Dress-raising in Connemara English: shedding light on the role of Irish
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2022/13/0042/000584Keywords:
Irish English, DRESS-raising, PEN-PIN merger, contact Irish EnglishAbstract
Pre-nasal DRESS-raising (/ɛ/ to /ɪ/) is a salient feature of western Irish English. However, its origins remain poorly understood. Existing accounts differ on whether it represents a transfer feature from Irish or a retention from Early Modern English. To investigate the possibility of synchronic transfer from Irish, 448 DRESS tokens produced by bilingual L1 Irish speakers were acoustically analysed and compared with 450 DRESS tokens produced by monolingual English speakers from the same region. The L1 Irish speakers of English demonstrated a higher degree of pre-nasal raising than the monolingual English speakers. However, an equivalent analysis of the bilingual speakers’ Irish productions (113 tokens) revealed no evidence of pre-nasal raising. These findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that DRESS-raising in Irish English originates from Irish language transfer.
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