The Celtic Englishes

Three alternants for expressing the infinitive have been isolated in a range of Celtic and non-Celtic Englishes: viz. (i) to + infinitive; (ii) for-to(-til) + infinitive and (iii) zero + infinitive. Type (i) is categorical in Standard English with the exception of restricted uses of (iii) such as accusative-and-infinitive constructions with perception verbs like I saw her leave (c.f. Blatt (1957:66); Denison (1993:165-217); Fischer (1994:22) and Visser (1963-73:§2055 and §2250-2337). Type (ii) and a less restricted use of Type (iii), are reported for a number of diverse English vernaculars. Harris (1967), for example, records all three options in a Devonshire dialect. The for-to infinitive is mentioned in Edwards et al. (1984:27) as characteristic of Northern Irish-English, Scots, South-Western English and Cockney and (iii) is described as a North-Western English feature. Macafee (1983:50-51), Macaulay (1991:106) and Miller (1993:131) record for-to infinitives in contemporary Scots and Beal (1993:200) and Beal et al. (2000) note that the feature is also current in rural Northumbrian and urban Tyneside English. The persistence of for-to infinitives in North American vernaculars (such as those spoken in Ottawa Valley and the Ozarks) prompted Chomsky and Lasnik (1977), in an early generative account of the feature, to invoke a for-to filter in order to distinguish Standard English from these vernaculars which apparently lack the filter (c.f. Carroll (1983); Chomsky and Lasnik (1977); Chomsky (1981); Koster and May (1982) and Lightfoot (1979)).
A number of more recent accounts have charted the distribution of for-to and bare infinitives in Irish-English, though the most comprehensive dialect grammar of this Celtic English to date does not include any complex discussion of the infinitival system (c.f. Filppula (1999:54 and 184-185)). While Henry (1995:83) mentions that non-standard infinitive variants persist in certain dialects of Northern Irish-English, such as those spoken in Tyrone and South Armagh, treatments have been largely synchronic and have focused on the distribution of the for-to infinitive, in particular, in urban Belfast data (c.f. Davis (1984); Finlay (1988:275-277) and (1994); Harris (1993:167); Henry (1992) and (1995) and Milroy (1981)).
Variation in the semantic and syntactic constraints operating on the system of non-finite complementation in English can be traced back to the Old English period. Consequently, contemporary Celtic and non-Celtic vernaculars may be distinguishable by variability in the use of these constructions along similar lines to those suggested by Henry (1995:104) who concludes that different dialects have divergent underlying systems. One objective of this paper, therefore, is to provide a sociolinguistic account of the synchronic distribution of various infinitival constructions used by speakers in rural South Armagh, Northern Ireland. A second objective will be to attempt to shed light on the origin and development of non-finite complementation in the history of English on the basis that the peripheral geographical location and isolated socio-political circumstances of this relic area make it likely to have preserved conservative features inherited from the superstratal lects brought to the region as a result of colonisation from the Jacobean period onwards (c.f. Anttila (1989:294) and (Hock 1986:442)). In addition, the persistence of a South Armagh Irish substrate into the early part of the twentieth century may have important consequences for the syntactic distribution and semantic constraints operating on these constructions in the contemporary dialect as the system of non-finite complementation in Gaelic diverges in interesting ways from that of the superstrate (cf. Disterheft (1980), (1981), (1982), (1984), (1992) and (1997); Guilfoyle (1993); Hughes (1994); McCloskey (1980) and (1983); McCloskey & Sells (1988) and Ó Siadhail (1989)).
The paper will be inter-disciplinary in that its overarching aim is to present a language-contact account which utilises comparative superstratal and substratal historical materials that are appropriate (as far as practicably possible) on diatopic as well as diatypic grounds. In addition, the system of non-finite complementation in South Armagh English will be examined from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives and will draw on insights from dialectology, historical linguistics, generative syntax and sociolinguistics.

References:

Anttila, R., 1989, Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. [1st edn 1972, New York: Macmillan.]
Beal, J., 1993, "The Grammar of Tyneside and Northumbrian English", in: Milroy, J. & L. Milroy, eds., Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. : Longman, 187-213.
Beal, J., Corrigan, K.P., Moisl, H.M. & M. Fryd, 2000, "The Newcastle-Poitiers Electronic Corpus of English", Paper presented at 11th ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 Sep-tember, 2000.
Blatt, F., 1957, "Latin Influence on European Syntax". Travaux du Cercle Linguistique du Copenhague 11: 33-69.
Breatnach, L., 1994, "An Mheán-Gaeilge", in: McCone, K., McManus, D., O! hAinle, C., Williams, N. & L. Breatnach, eds., Stair na Gaeilge in O!mós do Padraig O! Fiannachta. Maynooth: Roinn na Sean-Ghaeilge, Coláiste Phadraig, Maigh Nuad, 221-334.
Carroll, S., 1983, "Remarks on FOR-TO Infinitives". Linguistic Analysis 12: 415-51.
Chomsky, N., 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Chomsky, N. and Lasnik, H., 1977, "Filters and Control". Linguistic Inquiry 8: 425-504.
Corrigan, K.P., 1997, The Syntax of South Armagh English in its Socio-Historical Perspective. Unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, University College, Dublin.
Craigie, W., Aitken, A.J. & J. A.C. Stevenson, eds., 1931-., A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: From the Twelfth Century to the End of the Seventeenth. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.
Davis, A., 1984, "Behind the For-to Filter: For-to Infinitives in Belfast English and the Theory of Government'. Sheffield Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 1: 56-71.
Denison, D., 1993, English Historical Syntax. London: Longman.
Disterheft, D., 1980, The Syntactic Development of the Infinitive in Indo-European. Columbus: Slavica Publishers.
Disterheft, D., 1981, "Remarks on the History of the Indo-European Infinitive". Folia Lin-guistica Historica 2: 3-34.
Disterheft, D., 1982, 'Subject Raising in Old Irish', in: Ahlqvist, A., ed., Papers from the 5th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Vol. 21.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 44-53.
Disterheft, D., 1984, "Irish Complementation: A Case Study in Two Types of Syntactic Change", in: Fisiak, J., ed., Historical Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 89-106.
Disterheft, D., 1992, "Irish Complementation: A Case Study in Two Types of Syntactic Change', in: Gerritsen, M. & D. Stein, eds., Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 89-106.
Disterheft, D., 1997, "Syntactic Innovation in Early Irish", in: Ahlqvist, A. & V. C&apková, eds., Dán do Oide. Dublin: ITE/, 123-133.
Edwards, V., Trudgill, P. and Weltens, B., 1984, The Grammar of English Dialect: A Survey of Research. London: ESRC.
Fanego, T., 1994, "Infinitive Marking in Early Modern English", in: Fernández, F., Fuster, M. & J.J. Calvo, eds., English Historical Linguistics, 1992: Papers from the Seventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Vol. 113). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 191-203.
Filppula, M., 1999, The Grammar of Irish English. London: Routledge.
Finlay, C., 1988, Syntactic Variation in the Speech of Belfast Schoolchildren. Unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, University of Ulster at Jordanstown.
Finlay, C., 1994, "Syntactic Variation in Belfast English". Belfast Working Papers in Lan-guage and Linguistics 12: 69-97.
Fischer, O., 1989, "The Origin and Spread of the Accusative and Infinitive Construction in English". Folia Linguistica Historica 8: 143-217.
Fischer, O., 1991, "The Rise of the Passive Infinitive in English", in: Kastovsky, D., ed., Historical English Syntax. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 141-88.
Fischer, O., 1992, "Syntactic Change and Borrowing: The Case of the Accusative and Infini-tive Construction in English', in: Gerritsen, M. & D. Stein, eds., Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 17-88.
Fischer, O., 1994, "The Fortunes of the Latin-type Accusative and Infinitive Construction in Dutch and English Compared", in: Swan, T. eds., Language Change and Language Structure. Older Germanic Languages in a Comparative Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 91-133.
Fischer, O., 1995, "The Distinction Between Bare and To-Infinitival Complements in Late Middle English". Diachronica 12: 1-30.
Fischer, O., 1996, "Verbal Complementation in Early Middle English: How do the Infinitives Fit In?", in: Britton, D., ed., English Historical Linguistics 1994. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 247-70.
Fischer, O., 1997a, "The Grammaticalisation of Infinitival To in English Compared with German and Dutch", in: Hickey, R. & Puppel, S., eds., Language History and Linguistic Modelling: a Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 265-280.
Fischer, O. 1997b, "Infinitive Marking in Late Middle English: Transitivity and Changes in the English System of Case", in: Fisiak, J., ed., Studies in Middle English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 109-134.
Guilfoyle, E. 1993, "Nonfinite Clauses in Modern Irish and Old English". Proceedings of the 29th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Chicago: CLS, 119-214.
Harris, M., 1967, M. The Phonology and Grammar of the Dialect of South Zeal, Devonshire. Unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds.
Harris, J., 1993, "The Grammar of Irish English", in: Milroy, J. & L. Milroy, eds., Real Eng-lish: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. London: Longman, 139-86.
Henry, A., 1992, "Infinitives in a For-to Dialect". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10: 279-301.
Henry, A., 1995, Belfast English and Standard English: Dialect Variation and Parameter Setting. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hock, H.H., 1986, Principles of Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hughes, A., 1994, "Gaeilge Uladh", in: McCone, K., McManus, D., O! hAinle, C., Williams, N. & L. Breatnach, eds., Stair na Gaeilge in Ómós do Padraig Ó Fiannachta. Maynooth: Roinn na Sean-Ghaeilge, Coláiste Phadraig, Maigh Nuad, 611-750.
Joyce, P.W., 1910, English as We Speak it in Ireland. 3rd edn. rev. by T.P. Dolan, Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1988.
Koster, J. & R. May, 1982, "On the Constituency of Infinitives". Language 58: 116-43.
Lightfoot, D., 1979, Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Macafee, C., 1983, Varieties of English Around the World: Glasgow. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Macaulay, R.K.S., 1991, Locating Dialect in Discourse: The Language of Honest Men and Bonnie Lasses in Ayr. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCloskey, J. 1980, "Is there Raising in Modern Irish?". Ériu 31: 59-99.
McCloskey, J. 1983, "A VP in a VSO Language?", in: Gazdar, G, Klein, E. & G. Pullum, eds., Order, Concord and Constituency. Dordrecht: Foris, 9-55.
McCloskey, J. & Sells, P., 1988, "Control and A-Chains in Modern Irish". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6: 143-189.
Miller, J., 1993, "The Grammar of Scottish English", in: Milroy, J. & L. Milroy, eds., Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. London: Longman, 99-138.
Milroy, J., 1981, Regional Accents of English: Belfast. Belfast: Blackstaff.
Mufwene, S. & M.B. Dijkhoff, 1989 "On the So-Called 'Infinitive' in Atlantic Creoles". Lingua 77: 297-330.
Murphy, M.J., 1942-1974., Ulster Manuscripts. Dublin: Roinn Bhéaloideas Éireann, University College, Dublin.
Mustanoja, T., 1960, A Middle English Syntax, Part I: Parts of Speech. Helsinki: Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique, 23.
Mufwene, S., 1996, "The Founder Principle in Creole Genesis". Diachronica 13 (1): 83-134.
Ó Siadhail, M., 1989, Modern Irish: Grammatical Structure and Dialectal Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sommerfelt, A. 1929, "South Armagh Irish". Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 2:107-94.
Trudgill, P., 1986, Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell.
Trudgill, P., Gordon, E. & G. Lewis, 1998, "New Dialect Formation and Southern Hemisphere English: The New Zealand short front vowels". Journal of Sociolinguistics 2 (1): 35-52.
Trudgill, P., 1999, "New Dialect Formation and Dedialectalisation: Embryonic and Vestigial Variants". Journal of English Linguistics 27 (4): 319-327.
Upton, C., Parry, D. & J.D.A. Widdowson, 1994, Survey of English Dialects: The Dictionary and Grammar. London: Routledge.
Visser, F.Th., 1963-73, An Historical Syntax of the English Language, 4 vols. Leiden: Brill.
Warner, A., 1982, Complementation in Middle English Syntax and the Methodology of His-torical Syntax. London: Croom Helm.
Wright, J., 1961, The English Dialect Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Reprint).

My aim with this paper is to add another part to the puzzle: Based on personal research in East Galway in 1995, I will describe the structure of the grammatical forms used for the generic/habitual category in this variety and explain the semantic context they are used in. In the second part of the paper I will touch on the sociolinguistic aspects of my study. Finally, I will argue that my findings have implications on the conventional views taken concerning the geographical distribution of the various generic/habitual forms in Irish English.

The aim of this paper is to assess the possibilities for 'conclusive conclusions' about the influence of Celtic on the English progressive. The kinds of evidence adduced for or against the Celtic hypothesis will be weighed against each other and against the competing hypotheses. New evidence from conservative British English dialects and 'external' factors such as the background and even nationality of the central players in this field will also be discussed. Indeed, a recent paper by Johan van der Auwera and Inge Genee (van der Auwera and Genee 2000) has brought along a new perspective on the influence of external factors on another much-debated problem of English historical syntax, viz. the origins of 'periphrastic DO'.

References:

Mittendorf, I. & E. Poppe (2000). "Celtic Contacts of the English Progressive?" In: Tristram, H.L.C. (ed.), The Celtic Englishes II. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 117-145.
van der Auwera, J. & I. Genee (2000). "English 'do': converging languages and linguists". Paper read at 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela 7 - 11 September, 2000.

One avenue of investigation which has not been fully exploited, however, and which could offer fascinating insights into the early evolution of English as well as the nature of Celtic influence upon English in modern Celtic-speaking countries, is the French spoken in Western Brittany. Indeed, although Breton influence on French is heavy in Breton-speaking areas and can be discerned at all levels of grammar, it has remained remarkably understudied by linguists in France and abroad, possibly because it is so thoroughly stigmatised.

In this paper we shall attempt to provide an overview of the kinds of phonological, morpho-syntactic and lexical influence Breton has exerted (and continues to exert) on the French of this region. We shall conclude with the presentation of a model of language shift in Brittany and consider its relevance to the study of the Celtic Englishes.

The greatest stumbling block to the replacement model is the new population estimates for Roman Britain, suggesting a population between 3 and 6 million. Such a substantial population can hardly have disappeared suddenly within a few decades; and there is, indeed, no archaeological evidence of catastrophic events (plague, famine, ethnic cleansing) which might have caused such disappearance. On the contrary, new palaeobotanic evidence implies substantial population continuity in the sub-Roman period.

These arguments and evidence, and a general shift of opinion against migrations, have led to a search for the largely 'invisible' Britons in the archaeological evidence of early Anglo-Saxon England. They remain difficult to identify, mostly because of the disappearance of the Roman material culture, but there are some indicators in house types, burials, artefact types, and skeletal evidence. The latter might even allow a rough, hypothetical quantification of the relative numbers of immigrants and natives, supported by preliminary results of the analysis of modern DNA.

The majority view in Anglo-Saxon archaeology today is that much, perhaps most, of the Romano-British population survived and underwent a process of acculturation which may also be found in other 'Dark Age' cases of empire collapse. As a result, Britons would appear as Anglo-Saxons in the archaeological record. This model would have profound implications for the ethnogenetic, social and linguistic processes of the post-Roman period in England.

Reference:

Heinecke, Johannes (1999). Temporal Deixis in Welsh and Breton (Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitaetsverlag)

During the 1970s and 80s, the SWML conducted more than 700 interviews with people connected with the South Wales mining communities, at a time when the last pits were being closed, the aim being to record and preserve various aspects of a dying industrial culture.

Some 380 recordings are potentially suitable for the corpus, corresponding to ca. 460 hrs of speech or about 4 million words. For reasons of speed and because standard corpus processing software is unable to work with phonetic symbols the recordings are being transcribed orthographically. Apart from their linguistic relevance, the data will also be of interest to historians or researchers into oral history, among others.

The corpus and its analysis will be innovative in several respects: on the theoretical level, it combines traditional dialectology with corpus linguistics and also adds a diachronic perspective. Apparent time evidence takes us back to the 1880s, just some 30 years after the valleys were populated. Coupled with the very detailed census data available for 1851-1901 (when the 1901 census returns are finally published in 2001), this offers the rare chance of studying the "birth" of a dialect. The data also allow sociolinguistic studies, the amount of the material available being such that there is enough data to draw statistically significant conclusions about e.g. social class or gender variation. On a more practical level, the corpus will close a gap in the Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects, which neglected the valleys because they were considered urbanised. It will also be the first substantial computerised corpus of English as spoken in Wales (no corpus of Welsh English is available apart from the Polytechnic of Wales Corpus, which records childrens' language). Last but not least, there is the great practical advantage that no fieldwork is needed and that the observer's paradox is minimised as the purpose of these interviews was not linguistic. Nevertheless, the interviews do contain valuable metalinguistic statements e.g. on the relationship of Welsh to English, language use. Dublin English is being radically altered. The changes are of general linguistic interest because they represent a case of dissociation as a type of change, that is, the motivation for the shifts would appear to be a distancing on the part of fashionable Dublin English speakers from those who speak the colloquial form of English in the capital. This dissociation is particularly clear because it is not simply an approximation to a British English standard of pronunciation. In the presentation, the course of the shifts so far and their present orientation will be discussed and compared with other cases of dissociation known in the Anglophone world.

(1)	Then you'd press en down again, you see, and let en bide for two days. Well, press en down. Keep on pressing en. And then you uh # take en out and give en to the cows out in the field. (So3:Somerset Wedmore)
(2)	So farmer # Salisbury say +… come to we, "Want some grass cut up there?” (So11: Somerset, Horsington)
(3)	"I know what we'll do. # We'll get a brick, and chuck him up in the air, and if he do come down, we got to # go to work, and if he stop up there,” he said, "we got to have a day off.” (So1:Somerset,Weston)

In example (1) we find the typical south-western use of en /�n/ as a 3rd person singular oblique form, (2) exemplifies the phenomenon sometimes referred to as 'pronoun exchange' – the reversal of subjective and objective forms of the pronoun, and in (3) we find an example of the south-western use of 3rd person singular masculine pronoun he/him referring to inanimate objects.

In this paper I will discuss the linguistic characteristics, geographical distribution, and history of these features of the personal pronouns in the South West of England. The paper will also address the question of whether these characteristics of the personal pronouns in south-western dialects could be due to a Celtic substratum.

This paper seeks to (i) sketch the extent to which English has been making an impact on Irish-language compositions since the early seventeenth century, (ii) delineate the principal phases of the phenomenon, (iii) identify the literary genres which admitted and those which resisted the inclusion of English, and (iv) analyse the characteristic thematic and linguistic features of code-mixing in the context of the sociolinguistic circumstances of the various periods.

A previous study, presented at "The Celtic Englishes II" Colloquium, explored the anglicisation of Irish personal and topographical nomenclature following Ireland's incorporation into the English administrative and judicial system. Significantly, it is this public sphere of activity which first impacted linguistically on Irish texts, e.g. Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis, and a number of political poems in the seventeenth century, and the eighteenth-century, Munster genre of An Barántas, ("The Warrant"), which parodied the application of the new common law.

The importance of English in the Dublin area is illustrated in several texts from the Ó Neachtain circle, dating from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, e.g the humorous prose tale Stair Éamuinn Uí Chléire, Bearna Chroise Brighde and other poems. The later rise of English throughout the country is widely attested in macaronic songs, where the creative interplay of the two languages is given free rein. Finally, this paper will explore the modest role of English in certain pivotal works of the Revival and post-Revival periods, including Séadna, the standard-bearer for caint na ndaoine "the (ordinary) speech of the people".

The geographic distribution of the habitual periphrastic verb phrases, be + present participle and do + infinitive, is a well-known feature of Welsh English. A large number of scholars today maintain that both structures result from two historical layers of Celtic substratum, although their precise origins may be under some dispute. What is less known still is whether and how these structures are used by present-day speakers of Welsh English.

This paper focuses on the use of the habitual periphrastic be of the following type (examples from my Llandybie interviews):

Thomas (1994) considers the grammatical distinctiveness of Welsh English a transitional phenomenon. It is my intention to study this transition as evidenced in apparent time.

References

Parry, D. (1999). A Grammar and Glossary of Conservative Anglo-Welsh Dialects of Rural Wales. NATCECT. Occasional Publications, No. 8. University of Sheffield.
Penhallurick, R. (1991). The Anglo-Welsh Dialects of North Wales. University of Bamberg Studies in English Linguistics, Vol. 27. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Thomas, A. R. (1994). "English in Wales”. In Burchfield R. (ed.) The Cambridge History of The English Language, Vol. V: English in Britain and Overseas: Origins and Devel opment. Cambridge: CUP, 94-147.

The following are the main topics I propose to examine:

• the areal distribution of progressives in African languages as a contact phenomenon;
• the history of so-called 'contact clauses', or zero-relatives, in Middle Welsh;
• the typology of the expression of prepositional relatives;
• the typology of clefting in a formal and functional perspective;
• the comparative typology of the demise of full morphology in Persian and English.

While they remain scarce in earliest writing, a considerable amount of examples appear in other narrative genres, such as saints' lives, e.g. Bethu Brigte, 'The life of Saint Brigit' or Bethu Phádric, 'The life of Patrick'. Where used they appear to be employed for aspectual and emphatic marking. The amount of periphrastic constructions increases considerably in Middle Irish (900-1200). Irish therefore displays even earlier documented examples for periphrastic constructions than typologically closely related Welsh (see Poppe and Mittendorf in CE II) and may offer a further interesting comparandum for developments of the progressive in the history of the English language.

The paper reports some of the findings from ‘A study of the segmental and supra-segmental phonology of Rhondda Valleys English,’ a PhD dissertation completed by the author in 1999. Its focus is on the suprasegmentals – stress, rhythm and intonation – which are generally regarded as forming the most striking feature of South Wales ‘Valleys Accents’. Several of the prosodic forms described have parallels in other ‘Celtic influenced Englishes’, including Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast and may form one of the most significant and enduring legacies of the Celtic languages.

Among the intonational features of Rhondda Valleys English (RVE) are:

- In 50.4% of non-final and 55.8% of final accents the obtrusion (pitch movement to the stressed syllable) is downwards. An even more conspicuous intonational feature is that in 87.8% of non-final and 75.7% of final accent profiles, the initial pitch movement from the stressed syllable is rising. Examples can be seen in the intonational phrase below: pitch rises from each of the accent profiles (H*+H, 0*+H, L*+H & L*+H), and in the last two accents – including the final one on Maerdy’ there is a pitch obtrusion down to the stressed syllable.

- Amongst the phonetic characteristics of accent profiles investigated is the peculiar feature that, whatever the type of obtrusion to them, they are often heard to flatten or ‘sag’ during the course of the stressed syllable before the subsequent rise. This feature is analysed instrumentally.
- Measurements were also taken of alignment of H-peak in rises, relative to onset of stressed vowel, and show that in profiles where the rising-tone is compressed into a single syllable, the average alignment of H-peak is 79% into stressed long vowels; and in polysyllabic rising-tone profiles, the H-peak generally aligns with the second syllable, with 50% of the examples in the data peaking late in its vowel or during its closing consonant.
- Of the nuclear contoursin the data (the stretch from the onset of the final accent to the end of the intonational phrase): 60.1% are ultimately rising (subsuming level) and 39.9% are ultimately falling. The figures thereby show a strong tendency in the informal conversations forming the data for speakers to accompany completed statements with a rising (‘referring’) rather than a falling ter-minal tone – a feature that could be culturally determined.
- There are very few falling-rising contours in the data : 0% of non-final accent profiles and only 2% of nuclear contours. Most of the latter are separated fall-rises, i.e. the terminal tone was separated from the final accent profile.

Among the rhythmical features of RVE are the following:

- The main ‘organizing principle’ of rhythm in RVE, as in RP and most UK dialects of English, lies in the alternation of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ beats: on average a strong beat occurs at intervals of 2 to 2.5 syllables. There seems less tolerance than in RP for a succession of more than two weak beats, so that a strong beat tends to be inserted. Examples include the words teleVIsion ; epilEPsy ; coopeRAtive; overHEADS (where underlined syllables denote stress, and capitals primary stress).
-Word-stress placements sometimes seem influenced by the Welsh language, with its strong ten-dency towards stress on the penultimate. For example, in the data:
1. stress on the penult is strongly preferred in sub'sidence
2. and is heard with two informants in main'tenance
3. stress may be shifted rightwards, e.g. in ca'pitalist, where, with the penultimate syllable weak, the effect is similar to (1)
- Stresses, even non-accentual ‘rhythmic stresses’, are typically accompanied by L H, O H or H H contours. The greater duration of a stressed syllable in RVE may be accomplished
1. by lengthening the stressed vowel
2. by shortening the stressed vowel and lengthening of the following consonant
The latter device is common in strongly accented syllables, and is a conspicuous feature of RVE prosody. It can occur with any of the short vowels, with /i:/and /u:/and with any of the diphthongs.
- Another conspicuous prosodic feature of RVE rhythm is the frequent phonetic strength of the post stress (final) syllable. The impression is of it being as long and strong as the stressed syllable. It also carries much of the pitch movement.
- Measurements of isochrony were taken from the onset of stressed vowels in first and final accents of IPs containing two or more accents. The findings quite clearly reject the hypothesis of strict isochrony, but are generally supportive of the weaker hypothesis that speakers tend to make adjustments towards it.

In the 1980's, a team working under the direction of David Parry undertook the same task in Wales as that accomplished by H. Orton et al. in England. The result was SAWD, two volumes of the Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects. Although she had contributed to SAWD, Ceri George broke away from what she saw as an overly conservative approach to compile a corpus of natural conversation from the two valleys of the Rhondda. The result is an exceptionally rich source of material whichcan be analysed from the twin perspective of syntax and pragmatics. This paper sets out to show how the Welsh language has left its mark on the way the Rhondda dialect conveys information. A quantative analysis raises questions as to how a possible "tacit language contract" could be set up between researcher and informant.

This paper discusses those phonological traits of English as spoken in Wales and Cornwall that can be specifically attributed to Welsh and Cornish (hereafter titled 'Celtic-English' for convenience's sake).

I begin by looking at those salient phonological features in the contemporary English in Wales and Cornwall that can be viewed as veering from contemporary mainstream English. Reference is made to evidence dating from the 16th century onwards which can instruct us as to the way in which English was taken up by the Celtic-speakers. Another source of evidence used will be my own observations on phonological changes in progress in contemporary Welsh-English and Cornish-English (including analogical evidence from Breton-French).

It is hoped that the paper will have demonstrated that:

• one era's Celtic-English is not identical to the next era's Celtic-English
• ny phonological features in Celtic-English are beyond exclusive attribution to unambiguous classification as purely Celtic or purely English origins
• some phonological features are not attributable to either the native Celtic speech or to the incoming English, but to an interplay between the two phonological systems as they came into contact
• the characteristic phonological features of Celtic-English have a mixed origin (that is they can be attributed to the preservation of an archaic English pronunciation, or in other cases to an underlying Celtic phonological value).