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The segmental phonology of nineteenth-century Tristan da Cunha English: convergence and local innovation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2006

DANIEL SCHREIER
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Zurich, Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerlanddschreier@es.unizh.ch
PETER TRUDGILL
Affiliation:
Faculty of Humanities, Agder University College, Kristiansand, Norwaypeter.trudgill@unifr.ch

Abstract

This article looks into convergence processes that involve distinct phonological systems in dialect contact situations, exemplified by the variety of English that developed on Tristan da Cunha, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Based on a discussion of the community's social history and an auditory analysis of the segmental phonology of late nineteenth-century Tristan da Cunha English, this article reconstructs the early contact scenario and looks into both phonological convergence and independent innovative mechanisms that accompany new-dialect formation. The data presented here show that dialect contact gives rise to mixing of several inputs (so that ‘new’ dialects draw features from several ancestral varieties), that the interaction of transplanted dialects may also trigger independent, variety-specific mechanisms, and that the interplay of feature retention, input mixing, and local innovation lead to distinctive and (on occasion) endemic varieties of English.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2006

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Footnotes

We wish to thank Karen Lavarello-Schreier for her invaluable help with data analysis. We are also obliged to Randy McGuire, Pius XII Memorial Library at St Louis University, for kindly making recordings from the Svensson corpus available to us.