Abstract
This chapter focuses on recent changes in the morphosyntax of Welsh English, a set of regional dialects of English with distinctive Welsh contact influence. I present fresh research on three contact-induced features—focus fronting, extended uses of the preposition with, and invariant question tags is it?/isn’t it?—across corpora from different parts of Wales and speakers of varying ages. The roles of language shift, language acquisition, community, and prestige intertwine in the observed patterns of variation in intricate ways, showing that while the most distinctive Welsh-induced characteristics are being levelled, the investigated features are also drawing on vernacular English English for support. Young Welsh English speakers, particularly in South Wales, are updating their dialect while maintaining its regionality.
Mae’r bennod hon yn canolbwyntio ar newidiadau diweddar i forffo-gystrawen Saesneg Cymru, grŵp o dafodieithoedd Saesneg a ddylanwadwyd gan gyffyrddiad â’r Gymraeg. Rwyf yn cyflwyno dadansoddiad newydd o dair nodwedd a ddylanwadwyd gan gyffyrddiad—blaenu dibeniad cymal, defnydd estynedig o’r arddodiad with a’r tagiau gofynnol is it?/isn’t it?. Fe gymharir gwahanol ardaloedd yng Nghymru a siaradwyr gwahanol oedrannau. Mae rolau shifft ieithyddol, caffael iaith, cymuned a bri ieithyddol yn cydblethu â phatrymau o amrywio mewn ffyrdd cymhleth. Er bod y nodweddion mwyaf nodedig yn y tafodieithoedd yn cael eu lefelu, fe’u dylanwadir hefyd gan Saesneg Lloegr. Mae siaradwyr ifainc Saesneg Cymru, yn enwedig y rhai hynny o Dde Cymru, yn diweddaru eu tafodiaith tra eu bod hefyd yn cynnal agweddau rhanbarthol arni.
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Notes
- 1.
The results presented in this chapter are based my doctoral dissertation (Paulasto 2006), two previously unpublished conference papers (Paulasto 2013a, b) and fresh research on corpora from the southeast of Wales. Apart from the most recent findings, the results have been discussed in connection with two presentations, at the Amrywiaeth Ieithyddol yng Nghymru/Language Diversity in Wales conference in Aberystwyth, July 2014, and at the Seminar of the Language Research Centre in Swansea, May 2015. I would like to thank all discussants for their valuable comments and the editors of this volume for their feedback, suggestions, and care. Any remaining errors are my own. This research has been conducted with the support of the Research Council for Culture and Society, Academy of Finland (project no. 258999).
- 2.
2011 Census: Key Statistics for Wales, March 2011, URL: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/key-statistics-for-unitary-authorities-in-wales/stb-2011-census-key-statistics-for-wales.html#tab---Proficiency-in-Welsh (last accessed 16 June 2015).
- 3.
- 4.
There is no adequate means of circumscribing the variable context and quantifying the results more specifically, because assessing all contexts where FF would or would not be a possibility would be a highly impractical and subjective exercise.
- 5.
The Survey of English Dialects (SED) tape recordings comprise 479,000 words of guided informal interview data from 298 NORM informants born 1863–1909, covering 286 rural localities in England and the Isle of Man.
- 6.
Oxford English Dictionary, URL: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/229612 (last accessed 25 June 2015).
- 7.
These involve institutional relationships with an employer, company, association, etc.
- 8.
There is regional variation in the Welsh invariant question tags, though. Morris Jones (1990: 200) gives the positive variants ie (north) and efe (south) and negative ones ynte (north) and yntefe (south).
- 9.
The lexical questionnaire sections in TC provide a context for the occurrence of a number of instances: 57 of the total of 188, that is, 30.3%. This has no impact on the proportional difference between invariant and paradigmatic tags, however, and with the omission of the lexical sequences, the normalised frequencies would be even higher.
- 10.
See, e.g. the YouGov poll from November 2014, where UK informants found the Welsh accent to be the third most attractive out of 15 British and Irish regional accents; URL: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/12/09/accent-map2/ (accessed 20 Jan 2016).
- 11.
Paulasto (2006: 287) notes the same distinction between FF and extended uses of PF in another corpus, the Urban SAWD interviews, where the former is used in all four localities (Caernarfon, Carmarthen, Wrexham and Grangetown in Cardiff) but the latter is restricted to the western, Welsh-speaking towns.
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Paulasto, H. (2016). Variation and Change in the Grammar of Welsh English. In: Durham, M., Morris, J. (eds) Sociolinguistics in Wales. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52897-1_5
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