language and their own language practices, and in extensive participant observation of cultural and language-related activities in each site. Thematic content analysis of interview data provides the basis for ethnographic descriptions of each site. A Foucauldian understanding of discourse (e.g. Pennycook, 1994; Foucault, 1981, 1972) affords the identification and delineation of predominant discourses within which Irish-language use is implicated as a meaningful social act, and that are enacted or actively resisted within and across communities, as well as key subject positions made available within these discourses. This approach provides the basis for an exploration of (i) the processes of authenticating a cultural practice within discourse; (ii) how such processes shape the changing configurations of who is included and who is excluded within dominant politico-cultural discourses; and (iii) the various formations of community that exist within and across the diaspora space. The paper shows that the role of the Irish language in authenticating Irish cultural identity is subject to reworkings across time and space, as exemplified in the variety of local meanings it has taken on across the three diaspora sites featured.

Commentators on the social history of Australian English often refer to the presence of the Irish in Australia but the Irish language is seldom mentioned. These works lean heavily towards England, and London in particular. The discourse is largely concerned with ‘British’ or ‘English’ dialects, although Irish English is often found under the heading of ‘British’. There is a prevailing theory in works concerned with Australian English that there was a movement of people within the British Isles towards the larger towns, and London in particular, and that any distinctive dialect would have been modified as a result of exposure to the dominant London one. It is as a result of this type of discourse that the Irish voice has been silenced.