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Part of
Keeping in Touch: Emigrant letters across the English-speaking world
Edited by Raymond Hickey
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 10] 2019
► pp. 163–184

Chapter 8
Grammatical variation in nineteenth-century Irish Australian letters

A large section of the early settler population in Australia came from Ireland and many of these individuals wrote back home reporting on conditions in the colony and/or advising relatives and friends on emigration. This private correspondence shows a large number features known from present-day vernacular varieties of Irish English but also some features which have disappeared in the meantime. Given the authenticity of the letters examined here an investigation is particularly useful when tracing the development of specific features in the past two centuries. Virtually all such features were not adopted into the emerging supraregional form of Australian English, the precursor of the present-day homogenous variety. One of the main assumptions here is that the specifically Irish features were stigmatised as indexical of low-status emigrants and hence avoided by following generations Irish-descent Australians.

Keywords: Irish English, nineteenth-century Australian English, grammatical variation, stigma of vernacular features, new dialect formation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Phonological evidence
    • 3.1Unraised Middle English long mid vowel
    • 3.2Raised short /e/
    • 3.3Evidence of SERVE-lowering
    • 3.4Short vowel ~ /r/ metathesis
    • 3.5ER-retraction
    • 3.6OL-diphthongisation
    • 3.7Pre-rhotic /a/-raising
    • 3.8Remaining phonological features
  • 4.Grammatical evidence
    • 4.1Second person plural pronouns
    • 4.2Non-standard verbal concord
    • 4.3Irregular past forms
    • 4.4Syntactic features
      • 4.4.1Habitual aspect
      • 4.4.2Immediate perfective with after
      • 4.4.3Lack of present perfect
      • 4.4.4For to infinitives
      • 4.4.5Main clause word order of questions in sentential complements
      • 4.4.6Lack of indefinite article
      • 4.4.7 Copula and auxiliary be deletion
      • 4.4.8Auxiliary be for have
      • 4.4.9Comparatives with than what
      • 4.4.10Subordinating and
      • 4.4.11Topicalisation strategies
      • 4.4.12Negative concord
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.10.08hic
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