Wednesday, 14 October 2015, 13.00
Fulton 214, University of Sussex
goose-fronting as innovative angloversal
Sandra Jansen, University of Brighton
In this
presentation, I demonstrate that goose-fronting
has been identified as phenomenon in varieties of English around the world and
provide detailed information about this change in Carlisle, a city in the
north-west of England. The results show that similarly strong linguistic
constraints are found in this variety as in other varieties. However, the
change cannot be characterised as Vernacular Universals (Chambers 2004, 2012)
or global innovation (Buchstaller 2008). Hence I argue that we need to
introduce the new category of innovating angloversals,
a group of features that are arising independently in varieties of English due
to language internal motivations rather than dialect contact.
A second point
of discussion is the dynamics between goose
and other back vowels, i.e. goat
and foot. I argue that in order to
understand goose-fronting
completely, we also need to study the most adjacent back vowels. The data stem
from interviews conducted in Carlisle between 2007 and 2010 and show that while
goose is fronting across
apparent-time, for goat and foot a change in progress is not
observable. These dynamics seem to be geographically restricted to the
north-west of England which leaves us with two conclusions. Either the apparent
chain shift which is often referred to in the goose-fronting
context has not set in yet or a chain shift is not a necessary consequence of goose-fronting. In both cases, goat and foot
do not belong the group of innovating angloversals.
All welcome!!
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