The pronunciation of "short A" varies in English.
Contents |
Late Middle English had two phonemes /a/ and /aː/, differing only in length. /a/ ("short A") was found in words such as cat [kat] or trap [trap], and also before /r/ in words such as start [start]. /aː/ ("long A") was found in words such as face [faːs], and before /r/ in words such as scare [skaːr].
As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, the "long A" [aː] of face was raised, initially to [æː] and later to [ɛː] This process began in the fifteenth century. [æː] "seems to have been the normal pronunciation in careful speech before 1650, and [ɛː] after 1650".[1] In a separate development, the [a] of trap was later fronted to [æ] (the value it retains in many accents today). This fronting was mostly confined to "vulgar or popular" speech in the sixteenth century, but gradually replaced the more conservative [a] in the seventeenth century, and was "generally accepted by careful speakers by about 1670".[2]
These trends, allowed to operate unrestrictedly, would have left standard English without any vowels in the [a] or [aː] area by the late seventeenth century. However, this putative gap was filled by the following special developments:
The [aː] of the late seventeenth 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 /a:/, has also been included for comparison (although not all of its development is shown).
| gate | cast | cart | cat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Middle English | [ɡaːt] | [kast] | [kart] | [kat] |
| Great Vowel Shift | [ɡɛːt] | |||
| Lengthening before /r/ | [kaːrt] | |||
| Lengthening before /f,θ,s/ | [kaːst] | |||
| Fronting of /a/ | [kæt] | |||
| Backing of /aː/ | [ɡeːt] | [kɑːst] | [kɑːrt] | |
| R dropping | [kɑːt] |
The table below shows the results of these developments in some contemporary varieties of English:
| RP | NE | SCO | IRL | GA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lengthening before /r/ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| Lengthening before /f,θ,s/ | ✔ | ||||
| Fronting of /a/ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| Backing of /aː/ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| R dropping | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| Output |
[kɑːst] |
[kast] |
[kast] |
[kæst] |
[kæst] |
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 seventeenth century they were also distinguished by the quality of the vowel. In cat, the vowel had been fronted to [kæt], while in cart it had been lengthened to [kaːrt]. This is the result of the development of Middle English /a/ in the environment of a following postvocalic /r/. It seems to have first occurred in the dialects of southern England in the early fifteenth century, but did not affect Standard English until the later seventeenth century.[3] It has affected most varieties of contemporary English, which have distinct vowels in pairs such as car, cart, although the original identity of the vowels is preserved in Irish English: [kæt], [kært].
Before intervocalic /r/, broadening did not generally take place: the vowel of carrot [kærət] remained the same as that of cat: this is preserved in most modern varieties (but see the Mary–marry–merry merger).
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 seventeenth century.
The primary environments which favored broadening was before the nonprevocalic 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.[4]
Once broadening affected a particular word, it tended also to affect 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 derived not from the English word pass but separately from French, 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/.[5] 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 seventeenth 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:
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the broadening of father as "anomalous".[6] Dobson, however, sees broadening in father as due to the influence of the adjecent /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.[7]
The table below represents the results of broadening before fricatives in contemporary Received Pronunciation.[8]
| 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*, etc.), 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, asteriod, 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 |
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:
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 sixteenth and seventeenth century sources.[14] In raspberry we find /s/ rather than /z/.[15]
The pattern of lengthening shown here for Received Pronunciation is generally found in southern England, the Caribbean, and the Southern hemisphere (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[16]) 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 ([17]) 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.[18] In the north of England, broadening is found only in father and usually half and master.[19]
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 French resulted in two varying pronunciations in English. (One might compare the different ways in which modern French loanwords like envelope or envoy are pronounced in contemporary varieties of English).
Words with Middle English with the vowel /au/ generally developed to [ɒː] in Early Modern English (e.g. paw, daughter). However, in some of the French loanwords, especially short words in common use, the /au/ instead developed to /aː/ this development preceded the Great Vowel Shift, the resulting Early Modern English sound was [eː] rather than [aː], as in change. In the table below, these words are classified according to the lexical sets of John Wells.
| Environment | TRAP lexical set | BATH lexical set | PALM lexical set | THOUGHT lexical set | FACE lexical set |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| _[m]$ | alms, balm, calm, palm, psalm, qualm[20] | 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 |
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.[21]
It is apparent that the development to the FACE lexical set (contemporary /eɪ/) was particularly common before /ndʒ/, whereas before velars only the development to the TRAP lexical set (contemporary /æ/) is found.
While these words were generally spelled with both <a> and <au> in Middle English, the current English spelling generally reflects the pronunciation, with <au> used only in words of the THOUGHT lexical set. The only common exception is aunt (which would otherwise cause confusion in written English with ant).
The trap–bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation), and to a lesser extent in Boston English, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme /æ/ was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long /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 [ɑː] in Received Pronunciation (RP); it is a fronter vowel, [ɐː] or [aː], in some other accents, including many Australian and New Zealand accents, and it may be a rounded [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 originally occurred in southern England, and ultimately changed the sound of [æ] to [ɑː] in some words in which the former sound appeared before [f, s, θ, ns, nt, ntʃ, mpl], leading to RP [pɑːθ] for path and [sɑːmpl] for sample, etc. The sound change did not occur before other consonants; thus accents affected by the split preserve /æ/ in words like cat. (See the Variations section below for more details on the words affected.) The lengthening of the bath vowel began in the 17th century but was "stigmatised as a Cockneyism until well into the 19th century".[22]
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-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-a, but aunt and laugh usually have long vowels. Additionally, some words which have /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 [a ~ a̠], while the broad A varies from [ɑː] to [aː]; for some speakers, the two vowels may be identical in quality, differing only in length ([a] vs [aː]) (Wells 1982: 356, 360).
In some West Country accents of English English where the vowel in trap is realized as [a] rather than [æ], the vowel in the bath words was lengthened to [aː] and did not merge with the /ɑː/ of father. In those accents, trap, bath and father all have distinct vowels /a/, /aː/ and /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 /æ/ and /ɑː/.
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 [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. In South Australian English the broad A is usually used.
South African and New Zealand English have a distribution of sounds similar to that of RP.
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. ("aunt" though is unique, as the broad a pronunciation is found sporadically throughout the U.S., not only in New England)
A related, but distinct, phenomenon is the phonemic tensing of /æ/ in the accents of New York and Philadelphia, in which tensing occurs specifically before [f, s, θ, n, m] (see section below).
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 /æ/ to broad /ɑː/ took place. It also looks as if monosyllables were more likely to change than polysyllables. The change very rarely took place in open syllables, except where closely derived from another word with /ɑː/. Thus passing is closely derived from pass, and so has broad A /pɑːsɪŋ/: passage is not so closely derived, and thus has flat A /pæsɪdʒ/. Here are some examples from RP, to illustrate the variety:
There are some words in which both pronunciations are heard among southern speakers:
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 always has a flat A. The broad A is more likely when the s is voiceless (thus transfer [trɑːnsfɜː], transport [trɑːnspɔːt]) than when it is voiced (thus translate [trænzleɪt], trans-Atlantic [trænzətlæntɪk]).
The bad–lad split is a phonemic split of the Early Modern English short vowel phoneme /æ/ into a short /æ/ and a long /æː/. This split is found in some varieties of English English and Australian English in which bad (with long [æː]) and lad (with short [æ]) do not rhyme. (Wells 1982: 288–89, 596; Horvath and Horvath 2001; Leitner 2004).
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.
Note that 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/.
Daniel Jones noted for RP that some speakers had a phonemic contrast between a long and a short /æ/ which he wrote as /æː/ and /æ/, respectively. Thus, in An outline of English phonetics (1962, ninth edition, Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons) he noted that sad, bad generally had /æː/ but lad, pad had /æ/. In his pronouncing dictionary, he recorded several minimal pairs, for example bad /ˈbæːd/, bade /ˈbæd/ (also pronounced /ˈbeɪd/). He noted that for some speakers, jam actually represented two different pronunciations, one pronounced /ˈdʒæːm/ meaning 'fruit conserve', the other /ˈdʒæm/ 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 /ˈkæn/, whereas the noun can 'container' or the verb can 'to put into a container' is /ˈkæːn/; this is similar to the situation found in æ-tensing 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 /ˈspæːn/ ‘to span’ (the bridges /ˈspæːn/ the river) and /ˈspæn/, the past tense of ‘spin’ (the ball /ˈspæn/).
Apart from Jones, dictionary makers never show a difference between these varieties of the historical /æ/.
In the sociolinguistics of English, æ tensing is a process that occurs in some accents of North American English by which the vowel [æ] is raised and lengthened or diphthongized in various environments. The realization of this "tense æ" varies from [æ̝ˑ] to [ɛə] to [eə] to [ɪə], depending on the speaker's regional accent. A common realization is [eə] (that is, a centering diphthong with a starting point closer than the vowel [ɛ] as in dress); that transcription will be used for convenience in this article.[23]
In Baltimore, Philadelphia and metropolitan New York, the tense /eə/ is a separate phoneme from /æ/ (in Labovian linguistic variable notation, the phonemes are represented as (aeh) and (ae) respectively), since certain minimal pairs can be found:
In these accents there has thus been a phonemic split. Nevertheless, the distribution between /æ/ and /eə/ is largely predictable in the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York regions: In Philadelphia and Baltimore, tense [eə] occurs in closed syllables before the /n/, /m/, /f/, /θ/, and /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 /ʃ/. Lax [æ] usually occurs before /ŋ/, /l/, and voiceless stops, and also usually occurs in open syllables regardless of the following consonant. The word avenue normally has tense [eə] (unlike average, etc.).
In Philadelphia, tensing in some lexical items before /l/ and nontautosyllabic nasals has been reported.[24]
| Tense [eə] | Lax [æ] | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| man | [meən] | hang | [hæŋ] |
| ham | [heəm] | pal | [pæl] |
| laugh | [leəf] | lap | [læp] |
| bath | [beəθ] | bat | [bæt] |
| glass | [ɡleəs] | manage | [mænɪdʒ] |
The main exceptions to the above generalizations are:
[eə] is also used in these accents before intervocalic /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 /æ/ is similar to the broad A phenomenon of certain other dialects. The environment of broad A overlaps with that of 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 /æ/ with a longer and tenser vowel. However, the "broad A" is lower and backer than [æ], while the result of 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 /æ/ is lengthened to [æː] 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 /ɡ/ and /l/.
In Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961; Springfield, Mass: Merriam-Webster Inc.), the Mid-Atlantic tense /æ/ (written with \aa(ə)\, the lax /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).
In accents that have undergone the Northern cities vowel shift, the phoneme /æ/ is raised and tensed in all environments.[25]
Most other dialects of North American English display an /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, Baltimore, and Philadelphia accents do. A common one is the "nasal system", in which /æ/ is raised and tensed 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 /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 /æ/ is usually raised and tensed to [eə] before nasal consonants, but instead of a sharp divide between a high, tense allophone before nasals and a low, lax one before other consonants, allophones of /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 /æ/.
In the Southern United States, the pattern most characteristic of Southern American English does not employ æ-tensing at all, but rather what has been called the "Southern drawl": /æ/ becomes in essence a triphthong [æjə]. However, many speakers from the South have the nasal æ-tensing system described above, particularly in Charleston, Atlanta, and Florida; and certain speakers from the New Orleans area have been reported to have a system very similar to the phonemic split of New York.[26]
For some speakers in Canada and the northern and northwestern United States, a following /ɡ/ tenses an /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 /æ/ merges with /eɪ/ before /ɡ/, so that bag rhymes with plague. These usually remain distinct from /ɛɡ/ as in egg.
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);[27] 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, lava, Bahamas, pasta, many of which vary between /ɑː/ and /æ/ among different dialects of English.
|
||||||||||||||||||