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The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States: Based upon the Collections
of the Linguistic Atlas of the Eastern United States
Article in Language · April 1963

DOI: 10.2307/411215
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Linguistic Society of America
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Author(s): Samuel Jay Keyser
Review by: Samuel Jay Keyser
Source: Language, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1963), pp. 303-316
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REVIEWS 303
seems to occur to him that these 'definitions' of abstract linguistic units in

terms of one material in which they may be roughly represented are quite parallel
to the 'definitions' in phonological syntax.
Practicality and aversion to abstraction, as the reviewer can testify, can make
a grammar quite impractical, and independence can become obstinacy. One
must therefore hope that in any later editions of The sentenceand its parts, Long
will reconsider his unfortunate sacrifices to the god of grammatical war. His book
is too valuable to be marked by such deformities. That is not to say, of course,
that The sentenceis tomorrow's English grammar. From some of Long's remarks,
a reader might suspect that in his judgment tomorrow's grammars will be built
from data like his own but on theories like Chomsky's (and will therefore be
quite different from Long's atheoretical description, where even the relevance of
data is hard to judge). The guess is not absurd, whether Long would make it or
not. Still he has not wasted his 'twenty years of steady work'. In a generation
when new prophets are announced faster than old ones can be satisfactorily
martyred, intelligent traditionalists maintain the essential continuity of scholar-
ship. That makes them everyone's first choice for the guillotine, but probably
they have as good a chance of surviving for a little time as most.
The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states: Based upon the collections
of the Linguistic Atlas of the Eastern United States. By HANS KURATHand
RAVENI. MCDAVIDJR. (Studies in American English, No. 3.) Pp. xi, 182, with
180 full-page maps. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1961.
Reviewed by SAMUELJAY KEYSER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
As its subtitle indicates, the Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states
(PEAS) is based upon the collections of the Linguistic atlas of the Eastern United
States. It is not, however, simply a collation of published material. Recent studies
have been added, in particular those by Raven McDavid in Georgia, Florida,
New York State, and Canada, and his expansion of the late Guy S. Lowman's
preliminary study in South Carolina.1
One of the major difficulties facing any dialectologist is that of presenting his
material in an accessible manner. To accomplish this the authors have employed
'outlines', accompanied by a large number of 'synopses', to describe the 'Regional
dialects of cultivated speech' (Chapter 2). The outlines note the major features
of the areas delineated. The 'synopses' present in tabular form the most impor-
tant allophones of the vowel phonemes in sixty-six key words in the dialects of
seventy cultivated speakers.
Another device used is maps. Maps 4-33 show the regional variants or dia-
1This work was supported in part by the U. S. Army, the U. S. Navy (Office of Naval
Research), and the U. S. Air Force (Office of Scientific Research and Development Com-
mand), and in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant G-16526).
I wish to thank G. H. Matthews and P. M. Postal for their useful comments, Noam
Chomsky for several valuable suggestions, and Morris Halle for his astringent readings of
the manuscript, which have both clarified the argument and spared the reader many digres-
sions.
304 LANGUAGE,VOLUME39, NUMBER2 (1963)
phones for each of the vowel phonemes.2 These maps are augmented by Chapter
3, 'The regional and social dissemination of the diaphones of stressed vowels'.
Maps 34-58 present the distribution of the consonant /r/ and the incidence
of vowels before /r'a/. Chapter 4 deals with this aspect in detail, the authors
having decided to devote a separate chapter to it because of the extremely com-
plicated nature of the material and its interpretation. The remaining maps,
59-180, present the material discussed in Chapter 5, which deals with the 're-
gionally and socially varying incidence of vowel and consonant phonemes in the
vocabulary'. (This chapter is chiefly the work of McDavid; Kurath is responsible
for Chapters 1-4.)
The use of synopses, outlines, and simplified maps has effected a great economy
in presentation, and for anyone who has attempted to use, for example, the
Linguistic atlas of New England, the compactness and accessibility of the data in
this volume cannot be praised enough.
The basic orientation of the book, as is evident from the attention paid to
devices for presenting data, is extreme empiricism, an orientation the authors
share with many contemporary linguists. They see their primary task as that of
presenting data in the most convenient form; the reader gets no specific account
of the theoretical framework behind their study. They are, to some extent, sus-
picious of all contemporary schemes of phonemicization, even their own, and
they are careful to point out to the reader that their theoretically motivated
results are not irreversible, that the original data can always be recovered (2):
A phonic record of pronunciation is needed for all attempts at establishing the system of
phonemes and describing the phonic range of the several phonemes (i.e. their positional
and prosodic allophones or their free variations). The preservation of the phonic record is
all the more important since all schemes of phonemicization are to some extent arbitrary
in view of the present state of our knowledge of the segmentation of utterances. If the
basis of the adopted scheme of phonemicization is explicitly stated and each phoneme in
that system is described in phonic terms, the phonic data thus preserved can be interpreted
in terms of different systems of phonemicization.
It would be a misunderstanding to regard the study simply as a record of more
or less well-chosen facts. On a number of points the authors take positions that
are of the greatest interest for linguistic theory. Since the general tenor of the
study may obscure this fact, I shall examine a few of these points in detail.
I take the theoretical orientation of PEAS to consist essentially in the follow-
ing three conditions: (1) STRONG BIUNIQUENESS, (2) UNIFORMITY, and (3) MINI-
MIZATION. By strong biuniqueness I mean the constraint that allophones of a
given phoneme must be phonetically distinct from allophones of other phonemes.
By uniformity I mean the constraint that all phonetic diphthongs must be treated
exclusively as unit phonemes or else all phonetic diphthongs must be treated
exclusively as phonemic sequences. By minimization I mean the constraint that
phonemicizations in dialectology should be so formulated as to yield a minimum
of phonemic heteroglosses between dialects.
The authors have established a hierarchy among the features in which dialects
(and/or idiolects) of a language differ (2):
2 In the Preface (page v) Kurath says, 'The term diaphone as used here comprises all
regional and social variants of a phoneme or its allophones.'
REVIEWS 305
Phonemic, phonic, and incidental heteroglosses are of unequal value in determining the
degree of difference between dialects and in evaluating the relative importance of the
boundaries between speech areas. Of the three types, phonemic heteroglosses obviously
outrank the others.
It should be noted that this hierarchy is not explicitly justified in the book,
probably because it seemed self-evident to the authors, and one can only specu-
late what the justification would be. I do not question their hierarchy. I only
want to observe that the introduction of such a hierarchy is an important the-
oretical step which does not follow in any simple sense from the data and-what
is more important-that a number of other features of their description are
directly dependent on it.3
Given the primacy of phonemic heteroglosses, the authors have, I suggest,
reasoned in the following manner: since phonemic heteroglosses are indices of
the most important differences among dialects and since different dialects of a
given language must resemble each other (what other sense could there be to the
concept 'dialect'?), it is necessary to devise phonemicizations for the individual
dialects in such a way as to minimize the number of phonemic heteroglosses
among dialects. This is condition 3.
An especially clear illustration of the manner in which the authors utilize
that condition is provided by the treatment of /awi/ and /a_u/ in PEAS.4
As is well known, there are three competing phonemicizations of English phonetic
diphthongs: the binary regards them as sequences of two phonemes; the unitary
regards them as allophones of unit phonemes; and the mixed is a blend of the
two, regarding some phonetic diphthongs as phonemic diphthongs and others as
unit phonemes. The authors have not even considered the third alternative and
may well be in agreement with Hockett, who, on the grounds that IC levels are
mixed, rejects that analysis in which the vocalic nuclei of beat, boot, bait, etc. are
regarded as units and those in bite, bout, and Hoyt as sequences.5
Choosing, then, between a strictly binary and a strictly unitary phonemiciza-
tion, the authors reject the former (3):
Although admitting that a binary interpretation of diphthongal phones of American English
more satisfactory than any advanced so far may in time be devised, a unitary interpretation
seems more realistic and certainly more convenient for comparing the dialects of English
spoken in the Altantic States and establishing degrees of diversity of kinship between them
on a stated basis.
The reasons for their choice are further amplified in the following (4):
In most dialects diphthongal and monophthongal variants occur side by side under ob-
servable (hence statable) conditions, i.e., in certain positions or under certain prosodic
3 A similar hierarchy may be found in Uriel Weinreich, 'Is a structural dialectology
possible?', Word 10.392 (1954).
4 Since I shall be discussing both unitary and binary interpretations throughout, to
avoid confusion I adopt the following notation: letters (between slant lines) that are joined
by a link or tieline represent unit phonemes; otherwise, two adjacent symbols between
diagonals represent binary sequences of phonemes.
6 Given condition 2 above, however, it is not surprising that the authors pay no attention
to the third alternative and probably do not consider it viable. - For Hockett's complete
argument see Manual of phonology160 ff. For a criticism of his position see Chomsky, IJAL
23.229 ff. (1957).
306 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2 (1963)
conditions. For instance, a speaker may have [I] in bit, [n] in put, [ae]in bat and [a] in lot
but [19] in crib, [ua] in good, [se] in half and [a-] in rod.Y
But, they go on to say (4),

... if [ei, on] are taken as /ey, ow/, the segments [IX,na] cannot be taken as unit phonemes ...
The authors thus recognize that in certain idiolects [Ia]and [uo] are in comple-
mentary distribution with [I] and [u] respectively: the former occur before voiced
consonants, the latter before voiceless consonants. They want their description
to reflect this alternation-which means that they want [Ia] to be a conditioned
allophone of /I/. But the uniformity condition (2) requires them to say that if
[I9] is an allophone of a unit phoneme, [ei] must be an allophone of a unit phon-
eme also.
What of the other side of the coin? If [ei] is treated as a phonemic sequence
/ey/, then [I1] must also be treated as a phonemic sequence. This follows from
the same uniformity condition. But if [1] is analyzed as /Ia/, then the apparent
alternation [I] '
[Ia] cannot be regarded as an allophonic variation.
The authors have chosen the unitary interpretation. They have said that the
unitary interpretation seems better on grounds of realism and convenience
(see quotation above). Though they nowhere define these terms, I think it is
safe to assume that by realism they mean the satisfaction of conditions 1 and 2
in conjunction with certain factors of psychological reality. They argue, for
example (4):
Since all speakers of American English distinguish /h/ from /y/ and /w/ before vowels ...
it is rather incredible that speakers who are said to have /y/ and /w/ in eight and road
should not detect the posited postvocalic /h/ in speakers of another dialect.
The authors have taken it for granted that the alternation [i] [I@] is allo-
'
phonic. This decision may be based upon their realism principle, though one
could also argue that the decision follows equally well from the convenience
principle. Like realism, however, convenience is nowhere defined explicitly. I
suspect that it is essentially embodied in condition 3 above. A binary interpreta-
tion meeting the conditions of uniformity and strong biuniqueness would neces-
sarily lead to an increase in the number of phonemic sequences postulated for the
Atlantic States dialects. An increase in the number of phonemic sequences,
however, carries with it a proliferation of phonemic heteroglosses (as will be
seen in detail below). But this proliferation directly counters condition 3, that
phonemic heteroglosses be minimized. The unitary interpretation, which mini-
mizes phonemic heteroglosses, is therefore termed more convenient.
We find that the choice of the unitary interpretation has allowed the authors
to assert that the major dialects spoken in the Eastern States all share the free
vowels /a vi/ and /a wu/. This assertion amounts to the complete elimination of
phonemic heteroglosses in the major dialects for /awi/ and /a u/, and it
attributes the differences among the dialects to the less crucial phonic hetero-
glosses. The cost of organizing the data so that this assertion holds, however, is
5a Because of typographical limitations, no distinction will be made between full-size
and superior phonetic symbols. Thus the superior [o] in this passage is reproduced here as
full-size [a].
REVIEWS 307
by no means trivial. It forces the authors to increase the number of phonemes

in those dialects where a binary interpretation would necessitate no such increase.
Consider, for example, the following data from Rochester, N. Y.:6
Rochester (Synopsis 53)
five [awi] [a-u]down
twice [ai] [au]out
Here the unitary interpretation requires an increase in the number of unit pho-
nemes as compared with a binary interpretation, since it must postulate /ai/,
/au/, /a/, and the semivowels /y/ and /w/, whereas a binary interpretation
could account for the facts with the vowel /a/ alone, plus the semivowels /y/
and /w/. And if we consider the large number of dialects like that of Rochester,
we see that in all of these a unitary interpretation increases the number of pho-
nemes for each one.7
At this point let us examine three specific idiolects where a unitary interpreta-
tion produces results in harmony with condition 3. The first is from Winchester,
Virginia:
Winchester (Synopsis 105)
five [a?e] [aeu] down
twice [si] [su] out
Winchester also has [I] in six and [Ira] in crib. If we treat the latter as /Ia/, by
ignoring the alternation between the two reflexes in their respective environ-
ments, then, by condition 2, we must treat the vocalic nuclei in five, twice, down,
and out as phonemic diphthongs as well. But since one allophone of /e/ is [e]
in Winchester, we must, by condition 1, set up the sequence /ae/ in five. By the
binary interpretation Rochester would have /ay/ in five, and this would require
the drawing of a phonemic heterogloss between the two idiolects. Moreover,
since one allophone of /ae/ is [ae]in Winchester, we must, again by condition 1,
set up /sew/ in down beside Rochester's /aw/. Hence another phonemic hetero-
gloss must be drawn between the two. Consider also that Rochester has /I/
in crib while Winchester by condition 2 has /i?/ there: still another phonemic
heterogloss. The unitary interpretation, on the other hand, can handle both id-
iolects with /a i/, /a u/, and /I/, and this has led the authors to opt in its
favor; the option, by the way, follows from condition 3.
Consider the following data from Charleston, South Carolina:
Charleston (Synopsis 136)
five [a i] [au] down
twice [si] [wiu]out
Charleston also has [i] in six and [I] in crib, both phones assigned by the authors
to /I/. In order to satisfy condition 3, the authors must set up /a wi/ and /a u/
6 In this and
all following citations from PEAS diacritics are suppressed because of
limitations of the type font. This will in no way affect the argument, and the precise nature
of the phonetic detail may, for present purposes, be safely ignored.
7 It should be made clear that Kurath and McDavid make no explicit use of the notion of
'overall pattern' in their treatment. In fact Kurath has rejected the notion as 'spurious' in
Lg. 33.120 fn.
for Charleston,therebymatchingWinchesterand Rochester;for if, by the binary

interpretation,they assign the second elementin fiveand twiceto the semivowel
/y/, then the allophone[I]will be sharedby two phonemes,/I/ and /y/. This
violates condition1 and must thereforebe discounted.
What alternativeis open to the binary interpretation,providedthat the con-
dition of strongbiuniquenessis to be satisfied?It is possibleto treat the Charles-
ton dialect as having the phoneme /I/ with the allophone [i] before voiceless
consonantsbut [i] beforevoiced consonantsand after vowels. The result is that
the vocalic nuclei in Jiveand twice are analyzed as the sequences /aI/. Why
haven't the authorsdone this? Preciselybecause/aI/ in five in Charlestonalong-
side /ay/ in Rochesterand /ae/ in Winchesterrequiresyet another phonemic
heterogloss. Again condition 3 is violated unless a unitary interpretationis
adopted.
Now considerone last idiolect, this from New Bern, North Carolina:
New Bern (Synopsis 120)
five [ae] [aeu] down
twice [ae] [aeu]out
New Bern also has [e] as an allophone of /ae/ in ashes and [ae} in bag, where
length is predictable in terms of voicing in the following consonant. In ten, egg,
and head, however, it has [Ea]. Beginning with a binary interpretation, the
[en] in ten would be analyzed as /e?/. By condition 2, then, the nuclei in five,
twice, down, and out must be treated as diphthongs. Since /e/ has the allophone
[e], however, we must analyze five and twice as containing /ae/, this by condition
1. Similarly down and out are analyzed as /aew/. But notice that the effect of the
binary interpretation in New Bern is to destroy completely the postulated phone-
mic similarity between Rochester with its /ay/ in five and twice and its /aw/
in down and out beside New Bern's corresponding /ae/ and /aew/. To avoid this
extreme violation of condition 3, the authors have chosen the unitary interpreta-
tion.
We have seen that the authors, in postulating the supremacy of phonemic
heteroglosses,have chosen that phonemicizationwhich requires the smallest
number of phonemic units consistent with a minimizing of phonemic hetero-
glosses. We have also seen that a binary interpretation, though achieving a
minimization of the phonemic register for any given idiolect, necessarily in-
creases the number of phonemic heteroglosses in the Atlantic States.
Let us consider for a moment what the authors mean by a phonemic hetero-
gloss. Given a representative word (or word group) and its pronunciation by two
speakers, if the phonemicizations are identical, no heterogloss is drawn between
the two speakers; if not, a phonemic heterogloss must be drawn. Consequently,
given the phonemicization of the reflexes in all of the dialects mentioned above
as /a wi/ and /a vu/, no such heteroglosses are required, though clearly several
phonic heteroglosses must be postulated. But their analysis is seriously at fault,
since, on the basis of the Rochester data alone with /I/, /ay/, and /aw/, there
is no reason to treat /ay/ and /aw/ as unit phonemes. To do so merely expands
the phonemic register in a wholly gratuitous fashion.
In other words, in order to reduce the number of phonemic heteroglosses
REVIEWS 309
between Rochesterand Winchester,the authors have increasedthe numberof

phonemesin the Rochesteridiolect. But one may well ask why the facts of one
should in any way bear on the facts of the other. Is this not, in effect, robbing
Rochester to pay Winchester?
There is an associateddifficulty.We have seen that one of the principlesin-
volved in the authors' choice of a unitary phonemicizationis realism,i.e. con-
ditions 1 and 2 in conjunctionwith the linguistic intuitions of a given speaker,
at least when these are deemedrelevant.But the authors'apparentassumption
that the facts of Winchesterare relevant to the facts of Rochester is hardly
consistent with their principleof realism, since we cannot suppose that the
linguisticintuitionsof any givenspeakerare in any way relevantto the intuitions
of a speakerof a differentdialect.
Let us return,for a moment,to the three conditionsunderlyingthe organiza-
tion of PEAS. Conditions1 and 2 are theoreticalrequirementswhichthe authors
feel must be observedfor an adequate phonemicanalysis. Condition3, on the
otherhand, is in reality a goal of dialectology.It says that since we wouldexpect
dialectsof a languageto be similar,we wouldexpectto finda minimumof phone-
mic heteroglosses.
That the authors accept 1 and 2 as necessaryconstraintson a unitary or a
binary interpretationseems evident. We have seen that they considerthat a
binary interpretationproducesinconvenientresults. We have interpretedthis
inconvenienceto mean maximizingof phonemicheteroglosses.But the maxi-
mizing of phonemicheteroglossesarises only from a binary interpretationthat
takes constraints1 and 2 seriously.Hencewe must assumethat the authorstake
them seriously. Notice also that when the binary interpretationwith 1 and 2
producesresults in conflictwith 3, crucialcases arise, as in Winchester,where
new phonemicheteroglossesare required,leadingthe authorsto rejectthe binary
analysis. Without 3 there would be no reason to reject the binary results. If
phonemicheteroglossesare proliferated,let them be.
Even though we accept,as I think we should, condition3 as a reasonablegoal
for dialectology,we cannotaccept the authors'mannerof achievingit: insteadof
analyzing their data to see if 3 results, they have manipulatedtheir data to
insure that result.They have, as their treatmentof the Rochesterdata shows,
turned an interestingempiricalquestion into a tautology.
On the other hand, by adoptinga binaryinterpretationwith constraints1 and
2, we are forced to concludethat the minimizationachievedby the authorsin
meeting condition3 is, after all, unattainable.This conclusionis uncomfortable,
since the minimizationachieved by the authors, albeit in a trivial fashion, fits
well with our notion of dialect, i.e. that dialects of a given language should
resembleone anotheras much as possible.
There is anotheralternative.I shouldlike to proposethat we adopt a binary
interpretation,but that we drop all three conditionsimposed by the authors.
By adoptinga binaryinterpretationwithoutstrongbiuniquenessand uniformity,
we will not only be able to make use of its impliciteconomy,but also arriveat a
minimizationof phonemicheteroglossesin the majorAtlantic States equivalent
to that proposedby the authors.In effect I am suggestinga theoreticalposition
weaker than the authors', since it requires fewer constraints and treats minimiza-
tion not as a condition but as an interesting empirical question. As will be seen
below, the question is in fact answered positively.
Every system of phonemic analysis must account for the relationship between
the abstract phonemes and the phonic substance (allophones or phones). In the
authors' theoretical framework this account is embodied in the entries in the
synoptic tables of Chapter 2. In the following I shall make use of a different
convention. Instead of being shown as entries in the synoptic tables, the allo-
phonic variants will be given by means of statements. For example, the material
collected for the Charleston dialect (Synopsis 136 above) is accounted for by the
following statement or rule:
Rule 1. a -> v before a vowel followed by a voiceless consonant.
The rule required by the New Bern dialect is different:
Rule 2. a -* ae before u.
The Winchester dialect shares Rule 1 with Charleston and Rule 2 with New
Bern. The allophonic rules accounting for Winchester, then, are:
Rule 1. a -> e before a vowel followed by a voiceless consonant.

Rule 2. a -* e before u.
If we postulate (as we have for Charleston and New Bern) that the diphthongs
in Winchester are represented by the sequences ai and au, Rule 1 will operate to
produce v in twice and out. If we next apply Rule 2, it will operate to produce
e in down since, after Rule 1 has been applied, it is only in this word that a now
occurs before u. Notice, however, that in order to achieve the Winchester output
from Rule 1 and Rule 2, an important restriction has been placed upon the rules:
Rule 1 must precede Rule 2. One important consequence of this restriction is that
it produces rules which are, in an obvious way, simpler than rules requiring no
order. For example, if we were to account for the Winchester data by rules un-
restricted as to order, we would require, beside Rule 1, the following counterpart
to Rule 2:
Rule 2'. a -+ aebefore u followed by a voiced consonant.
Clearly Rule 2 is simpler than Rule 2' because it is more general.8

To emphasize the necessity for ordering these rules, let us run through them
in reverse. Beginning with ai and au
e
in the four words above, Rule 2 would
operate to produce r in down and out. Then Rule 1 would operate to produce
in twice but not in out, since it is only in twice that a now occurs before a vowel
followed by a voiceless consonant. The resulting display appears as
8 For a similar discussion of phonological systems in terms of rules and their orderings
see Halle, 'Phonology in generative grammar', Word 18.54-72 (1962).
REVIEWS 311
five [ai] [aeu]down

twice [si] [aeu]out
The results of the reverse ordering are not only hypothetical. If we examine
maps 26-29, where the words nine, twice, mountain, and out are mapped, we see
that precisely this distribution-Rule 2 preceding Rule 1-occurs in the vicinity
of Roanoke, Virginia, i.e. in the southwesternmost point of the area delineated
by the authors as the Virginia Piedmont.9
It has been noted that every system of phonemic analysis must include a set
of rules expressing the relationship between the abstract phonemes and the phonic
substance. It should now be obvious that what the authors have termed phonic
heteroglosses will be directly dependent upon the nature and distribution of the
rules from one dialect to another. Dialects differing only in their rules, in other
words, are distinguished by phonic heteroglosses. This formulation enables us
to ask what can be learned by an examination of the rules of particular dialects
which underlie the phonic heteroglosses. That is, what significance, if any,
can be assigned to the observation that the dialect of New Bern, N. C., is de-
scribed with Rule 2, while that of Charleston requires Rule 1 and that of Win-
chester requires Rule 1 followed by Rule 2? To arrive at an answer we need
first to examine the geographical distribution of the phonic heteroglosses de-
fined by our rules.
By making use of maps 26-29 and the relevant portions of the text we find
that dialects subject to Rule 1 alone are located in South Carolina (coastal area)
with a scattering of instances in the Cape Fear and Pee Dee Valleys and in
northeastern North Carolina. Rule 2, on the other hand, appears to have operated
not only in New Bern, N. C., but also (110),
... in West Jersey, on the Delaware and the lower Susquehanna in Pennsylvania, and in all
of Delmarva...
If we examine the Virginia Piedmont, however, we see that, except for the
Roanoke area, the vast majority of dialects on the maps can be described with
Rule 1 followed by Rule 2.
If we assume that the geographical areas characterized by Rule 1 alone
(Charleston, S. C., and the Cape Fear and Pee Dee Valleys) and those charac-
terized by Rule 2 alone (New Bern, N. C., and the Upper Potomac and Shenan-
doah Valleys and Delmarva) were at one time dialectal areas in which these
rules actually arose as so-called 'sound changes', an interesting possibility comes
to mind.
Let us suppose that Rule 1 arose in South Carolina and that, through dialectal
diffusion, it began to travel northward, stopping finally at the northern periphery
of the Virginia Piedmont. Let us also suppose that Rule 2 arose in the Upper
9It is regrettable that the authors did not make use of the device of overlaying maps;
without it, comparison from map to map is tedious and often inconclusive. Aside from the
unfortunate fact that symbols do not always appear in precisely corresponding positions
from map to map, there is the added difficulty that map 1, showing the location of cultured
speakers, and map 2, indicating the speech areas, are not drawn to the same scale. Since
maps 4-180 are drawn to the scale of the former, it is difficult to determine precisely into
what proposed speech area many of the dialects fall.
Potomac Valley, and, through dialectal diffusion,began to migratesouthward

through the entire VirginiaPiedmont area and beyond into New Bern. Given
this migration,it follows that the area between, i.e the area which was essen-
tially overlappedby the two movements, would be characterizedby Rule 1
(acquiredwhen Rule 1 moved northwardfrom South Carolina)followed by
Rule 2 (acquiredwhen Rule 2 moved southwardfrom the Upper Potomac).
And we have seen that the areamarkedby Rule 1 followedby Rule 2 is precisely
the one which lies between South Carolinaand the Upper Potomac, i.e. the
VirginiaPiedmont.
A closerexaminationof the dialectsin the severalareasmentionedmay suggest
other alternatives.For example,Rule 1 and Rule 2 may both have arisen south
of the VirginiaPiedmont.Rule 1 may have arisenin South Carolinaand, through
diffusion,extendedas far as the northernperipheryof the Piedmont.Then Rule
2, beginning in the New Bern area, may have migrated northwardas well,
though extendingbeyondthe Piedmontinto the UpperPotomacand Shenandoah
Valleys and Delmarva.Such a migrationwould also accountfor a large dialect
area with Rule 1 followed by Rule 2.10
These suggestionsdemonstratethe possibilityof accountingfor the formation
of dialect groups through the disseminationof rules from other dialects. No
attempt has been made here to bringthem into line with populationmovements
and other sociologicalfactors. Rather they are intended to illustrateon purely
theoreticalgroundswhat kinds of results may be hoped for within the field of
dialectology.
That such results are, in any case, unattainable from the data in PEAS
(and in similarly orientedstudies) is evident. The geographicaldistributionof
Rules 1 and 2, for example,is basedupon the maps and outlines in PEAS, but
these were compiledfrom data structuredaroundrepresentativewordsor word
groupingsand not from data exhibitingparticularrules and their geographical
occurrence.Hence conclusionsresting upon the distributionof Rules 1 and 2
(and of any other rules), as inferredfrom PEAS, must be consideredtentative
for lack of sufficientevidence.
The authors'statement,then, that the preservationof the phonicrecordwould
suffice to accommodatefuture phonemicizationsis not borne out. This is not
surprising.We have seen that the materialthey have amassedhas been analyzed
in terms of a specifictheoreticalframework,the one definedby the three con-
ditions outlinednear the beginningof this review. Given the alternativeframe-
work suggestedhere, we find that the materialis insufficient.But since there is
no reasonto suppose that data collectedto substantiateone theory will suffice
to substantiate another, this insufficiencyis to be expected. This assumes, of
10When we consider that a specific ordering of a given set of rules may in certain cases
reflect their acquisition through time, we are not, as might be argued, confusing diachronics
and synchronics. The ordering is clearly synchronic, but that does not preclude the possi-
bility of drawing diachronic conclusions based upon that ordering.
For a similar argument concerning the diachronic suggestiveness of synchronic data, see
Leonard Bloomfield, 'Menomini morphophonemics', TCLP 8.106 (1939), and Edward Sapir,
'On the psychological reality of phonemes', Selected writings 49 (ed. D. Mandelbaum;
Berkeley, 1949).
REVIEWS 313
course, that the authors knew what they were looking for. If, on the other hand,
their material was gathered without any specific theoretical framework in mind,
then whether the facts collected can accommodate future phonemicizations is
not a matter of preservation of the phonic record so much as a matter of pure
chance.
I have tried to show that by adopting a unitary interpretation of diphthongal
phones, the authors have been forced to pay a high price by increasing the
phonemic register in idiolects more economically treated by a binary interpreta-
tion, so that, in their effort to minimize phonemic heteroglosses, they have al-
lowed their description of one dialect to influence that of another.
These inadequacies may be overcome by two fundamental departures from
the theoretical framework in PEAS. The first is to abandon strong biuniqueness,
uniformity, and minimization as theoretical requirements in phonemic analysis.
The second is to impose a specific order on the application of allophonic rules.
By making use of a binary interpretation and by abandoning strong biuniqueness
and uniformity as a-priori theoretical constraints upon that interpretation, we
have been able to effect economy where PEAS has not and still arrive at intui-
tively satisfying empirical results, namely the minimizing of phonemic hetero-
glosses in the Atlantic States.1l By ordering our rules, we have been able to
simplify our description of a given dialect. We have seen, moreover, that through
a comparison of rules and their respective orderings from one dialect to another,
the possibility now arises of accounting for the formation of new dialect groups
through the geographical dissemination of rules.
In the course of PEAS the authors have had occasion to make certain histori-
cal statements. A few of these are questionable and seem to call for discussion.
The following statement appears on page 134:
The type of /jalo/, with the vowel of hollow, which is historically derived from /jela/, oc-
curs chiefly in Tidewater Virginia folk speech.
The derivation of [a] from [ae] in /jala/ for yellow is rather doubtful.'3 The
OE preform is geolu. The occurrence of spellings like 3olowe from the 12th cen-
tury onward (cf. OED) suggests early stress shift in this word.'4 The o spelling in
3olowe is, however, ambiguous, since it may represent rounded o in the West.'6
But dialectal forms with [jola]in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Leicester'6 definitely
point to an early o, which could easily have been unrounded to a, i.e. [a]. (The
OED records a forms from the 14th century onward.) A similar suggestion is
I1 It should be noted that the phonemic analysis presented here corresponds precisely to
that which Hockett considered indefensible (see fn. 5 and the corresponding text above for
Hockett's position).
18 I am indebted to Helge Kokeritz of Yale University for bringing this error to my
attention.
14 With this can be compared NE show from OE sctawian, assuming stress shift
to sceawsan. NE shew derives regularly from sctawian without shift of stress.
'5See Richard Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik?65, ?66 (Heidelberg,
1934).
16 See Joseph Wright, English dialect grammar, Index (Oxford, 1905).
made by E. J. Dobson,17who notes that 'The unrounding also occurred early in

the North; OED records 3alow 'yellow' (< earlier 3olow) from Northern texts
from 1375 onwards.' Hence the Tidewater [a] is best viewed as descending from
ME a or o forms, and not from an [ae]which was lowered and retracted.
Forms in [ae],on the other hand, are due either to early a forms or else to a
special lowering of ME e before r and 1.18Another source of [ae]in yellow, how-
ever, is suggested by the little known though well documented change OE eo >
ea > ME a > [ae](or, when lengthened in open syllables, > NE [ei], as in the
Isle of Wight place name Chale).'9
On page 145 is the following:
Other folk pronunciations of the vowel in judge occur sporadically in the North (especially
northeastern New England) and in the Carolinas; the /e/ of egg and (very rarely) the /I/
of big, both obviously derived from /A/ between the two palatal consonants.
This explanation fails to take into account the related doublets skim beside
scum, brisk beside brusk, and forms like Gillian (Juliana) and periwig from OF
perruque,where palatalization is not a factor. Like judge, all of these derive from
OF ii, i.e. y], a vowel that is both front and rounded. When borrowed into
English, however, the absence of a native [y] (except for its occasional occurrence
in the southwestern dialects) caused speakers to hit upon either fronting or
rounding as the distinctive feature. The former produced skim, brisk, Gillian,
periwig, and [diidi]; the latter produced [u], which, by the end of the 16th cen-
tury, was lowered, centralized, and unrounded to [A],as in contemporary brusk,
scum, and of course judge. The /e/ in judge is to be explained as a result of the
very common lowering, in certain dialects, of ME i to e.20It is preferable, there-
fore, to consider the variants in the North and in the Carolinas as descending
directly from the ME doublets mentioned above.21
Concerning variants of sausage the authors write (162):
Of all American variants only /Ae/ seems to be unknown in English folk speech.
This impression is corrected by the following comment from John Walker,
Critical pronouncing dictionary of the English language ?218 (London, 1797):
'Au in sausage, also, is sounded by the vulgar with short a, as if written sassage
...' Walker's 'short a' undoubtedly signifies [ae], as does his variant spelling
sassage. The OED also notes sassage as a vulgar variant in the 17th and 19th
centuries.22
17 Dobson, English pronunciation 1600-1700580 (Oxford, 1957).
18 For ample evidence of the latter see Kokeritz, Shakespeare'spronunciation 185 fn. 1
(New Haven, 1953), with reference there to his Phonology of the Suffolk dialect ?24 (Uppsala,
1932).
19See Kokeritz, Place-names of the Isle of Wight xciv (Uppsala, 1940), for a discussion of
this change and the evidence he adduces for it.
20 Jordan ?271.
21For the most illuminating discussion of this thorny problem see Kokeritz, 'English i
for Old French u', Melanges de linguistique et de philologie, Fernand Moss6 in memoriam
218-24 (Paris, 1959).
22 For other references to this variant see Dobson 793, and Horn-Lehnert, Laut und
Leben:Englische Lautgeschichteder neueren Zeit (1400-1950)727 (Berlin, 1954).
REVIEWS 315
Another 18th-century example of the [ae]variant is offered by Ekwall,23who

notes: 'Aus [aei] hat sich offenbar das von Nares 1784 bezeugte [ae]in sausage
entwickelt.' His suggestion that [ae]derives from earlier [ae:]is probably correct.
Evidence for the latter is common, for example in the work of the Scotsman
James Elphinston.24
But the possibility of a ME doublet with a developing regularly to [ase] cannot
be discounted.26
Yet a third origin for [ae]is suggested by Wyld, who records the form sassage
in the writings of Dr. Denton (1684).26 Wyld points out that from a ME [o:]
(< ME au), a shortened [a] could result which may have been unrounded in
early NE to [a]. Once the unrounding occurred, spellings with a would become
common and forms spelled sassage would then be susceptible to spelling pro-
nunciation. NE strop beside strap and God beside Gad offer parallels. Against
Wyld's suggestion is the likelihood that sassage is late Middle English, with
[a:] < ME au shortened in trisyllabic words in initial syllables. The subsequent
late ME a would then develop regularly to NE [ae]in sassage. Hence the not
uncommon [ae]in British dialects is accounted for by any of these three alterna-
tive histories, though Wyld's is the least likely.
The following suggestion is made on page 149:
The English background of American /I/ and /A/ in either, neither is not clear; they are
presumably related to short [e] sounds current in large parts of England and Scotland.
This, however, does not consider the common dialectal variant nuther. The OED
cites nuther with [A]as a dialectal variant of nother, beside neither, and derives it
from OE ne + o3oer.It is, therefore, subject to shortening as in the familiar
other,mother,brother;hence ME o > [u] > [A].27
The /I/ in this form may have derived through late shortening of [i:] from
the North Midlands and Northern ME ether or through early shortening of the
East Midlands tther, from an earlier eh-.28The [e] form, on the other hand, could
have arisen through shortening of the e or f variants. The suggestion, then, that
/I/ and /A/ are related to [e] is to be discounted for the latter and is possible for
the former only if one assumes a change (by no means uncommon) of ME e to i
before dentals, as in Shakespeare's togither.29
On page 138 one finds the following comment:
It is of some interest to observe that ratherwith the vowel of bathe... has no counterpart in
American English. This confirms the general impression that distinctive features of the
dialects of the northern counties of England, of Scotland, and of Northern Ireland rarely
survive in American English.
23 Eilert Ekwall, Historische neuenglischeLaut- und Formenlehre29 (Berlin, 1956).
24 Christian Muller, Englische Lautlehrenach James Elphinston ?188 (Heidelberg, 1914).
25 For a discussion of both possibilities see Karl Luick, Historische Grammatikder engli-
schen Sprache ?519, ?521.3and fn. 3 (Leipzig, 1921).
26 Henry Wyld, History of modern colloquial English 241 (London, 1921).
27 For a discussion of this shortening see Kokeritz, Shakespeare's pronunciation 236;
Horn-Lehnert 308-12.
28 Jordan ?94, Anm. 2.
29 Jordan ?34.1.
Recent evidence, unavailablewhen PEAS went to press, suggests that this

'generalimpression'is in need of modification.In my unpublisheddissertation,
dealingwith New Englandspeechof the last century,30 severallikely Scotticisms
were uncovered as common substandardvariants. Examples are [faerm}for
farm and [dezenlfor dozen.31 Examplesfrom the northerncounties, as well as
Scotland, could be multipliedfrom this one study alone. The new evidencesug-
gests that Scotticismsand northernfeaturessurvived in the 19th century to a
greater extent than has generally been recognized, and raises the possibility of
more general survival in contemporary usage.
While the absenceof l[e:]in rathermay tend to supportthe generalimpression
that northernfeaturesfailed to survive, what of the extremelycommonAtlantic
In the past one may have been inclined to
States variant with [e:]in parents?32
attribute this to spelling pronunciation, but in view of the new evidence, the
possibilityof northernEnglishand Scottishinfluencecan no longerbe discounted.
We must await furtherstudies of several differentperiodsbefore we can say
with any accuracy to what extent Scottish, northern English, and Irish features
survived in past periodsof AmericanEnglish. When such studies are available,
we will also be able to judge how far they have survivedin contemporaryusage.
JamaicanCreole:Part I. An historicalintroductionto JamaicanCreole,by R. B.

LE PAGE;Part II. Four JamaicanCreoletexts with introduction,phonemic
transcriptions,and glosses, by DAVID DECAMP. (Creole language studies,
No. 1.) Pp. ix, 182. London: Macmillan & Co Ltd; New York: St Martin's
Press, 1960.
Reviewedby DOUGLASTAYLOR,Dominica,B. W. I.
R. B. Le Page, who has previouslypublisheda paperon the 'Generaloutlines
of CreoleEnglishdialectsin the British Caribbean'(Orbis6.373-91, 7.54-64) and
is editor of the presentseries of Creole LanguageStudies, here assemblesand
presents available material on the settlement history of Jamaica, 'as an in-
dispensableintroductionto the linguistic studies which are to follow'. He found
that recordedinformationon the provenanceand numbersof Europeansand
slaves, while insufficientlydetailedto explaincertainaspectsof JamaicanCreole,
lends support to such general inferencesas the absence of native Indian or
Spanishinfluenceon the languagesand dialectsspokenin the island subsequent
to the withdrawalof the Spanish forces in 1660, the prevalencethenceforthof
speakersof regionalEnglish (especiallywest-of-Englandand Irish dialects)over
those of upper-classEnglish, and the cultural predominanceof 'Cormantin'
(Gold Coast) slaves, speakingTwi or languagesclosely relatedthereto, over the
morenumerouslater-comersfromotherpartsof Africa.Fourlists (115-16) assess
80 Samuel Jay Keyser, The dialect of Samuel Worcester (Yale University dissertation,
1962).
81 Wright (English dialect grammar,Index) records only one example of [farm] and that
in Scotland; for [dezen] see Eugen Dieth, A grammarof the Buchan dialect ?60 (Cambridge,
1932).
32 See PEAS 150 and maps 102-4.
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Article in Language · April 1963

Samuel Jay Keyser

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seems to occur to him that these 'definitions' of abstract linguistic units in

But, they go on to say (4),

by no means trivial. It forces the authors to increase the number of phonemes

for Charleston,therebymatchingWinchesterand Rochester;for if, by the binary

between Rochesterand Winchester,the authors have increasedthe numberof

Rule 1. a -> v before a vowel followed by a voiceless consonant.

The rule required by the New Bern dialect is different:

Rule 1. a -> e before a vowel followed by a voiceless consonant.

Rule 2'. a -+ aebefore u followed by a voiced consonant.

Clearly Rule 2 is simpler than Rule 2' because it is more general.8

five [ai] [aeu]down

Potomac Valley, and, through dialectal diffusion,began to migratesouthward

made by E. J. Dobson,17who notes that 'The unrounding also occurred early in

Another 18th-century example of the [ae]variant is offered by Ekwall,23who

Recent evidence, unavailablewhen PEAS went to press, suggests that this

JamaicanCreole:Part I. An historicalintroductionto JamaicanCreole,by R. B.

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