Syntactic Atlas of Northern England (SANE)
As noted in Corrigan (2006), [http://www.meertens.nl/projecten/edisyn/] existing typologies of English dialects, such as the Survey of English Dialects: [http://www.yorkshiredialect.com/SED.htm] or Hughes, Trudgill & Watt (2005), are based on phonological or lexical criteria. See, for example, the following map, which was taken from Hughes Trudgill and Watt (2005) depicting the distribution of front and back /a/, derived by phonological criteria.
Our knowledge of how dialect morphosyntax patterns in relation to spatial factors (social/physical/temporal) is considerably less advanced for Britain than it is for other regions in Europe (Compare SAND for Dutch-speaking Netherlands and Belgium and for Italian dialects, ASIS). Also, the comparability of existing data-sets is hard to assess as previous studies have been small-scale, focusing on individual speech communities and relying on rather different research methods (e.g. McDonald & Beal 1987, Llamas 1999, Miller 1993, Smith & Tagliamonte 1998). Currently, strictly comparative claims about the geospatial/social patterning of dialect morphosyntax in Britain are, therefore, problematic.
This project aims to systematically collect, analyse, and make public a large-scale corpus of systemic corpora spanning the dialects of Northern England. This is significant because it would fill gaps in our knowledge of the grammars of dialect speakers in this distinctive region of Britain and would also further our understanding of the extent to which they differ across social/regional/temporal space.
The specific aims are:
(i) In consultation with the Meertens Institute, Amsterdam, we intend to create a Syntactic Atlas of Northern England (SANE) along the lines of SAND and ASIS.
(ii) To test and compare different instruments regarding the effective elicitation of syntactic data (Cornips & Corrigan 2005b, Cornips & Poletto 2005, Hollmann & Siewierska 2006).
The SANE project is the first concerted attempt to establish sophisticated and uniform methodologies for the collection, storage and analysis of vernacular morphosyntactic data from a well-recognised region of the British Isles. It will therefore help establish ‘best practices’ in accessing British dialect data that is both naturalistic and fully representative of native speaker intuitions. It is also especially timely given the rise of comparative dialect syntax projects elsewhere in Europe (see Cornips & Poletto 2005, Nerbonne & Kretschmar 2003).
Moreover, the SANE project represents the first phase of a larger, cross-institutional, collaborative project on the distribution of dialect grammars across the entire British Isles. [http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/groups/lvcrg/index.htm] It pilots the methodology and research design which the subsequent project will use and apply to (i) a wider range of linguistic features and (ii) a larger set of data points (including Southern England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland).
The project has thus far resulted in three pilot studies, funded by Newcastle University Vacation Scholarships and a small grant from the HASS Faculty Research Fund.
SANE Pilot Projects
Summer 2006: Tejshree Aukle
This project reviewed a variety of tests commonly used for the elicitation of grammaticality judgments - including newer, subtler techniques - so as to measure their usefulness as a means of revealing the degree of dialectal divergence amongst two local communities, Newcastle and Gateshead. The scholar interviewed 4 women and 4 men, all in the 60+ age bracket and did a variety of tests with them.
The student’s poster won 3rd prize in the Vacation Scholarship Poster Competition.
Here is a picture of the Vacation Scholarship with the prize-winning poster (from left: Karen Corrigan, Anders Holmberg, Isabelle Buchstaller and Tejshree Auckle)
Summer 2007: Sophie Robinson
Sophie’s project plans to investigate generational linguistic differences on the Scottish-English border. Her research targets Peebles, Scotland, where she will gather speech samples/attitudinal data about language/identity from younger/older WC men/women. The project focuses on features that have previously been classified as typically 'Northern English' rather than ‘Scots’ and intends to investigate the extent to which these do actually occur in Scotland and whether generation or gender are factors favouring their use.
HASS Faculty Research Fund awarded to Isabelle Buchstaller
Testing Instruments for a Dynamic Syntactic Atlas of Northern Englishes
This project investigates the strengths/weaknesses of methods used for collecting attitudinal data about dialect grammar. The results of previous surveys of Northern Englishes are not fully compatible because the data collection methods used are so divergent. A Vacation Scholarship project run in Newcastle/Gateshead in 2006 has revealed that (i) there are interesting differences in the grammars of speakers from the two localities but that (ii) the results depend crucially on the method employed. The proposed project builds on this pilot, refining the methodology and testing it on a larger sample, i.e. the urban conurbations of Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland with the aim of:
(1) Comparing/testing methodologies for the collection of linguistic intuitions on a stable set of grammatical variables across the 3 local communities.
(2) Locating the most effective methods for accessing native speaker intuitions about grammatical differences.
(3) Probing the interface between social factors and the linguistic system.
(4) Enhancing our knowledge of grammars across the North. This is crucial to:
(i) Furthering our understanding of the extent to which British Isles’ vernaculars vary and
(ii) Ascertaining to which degree geolinguistic divisions based on sound differences are replicable elsewhere in the grammar.
A BA-funded project with colleagues at Edinburgh university (Patrick Honeybone, Warren Maguire and April MacMahon).
This project is aimed at filling key gaps in our knowledge of the coherence of dialect syntax and phonology. It focuses on two linguistic features, one phonological and one (morpho-)syntactic, sampled at a single locality in Scotland (Hawick in the Borders region) and another in North-East England (Newcastle). Fieldworkers will interview 8 speakers at each locality and test the patterning of linguistic features which have been reported in previous work but which are not fully understood linguistically, socially or geographically within these regions, namely, the 'T-to-R rule' ('T-to-R'), and the 'Northern Subject Rule' ('NSR').
The research questions for NESPS are in equal measure (i) dialectological, (ii) linguistic and (iii) methodological:
(i) What is the geographical and social spread of T-to-R and NSR?
(ii) What is the precise linguistic patterning of T-to-R and NSR? How do lexical and phonological constraints interact in T-to-R? Does the NSR 'rule' reported for older stages of English still hold or has the phenomenon generalised and/or lexicalised? To what extent do functional categories (grammatical person and/or tense and aspect) condition the occurrence of the NSR?
(iii) What is the best way to access data relevant to (i) and (ii)? How well do introspection and elicitation tasks work in phonology and in (morpho-)syntax? How well do such tasks mirror linguistic performance in free speech?