Pronunciation of English ⟨a⟩
History and description of |
English pronunciation |
---|
Historical stages |
General development |
Development of vowels |
Development of consonants |
Variable features |
Related topics |
There are a variety of
Overview
Late
As a result of the
These trends, allowed to operate unrestrictedly, would have left standard English without any vowels in the [a] or [aː] area by the late 17th century. However, this putative gap was filled by the following special developments:
- In two environments, Middle English [a] developed to [aː] rather than [æ]
- Before non-prevocalic /r/ (e.g. in start, star; but not in carry), [a] developed to [aː] in all words
- Before some fricatives, broadening happened inconsistently and sporadically
- Words that had Middle English [au] had a regular development to [ɒː] (for example, paw). However, before a nasal, such words sometimes instead developed to [aː] (e.g. palm).
The [aː] of the late 17th century has generally backed to [ɑː] in several varieties of contemporary English, for example in Received Pronunciation.
The following table shows some developments of Middle English /a/ in Received Pronunciation. The word gate, which derived from Middle English /aː/, has also been included for comparison.
gate | cast | cart | cat | glad | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Middle English | [ɡaːt] | [kast] | [kart] | [kat] | [ɡlad] | |
Great Vowel Shift | Phase 1 | [ɡæːt] | ||||
Phase 2 | [ɡɛːt] | |||||
Phase 3 | [ɡeːt] | |||||
Phase 4 | [ɡeɪt] | |||||
Lengthening before /r/ | [kaːrt] | |||||
Lengthening before /f,θ,s/ | [kaːst] | |||||
Fronting of /a/ | [kæt] | [ɡlæd] | ||||
Backing of /aː/ | [kɑːst] | [kɑːrt] | ||||
/r/-dropping | [kɑːt] | |||||
bad-lad split[1]
|
[ɡlæːd] | |||||
Lowering of /æ/[2][3][4] | [kat] | [ɡla(ː)d] |
The table below shows the results of these developments in some contemporary varieties of English:
RP | NE
|
SCO | IRL[5] | GA
|
AusE | NZE | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lengthening before /r/ | ✔ | ✔ | variable | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
Lengthening before /f,θ,s/ | ✔ | variable | variable | ✔ | ||||
Fronting of /a/ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
Backing of /aː/ | ✔ | ✔ | partly | partly | ||||
R-dropping | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
bad-lad split
|
✔[1] | ✔ | ✔ | |||||
/æ/ tensing
|
✔[6] | |||||||
Lowering of /æ/[2][3][4] | ✔ | variable | ✔ | |||||
Output for | gate | [ɡɛɪt] | [ɡeːt] | [ɡet] | [ɡeːθ̠] | [ɡeɪt] | [ɡæɪt] | [ɡæɪt] |
cast | [kɑːst] | [kast] | [kast] | [kæs(ː)t~ka(ː)st] | [kæst]* | [kast]~[kɐːst] | [kɐːst] | |
cart | [kɑːt] | [kaːt] | [kaɹt] | [kæ(ː)ɻθ̠~kä(ː)ɻθ̠] | [kɑːɹt] | [kɐːt] | [kɐːt] | |
cat | [kat] | [kat] | [kat] | [kæθ̠~kaθ̠] | [kæt] | [kat] | [kɛt] | |
glad | [ɡla(ː)d] | [ɡlad] | [ɡlad] | [ɡlæd~ɡlad] | [ɡlæd] | [ɡlaːd] | [ɡlɛd] | |
gas | [ɡas] | [ɡas] | [ɡas] | [ɡæs~ɡas] | [ɡæs]* | [ɡas] | [ɡɛs] |
* May undergo /æ/-tensing.
Old and Middle English
In
During the Middle English period, like other short vowels, the /a/ was lengthened in open syllables. Later, with the gradual loss of unstressed endings, many such syllables ceased to be open, but the vowel remained long.
For example, the word name originally had two syllables, the first being open, so the /a/ was lengthened; later, the final vowel was dropped, leaving a closed syllable with a long vowel. As a result, there were now two phonemes /a/ and /aː/, both written ⟨a⟩, the long one being often indicated by a silent ⟨e⟩ after the following consonant (or, in some cases, by a pronounced vowel after the following consonant, as in naked and bacon).
Further development of Middle English /aː/
As a result of the
Before (historic) /r/, in words like square, the vowel has become [ɛə] (often practically [ɛː]) in modern RP, and [ɛ] in General American.[8]
Changes in realization of /a/
Independently of the development of the long vowel, the short /a/ came to be
This vowel (that of trap, cat, man, bad, etc.) is now normally denoted as /æ/. In present-day RP, however, it has lowered to a fully front [a].[2][3][4] Such a quality is also found in the accents of northern England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the Caribbean. Raised pronunciations are also found in Southern Hemisphere English, and are also associated with Cockney.[10] For the possibility of phonemic length differentiation, see bad–lad split, below.
Development of the new long A
In Modern English, a new phoneme /ɑː/ developed that did not exist in Middle English. The phoneme /ɑː/ comes from three sources: the word father lengthening from /a/ to /aː/ for an unknown reason (thus splitting from gather);[11] the compensatory lengthening of the short /a/ in words like calm, palm, psalm when /l/ was lost in this environment; and the lengthening of /a/ before /r/ in words like car, card, hard, part, etc. In most dialects that developed the broad A class, words containing it joined this new phoneme /ɑː/ as well. The new phoneme also became common in onomatopoeic words like baa, ah, ha ha, as well as in foreign borrowed words like spa, taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach, many of which vary between /ɑː/ and /æ/ among different dialects of English.
Some of these developments are discussed in detail in the following sections.
Before /r/
In late Middle English, pairs such as cat, cart, were pronounced [kat], [kart] respectively, distinguished only by the presence or absence of [r]. However, by the late 17th century they were also distinguished by the quality and length of the vowel. In cat, the vowel had been fronted[
This lengthening occurred when /a/ was followed by non-pre-vocalic /r/; it did not generally apply before intervocalic /r/ (when the /r/ was followed by another vowel). Hence the first vowel of carrot and marry has normally remained the same as that of cat (but see the
Before fricatives
Unlike lengthening before nonprevocalic /r/, which applied universally in Standard English, lengthening, or broadening, before fricatives was inconsistent and sporadic. This seems to have first occurred in the dialects of Southern England between about 1500 and 1650. It penetrated into Standard English from these dialects around the mid-17th century.
The primary environment which favored broadening was before preconsonantal or morpheme-final voiceless fricatives /f, θ, s/. The voiceless fricative /ʃ/ has never promoted broadening in Standard English in words like ash and crash. There is, however, evidence that such broadening did occur in dialects.[13]
Once broadening affected a particular word, it tended to spread by analogy to its inflectional derivatives. For example, from pass ([paːs]) there was also passing [ˈpaːsɪŋ]. This introduced broadening into the environment _sV, from which it was otherwise excluded (compare passage which is not an inflectional form, and was never affected by broadening).
In a phenomenon going back to Middle English, [f, θ] alternate with their voiced equivalents [v, ð]. For example, late Middle English path [paθ] alternated with paths [paðz]. When broadening applied to words such as path, it naturally extended to these derivatives: thus when [paθ] broadened to [paːθ], [paðz] also broadened to [paːðz]. This introduced broadening into the environment before a voiced fricative.
Broadening affected Standard English extremely inconsistently. It seems to have been favored when /a/ was adjacent to labial consonants or /r/.[14] It is apparent that it occurred most commonly in short words, especially monosyllables, that were common and well-established in English at the time broadening took place (c. 1500–1650). Words of 3 or more syllables were hardly ever subject to broadening. Learned words, neologisms (such as gas, first found in the late 17th century), and Latinate or Greek borrowings were rarely broadened.
A particularly interesting case is that of the word father. In late Middle English this was generally pronounced [ˈfaðər], thus rhyming with gather [ˈɡaðər]. Broadening of father is notable both in two respects:
- its occurrence before an intervocalic voiced fricative [ð]
- its distribution in many accents that do not otherwise have broadening, such as those of North America.
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the broadening of father as "anomalous".[15] Dobson, however, sees broadening in father as due to the influence of the adjacent /f/ and /r/ combined. Rather and lather appear to have been subject to broadening later, and in fewer varieties of English, by analogy with father.[16]
The table below represents the results of broadening before fricatives in contemporary Received Pronunciation.[17]
Environment | RP /æ/ as in TRAP ("flat A") | RP /ɑː/ as in PALM or FAther ("broad A") |
---|---|---|
_[f]$ | carafe*, chiffchaff, gaffe, naff, riffraff | calf**, chaff*, giraffe, graph (telegraph, see above), half**, laugh**, staff |
_[f]C | Daphne, hermaphrodite, kaftan, naphtha | aft, after, craft, daft, draft/draught**, graft, laughter**, raft, rafter, shaft |
_[θ]$ | hath, math (abbrev. for mathematics) | bath, lath*, path |
_[θ]C | athlete, decathlon (pentathlon, biathlon, etc.), maths | |
_[s]$ | alas*, ass (donkey), ass (term of abuse)*, crass, gas, lass, mass (amount), Mass (religious service)* | brass, class, glass, grass, pass |
_[sp] | asp, aspect, aspen, aspic (jelly), aspirant, aspirin, Diaspora, exasperate*, jasper | clasp, gasp, grasp, hasp*, rasp |
_[st] | aster, asteroid, astronaut (astronomical, etc.), bastion, blastocyst (blastopore, etc.), canasta, castanets, chastity, elastic*, fantastic, gastric, gymnastic, hast, Jocasta, mastic, masticate, mastiff*, mastitis, mastoid, mastodon, masturbate*, monastic, onomastic, pasta, pastel, plastic*, procrastinate, Rastafarian, raster, sarcastic, scholastic, spastic | aghast, avast, bastard*, blast, cast, caster, fast, ghastly, last, mast, master, nasty, past, pasteurize*, pastime, pastor, pastoral*, pasture, plaster, repast, vast |
_[sk] | Alaska, Basque*, emasculate, gasket, Madagascar, mascot, masculine, masquerade*, Nebraska, paschal*, vascular | ask, bask, basket, cask, casket, flask, mask, masque*, rascal, task |
_[sf] | blasphemy* | |
_[ð] | blather, fathom, gather, slather | father, lather*, rather |
other (see below) | calve**, castle, fasten, halve**, raspberry |
- * indicates that the other pronunciation is also current in RP.
- ** indicates that this word had late Middle English /au/ (possibly in addition to late Middle English /a/)
- Words in italics were first recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary later than 1650
In general, all these words, to the extent that they existed in Middle English, had /a/ ("short A" as in trap) which was broadened to [aː]. The exceptions are:
- half and calf, which had been pronounced with [half, kalf] in early Middle English before developing around the early 15th century to [hauf, kauf] by L-vocalization.[18] In accents of England the development was subsequently the same as that in words such as palm (see below). The North American development to [æ] as in trap seems to be the result of shortening from [hauf, kauf] to [haf, kaf], although there is little evidence of this development.[19]
- laugh, laughter and draft/draught, which all had [auχ] in Middle English. This first changed to [auf] (accepted in Standard English from about 1625, but earlier in dialects),[20] and was then shortened to [af].[21] The subsequent development was similar to other words with [af], such as staff. The development of draft/draught is notable: in the 17th century it was usually spelled draught and pronounced to rhyme with caught, making clear its derivation from the verb to draw. The pronunciation with [f] was rare, and its use in current English is a historical accident resulting, according to Dobson, from the establishment of the spelling variant draft.[22]
The words castle, fasten and raspberry are special cases where subsequent sound changes have altered the conditions initially responsible for lengthening. In castle and fasten, the /t/ was pronounced, according to a slight majority of 16th and 17th century sources.[23] In raspberry we find /s/ rather than /z/.[24]
The pattern of lengthening shown here for Received Pronunciation is generally found in southern England, the Caribbean, and the Southern hemisphere (parts of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). In North America, with the possible exception of older Boston accents, broadening is found only in father (the success of broadening in this word alone in North America unexplained)[11] and pasta (which follows the general pattern for recent Italian loanwords, cf. mafia). In the Boston area there has historically been a tendency to copy RP lengthening which perhaps reached its zenith in the 1930s[25] but has since receded in the face of general North American norms.
In Irish English broadening is found only in father (which may, however, also have the FACE vowel). In Scottish and Ulster English the great majority of speakers have no distinction between TRAP and PALM (the Sam–psalm merger). In Welsh English Wells finds broadening generally only in father, with some variation.[26] In the north of England, broadening is usually found only in father and half, and in some regions master.[27]
Before nasals
There was a class of Middle English words in which /au/ varied with /a/ before a nasal. These are nearly all loanwords from French, in which uncertainty about how to realize the nasalization of the French vowel resulted in two varying pronunciations in English. (One might compare the different ways in which modern French loanwords like envelope are pronounced in contemporary varieties of English.)
Words with Middle English with the /au/ diphthong
Words in this category may therefore have ended up with a variety of pronunciations in modern standard English: /æ/ (where the short A pronunciation survived), /ɑː/ (where the pronunciation with lengthened A was adopted), /ɔː/ (where the normal development of the AU diphthong was followed), and /eɪ/ (where the A was lengthened before the Great Vowel Shift). The table below shows the pronunciation of many of these words, classified according to the lexical sets of John Wells: TRAP for /æ/, BATH for RP /ɑː/ vs. General American /æ/, PALM for /ɑː/, THOUGHT for /ɔː/, FACE for /eɪ/. Although these words were often spelled with both ⟨a⟩ and ⟨au⟩ in Middle English, the current English spelling generally reflects the pronunciation, with ⟨au⟩ used only for those words which have /ɔː/; one common exception is aunt.
Environment | TRAP lexical set | BATH lexical set | PALM lexical set | THOUGHT lexical set | FACE lexical set |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
_[m]$ | alms, balm, calm, palm, psalm, qualm[28] | shawm | |||
_[mp] | champion, rampant, stamp* | example, sample | |||
_[mb] | amber | chamber | |||
_[mf] | pamphlet | ||||
_[nt] | ant*, lantern, phantom, rant, scant | advantage, aunt, can't*, chant, grant, plant, slant, vantage | daunt, flaunt*, gaunt*, gauntlet, haunt, jaunt*, saunter, taunt, vaunt | ||
_[nd] | abandon, grand, random | command, demand, Flanders, remand, reprimand, slander | jaundice, laundry, Maundy | ||
_[n(t)ʃ] | franchise | avalanche, blanch, branch, ranch*, stanch, stanchion | haunch, launch, paunch, staunch | ||
_[n(d)ʒ] | evangelist, phalange | angel, arrange, change, danger, grange, mange, range, strange | |||
_[ŋk] | bank ("bench/financial institution"), canker, flank, plank, ranco(u)r, sanctity | ||||
_[ŋɡ] | anger*, angle, strangle | ||||
_[ns] | ancestor, finance, ransom, romance | answer*, chance, chancellor, dance, enhance, France, lance, lancet, prance, stance, trance, transfer (trans-) | launce | ancient | |
Other | salmon | almond |
* Not a French loanword
In some cases, both the /a/ and the /au/ forms have survived into modern English. For example, from Sandre, a Norman French form of the name Alexander, the modern English surnames Sanders and Saunders are both derived.[29]
TRAP–BATH split
The TRAP–BATH split is a
/æ/ | /ɑː/ | Notes |
---|---|---|
aff | half | With h-dropping. |
ant | aunt | |
asp | hasp | With h-dropping. |
baff | bath | With th-fronting. |
bat | bath | With th-stopping. |
caf | calf | |
cant | can't | |
hath | half | With th-fronting. |
have | halve | |
lat | lath | With th-stopping and lat meaning 'latitude'. |
pat | path | With th-stopping. |
TRAP–STRUT merger
The TRAP–STRUT merger is a merger of /æ/ and /ʌ/ occasionally occurring in Received Pronunciation. It is the outcome of lowering the TRAP vowel to [a] for those speakers who have a fronted STRUT vowel. The merger is likely not categorical, which means that the phonemes remain distinct in their underlying form. In contemporary RP, [a] is the norm for TRAP, whereas STRUT is usually backer and somewhat higher than TRAP, [ɐ] or even [ʌ]. In the early days of TRAP-lowering, the fully open pronunciation of TRAP was typically heard as a merger regardless of the exact phonetic realization of STRUT.[31][32]
In
In General Australian English, the vowels are distinguished as [a] and [ä] before non-nasal consonants.[34]
A three-way merger of /æ/, /ʌ/ and /ɑː/ is a common pronunciation error among L2 speakers of English whose native language is Italian, Spanish and Catalan.[35][36]
/æ/ | /ʌ/ | IPA | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
back | buck | ˈbak | |
bad | bud | ˈbad | |
ban | bun | ˈban | |
bat | but | ˈbat | With the strong form of but. |
bat | butt | ˈbat | |
cal | cull | ˈkal | |
cant | cunt | ˈkant | |
cap | cup | ˈkap | |
carry | curry | ˈkari | |
cat | cut | ˈkat | |
fan | fun | ˈfan | |
gat | gut | ˈgat | |
Harry | hurry | ˈhari | |
hat | hut | ˈhat | |
lack | luck | ˈlak | |
mad | mud | ˈmad | |
pat | putt | ˈpat | |
sack | suck | ˈsak | |
Sam | sum | ˈsam | |
tack | tuck | ˈtak |
STRUT–PALM merger
The STRUT–PALM merger is a merger of /ʌ/ and /ɑː/ that occurs in Black South African English and commonly also in non-native speech.
Bad–lad split
The bad–lad split has been described as a
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, glad and mad; family also sometimes has a long vowel, regardless of whether it is pronounced as two or three syllables. Some speakers and regional varieties also use /æː/ before /ɡ/, /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 before a consonant followed by a vowel. Lengthening is not stopped by the addition of word-level suffixes.
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/.
Outside of England, can meaning 'able to' remains /kæn/, whereas the noun can 'container' or the verb can 'to put into a container' is /kæːn/; this is similar to the situation found in /æ/ raising in some varieties of American English. A common minimal pair for modern RP speakers is band /bæːnd/ and banned /bænd/. Australian speakers who use 'span' as the past tense of 'spin' also have a minimal pair between longer /spæːn/ (meaning width or the transitive verb with a river or divide) and /spæn/, the past tense of 'spin' (/spæn/). Other minimal pairs found in Australian English include 'Manning' (the surname) /ˈmænɪŋ/ and 'manning' (the present participle and gerund of the verb 'to man') /ˈmæːnɪŋ/ as well as 'planet' /ˈplænət/ versus 'plan it' /ˈplæːnət/.
Apart from Jones's, dictionaries rarely show a difference between these varieties of /æ/.
Experimental recordings of RP-speaking
/æ/ raising
In the
In foreign borrowings
Many foreign borrowed words such as taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach, pecan, pajamas etc. vary as to whether or not they have the PALM vowel or the TRAP vowel in various dialects in English. In Canada and Northern England, many speakers pronounce such words with the same vowel as TRAP, whereas in American, Australian and New Zealand English as well as RP, they usually have the same vowel as PALM (although taco and pasta have the TRAP vowel in RP). However the pronunciation of certain words can vary even in regions which either usually assign the TRAP vowel or usually assign the PALM vowel to such words; pajamas and pecan, for instance, vary among Americans as to whether or not they have /æ/ or /ɑː/.[43][44]
Other pronunciations
Other pronunciations of the letter ⟨a⟩ in English have come about through:
- dark L (which may no longer be sounded), to produce (in RP) the sound /ɔː/ in also, alter, ball, call, chalk, halt, talk, etc.. See English-language vowel changes before historic /l/.
- Rounding following /w/, resulting in the same two vowels as above, as in wash, what, quantity, water, warm. This change is typically blocked before a Phonological history of English low back vowels (17th-century changes).
- (depending on dialect)is /ɪ/ in cases where the reduction of FACE vowel might be expected, -ace, -age, -ate (only adjectives and nouns), as in the second syllables of palace, message and private, etc.
- Irregular developments in a few words, particularly any and many. In the case of any, the spelling represents the pronunciation in the Midland dialect of Middle English, while the modern pronunciation comes from that of the southern dialect (the alternative spelling eny is also found in texts up to around 1530; the spelling ony, representing a northern dialect pronunciation, is also found).[45] The situation is similar with many (with the spellings meny and mony formerly occurring).[46]
See also
- List of Latin-script digraphs
- Phonological history of the English language
- Phonological history of English vowels
Notes
- ^ a b Only some speakers, mainly from London.
- ^ a b c de Jong et al. (2007:1814–1815)
- ^ a b c Roach (2011:?)
- ^ a b c "Wells: Whatever happened to Received Pronunciation?". 1997. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
- ISBN 9781139465847.
- ^ Labov et al. (2006), p. 182.
- ^ Dobson, p. 594
- ^ Wells (1982), pp. 141, 155.
- ^ Dobson, p. 548
- ^ Wells (1982), p. 129.
- ^ a b Wells (1982), p. 206.
- ^ Dobson, pp. 517–519
- ^ Dobson p. 533
- ^ Dobson, p. 531
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, online edition, entry father, retrieved 2011-02-01
- ^ Dobson 531-532
- ^ Words are classified according to their pronunciations given in Wells, John C. (1990). Longman pronunciation dictionary. Harlow, England: Longman.
- ^ Dobson, p. 988
- ^ Dobswon, p. 500
- ^ Dobson, p. 947
- ^ Dobson, pp. 500–501
- ^ Dobson, p. 501
- ^ Dobson, pp. 968–969
- ^ Dobson, p. 941
- ^ Wells (1982), p. ?.
- ^ Wells (1982), p. 387.
- ^ Wells (1982), pp. 352–355.
- ^ given as THOUGHT by OED first edition
- OCLC 247393450.
- ^ Wells (1982), pp. 100–101, 134, 232–233.
- ^ Wells (1982), pp. 291–292.
- ^ Cruttenden (2014), pp. 119–120, 122.
- ^ Wells (1982), p. 305.
- ^ Cox & Fletcher (2017), pp. 65, 179.
- ^ Swan (2001), p. 91.
- ^ "Italian Speakers' English Pronunciation Errors". 22 November 2013.
- ^ Wells (1982), pp. 288–289, 596.
- ^ Horvath & Horvath (2001), p. ?.
- ^ Leitner (2004), p. ?.
- .
- hdl:10125/55398.
- ^ Boberg, Charles (Spring 2001). "Phonological Status of Western New England." American Speech, Volume 76, Number 1. pp. 3-29 (Article). Duke University Press. p. 11: "The vowel /æ/ is generally tensed and raised [...] only before nasals, a raising environment for most speakers of North American English."
- ^ "Foreign Languages and Literature – UW-Milwaukee".
- ^ "Foreign Languages and Literature – UW-Milwaukee".
- ^ Taavitsainen, I., Melchers, G., Pahtap, P., Writing in Nonstandard English, John Benjamins 2000, p. 193.
- ^ Bergs, A., English Historical Linguistics, de Gruyter 2012, p. 495.
References
- Cox, Felicity; Fletcher, Janet (2017) [First published 2012], Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-316-63926-9
- Cruttenden, Alan (2014), Gimson's Pronunciation of English (8th ed.), Routledge, ISBN 9781444183092
- Dobson, E.J. (1968). English pronunciation, 1500–1700. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 310545793.
- de Jong, Gea; McDougall, Kirsty; Hudson, Toby; Nolan, Francis (2007), "The speaker discriminating power of sounds undergoing historical change: A formant-based study", the Proceedings of ICPhS Saarbrücken, pp. 1813–1816
- Gupta, A. F., Baths and becks, English Today 81, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp21–27 (2005).
- 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. ISBN 3-11-018194-0. (vol. 1). (vol.2).
- Roach, Peter (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (18th ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521152532
- Swan, Michael (2001), Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521779395
- .
- For æ-tensing
- 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. PhD 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, W. 2005. Transmission and Diffusion.
- ISBN 3-11-016746-8.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - 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 ˈiŋɡliʃ. Maître Phonétique 17–19. JSTOR 44708001
- Wood, Jim. 2011. Short-a in Northern New England. Journal of English Linguistics 39:135-165.
External links
- Sounds Familiar? – Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website, including an audio "bath" map of the UK