Speaking the American and British Tongues

Salonee Priya

Visiting Scholar, Linguistic Empowerment Cell, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Keywords: Phonological, Morphological, Syntactic and Semantic Variations, American vs British English


Abstract

Though English has become a global language with every nation having its own form and characteristic feature, British English and American English are still held with reverence. They often form a model for World Englishes to follow. The colonial rule of the British Empire spread British English to Commonwealth countries whereas it is through its vast economy and market reach that American English has given its flavor to the world. The article points out at the phonological, morphological, syntactic as well as semantic variations in these popular yet divergent forms of English.


References

Chomsky, N. and Halle, M. (1968) The Sound Pattern of English. NY: Harper and Row.

Gaskell, M.G. and Marslen-Wilson, W.D. (1998) Mechanisms of phonological inference in speech perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 380-396.

Goldsmith, J. (1990) Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.

Henry Sweet: A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, 2 parts; Oxford, 1900–03, part i, p. 224.

Hockett, C. (1965) A Manual of Phonology. IJAL Monograph.

Jakobson, R. and Halle, M. (1968) Phonology in relation to phonetics. In Malberg, B. (ed.) Manual of Phonetics. Amsterdam: North Holland (pp. 411-449).

Johnson, K. (1997a) Speech perception without speaker normalization. In Johnson, K. and Mullennix, J.W. (eds.) Talker Variability in Speech Processing. NY: Academic Press (pp. 145-166).

Johnson, K., Ladefoged, P. and Lindau, M. (1993) Individual differences in vowel production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94, 701-714.

Kenyon, J.S. and Knott, T.A. (1944) A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster

Kirby, T., (2007-03-28), “Are regional dialects dying out, and should we care if they are?”, The Independent, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2398845.ece

Knott, T.A. (1935) How the dictionary determines what pronunciations to use. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 21, 1-10.

Lavoie, L. (2002) Some influences on the realization of for and four in American English. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 32, 175-202.

Manuel, S.Y. (1991) Recovery of “deleted” schwa. PERILUS XIV: Papers from the Symposium on Current Phonetic Research Pardigms for Speech Motor Control. Institute of Linguistics, University of Stockholm (pp. 115-118).

Mencken, H., L., 2000, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States.

Pattee, F. L., 1916, A History of American Literature Since 1870; New York, 1916

Wang, W.S-Y. (1977) (ed.) The Lexicon in Phonological Change. The Hague: Mouton.