Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 03:21:06 -0000, And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:

>John:
>> Joe scripsit:
>>
>> > He's right there.  I got confused by my(Yorkshire) grandfather saying
>> > [In?l&v], 'in the lav' or 'in the toilet
>>
>> You know, this makes me wonder if "the" is actually the underlying
>> morpheme.  In the conventional written form of Yorkshire dialect, this is
>> written "in t'lav", as if /T/ > /t/.  But in fact the /t/ is realized as
>> [?], suggesting that it is underlyingly at the end of a syllable
>>
>> Perhaps what we have here is a survival of the Gmc *neuter*
demonstrative,
>> generalized to all nouns, which surfaces as "it" in Frisian, "het" in
>> Dutch, and (perhaps more relevantly, given the history of Yorkshire as
>> part of the Danelaw) "et/ett" in Scandinavian languages.  In that case,
>> "in 't lav" would be a better written form.  Normative OE is Southern
>> and doesn't show this form with neuter nouns: instead we see 'tha:' > the
>>
>> Any takers?
>
>I've no idea, but I don't find a derivation from _the_ particularly
>odd. D > T > t > ? or D > d > t > ? are both natural chains of
>development. Note, btw, that _to_ also is realized as [?] in these
>dialects, which is counterevidence to your notion that article [?]
>could not have originated in a syllable onset.
>
>--And.
John's suggestion of the as [?] deriving from the Germanic neuter sounds
very plausible to me, though of course the _stressed_ form of the article is
still [D@] or [Di], possibly through levelling with standard English.

I certainly agree that writing the dialect form as 't rather than t' would
help people get nearer the correct pronunciation. I've lost count of the
number of people whose attempt at a Northern English accent includes
pronouncing _the_ as [t@] rather than [?].

And's comment about _to_ being realised as [?] is very interesting, too,
which doesn't sound quite right to me. On the other hand, And's ear for this
kind of thing is normally very good, and I may well be being distracted by
native speaker syndrome, so could I ask for an example? For instance, I
would say the common phrase "I'm off to the pub" as [amQft_h@?p_hUb].

Andrew Smith

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