Forthcoming: Tracing the history of pronunciation in Nineteenth-Century English

This book studies the pronunciation of nineteenth-century English based on grammar books as sources for historical phonology. Its overarching research question is the following: To what extent can nineteenth-century grammars be taken as historical evidence for sounds changes and sociolinguistic variation? One major goal of this book is to investigate the phonology of a historical period that has often been neglected, namely Late Modern English (LModE; 1700–1900). The primary source of data consulted is the Collection of Nineteenth Century Grammars (CNG) (Anderwald 2016), a collection of 258 English grammars published in Britain, Ireland and North America. This book features quantitative and qualitative analyses of comments on phonological variables. The phonological variables considered are Long Mid Diphthonging (in GOAT and FACE words), the TRAP-BATH split, post-vocalic /r/ absence and /r/ realisations, /h/-dropping and /h/-insertion, /hw/ vs. /w/ in WHALE words, /v/-/w/-interchange, and the velar nasal in -ing. These were chosen because they were in the process of changing in LModE and some of their variants were stigmatised.

This book thus assesses how suitable the genre of grammars is for similar historical phonological analyses and whether the CNG could be utilised for research in LModE phonology. Additionally, I evaluate the extent to which grammars from the period were prescriptive in their approach to phonological variation and change. The aim, however, is not to trace their potential impact on language change but to evaluate the extent to which they may serve as reliable and independent chronologists of the phonology of the time. My research is therefore located in the areas of historical sociolinguistics, historical phonology, grammaticography and prescriptivism.

I show that Nineteenth-century grammars offer important insights into the timeline and types of phonological variation and change in the LModE period. In contrast to present-day grammars, they provide information on the distribution of phonological variants, their realisations, and regional and social information on the speakers. Nevertheless, grammars in the CNG exhibit a considerable number of close-to-verbatim copies from other authors and earlier orthoëpists and grammarians, which was characteristic of the LModE period in Europe (McLelland 2021). Moreover, the CNG as a whole is heterogeneous collection because some grammars are very prescriptive while others are characterised by a striking absence of prescriptive commentary. Yet, even the prescriptive grammars and those who plagiarise others provide valuable information on phonological change. If a grammar negatively evaluates a variant, they show awareness of a change in progress and that the variant was likely salient. (Near-)verbatim copies reveal who the authority was on pronunciation and which variants were regarded as the standard. I thus argue that grammars can be used for research in historical phonology if caution is exercised in their interpretation.

The contributions through this book are not only to fill a gap in the study of nineteenth-century phonology and grammaticography but also to catalogue awareness of eight changing phonological features of nineteenth-century English through the medium of grammars. It scrutinises data that have not been considered from a historical phonological perspective and constitutes an important addition to studies on LModE phonology, grammar writing and prescriptivism. This book therefore benefits researchers and students in English historical linguistics, historical phonology, prescriptivism, the histories of phonetics, linguistics and language teaching, as well as historical sociolinguistics more generally.

Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2016. Language between description and prescription: Verbs and verb categories in nineteenth-century grammars of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McLelland, Nicola. 2021. Grammars, dictionaries and other metalinguistic texts in the context of language standardization. In Wendy Ayres-Bennett & John Bellamy (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of language standardization, 263–293. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.