CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

A. An Overview
Every speaker of English has particular system of his or her own, known by
linguists as that individual’s idiolect. To understand this, we must identify higher-
level groupings, and investigate geographical and social accents. Individuals adopt a
particular mode of speech depending on who they want to identify with, who they are
talking to, and what impression they want to make. Small children learn to speak as
their immediate family members do; but quite soon, the peer group at school becomes
at least equally important; and later, older children, then television presenters, actors
or sporting heroes may become role models, leading to modifications in accent.

B. Purposes
After taking this paper, there are some goal that we may get hopefully, as follow:
1. Get knowledge what Variation is,
2. Get knowledge what Variation between Accents means,
3. To know the Systematic Differences,
4. To know Realisational Differences, and
5. To know Distributional Differences.

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 CHAPTER 2
CONTENTS

A. The Importance of Accent

Any description of ‘an accent’ is necessarily an idealisation, since no two
speakers will use precisely the same system in precisely the same way. Two speakers
of, say, Scottish Standard English, or New Zealand English, will have a common core
of features, which allows them to be grouped together by speakers of the same
accent, by speakers of other accents, and by phonologists. Speaker of GA (General
American) may have difficulty in distinguishing a Scottich from an Irish speaker,
while conversely, a Scot may confuse Americans and Canadians.

Accent is clearly extremly important, as one of the major tools we use in

drawing inferences about our fellow humans and in projecting particular images of
ourselves. Standard accents should also be described i just the same way as non-
standard ones, as they provide just the same sort of social and geographical
information about their users.

The main contribution a phonologist can make is to produce a classification of

types of differences between accents. In the next three sections, then, we shall
introduce a three-way classification of accent differences, and illustrate these using
examples involving both consonants and vowels. First, the systems of two accents
may contain different phonemic oppositions can be established for them: these are
systematic differences. Second, the same phonemes may have different allophones:
these are realisational defferences. Finally, there are distributional differences,
whereby the same lexical item may have different phonemes in two different
varieties.

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B. Systemic Differences
Consonantal examples in English are relatively rare. As we have seen, some
varieties of English, notably SSE, Scots and NZE, have a contrast between /w/
and / /, as evidenced by minimal pairs like Wales and whales , or witch and which.
Similarly, SSE and Scots have the voiceless velar fricative /x/, which contrasts with
/k/ for instance in loch versus lock, but which is absent from other accents. Scot an
SSE speakers two more, than the norm for accents of English. Some accents have
fewer consonants phonemes than most accents of English. For instance, in Cokney
and various other inner-city English accents.

Systemic differences in the case of vowel phonemes can be read easily from
lists of Standard Lexical Sets. If for the moment we stick to the four reference acents
introduced in the last chapter, namely SSBE, GA, SSE, and NZE, we can see that
SSBE has the largest number of oppositions, withh the others each lacking a certain
number of these. Comparing GA to SSBE, we find that GA lacks / /, so that LOT
words are produced with / /, as are PALM words, while CLOTH has the / / of
THOUGHT.

In systemic terms, NZE lacks only one of the opposition found in SSBE,
namely that between /I/ and / / ; in NZE, both KIT and LETTER words have schwa.
There are more differences in symbols between the SSBE and NZE lexical set lists.

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SSE is rhotic, it lacks the centring diphthongs.

Each of these three contrasting pairs of vowel phonemes in SSBE, corresponds

to a single phoneme in SSE. There is some variation in SSE in this respect: speakers
who have more contact with SSBE, or who identify in some way with English
English, amy have some or all of these oppositions in their speech. Within British
English, many accents of the north of England an north Midlands fail to contrast / /
and / /, so that put and putt, or book and buck all have / /. Other varieties of English
have an even more extreme reduction of the vowel system relative to SSBE. These are
typically accents which began life as second language varieties of English.

Singapore became a British Colony in 1819, and English was introduced to a

population of native speakers of Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and a nmuber of other
languages. Increasingly today, children attend English-medium schools, and use
English at home, so that Singapore English is becoming established as a native
variety. At Chiense ‘dialect’ with the largest number of speakers in Singapore. As
with many accents, there is a continuum of variation in Singapore English, so that
non-native speakers are likely to have pronounciations more distant from, say, SSBE:
while native Singapore English Speaker will say [ma II] ‘mile’, a second-language
speaker who is much more influenced by his native language may say [m ].
Increasingly, younger speakers of Singapore English are also looking to American
rather than British English as a reference variety. SgE has no contrastive differences
of vowel length, that / / is the IPA symbol for high bcak unrounded vowel.

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C. Realisational Differences
In ssecond type of accent difference, part of the system of phonemes may be
the same for two or more accents, but the relalisations of that phoneme or set of
phonemes will vary. For instance, in SSBE, SSE, and GA, /I/ has two main
allophones, being clear, or alveolar [1] before a stressed vowel, as in light, clear, but
dark, velarised [ ] after a stressed vowel, as in dull, hill. In Australia and New
Zealand, /1/ is consistenly pronounced dark. In London English, there is a further
allophone of /1/, namely a vocalized (or vowel-like) realisation finally or before a
consonant: in sell, tall, people, help, /1/ is typically realised as high or high mid back
vowel like [ ] or [o]. In other areas northen England, this time notably Yorkshire,
Tyneside and Liverpool, [ ] appears as an allophone of /t/, typically between vowels
and across a word-boundary, as in not on [ ], lot of lauhgs [ ], get a job
[ ]. Turning to vowels, one particularly sailent example the FACE and GOAT,
which SSBE, NZE, and Australian English are pronounced consistenly as diphthongs.
Realisational differences have no impact on the phoneme system. In some varieties at
least, the diphthong in keys is central [ ], which will therefore favour a velar
allophone of /k/.

D. Distribution Differences
First differences in lexical indence: certain individual lexical items will simply
have no vowel phoneme in some accents, and another in others. A difference in
distribution of two phonemes may depend on the phonological context rather thatn
having to be learned as an idiosyncacy of individual lexical items.

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 CHAPTER 3
CONCLUSION

CONCLUSIONS
After learning this paper, In defining how accents differ, then, we must consider three
types of variation: sytemic, realisational, and distributioanl. In any case, all of these types of
variation will work together in distinguishing the phonological systems of different
accents,and as we have seen, variation at one level very frequently has furhther implications
for orther areas of the phonology.

.
SUGGESTIONS
In this case, refference is the important thing before going to make paper. We have to
prepare for this side. There is no score, If we have no refference. We do hope that for the next
time there are more that refferences that builds a paper.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

McMahon, April, An Introduction to English Phonology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press. 2002