Learn English – Dialect “rules” and the pronunciation of individual words

dialectsphonologyphonotacticspronunciation

Consider an American actor who is tasked with mastering British Received Pronunciation for an upcoming role. If he has a talent for vocal mimicry, as many actors do, he should have no trouble picking up the "rules" of RP just from listening to people speak it: the non-rhotacism of the dialect, the aspiration of intervocalic t, the characteristic intonation patterns and prosody of RP, and so on. For the most part, he should have no trouble speaking RP like a native. Yet he would never in a million years figure out on his own that lieutenant should be pronounced "leftenant," for example, or that controversy is often pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, unless he hears those specific words pronounced. To my knowledge, there are no general characteristics of RP that account for the mysterious appearance of an f in lieutenant (or, if you prefer, there are no general characteristics of General American that account for its absence). You just have to know how those specific words should be pronounced, because you'll never figure it out on your own.

Do linguists recognize a distinction between the "rules" of a dialect on the one hand and its individual pronunciation "quirks" on the other? Is there a term for this phenomenon? Is it considered merely a variation on regional preferences for certain words over their synonyms (e.g., rubbish vs. garbage), or is there something else at play here?

(Disclaimer: I take no position on whether the BE or AE pronunciation of any of these words should be considered the "quirky" one; I simply note that one couldn't easily intuit one pronunciation just from knowing the other.)

Best Answer

Do linguists recognize a distinction between the "rules" of a dialect on the one hand and its individual pronunciation "quirks" on the other? Is there a term for this phenomenon? Is it considered merely a variation on regional preferences for certain words over their synonyms (e.g., rubbish vs. garbage), or is there something else at play here?

I would say that linguists in general tend to consider the entire lexicon of each language/dialect/sociolect/regiolect/idiolect as a more or less complete system unto itself. This system may share or not share more or fewer characteristics with other like systems, but they are ultimately separately existing systems.

These systems are all basically phonetically based, though. Writing complicates matters, but it doesn’t change the basics of the systems: they are at their inmost based on spoken sounds.

As an American, you can learn to pick up RP quite easily to the extent that RP mirrors American phonemically. If the underlying phonemes of a word are the same, a simple translation or transposition from one phoneme-based system to another is all that is needed. But in any case where the underlying phonemic structure differs, there is no other way than just to learn by rote. Lieutenant is one such word: it is simply ‘sound-spelt’ differently in the two dialects. The fact that the codified and standardised conventions of our writing system has them spelt the same way makes it less obvious to draw this conclusion, but American and British ‘lieutenant’ are really two different words, just like ‘truck’ and ‘lorry’ are. Of course, it is easier to remember in a practical situation that a word for something in a foreign system is almost, but not quite, the same as in your own system, so there is a cognitive difference. But as far as direct transposition from system to system goes, there is no difference: something is either mappable or it isn’t.

I don’t think there is really a term for this, except perhaps in the guise of pointing out that words that aren’t mappable constitute isoglosses between the systems (which isn’t really what you’re looking for). With all related languages, there are words that map perfectly between systems, and there are words that don’t—the latter category being made up of words that, once you know them, can be retrofitted into almost mapping, and words that do not match at all. But for all languages, this is a continuum.

Between American and British English, the vast majority of the language maps, and a minority of words don’t. Between languages like Spanish and Portuguese or Ukrainian and Russian, a good percentage of the words map, but many don’t. Between Danish and German, a fair few roots are mappable, but the majority of the morphology—and hence of the complete surface forms of words—are not. Between Icelandic and Dutch, virtually nothing is mappable, though many words still fall in the ‘lieutenant’ category of words that are close enough to be recognised as being related to each other. And between Greek and Swahili, virtually everything is neither mappable nor recognisable.

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