Date of Award
8-1-2025
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Baertsch, Karen
Abstract
Unlike most Modern English varieties, Southwest Yorkshire English maintains the distinction between the vowels in to eat /ɛɪt/ and to mean /mɪən/ (< 1200s Middle English /etən, mɛːnən/) and between those in throat /θrɒɪt/ and goat /ɡʊət/ (< 1200s MidE /θrotə, ɣɔːt/). Here, 1200s MidE /ɛː ɔː/ undergo the Great Vowel Shift and rise to /ɪə ʊə/ respectively while /e/ and pre-coronal /o/ affected by Open Syllable Lengthening retain unraised nuclei, avoiding the Great Vowel Shift even as other outputs Open Syllable Lengthening do undergo the shift (e.g. 1200s MidE /snakə, xopə/ ‘snake, hope’ > /snɛək, ʊəp/). Drawing on Labov 1994, I propose that 1200s MidE /e/ and (pre-coronal) /o/ were nonperipheral (a characteristic of short vowels) and retained this nonperipherality even when lengthened, remaining distinct from older, peripheral /ɛː ɔː/ and avoiding the Great Vowel Shift, which only operated on peripheral vowels.
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