Journal of English Linguistics

Conventional linguistic and metrical perspectives claim that secondary elements of Old English compound names are only stressed if they are disyllabic or inflected. This essay argues that this conclusion derives directly from the use of Eduard Sievers's metrical formalism and that other formalisms may suggest that this counterintuitive result is, in fact, incorrect. Using Geoffrey Russom's innovative word-foot metrical formalism and examining evidence from secondary alliteration patterns, this essay offers evidence that monosyllabic secondary elements were given secondary stress. Furthermore, evidence from the spacing of compound names in the Beowulf manuscript supports such a conclusion. Taken together, the evidence from scansion, alliteration patterns, and the manuscript suggest that both Sieversian formalism and the linguistic claims that it gave rise to should be replaced.

The historical linguist has to rely on written records of a speech event for evidence regarding spoken interaction of the past. The authors consider records of trial proceedings and witness depositions, two genres that are included in A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (currently under compilation). They present evidence both for and against the reliability of these written records as representations of past speech. The role of the scribe, as well as the printer and editor, is discussed. The authors also offer evidence to suggest that records that are contemporaneous with the speech event are preferable to later printings and editions for linguistic research. They conclude that the study of speech-related texts is of value in its own right, although these texts cannot be equated with present-day audio recordings of spoken interaction.

Insularity can play a crucial role in the development (or adoption) of endemic dialect structures. This claim is based on an analysis of the co-occurrence of preterit forms with the quasi-modal used to, as in we used to went there all the time, in the dialect of English spoken on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha. The author argues that useta went structures most likely originated in second-language (L2) forms of English since some of the Tristan da Cunha settlers had nonnative competence of English. Two crucial stages need to be considered for an explanation of the emergence and development of such structures: an origination phase, which depends on nonnative influence and admixture with interlanguage forms, and a consolidation phase, which depends on the nonlinguistic conditioning of the community. The analysis is contextualized with reference to language acquisition and language-learning processes elsewhere.

Although several researchers have noted unusual phonetic realizations of s, there is little detailed documentation of such variation. This study investigates the use of a fronted variant of s in the speech of Auckland, New Zealand, residents. The results report on the findings from a rapid survey that elicits tokens of s in word-final position in the speech of 638 Pakeha (New Zealand European) speakers. The findings provide evidence of both a fronted and nonfronted variant of s in this community. The findings also show systematic variation on the basis of age, gender, and occupation, with the fronted variant preferred by younger speakers, professional females, and males in clerical jobs.