Phonological history of English short A

=Trap-bath split=

The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation), in the Boston accent, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme IPA|/æ/ was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long IPA|/ɑː/ of "father". (Wells 1982: 100–1, 134, 232–33)

In this context, the lengthened vowel in words such as "bath", "laugh", "grass", "chance" in accents affected by the split is referred to as a broad A (also, in the UK, long A). Phonetically the vowel is a long back IPA| [ɑː] in Received Pronunciation (RP); it is a fronter vowel, IPA| [ɐː] or IPA| [aː] , in some other accents, including many Australian and New Zealand accents, and it may be a rounded IPA| [ɒː] in South African English.In accents unaffected by the split, these words usually have the same vowel as words like "cat", "trap", "man", the short A or flat A.

The sound change probably occurred during the late eighteenth century in southern England, and changed the sound of IPA| [æ] to IPA| [ɑː] in some words in which the former sound appeared before IPA| [f, s, θ, ns, nt, ntʃ, nd, mpl] , leading to RP IPA| [pɑːθ] for "path" and IPA| [sɑːmpl] for "sample", etc. The sound change did not occur before other consonants; thus accents affected by the split preserve IPA|/æ/ in words like "cat". See the Variations section below for more details on the words affected.

British accents

The presence or absence of this split is one of the most noticeable differences between different accents of English English. An isogloss runs across the Midlands from the Wash to the Welsh border, passing to the south of the cities of Birmingham and Leicester. North of the isogloss, the vowel in most of the affected words is usually the same short IPA| [a] as in "cat"; south of the isogloss, the vowel in the affected words is generally long. (Gupta 2005)

There is some variation close to the isogloss; for example in the dialect of Birmingham (the so-called "Brummie") most of the affected words have a short IPA| [a] , but "aunt" and "laugh" usually have long vowels. Additionally, some words which have IPA|/æ/ in most forms of American English, including "half, calf, rather" and "can't", are usually found with long vowels in northern England.

In northern English dialects, the short A is phonetically IPA| [a ~ a̙] , while the broad A varies from IPA| [ɑː] to IPA| [aː] ; for some speakers, the two vowels may be identical in quality, differing only in length (IPA| [a] vs IPA| [aː] ) (Wells 1982: 356, 360).

In some West Country accents of English English where the vowel in "trap" is realized as IPA| [a] rather than IPA| [æ] , the vowel in the "bath" words was lengthened to IPA| [aː] and did not merge with the IPA|/ɑː/ of "father". In those accents, "trap", "bath" and "father" all have distinct vowels IPA|/a/, IPA|/aː/ and IPA|/ɑː/. (Wells 1982: 346–47).

In some other West Country accents, and in many forms of Scottish English, there is no distinction corresponding to the RP distinction between IPA|/æ/ and IPA|/ɑː/.

Southern Hemisphere accents

Evidence for the date of the shift comes from the Southern Hemisphere accents, those of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

In Australian English, there is generally agreement with southern British in words like "path, laugh, class". But before N+consonant, as in "dance, plant", most Australians use a flat A; "aunt" and "can't", however, are invariably pronounced with a broad A. Phonetically, the broad A is IPA| [ɐː] . In Australia there is variation in the word "castle", both pronunciations are commonly heard. For more information, see the table at Australian English phonology.

A unique exception to this rule is South Australian English, in which the broad A is usually used.

South African and New Zealand English have a distribution of sounds similar to that of RP.

North American accents

Most accents of American English and Canadian English are unaffected by the split. The main exceptions are parts of New England ("see Boston accent"), where the broad sound can be used in some of the same words as in southern England, such as "can't, aunt, ask, bath" etc.

A related, but distinct, phenomenon is the phonemic æ-tensing in the accents of New York and Philadelphia.

Variations

The change did not happen in all eligible words. It is hard to find a clear reason why some changed and others did not. Roughly, the more common a word the more likely that the change from flat IPA|/æ/ to broad IPA|/ɑː/ took place. It also looks as if monosyllables were more likely to change than polysyllables. Here are some examples from RP, to illustrate the variety:

*Broad IPA|/ɑːf/ in "half, calf, laugh, laughter, shaft, raft, after"
*Flat IPA|/æf/ still in "baffle, raffle, Taffy, Aphrodite, kaftan"
*Broad IPA|/ɑːθ/ in "path, bath"
*Flat IPA|/æθ/ in "mathematics, maths, Cathy"
*Broad IPA|/ɑːs/ in "class, pass, mast, past, master, plaster, castle, mask, task"
*Flat IPA|/æs/ in "ass (donkey), crass, mass (amount), classic, pastel, asp, Aston, Asquith"
*Broad IPA|/ɑːnt/ in "aunt, plant, can't, advantage"
*Flat IPA|/ænt/ in "ant, banter, cant (slang), scant, mantle"
*Broad IPA|/ɑːns/ in "dance, chance, advance, answer"
*Flat IPA|/æns/ in "ransom, cancer, Anson"
*Broad IPA|/ɑːmpl/ in "sample, example"
*Flat IPA|/æmpl/ in "trample, ample"

There are some words in which both pronunciations are heard among southern speakers:

* Greek elements as in "telegraph, blastocyst, chloroplast"
* the prefix "trans-"
* the words "mass" (church service), "chaff", "lather"

Use of broad A in "mass" is distinctly conservative and probably rare now. The other fluctuations are both common, but with further complications. While "graph, telegraph, photograph" can have either, "graphic, graphology" always have flat A. The broad A is more likely when the "s" is voiceless (thus "transfer" IPA| [trɑːnsfɜː] , "transport" IPA| [trɑːnspɔːt] ) than when it is voiced (thus "translate" IPA| [trænzleɪt] , "trans-Atlantic" IPA| [trænzətlæntɪk] ).

Bad-lad split

The bad-lad split is a phonemic split of the Early Modern English short vowel phoneme IPA|/æ/ into a short IPA|/æ/ and a long IPA|/æː/. This split is found in some varieties of English English and Australian English in which "bad" (with long IPA| [æː] ) and "lad" (with short IPA| [æ] ) do not rhyme. (Wells 1982: 288–89, 596; Horvath and Horvath 2001; Leitner 2004).

The phoneme IPA|/æ/ is usually lengthened to IPA|/æː/ when it comes before an IPA|/m/ or IPA|/n/, within the same syllable. It is furthermore lengthened in the adjectives "bad", "sad", "glad" and "mad"; "family" also always has a long vowel, regardless of whether it is pronounced as two or three syllables. Some speakers and regional varieties also use IPA|/æː/ before IPA|/g/, IPA|/ŋ/, IPA|/l/ and/or IPA|/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.

Note that British dialects with the bad-lad split have instead broad IPA|/ɑː/ in some words where an IPA|/m/ or IPA|/n/ follows the vowel. In this circumstance, Australian speakers usually (but not universally) use IPA|/æː/, except in the words ‘aunt’, ‘can’t’ and ‘shan’t’, which have broad IPA|/aː/.

Daniel Jones noted for RP that some speakers had a phonemic contrast between a long and a short IPA|/æ/ which he wrote as IPA|/æː/ and IPA|/æ/, respectively. Thus, in "An outline of English phonetics" (1962, ninth edition, Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons) he noted that "sad", "bad" generally had IPA|/æː/ but "lad", "pad" had IPA|/æ/. In his pronouncing dictionary, he recorded several minimal pairs, for example "bad" IPA|/bæːd/, "bade" IPA|/bæd/ (also pronounced as IPA|/beɪd/). He noted that for some speakers, "jam" actually represented two different pronunciations, one pronounced IPA|/dʒæːm/ meaning 'fruit conserve', the other IPA|/dʒæm/ meaning 'crush, wedging'. Later editions of this dictionary edited by Alfred C. Gimson, dropped this distinction.

Commonly also in these accents, "can" 'able to' is IPA|/kæn/, whereas the noun "can" 'tin' or the verb "can" 'to put into a tin' is IPA|/kæːn/; this is similar to the situation found in æ-tensing in some varieties of American English. Australian speakers who use ‘span’ as the past tense of ‘spin’ also have a minimal pair between IPA|/spæːn/ ‘to span’ (the bridges IPA|/spæːn/ the river) and IPA|/spæn/, the past tense of ‘spin’ (the ball IPA|/spæn/). Various other minimal pairs can be created in the slang speech of social groups as IPA|/æg/ meaning ‘agriculture’ vs IPA|/æːg/, a La Trobe University–specific term referring to the part of the university known in full as the Agora.fact|date=October 2007

Apart from Jones, dictionary makers have never shown a difference between these varieties of the historical IPA|/æ/.

IPA|æ-tensing

In the sociolinguistics of English, IPA|æ-tensing is a process that occurs in some accents of North American English by which the vowel IPA| [æ] is raised and lengthened or diphthongized in various environments. The realization of this "tense IPA|æ" varies from IPA| [æ̝ˑ] to IPA| [ɛə] to IPA| [eə] to IPA| [ɪə] , depending on the speaker's regional accent. The most common realization is probably IPA| [eə] (that is, a centering diphthong with a starting point closer than the vowel IPA| [ɛ] as in "dress"); that transcription will be used for convenience in this article.

Phonemic IPA|æ-tensing in the Mid-Atlantic region

In Philadelphia and metropolitan New York, the tense IPA|/eə/ is a separate phoneme from IPA|/æ/ (in Labovian linguistic variable notation, the phonemes are represented as (aeh) and (ae) respectively), since certain minimal pairs can be found:
*"can" IPA|/keən/ 'metal container' vs. "can" IPA|/kæn/ 'be able'
*"halve" IPA|/heəv/ vs. "have" IPA|/hæv/

In these accents there has thus been a phonemic split. Nevertheless, the distribution between IPA|/æ/ and IPA|/eə/ is largely predictable in the Philadelphia and New York regions: In Philadelphia, tense IPA| [eə] occurs in closed syllables before the IPA|/n/, IPA|/m/, IPA|/f/, IPA|/θ/, and IPA|/s/, as well as the words "mad", "bad", and "glad". In New York, tensing occurs in all those environments as well as before voiced stops and IPA|/ʃ/. Lax IPA| [æ] usually occurs before IPA|/ŋ/, IPA|/l/, and voiceless stops, and also usually occurs in open syllables regardless of the following consonant. The word "avenue" normally has tense IPA| [eə] (unlike "average", etc.).

In Philadelphia, tensing in some lexical items before IPA|/l/ and nontautosyllabic nasals has been reported. [Labov (2005), p. 39.]

The main exceptions to the above generalizations are:
#When a vowel-initial word-level suffix is added to a word with tense IPA|/eə/, the vowel remains even though it has come to stand in an open syllable:
#:"mannish" has IPA|/eə/ like "man", not IPA|/æ/ like "manage"
#:"classy" has IPA|/eə/ like "class", not IPA|/æ/ like "classic"
#:"passing" has IPA|/eə/ like "pass", not IPA|/æ/ like "Pasadena"
#When a polysyllabic word with IPA|/æ/ in an open syllable gets truncated to a single closed syllable, the vowel remains:
#:"caf" (truncation of "cafeteria") has IPA|/æ/, not IPA|/eə/ like "calf"
#:"path" (truncation of "pathology") has IPA|/æ/, not IPA|/eə/ like "path" 'way, road'
#:"Mass" (truncation of "Massachusetts") has IPA|/æ/, not IPA|/eə/ like "mass"
#Function words and irregular verb tenses have lax IPA|/æ/, even in an environment which would usually cause tensing:
#:"and" (a function word) has IPA|/æ/, not IPA|/eə/ like "sand"
#:"ran" (an irregular verb tense) has IPA|/æ/, not IPA|/eə/ like "man"

The phoneme IPA|/eə/ is also used in these accents before intervocalic IPA|/r/ in words like "dairy" and "Mary" and in non-rhotic varieties of these accents in words like "square" and "scarce" (which rhymes with "glass" for many non-rhotic speakers).

The phonemic tensing of "IPA|æ" is similar to the broad A phenomenon of certain other dialects. The environment of broad A overlaps with that of IPA|æ-tensing, in that broad A occurs before voiceless fricatives in the same syllable and before nasals in certain environments; and both phenomena involve replacement of the short lax vowel IPA|/æ/ with a longer and tenser vowel. However, the "broad A" is lower and backer than IPA| [æ] , while the result of IPA|æ-tensing is higher and fronter.

It is also related to the bad-lad split of some Southern British and Australian dialects, in which a short flat IPA|/æ/ is lengthened to IPA| [æ:] in some conditions. The most significant differences from the Philadelphian system described here are that bad-lad splitting dialects have the broad A phenomenon, so the split can't occur there; that 'sad' is long; and that lengthening can occur before IPA|/g/ and IPA|/l/.

In "Webster's Third New International Dictionary" (1961; Springfield, Mass: Merriam-Webster Inc.), the Mid-Atlantic tense IPA|æ (written with aa(ə), the lax IPA|æ being a) is shown at individual entries as a variant pronunciation; for instance, the pronunciation of "can" "container" is 'kan, -aa(ə)n. In the 11th (2003) edition of "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary", which is partly derived from the Third unabridged, the distinction is discussed in an introductory section on pronunciation but ignored elsewhere in the text. The editors justify their decision by maintaining that "this distinction is sufficiently infrequent that the traditional practice of using a single symbol is followed in this book" (p. 34a).

Non-phonemic IPA|æ-tensing

In accents that have undergone the Northern cities vowel shift, the phoneme IPA|/æ/ is raised and tensed in all environments, to IPA| [eə] or even higher. [Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006:ch. 13)]

Most other dialects of North American English display an IPA|/æ/ which is raised and tensed in some environments and lower and laxer in others, without splitting it into two contrasting phonemes as the New York and Philadelphia accents do. A common one is the "nasal system", in which IPA|/æ/ is raised and tensed to IPA| [eə] exclusively before nasal consonants, regardless of whether there is a syllabic or morphemic boundary present. The nasal system is found in several separate and unrelated dialect regions, including the southern Midwest, northern New Jersey, Florida, and parts of Canada, among others, but it is most prominent—that is, the difference between the two allophones of IPA|/æ/ is greatest, and speakers with the nasal system are most concentrated—in eastern New England ("see Boston accent").

More widespread among speakers of the Western United States, Canada, and southern Midwest is a "continuous" system. This resembles the nasal system in that IPA|/æ/ is usually raised and tensed to IPA| [eə] before nasal consonants, but instead of a sharp divide between high tense IPA| [eə] before nasals and low lax IPA| [æ] before other consonants, allophones of IPA|/æ/ occupy a continuum of varying degrees of height and tenseness between those two extremes, with a variety of phonetic and phonological factors interacting (sometimes differently in different dialects) to determine the height and tenseness of any particular example of IPA|/æ/.

In the Southern United States, the pattern most characteristic of Southern American English does not employ IPA|æ-tensing at all, but rather what has been called the "Southern drawl": IPA|/æ/ becomes in essence a triphthong IPA| [æjə] . However, many speakers from the South have the nasal IPA|æ-tensing system described above, particularly in Charleston, Atlanta, and Florida; and speakers from New Orleans have been reported to have a system very similar to the phonemic split of New York [Labov, "Transmission and Diffusion"] .

Bag-plague merger

For some speakers in Canada and the northern and northwestern United States, a following IPA|/g/ tenses an IPA|/æ/ as much as or more than a following nasal does; in much of the Midwest not affected by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, this extends to the point that IPA|/æ/ merges with IPA|/eɪ/ before IPA|/g/, so that "bag" rhymes with "plague". These usually remain distinct from IPA|/ɛg/ as in "egg".

Development of the IPA|/ɑː/ phoneme

In Modern English, a new phoneme IPA|/ɑː/ developed that didn't exist in Middle English. The phoneme IPA|/ɑː/ comes from three sources: the word "father" failing to participate in the change of IPA|/aː/ to IPA|/eː/ in the Great Vowel Shift; the compensatory lengthening of the short IPA|/a/ in words like "calm", "palm", "psalm" when IPA|/l/ was lost in this environment; and the lengthening of IPA|/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 IPA|/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", "lava", "Bahamas", "pasta", many of which vary between IPA|/ɑː/ and IPA|/æ/ among different dialects of English.

ee also

*Phonological history of the English language
*Phonological history of English vowels

References

Trap-bath split

*cite book | author=Wells, John C. | title=Accents of English | location=Cambridge | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1982 | id=ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3)
* Gupta, A. F., Baths and becks, "English Today" 81, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp21-27 (2005).

Bad-lad split

*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.
*cite book | author=Leitner, Gerhard. | title=Australia's Many Voices | location=Berlin | publisher=Mouton de Gruyter | year=2004 | id=ISBN 3-11-018194-0 (vol. 1), ISBN 3-11-018195-9 (vol.2)
*cite book | author=Wells, John C. | title=Accents of English | location=Cambridge | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1982 | id=ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3)

IPA|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. Ph.D. 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. [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/Papers/TD.pdf Transmission and Diffusion] .
*cite book | author=Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg | title=The Atlas of North American English | location=Berlin | publisher=Mouton de Gruyter | year=2006 | id=ISBN 3-11-016746-8
*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. IPA|ə ˈnəwt on æ ənd æ˔ˑ in əˈmerikən ˈiŋgliʃ. "Maître Phonétique" 17–19.
*Wells, J. C. 1982. "Accents of English." 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

External links

* [http://www.bl.uk/soundsfamiliar 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