THE SPEECH 05 THE CENTRAL COAST T * {3F NORTH CARGLENA: ms. cmnam coumv venszou as THE BANKS "saoeusw Thesis for flu: Deqrw of pit.» D.- MZCBIGAN STAE UNEVEESITY Hilda gaffe 196.5 132.515 . . - L l 5;? rt .4. r? Y Michigan Stair: Una ctr-slay This is to certify that the thesis entitled The Speech of the Central Coast of North Carolina: The Carteret County Version of the Banks "Brogue" presented by Hilda Jaffe has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph -D 0 degree in EngliSh Major professor Datejiét 514’ 331 ../C' / 966 0-169 THE SPEECH OF THE CENTRAL COAST OF NORTH CAROLINA: THE CARTERET COUNTY VERSION OF THE BANKS "BROGUE" By Hilda Jaffe AN ABSTRACT OF A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR O F PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1965 ABSTRACT THE SPEECH OF THE CENTRAL COAST OF NORTH CAROLINA: THE CARTERET COUNTY VERSION OF THE BANKS "BROGUE" by Hilda Jaffe Along the central coast of North Carolina, on the long lines of sand reefs called the Outer Banks and on the extreme fringes of the mainland. a variety of American English is spoken which differs radically from its nearest neighbors. Some of its characteristics are still perceptible fifteen to twenty miles inland. but from then on it rapidly fades out. This dialect is a result of the pattern of settlement of the coastal country. The coastal fringes, ideally suited to those who make their living from the sea, were in the main settled by such people in the first half of the eighteenth century. and where they settled they stayed. Predominantly English by descent, they or their immediate ancestors had come first to other colonies -- New England, Maryland. Virginia -- before moving on to North Carolina .' Later settlers moved in behind them, leaving them virtually undisturbed until encroachments began in the early part of the twentieth century. In pronunciation the dialect is surprisingly unlike the general speech of the rest of eastern North Carolina. Two features are immediately notable: The first is a marked retroflection of postvocalic /r/. very striking in a region where "r-less" speech is universal. The second is the treatment of the diphthong /aI/ . Unlike the speech further inland, which has [al] before voiceless and [a-] before voiced consonants, the dialect has only one allophone, [ail]. Newspaper feature writers usually render this as "oy," writing "hoy toyde" for "high tide." This is l 2 Hilda Jaffe misleading since the diphthong does not rhyme with boy, but is a good indication of the effect of the allophone on an unaccustomed ear. Other phonetic features of the dialect are a fronting of the vowels /u/. /A/. and /U/, and /o/ is usually [0U]. There are other lesser phonetic features as well. Certain features, however, the dialect does share with the rest of eastern North Carolina: final stops are generally unreleased; final [~g] in participles is [-n] more often than not; some speakers have [sr] for initial [s’r]; and the plural form of the pronoun Lou is commonly you-all or y'all. The data for the study was collected by means of the Linguistic Atlas work sheets for the South Atlantic states. administered to twelve informants. Because of the overwhelming reluctance of the people of these isolated communities to be interviewed at all, interviews were made by local residents using a tape-recorder. Because of this same reluctance. length of interview time was reduced by having the informant go through the work sheets. item by item, while the interviewer stood by to give explanations as necessary. The method proved to be very suc - cessful. Very few of our informants were concerned about notions of "correctness." and did not hesitate to phrase their responses in non-standard forms even when the work-sheet item was worded in the standard form . Further, they were not self-conscious about pronunciation . Thus the method gave excellent results for the phonetic data. very good results for the vocabulary items, and some usable results for most of the grammatical items. For the reader's convenience in comparing this dialect with the findings already published for the Atlantic states, selection and ordering of examples and discussions follow closely that in The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic 3 Hilda jaffe 1 States and in A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States.2 with close cross-references to those volumes. 1Hans Kurath and Raven I. McDavid, Jr. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961). 2 E. Bagby Atwood (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1953). THE SPEECH OF THE CENTRAL COAST OF NORTH CAROLINA: THE CARTERET COUNTY VERSION OF THE BANKS "BROGUE" BY Hilda Jaffe A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1965 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In large part this study owes its existence to the generous help I received from a number of people. My gratitude is therefore due to Raven I. McDavid. Jr.. for his advice in the planning of the project and for his assistance in obtaining the various Linguistic Atlas materials I needed; to my chairman, William W. Heist. for the generosity with which he placed at my disposal his time, his counsel. and his patience; to my advisor, Roger Shuy, for his expert advice, helpful criticism. and invaluable assistance in the writing-up of the study's results; to David Murrill of Morehead City, North Carolina, for his valuable service in locating informants and arranging and conducting interviews; to F. C . Salisbury of the Carteret County (North Carolina) Historical Society for his advice and for making available to me materials on local history; and to Julia L. Galloway and Margaret W . Grimes for their patience, advice, and physical and moral support while I was preparing the manuscript . ii Chapter I. II. III. IV. VI. VII. VIII . TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION S ETTLEM ENT HISTORY THE INFORMANTS OLD AND NEW ELEMENTS IN THE VOCABULARY THE REGIONAL DISSEMINATION OF THE DIAPHONES OF STRESSED VOWELS . THE CONSONANT /r/ AND THE VOWELS BEFORE /r «A Q/ THE INCIDENCE OF VOWELS AND CONSONANTS . A SURVEY OF VERB FORMS BIBLIOGRAPHY iii Page 10 13 18 26 39 47 81 106 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Along the coast of North Carolina. on the long lines of sand reefs called the Outer Banks and on the extreme fringes of the mainland. a variety of American English is spoken which differs radically from its nearest neighbors. Some of its characteristics are still perceptible fifteen to twenty miles inland. but from then on it rapidly fades out. The presence of this dialect is a result of the pattern of settlement of the coastal country. The coastal fringes are ideally suited to those who make their living from the sea -- fishing. whaling (in the early days). boat-building, tug-boating. In the main they were settled by such people in the first half of the eighteenth century. and the people stayed where they settled. Later settlers moved in behind them. and they have remained virtually undisturbed ever since. Only now, for the past quarter- to half-century. has the outside world begun to encroach on their isolation. Highways. causeways. and ferry lines put in for commercial and recreational reasons have opened up communities formerly accessible only by boat or sand tracks. increased traffic in the seaports has brought in new business and industry. and radios and tele- vision sets are found in places formerly untouched by outside influence. Still. I when the summer visitors leave after Labor Day, the long beaches are left to the sun and the surf, the sand fiddlers, the gulls and the pelicans. The wild Banks ponies (miniature descendants of a cargo of ship-wrecked horses) still rush with I flying manes across the dunes, and much of the old peace remains. The old speech-ways remain also. although already showing some modifications of vocabulary and usage. These modifications probably result mainly from the increased prevalence of public school education, and possibly also from the influence of television and radio. They are still slight, however, and the dialect which is locally referred to as "the brogue" is still distinctive enough to bewilder strangers. The people who speak it have not lost their old sense of communal solidarity. Generations of semi-isolation have taught them the necessity of cooperation and given them a very strong group feeling. They are. especially in the more isolated communities, remarkably homogeneous. Many of them are, of course, related. The same surnames recur and recur throughout the area. Although they are not unfriendly people. strangers from outside are very definitely strangers and tend to be kept at a polite distance. This tendency has been reinforced by past experiences with journalists who. courteously received, went back upstate and wrote articles that depicted them as quaint and ignorant people who spoke a comic variety of Old English . Now anyone who wants to investigate anything about the people of the region is likely to be met with considerable reserve and some distrust. although always with courtesy. It was this resistance to investigation which forced me to diverge from the usual fashion of collecting data from interviews. When I failed to find willing respondents even with the most promising recommendations and personal introductions. I made arrangements to have the interviews done with a tape recorder by a resident of the Bogue Sound area. He was able to get the interviews. NORTH CAROLINA R CARTERET COUNTY v CQPE LDOKOUT with the help of some other residents. but even with his local connections he found it difficult to find people who were willing to be interviewed. We restricted the area of the study to Carteret County. concentrating on the coastal commune ities. because in this way we could get samples not only from small. isolated villages. but from the largest town in the dialect area as well. thus obtaining a range of speakers from those of least outside influence to those of most. A future study might well be done. concentrating on the Outer Banks farther up the coast. to see if there are any significant differences between the speech there and that along Bogue and Core Sounds . However, it is my opinion that any differences would be differences in degree only. and possibly a greater retention of archaic vocabulary items. Several of our informants were of families which had moved in from the Outer Banks. and they showed no perceptible differences in speech from their neighbors. One informant was born and brought up on Harker's Island; this island. reachable from the mainland only by water up to a few decades ago, is considered by the people of the general area to have the most distinctive "brogue" anywhere around, and yet our informant's speech was not essentially different from that of the other small communities studied. The Bogue-Core Sound dialect can. I hold. be considered typical of the speech along the central coastal fringes of North Carolina. As such. it is worthy of record as a small but valid contribution to the area's linguistic history. In the course of the data collection for the Linguistic Atlas, interviews were made in the coastal North Carolina counties. However. they were not made in sufficient number to pinpoint the dialect, nor is the dialect area itself large enough to be significant in a general study of the Eastern seaboard. Thus the dialect is not noted as such in The PronunCIation of English in the Atlantic States nor 1n A Survey of Verb Forms 1n the Eastern United States. the two publications of the L1ngu1st1c Atlas data . Characteristics of the Dialect The most notable feature of the dialect is its pronunciation, not its vocabulary nor its grammatical features . Proof of this is that. once the ear is attuned to the various phonetic differences. from then on the stranger to the dialect has little difficulty in understanding anything said to him except for an occasional word or phrase. In pronunciation. however. it is surprisingly unlike the general speech of the rest of eastern North Carolina. It has its likenesses to that speech as well. but these of course are not the things one first notices. Two features are immediately notable: The first is a marked retroflection of postvocalic /r/. very striking in a region where "r-less" speech is universal. The second is the treatment of the diphthong /aI/. Unlike the speech further inland. which has an [af] allophone before voiceless consonants and an [a-] allophone before voiced ones. the ”brogue" has only one allophone for the phoneme. [61‘]. This is the sound which newspaper feature writers. in their discussion of the area. render as "oy"; thus "high tide" comes out as "hoy toyde." This is misleading since the diphthong does not rhyme with boy. but is a good indication of the effect of the allophone on an unaccustomed ear. lHans Kurath and Raven I. McDavid, jr. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961). 2E. Bagby Atwood (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1953). 6 There are several other less immediately obvious phonetic features which nevertheless contribute to the dialect's characteristic flavor. The vowels /u/. //\/. and /U/ tend to be fronted. often quite strongly. and sometimes with a suspicion of tongue-rounding as well, though this would be hard to prove. The vowel /o/ is characteristically, though not always. pronounced [GU]. Other phonetic variants, like the raising and fronting of /I/, will be gone into in detail in the discussion of vowels and consonants later on. One feature of the dialect which is not later taken up in detail merits brief notice here. It is not universal among all speakers, and does not neces- sarily occur with great frequency in the normal speech of any individual. Nevertheless. it is common enough to be clearly a feature of the dialect and to contribute to its general character. This is the substitution of a glottal stop for a word-final /t/. Since the work sheets were not designed to elicit this phenomenon, I have only a few examples of it, but they are very typical ones: [namaftan] for "not often"; [wai 'eIp aet 'sIksa'klak] for "we ate at six o'clock"; [ heI 'f)? 31 ba't‘aim] for "they fought all the time"; ['dru< I? |aUt] for "drew it u. out , and ['soQ aen 'p‘e pa] for "salt and pepper. N This use of the glottal stop does not occur in general eastern North Carolina speech. Certain features, on the other hand, the dialect shares with the rest of eastern North Carolina. Final stops are generally unreleased, and final [-9] in participles is more often than not [-n]. Some speakers have [sr] for initial [s’r]. And the plural form of the pronoun you is commonly you-all or m. The various phonetic features of the dialect will be discussed in consid- erable detail in subsequent sections of the study. All that has been attempted here is a brief survey of the most notable features which differentiate the dialect from the speech of the surrounding region of eastern North Carolina. The Collection of Data The data was collected by means of the Linguistic Atlas work sheets for the South Atlantic states . The work sheets are very lengthy and detailed. and if administered by the usual method - the interviewer asking careful questions designed to elicit untutored responses from the informants -- take a considerable period of time, something in the neighborhood of eight hours. depending on the quickness of the informant to understand what is wanted. As I mentioned above. in Carteret County we were confronted by a general resistance toward being interviewed at all; to get anyone to agree to devote eight hours to the process proved, for us at any rate. to be virtually impossible. A different method of administering the questionnaire was therefore worked out. whereby the informant was given a copy of the work sheet, and went through it item by item. responding to the written statements. The interviewer followed the process with his own copy of the work sheets, and interposed explanations when the informant seemed to need them. By this method the interviews averaged one to two hours apiece . The interviewer recorded the results on a tape-recorder. The obvious danger of the method is that the informant will tend to give answers based on what the work sheet says rather than responding independently. and of course this did occasionally happen . However, it mostly happened with vocabulary items with which the informant was not familiar, and even then it is usually possible to tell quite easily whether the response is by rote or not by the tone of the speaker's voice, by his comments, or by his questions to the inter- viewer. Thus, although a rote response means that you have no answer to the item. you have at least a clear indication that you have no answer to the item, not a response which would confuse the results . Further, even rote responses contribute to the phonetic data, since our informants were not self-conscious about pronunciation and did not attempt to use any but their own sound system. Probably the greatest weakness of the method shows up in certain of the grammatical items, but even here an alert interviewer can step in and clarify the situation and elicit the desired responses. Very few of our informants were concerned about notions of "correctness." and did not hesitate to phrase their responses in non-standard forms even when the questionnaire item was worded in the standard form. The method would undoubtedly be less successful with respondents who were self-conscious about their speech and concerned about whether they were speaking "correct" English, but this was not a problem with our informants. In general, after this experience with the method. I believe it has much to recommend it, particularly if some of the work-sheet items were rewritten to be more easily understood. In this study. it gave excellent results for the phonetic data, very good results for vocabulary items. and some usable results for most of the grammatical items . Presentation of the Data The study begins with a brief settlement history of the Carteret County area. which is followed by pertinent information about the people interviewed, and then by a section on old and new elements in the vocabulary. Then follow 9 three sections based upon the organization of The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States: the dissemination of stressed vowels (including a synopSis of the vowels in the speech of a typical informant), the vowels before /r/_. and the incidence of vowels and consonants. The material is thus presented to make it easy for the reader to compare this dialect with the findings for the Atlantic states; the sections contain the same examples. in the same order. as those in The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States, and are closely cross- referenced to that volume. The final section, a survey of verb forms, is similarly based upon A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States .4 It uses the same examples, presents them in the same order, and is closely cross-referenced to the Survey. Again, this is designed to make it easy for the reader to place this dialect within the findings for the Eastern states. 3Kurath and McDavid, op. cit. 4Atwood, op. cit. CHAPTER II SETTLEMENT HISTORY A map of the coast of North Carolina gives a clear indication why none of the early settlers came there directly from Europe. The mainland is protected from the sea by the waters of the sounds into which the rivers empty, cut off from the Atlantic by the long lines of sand reefs called the Outer Banks . The only entrance through the Banks is through small inlets whose location and navigability shift with the passage of the great tropical storms, and which are rendered forbidding by the heavy surf off the Capes . Thus, R. D. Connor points out, "the sand-reefs. the shifting inlets, the ocean currents, and the breakers off Cape Fear, Cape Lookout, and Cape Hatteras determined the fact that North Carolina should not be settled by colonists coming directly from Europe, but by H overflows from her neighbors. . . North Carolina was one of the last of the original thirteen colonies to be settled, and colonization was started first around the Albemarle Sound, bordering on Virginia and dependent economically and socially on that colony.2 Settlement further southward was more difficult, and has furnished background material for innumerable historical romances. The period between 1North Carolina: Rebuilding an Ancient Commonwealth, 1584-1925, Vol . 1 (Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, 1929), 11-12. 2Ibid . 10 11 1650 and 1725 was the "Golden Age of pirates" who found refuge on the Banks and the islands and throve on the capture of ships and cargoes supplying and supplied by the Albemarle settlements .3 The region south of Albemarle, as far down as the Pamlico and Neuse Rivers. gained most of its first settlers from the counties between the Sound and Virginia, followed by French Huguenots from the James River settlement in Virginia in two waves, in 1690 and 1707 .4 These were followed in 1710 by a group of Palatine Germans and Swiss (at New Bern on the Neuse), but Indian wars from 1712 to 1715 caused great loss of life . A curious side -effect of the settlement of the wars was that the Tuscaroras, defeated. went to New York State and became the Sixth Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy.5 Between 1715 and 1725, since things had now settled down, colonists began to push into the region between the Neuse and the Cape Fear River in considerable numbers . From this point on, the settlement history becomes more obscure. A group of Quakers did arrive in 1721 from Rhode Island. but most of the settlers did not come in groups and there was no machinery for recording the arrival of individuals or families . R. D. Connor says that most of the white settlers on the coastal plain were of English stock, 6 but there seems to have been a scattering of Scotch-Irish as well to add to the French Huguenots, Palatine 3mm... p. 135. 4Francis L. Hawks. Historxof North Carolina (Fayetteville. N. C.. 1858), pp. 85-89. 5Connor, op. cit., pp. 115-129. 6Ibid.. p. 151 . 12 Germans and Swiss mentioned earlier .7 Enough of these various settlers had arrived in what is now Carteret County by 1722 for Carteret to be established as a "precinct" which included what are now Onslow and New Hanover counties . The town of Beaufort was named and established as the seat of government, and settlers continued to arrive in increasing numbers . As for settlement of the Banks themselves, Norman C . Delaney says that "English habitation on the Banks began about 1700 and originated chiefly from Maryland and Virginia."8 Many of the surnames of residents of the area today can be found on the earliest records, and they are predominantly English. The family traditions of some of our informants supplement the settlement picture, and are typical of many of the residents of coastal Carteret County. One informant reports that he is descended from the original settlers of Williston who came to New England with a Captain John Williston and subsequently moved on to North Carolina; the ancestors of several came from England to New England, and on to North Carolina in the early period of colonization; another's ancestors came from England to Maine and thence to North Carolina; one even has an ancestor who came from England on the Mayflower - either he or his family later moved down to North Carolina. Even the vaguest of the traditions go far back in time . The people say they are descended from the original settlers of the various communities (all of which were settled in the first half of the eighteenth century), and if questioned most of them say those ancestors were English. 7F . C . Salisbury, How Carteret County Had its 18th Century Beginning (Morehead City, N. C .: Carteret County Historical Society, 1964. Multilithed), p.3 . 8"T he Outer Banks of North Carolina During the Revolutionary War ," North Carolina Historical Review, XXXVI, No. 1 (January, 1959), n. 3, p. 2 CHAPTER III THE INFORMANTS 1. College student (male), 22 years old. Education: two years of college. Raised and lives in Williston. an unincorporated community in the east of the county of about 400 people, mainly devoted to fishing. tugboating. and truck farming. Descended from original settlers of Williston. who came to New England with a Captain John Williston and later moved to North Carolina. Active in local and state politics. The informant's experience outside the home community has given him a certain linguistic sophistication without weakening his loyalty to his native speech. He is conscious of the distinctiveness of "the brogue" and proud of it. Tempo is fairly rapid. occasionally slurred; marked retroflection of postvocalic /r/ and fronting of vowels. 2. High school student (male), 16 years old. Education: two years of high school. For details of residence and ancestry see Informant 1, above. The two are brothers . Informant spent one year (1961 ~1962) in Greensboro, N . C . Moderately fast tempo. fairly clear enunciation; marked retroflection of postvocalic /r/ and fronting of vowels . Is not troubled by notions of how other people may say things or what is the more "correct" way. 13 14 3. Housewife, 32 years old. Education: grade school. Born in Otway, North Carolina (Carteret County); has lived in Williston (for details see 1, above) from 1948-1964. Ancestors came from England to New England, thence to North Carolina in the early period of colonization . Active in local politics . Moderate tempo, clear enunciation; fairly strong retroflection of post- vocalic /r/ and fronting of vowels. Shows fair amount of concern for "correctness ." 4. Barber, 23 years old. Education: high school and barber school. Now lives on Harker's Island, an isolated island community, but was raised and spent twenty years of his life in Williston (see Informant 1, above. for details of that community). Descendant of original settlers of Williston who came from England to Maine in the latter eighteenth century and stayed there a short while before moving down to North Carolina. Moderate tempo, very clear enunciation. Speech singularly different from that of other residents of coastal Carteret County except for retroflection of postvocalic /r/ . Uses [at] before voiceless consonants and [a] before voiced ones, for example, rather than using the universal [3.1] typical of "the brogue," fronts vowels slightly if at all. Considerable concern for "correctness 5. High school student (male), 17 years old. Education: one year of high school. Raised and lives on Harker's Island, an isolated island community in the eastern part of the county that was settled by English whalers and (later) by refugees from Diamond City on Shackleford Banks (ultimately rendered uninhabitable by storms by about 1891). His ancestors came from England and New England and 15 thence to North Carolina . Moderate tempo; slurred utterance; medial and terminal [5] almost [E]. Very strong retroflection of postvocalic /r/, fronting of vowels. 6. Beautician, 26 years old. Education: high school and beauty school. Raised and lives in Marshallberg, fishing and boatbuilding village in eastern part of the county with very small stable population . Descendant of original settlers (no details given). Moderate tempo; very clear enunciation. Marked retroflection of postvocalic /r/, fronting of vowels . 7 . Housewife and postmaster. 51 years old. Education: high school graduate. Born, raised, and lives in Smyrna, unincorporated settlement of about 250 people (two churches, one store, one filling station) in eastern part of the county. Is "descendant of original settlers of this community" Active in church affairs. Moderate tempo; very clear enunciation. Her [di] not as strongly marked as is usual for "the brogue" nor are her vowels as fronted. Retroflection of postvocalic /r/ . Tendency to give what she feels is the "correct" answer. 8. Mimeograph operator (male), 22 years old. Education: high school graduate. Born, raised, and lives in Morehead City, port city of about 7, 000 population in the central part of the county. F ather's people from Onslow County (neighboring county to the west), mother's people from the Outer Banks, descendants of orig- inal settlers there. Active in county historical society and political affairs . 16 Moderate tempo; fairly clear enunciation. Not self-conscious about grammar or ideas of "correctness Marked retroflection of postvocalic /r/ and fronting of vowels . Very conscious of distinctiveness of "the brogue," interested in archaic features of its vocabulary -- proud of his native speech and has no intention of modifying it. 9. Housewife, 54 years old. Education: high school and one year of business school. Except for a period from 1935-1941 in Weldon, North Carolina, has spent entire life in Morehead City (for details of this community see Informant 8, above). Parents born at Cape Lookout (Outer Banks), and descended from orig- inal settlers. Mother of Informant 8. Active in church affairs and P.T.A. Very good feeling for local usage. Clear enunciation. rather deliberate. Her /al/ is intermediate, ranging from general Southern [a-] before voiced consonants to [a8] before voiceless ones or when stressed. Marked retroflec- tion of postvocalic /r/. Preserves certain archaisms lost to other respondents. 10. Cabinet maker, 29 years old. Education: high school graduate. Except for a period from 19 56 to 1959 in Miami. Florida, has spent entire life in Morehead City (for details of which see Informant 8, above). Descended from original settlers of Diamond City, the extinct town on Shackleford Banks rendered uninhabitable by storms around 1891. Original settlers are said to have been English whalers. One ancestor, John Howland, is said to have come to the New World on the Mayflower. Informant is very active in politics. Moderate tempo; fairly clear enunciation. No self-consciousness about U grammar or notions of "correctness. Occasionally lacks retroflection of l7 postvocalic /r/.. vowels only slightly fronted if at all. Knows several old nursery rhymes handed down orally. 1] . House painter, 43 years old. Education: two years of high school. Born in Bladen County (third or fourth county to west of Carteret). lives in Broad Creek Community. population about 1200. in the western part of the county where his father is a minister. No details of ancestry given. As a result of spending his childhood elsewhere, his speech is more akin to general Eastern North Carolina than to the "brogue.' Active in American Legion. county politics, and the local fire department. Deliberate tempo and enunciation. Uses the general [ai~a-] of the typical Eastern North Carolina speech rather than the "brogue's" [Eli]. only slightly fronts his vowels. Has typical retroflection of postvocalic /r/. however. 12. Disabled veteran. 33 years old. Education: three years of high school. Born in Johnston County. in the Piedmont area . Lives in Broad Creek Community (for details see Informant ll . The two are brothers). Active in politics . Since this informant. like his brother, spent his childhood elsewhere, his speech is much more typical of general Eastern North Carolina than it is of the "brogue." He has clear enunciation and speaks in a moderate tempo. Charac- teristics of his speech are very much like those of Informant ll, q.v. CHAPTER IV OLD AND NEW ELEMENTS IN THE VOCABULARY The aspect of the "brogue" that makes it difficult for outsiders to under- stand easily is not its vocabulary but its pronunciation. However. it has a number of items or forms which are either non-existent or rapidly disappearing from the vocabulary of general American, and others of apparently local devel- opment. The word honey, for example. unlike general Southern practice. is casually used to address practically anybody. particularly in commercial trans- actions. Thus the young man in charge of a hot-dog stand at the beach is likely to startle his male customers with a "What's yours. honey?" This causes a certain amount of initial confusion. One idiom. much less frequently encountered. sheds light on the history of these coastal communities. This one emerged as a variant of Item 90.4. designed to elicit "It's rather cold," or some like state- ' ment: "It's colder than Chrissy Wright time.‘ When asked for a translation. the informant explained. "A ship come ashore here one time in a snow-storm." Two local words do not occur either in my Craven County dialect nor in standard American English. One. a verb, means to tease. torment. or disturb (either literally or figuratively). Thus. you can say that the storm momacked [ma m a kt] up the beach, or tell a child to stop momacking the cat. The Oxford English Dictionary lists it as mammock, pronounced "mae ma k. " now "chiefly dial.". meaning to break. cut. or tear into fragments or shreds; it is derived 18 19 from mammock. "arch. and dial.". a scrap. shred. broken or torn piece. As both substantive and verb it has an extensive entry in Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, which reports it in various parts of the British Isles from Scotland to Kent and Sussex and in America. As a verb meaning to break or cut into pieces. to crumble. tear. mangle, its spellings indicate a pronunciation similar to our informant's in Northamptonshire, Worcestershire. and Shropshire (mommock) and in Kent. Sussex. and Hamptonshire (mommick). With the meaning to disarrange. tumble, throw into confusion; to pull about, mess, make dirty; to worry. it is cited in Cheshire, Shropshire. and Northamptonshire (mommock). Both the range of meaning and the pronunciation parallel Carteret County usage. The other word means to flatter: "You're trying to fletch me. " The Oxford English Dictionary lists it with this meaning among others as Scottish and northern dialect. spelled fleech. f1ech(e). The English Dialect Dictionary lists it as used in Scotland. Ireland and some northern English counties under a wide variety of spellings which suggest pronunciations of [flic'5. fleE, flac, find]. The Carteret County [f1 5 a] may be derived from a pronunciation not clearly indicated by the spelling. or be a derivative of [flec]. The meanings listed are to flatter. fawn; wheedle. coax. cajole; beseech. entreat. importune. As one would expect. a certain number of traditional nautical terms persist in the area, although the work sheet was not designed to elicit many of them. Fishermen customarily use the words windward and leeward. for example. but this I know from my own experience. Some indication of the gradual loss of traditional terms or pronunciations is apparent from responses to Item 6: for 6.1. "a heavy rain." only four informants gave squall; three said downpour. two 20 said cloudburst. one said "a right good shower" and one said "raining cats and dogs." For 6.2. "a thunderstorm." four said thundersquall. one said squall. four said thunderstorm. and one said thundershower. For Items 6.4, 6.5, and 6.6 which concern winds and directions. the pattern is equally irregular. For "northwest" seven said northwest to three who said nor'west, and all seven who responded to "northeast" said northeast. The only one who mentioned a northerly direction said north'ard. Six said the wind was from the south'ard [SA63 rd] to two who said it was from the south. Six said sou'wester or spu'west while four said southwest or southwester, and three said southeast to two who said sou'easter. The word "drought" is relatively uncommon; only three informants responded with it. All others said dry spell except one who said "the dryest time it's ever been." Probably the most usual way to refer to the launching of a boat in the area is to say. as one informant did, "put it o'erboard." However, the wording of the item (24.4) on the work sheet led most informants to repeat the words "launch the boat." giving the verb the standard pronunciation. Only one produced a notable (and interesting) variant, saying [l§ns 'ba boUt]. Responses to Item 31.3, "wharf," were varied but predictable. Seven gave do_c_k only. three gave wharf only, one said he used either wharf or dock, and one said a landing or pier. All of these are common terms for the structure in question. In general the informants called the rooms in the house (Item 7 A) the standard terms: living room, dining room. bedroom, kitchen, hall. bathroom. pantry. However, one mentioned a couple of variants that he was familiar with. 21 He said. "People around here call the bedroom 'the room' and they call the living room 'the house'." When it came to attic or garret (Item 9 .7). though. the pattern is interesting. This same informant reported that common terms were the up-the-stairs. the overhead, or the o'erhead. Two others responded with overhead and one said 123; four said_a_£t_ig and one said she usedagig or g_a_1;1;e_t_. One woman who said attig, however, gave overhead for "loft" (Item 14.4). All informants saidpoygh except one who said piazza. pronounced ['p‘diga]. Responses to Item 11.2. "weatherboards." show some encroachment of a term from outside the area. While seven said weatherboards or weather.- boarding. three said siding. Item 8.6. "lightwood. kindling," shows a greater resistance to encroach- ment. All informants said lighterd (with variants fat lighterd and lighter knots) except for one who responded with the 5.1191313. which is the general term in the neighboring areas. The one informant who did not say frying pan or fr pan (Item 17.5). sayingspiyier; instead. is one of the two who were born outside the area and spent some of their childhood elsewhere. For Item 28x. "pillow slip." seven informants gave the pillow case common to the general coastal region. one gave sham. while three gave the more recent import, pillow slip. Responses to Item 29.1, "quilt," produced one surprise out of a generally agreed-upon quilt; the informant supplied the names of three kinds of quilts: patchwork quilt. crazy quilt, and a bird and a feather -- originally the name of a quilt pattern. Window shades (Item 9.4) are generally window shades; there were, however. two blinds and one curtains. Three items which are by now mostly in accord with general usage 22 showed interesting survivals. Grindstone (Item 23.5) is grindstone /graInstoUn/ throughout except for one informant's whetter. A string of beads (Item 28.4) was a string of beads or necklace in most cases. but one informant called it a pair of beads and the other said pretties. Most informants called a t9y(ltem 101.6) a 9y; one. though, called it a pretty. another a play-pretty. and a third. showing the transition from the old word to the new. a pretty toy. Other items which produced evidence of survivals of older forms do not lend themselves to any particular kind of tidy classification. either linguistic or sociological. Most informants said suspenders for Item 28.5. though one said galluses and another admitted to using galluses sometimes. No one responded to Item 27.2. "vest." with anything other than the standard pronunciation, but one informant volunteered the information that while he himself didn't, "a lot of poeople around here pronounce it 'west'.' Item 27x ("overalls") elicited a mixture of responses ranging from overhauls to dungarees. with only a slight preponderance of the latter. Item 48.1 ("food"). designed to elicit a generic term, mainly produced f_op_(i(ten informants). Another offered in addition the vittles common to my grandmother's generation. still another offered the relatively new slang variant M' while one (who said fggdhimself) said. "Now. they use that _m_e_s_s_. A H woman round here she'll say, 'Your mess is on the table'. Item 50.1("warmed over") produced only one survival out of a virtually unanimous warmed over - warmed o'er. Peanuts (Item 54.6) were peanuts to six informants. either peanuts or ground peas to two, and ground peas only to three. Item 55.8 ("spring onions") produced evidence of some vegetative confusion. Only four 23 informants gave simply spring onions. Other responses were shallots ['saral'ats] (two). scallions (two), and these statements: "spring onions is called shallot H V! 'éae' loUt onions, we call those scullions." and (to ca the confusion , " reen l _____._._ _.__.__._._ P L onions -- scullions, but they ain't the same thing." In view of the smallness of the general community of "brogue" speakers, it seems likely that most people are familiar with all the variants but favor particular ones according to individual or family preference. Although most informants said toadstool for Item 57 .1, three used the older variant frog stool which is completely alien to the surrounding region. Item 60.6 ("turtle") elicited girlie from all but two informants. a mother and son who both said turkle. A few agricultural items produced evidence of survivals of older forms. "Chicken coop" (Item 36.8) is a familiar object in the area. and most called it that except for two who said chicken house. However, one informant volunteered the information that the house or coop is in the chicken pound. which he described as a wire enclosure; in the surrounding region of the state this latter is generally called the chicken yard. The prevailing absence of sheep in the coastal area makes it natural that most people should give "ewe" (Item 35.1) a standard literary pronunciation [ju<]; one lone informant gave [jG U] instead. This same informant gave cutting o'er for Item 41 . 5's "second cutting." which was quite unfamiliar to most of the respondents. Only one other had a term for this; he said aftermath. The word "meadow" (Item 29.4) seemed to be more or less a literary term to most of the informants . Most of them simply repeated meadow. However. one did say open field. another said grassy land. and a third (surprisingly) said glade. 24 Among the informants the word "children" (Item 64.3) seems to be reserved for rather formal occasions. Eight of them use young'uns (or youngerns) quite naturally, and one gave school young'un as a variant for student (Item 68.6). The word "midwife" (Item 65.2) has gained considerable ground over the older granny woman. Six informants gave only midwife. one gave midwife or granny woman, two said only granny woman. and one said granny. Item 65.6 ("bastard") elicited mainly bastard (occasionally pronounced [baestat]) or bastard young'un (one informant). Another. however. produced the obscure but rather touching "Sunday baby." The term ' yard child" of Item 64x confused most of the informants. who passed it by. Four, though. equated it with the old rural term "knee baby." which refers to a toddler. There are possible indications of the very strong group feeling of the speakers of this dialect in the responses to Item 66.7 ("stranger"). Here nine informants simply repeated the word stranger. one said stranger or foreigner. one said newcomer. and one said outsider. Responses to Item 79.8 presented variants from the old natural term for "jaundice" to the modern spelling-pronunciation which has replaced it as the disease itself has disappeared. These ranged from single responses of jaunders [jo- ndaz] and Lellow jandis [Jaendls] to yellow (or yeller) jaundice [Jo ndIs](three informants) to jaundice [3'3 ndIs] (three informants). Items 90.2 ("spooks") and 90.3 ("haunted house") are more interestingly considered together, since the individual responses are not always self-consistent. Ten informants responded to 90. 2. and eleven to 90.3. Of the former. five said hants [ha‘e-ts] (two of these giving variants as well. one adding ghosts and 25 spooks and the other adding -SJLQELIES')‘ one said HEELS [h3- ts]. three more said glyoitg only. and one said £139.95 only. Of Item 90.3's eleven. ten responded with haunted [h3-tld] h_o_u_s_.e:, one giving flagged [héo tId] as a variant; the eleventh saidhagtgd. Both who saidhayilgg also had said Ragga; the other three who said hants had modified the word to its more conventional pronunciation in the adjec- tive form. Clearly the older pronunciation of both noun and adjective is dying out. Survivals of old forms and an occasional emergence of a quite new one were elicited by the following items. Item 81.1 ("he is courting her") brought forth "they are courting or sparking -- going gal-ing" from one informant. "going with her" from two. and "courting her" from another. Although Item 80.2 calls for "vomit (neutral terms)" and 80.3 for "vomit (crude and jocular terms)." the informants seemed to find the general concept sufficiently crude that their answers for both items have to be grouped together. They either gave only one term. or produced a few variants in an embarrassed rush. _Throw up seems in general to be felt the most acceptable (if not the most neutral), since it was offered first or second by eight of the nine informants who answered. One said y_o_r_n_i__t_; two said y_o_n_i_il_<; one added spewed to his throw up and vomik; two added p_u_ke_ to throw up; and one gave a full range from ancient to modern: throw up. 131:9 flash and easy- Two final items show the incursion of modern slang. To Item 101.4 ("tattle-tale") everyone answered tattletale except one apparent adherent of gangster legend -- she said stool-pigeon. And although Item 76x ("drowsy") produced in most cases an expectable sleepy. two informants responded with groggy. CHAPTER V THE REGIONAL DISSEMINATION OF THE DIAPHONES OF STRESSED VOWELS For the benefit of those who may want to compare aspects of the Carteret County version of the Banks dialect with speech patterns in other parts of the Eastern states, discussion of the stressed vowels has been ordered according to Chapter 3 of The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States (hereafter referred to as PEAS).l References are given throughout to sections and maps in PEAS. As was noted earlier, the dialect has relatively so few speakers, and covers such a narrow strip of the central North Carolina coast, that it was not pinpointed in the PEAS findings for the coastal counties . Thus no mention will be found in PEAS of its distinctive characteristics as a dialect. No effort is made to equate the findings of this study with the social dissemination of the vowels which PEAS discusses. since there is virtually no difference in social status among our Carteret County informants . As will be observed in the individual discussions of stressed vowels which follow. it is the characteristics of some of these vowels, along with the strongly constricted /3/ (pronounced [3*]) which make the Banks dialect so outstandingly different from the speech of the region. Some of these characteristics are 1Hans Kurath and Raven I. McDavid, Jr. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961). 26 unique to it. and it shares others with other areas. but together they give "the brogue" its distinctive flavor. A pattern sentence which I learned as a child in nearby Craven County was designed to be a humorous imitation of the dialect. It embodies a number of its features. though not all: "[hwsn Its ha} tald In he mu: : ' . I" sue} m9¥ning CIOP _i- ,' 1' 1 la. ‘ .337 1 . 923-“- - _-__1211}3_ . ‘ I i 1 ,a. , a»; ; -_ - - h-OISe -Cbollege 111_-1_--a. ; ‘ ; 1 ; -__-_ “row -. - _ ;_ 1 .. 1_.. -fi’, i-.-_....-_ -- .1 i. _- _ five 1 1 ‘ A}. d —————~-_-.-w~ 1. . . 1 .. 1‘}; .aU- “H _ “0Wn 'W‘W‘Ce.--.-- . . 1 1 1-41-6.11 EU. 1 . 1 1 - . -__9_u-t wire _ 1 1 ' 1 15" 1 7.111131 ‘ 1 1 1 . flower _ 1 1 ' ' L 31 1 1 1 - joint L 1 1 _ 31' --_-' y; boil Synopsis: Informant 6. Marshallberg, North Carolina 29 THE CHECKED VOWELS (Section 3. '2 in PEAS; PEAS Map 4) According to PEAS. ingliding diphthongs characterize the Southern pronunciation of the checked high and mid vowels as in crib, wool, bed. and judge. although monophthongs were noted for coastal and western South Carolina. Before voiceless stops inglides are briefer and less common. and they are infrequent in words of more than one syllable. THE VOWEL IN whip, crib, chimney (PEAS Section 3.3 and Map 5) /thp, krlb, c'lmni/ The most notable and persistent characteristic of the vowel /I/ in the Bogue- Core Sound speech is that it is frequently raised and fronted, sometimes almost to /i/ . This is less true when it is monophthongal, but even then it often occurs . Because of this fronting tendency, [i] rarely occurs in a stressed syllable. When /I/ is a diphthong, only the first element is raised, giving [Ilw I3]. Before a voiceless stop, in yv_h_i_p, seven informants used the ingliding diphthong to five who did not. In Eli-ii). only two used the monophthong; the rest used the A diphthong. In the disyllabic chimney. all used the monophthong [1" I ]. THE VOWEL IN wood. wool ,. pu sh (PEAS Section 3.4 and Maps 6-7) /wUd, in, pU§/ The fronting tendency noted for /I/ is true also for /U/ in coastal Carteret County. Perhaps it is this tendency which reduces the incidence of the diphthongal variant PEAS found typical of the South. Whatever the reason, before a voiced consonant. as in yvggd or $1951, only one informant used the ingliding diphthong; the rest said [U<]. The inglide was a bit more frequent in wool; three informants used it, 30 while the others said :U<""U]. In pui only the monophthong occurred. THE VOWEL IN bed, egg. fence (PEAS Section 3.5 and Maps 8-9,‘ /b£d, 5g, fcnts/ PEAS found that diphthongal [15"] is almost universal in the South except in the upper reaches of the Chesapeake. the immediate vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina and the western part of that state. Although most of our informants used some kind of diphthong in the three words. monophthongs still occurred. The raising and fronting tendency noted for /I/ and /U/ is observable in /8/ also. going either to /e/ or, before /n/. to /I/. In the word 133d four of the twelve informants used [EA ~’ 8 ]. The rest said [£13, £56]. Before velar /g/. as in egg. four informants replaced the checked vowel with the free vowel /'ei/ of eigfy. a phenomenon PEAS notes for the South and South Midland and eastern New England. Six others used a sometimes raised monophthong. [f ’8 ]. and the others used a slightly raised /e/ with an inglide. In fence or ten. three informants used the high vowel /I/ of _s_i_x_ (lEAS noted this in eastern North Carolina); two of these were monophthongal . The rest of the informants said [89’8wa-i]. All were heavily nasalized before /n/. THE VOWEL IN sun, judge. brush (“PEAS Section 3.6 and Maps 10-11) /SAn. JAJ’, brAs/ As with /I/, /U/, and /€/. there is a strong fronting tendency in /A/ along Bogue and Core Sounds . It is almost always fronted at least slightly. and occasionally approaches [(3]. It is again possible that this fronting tendency prevents the diphthongal variant which PEAS found to be typical though not universal in the 31 South; our informants used only monophthongs. None of them used the centralized [3’39] which PEAS reported sporadically in northeastern North Carolina. Our informants' range was [.\" V’G]. with slight rounding. Both fronting and round- ing were strongest in judge, but quite noticeable in the other two words as well. THE VOWEL IN sack, ashes, half, dance. glass (PEAS Section 3.7 and Maps 12-14) /saek, aes’az, hwf, daens. glaes/ PEAS finds that before the voiceless velar stop in 3519.1: monophthonga] /ae/ is common in the greater part of the South. though an ingliding [aea] is not uncommon along Albemarle Sound in North Carolina and an upgliding [312}. asa ] occurs rather frequently in northeastern North Carolina. PEAS reports rather extensively on /ae/ before /g/. but this combination was not recorded for our informants. Before the voiceless fricatives of ashes. glass, and half PEAS finds that [gal] is common in North Carolina. The usage of our informants forms a rather definite pattern in this vowel, but one which does not particularly agree with PEAS' find— ings. Before /k/, /§/. and /s/ in sack. ashes, and glass the simple monophthong [as] was predominant, with only two incidences of [33*] in ashes . It was in half. calf. and dance that our informants used the diphthongs. In ___..__ hall, calf five of the twelve used [ae ]. and in dance eleven used [ae .aeI.-orae ]. 32 THE VOWEL IN crop, oxen. college (PEAS Section 3 8 and Map 15) /krap, aksan, kcxlaj/ The pattern of usage of the checked low vowel /a/ is very complex in its distribu- tion throughout the Eastern states. For a complete discussion see PEAS. In coastal Carteret County, however, the pattern is simple. Before /r/ as in 935' 1352111 it is [w]. Before /g/ as in 19g. fog it is [o ], but before /p. b, t, k/ as in crop, cob, lot, rod, oxen or dock it is [a], as it is before intersyllabic /l/ in .————-—-——-——-—._ college. The vowels before /r/ and /g/ will be discussed separately. THE FREE VOWELS (PEAS Section 3.9) PEAS finds that the free vowels tend to be upgliding diphthongs except in certain subareas which do not concern Carteret County or the Bogue-Core Sound area. The mid vowels /e/ and /o/. as in dgy and egg. show parallel treatment. PEAS finds the diaphones [£1] and [3U ~" 0U] in clearly specified areas which include northeastern North Carolina, monophthongal variants elsewhere. Among our informants the diaphones [ei] and [ouweu] appear in these words. however. Our findings do not agree with PEAS as to the type of regional diaphones that occur for /ai/ and /au/ in such words as EELS" _t\_y_i_ge_. and mountain. gilt. For a discussion of these findings. see the pertinent sections below. THE VOWEL IN three. grease, bean (PEAS Section 3.10 and Map 16) /0ri. gris, bin/ Bogue-Core Sound speech has for this vowel what is essentially a monophthongal allophone [i -~ri] which frequently has a preliminary glide upward: [9i- «n 31]. PEAS does not mention this variant with the preliminary glide. but it is an 33 essential characteristic of this dialect. It is more likely to occur in a stressed syllable or sentence-stressed word. but in some informants it occurs almost uniformly for /i/ throughout. Thus. in three, four of ten informants used [9 i]; in tree. ten of twelve used it; in grease, six of twelve used it; and in bean, ten of twelve did. The variation is apparently the result of the difference in sentence stress as it falls on the syllable containing the vowel. THE VOWEL IN two . shoes. tooth , school (PEAS Section 3.11. Map 17) /tu, suz, tuB, skul/ According to PEAS, fully high-back [u- ’Uu] occurs, besides central [u ’81:] in parts of North Carolina; on Map 17. both as well as an intermediate variant are shown for the Carteret-Craven County area. Among our informants only one used the fully central [a], and he did not use it in £21192]. which agrees with PEAS' findings for the pattern of /u/ before velarized /l/ as less likely to be fronted. He was one of two informants who used (once each) a diphthongal allophone, both in the word _tw_9_; all others used [umu<] in that word. In shges, omitting the [tr] user, all but one informant used [u<]; the exception used [u]. In £9991. again omitting the [tr] user. six used [u<] and four used [u]. In the word 1913291 (for which not many responses were recorded). four (including the usual [tr] user) used [u<]. and one did not. To sum up, there is a strong tendency to front this vowel. as there was to front /I/, /U/, as discussed earlier, and a considerable (possibly resultant) tendency towards the use of monophthongs rather than diphthongs in this dialect. 34 THE VOWEL IN day. April. eight, bracelet (PEAS Section 3.12 and Maps 18-19) /de. epral, et, breslat/ This vowel in the coastal Carteret County area is commonly pronounced as [e1] or, with a preliminary central glide, as [3 e1]. This latter is very characteristic of the dialect and, like the preliminary glide already discussed in the allophone for /i/. occurs partly as an individual pattern and partly as a function of the amount of stress on the syllable containing it. Its incidence in the various words was as follows: in gay, one speaker used it; in A2311, four speakers used it; in eig_h_t_, six speakers used it; and in bracelet, five used it. All others used [e1]. PEAS does not note this phenomenon for this area or any other. THE VOWEL IN ago. coat, road (PEAS Section 3.13 and Maps 20-21) /a go. kot, rod/ The common pronunciation of this vowel in coastal Carteret County (as in the neighboring Craven County) is [GU]. PEAS notes that this allophone occurs in three separate areas: in the Delaware Valley, western Pennsylvania and the upper Ohio Valley, and in northeastern North Carolina. but does not discuss its possible origins . It is not quite universal in the Bogue-Core Sound area, though almost. Occasional speakers use [0U]. some [GoU], and in an occasional word one may hear a monophthongal [0-]. Out of thirty -five instances in the words Egg, coat, and road. one was [6- ]. four were [GoU], and one was [0U]; all the rest were [GU]. 35 THE VOWEL IN law , salt, dog (PEAS Section 3.14 and Maps 22-24) /l;) «~10, soltwsolt, dog” dog/ According to PEAS, on the coast of North Carolina monophthongal [3-] competes with diphthongal [DO ] and, though not uncommon, seems to be yielding ground. This does not seem to be the case along Bogue and Core Sounds, where the only vowel in these words was [3 -, 3]. Before /g/ there seemed to be a greater tendency to lengthen the vowel. THE VOWEL IN thirty, Thursday, sermon, girl (PEAS Section 3.15 and Map 25) /03ti, 03zdi, 53 man, g31/ In coastal Carteret County /.3/ is fully constricted, using the allophone PEAS depicts as [a~]. PEAS notes that this constricted form is predominant south of the Neuse River, which takes in the Bogue—Core Sound area, and this is the form we find among our informants. In thirty, Thursday, sermon, girl, without exception only [9] occurred. PEAS' historical note on this phoneme is interesting. "The constricted [a] of American English, it is clear, came to this country from England with the first settlers and throughout the Colonial period, the unconstricted type probably VI not until the eighteenth century. PEAS feels that the confinement of the uncon- stricted diaphones to four coastal areas in which commercial and social relations with London were maintained points to a later adoption and dissemination of the unconstricted variant. The use of constricted [a] in coastal Carteret County thus appears to be an indication of the long period of relative isolation of its population . 36 THE VOWELIN nine, twice. wire (PEAS Section 3.16 and Maps 26-27) /nain, twais, wai3’waia/ In this section it is fruitful to discuss only the vowel in nine and twice. That in wire will be discussed later. in a section below . PEAS goes into thorough detail, guy, regarding the distribution of the variants of this vowel throughout the Eastern states. The pronunciation of this vowel in the Banks "brogue" is so distinctive, however. that it can almost be considered independently of the usage in the rest of the country. The first element of the diphthong is a rather low central vowel which, in conjunction with its second element, [i], produces a result which is familiar to the American ear only in Cockney English. This is the [all-J which in the word Iii-El? is usually spelled _t_o_i__m_<3 to indicate its pronun- ciation. It is not, however, so far back as to rhyme with /3i/ as in Boy. In addition to giving the Banks dialect its characteristic flavor, this diphthong occurs in all positions. whether before voiced or voiceless consonants; the dialect thus does not have the distinction between the [a-] in 2.12.?- and the [ai] in _tw_i£_e_ which is common to the Neuse Valley speech just to the north of Carteret County. The two informants who habitually made the distinction did not have the [all] diphthong at all, and both had been born in another part of the state . The presence of one other who made this distinction is inexplicable. He himself and his ancestors were all Bankers, and he had spent his whole life in a community where the [611] diphthong is standard. All the other informants used only the [311-], with various degrees of centering ranging from [aiiai]. 37 THE VOWEL IN down. mountain. house, out (PEAS Section 3.17 and Maps 128-29) /daun_. mauntan, haus. aut/ As PEAS indicates for much of North Carolina, in coastal Carteret County [an] is competing with [aU]. Both sometimes assume with some speakers the form [aea] or [a9 ]. There is no trace in the dialect of the [a u. P u] which PEAS finds in the North Carolina periphery of the Virginia piedmont. THE VOWEL IN oil, boiled. poison, joint (PEAS Section 3.18) /:)il_. boild, poizan. joint/ There are two variants of /oi/ in the Bogue-Core Sound area. both of which are quite common in other parts of the South as well: one is the standard [of]. the other the ingliding [.39 ]. The allophone [3 l] is more frequent than the other. THE VOWEL IN coat. stonewall. whole (PEAS Section 3.19 and Map 30) /ket, stenwol. hel/ IEAS devotes this section to a discussion of the checked, mid-back vowel /e/ of New England pronunciation. The vowel does not exist in our dialect, which has only the allophones [0U] and occasionally [0U], as was seen in our discussion of the vowel /o/ in ago, coat, road. THE VOWEL IN car, barn, father. calm (PEAS Section 3.20, Maps 31-32) /kd’~ ka, bQ'n" ban, fq‘Saw fa‘ba, mm» kam/ The free low vowel PEAS discusses in this section, /C1-’~a/ , is confined to areas in which postvocalic /r/ is not preserved in words like egg. 2921;, etc. It is thus of no concern to this dialect. 38 THE VOWEL IN music, dues. Tuesday. new (PEAS Section 3.21 and Map 33) /miuzlk. diuz, tiuzde, niu/ The diphthong /iu/. according to PEAS. is confined to the New England settlement area. The phoneme does not exist in the Bogue-Core Sound region; there only /ju/ is heard. Like /u/. discussed above, it is almost invariably fronted to [ju<]. In this dialect. music. dues. Tuesday. and new invariably contain the diphthong /ju /. CHAPTER VI THE CONSONANT /r/ AND THE VOWELS BEFORE /r-I~a/ As PEASlobserves, postvocalic /r/ survives in parts of eastern North Carolina. Certainly we find it clearly surviving in coastal Carteret County. /r/ is articulated in this position and elsewhere very much in the same way that is found in the North and in western North Carolina. For a complete discussion of the articulation of this consonant, see Section 4.1 in PEAS. The stressed vowel in thirgy, sermon, etc ., has been treated, following PEAS, as a unit phoneme and was discussed in the preceding chapter on stressed vowels . THE INCIDENCE OF VOWELS BEFORE /r/ (PEAS Section 4.3) PEAS presents the incidence of vowels before /r/ and /Q/ by means of a tabula- tion of the speech of eight cultured informants who represent the major dialect areas of the Eastern states; the phonetic data is then phonemically interpreted. Applying the same method to our informants, we find their pronunciation as follows: 1To facilitate comparison of this dialect with speech patterns in the Eastern states generally, the organization of this chapter follows closely that of Chapter 4 of Hans Kurath and Raven I. McDavid, Jr., The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961), throughout referred to herein as PEAS. Discussions are cross -referenced closely to section numbers and maps in that volume. 39 40 2 ear care barn hornet door poor [1“?‘1(2) [38*](4) @3301) [38*](11) [0U8~](9) [CUB-1(6) [131(9) [ta-1(5) [0113*](2) [0113*](3) lie-1(1) [as-3.112) iua~ 1(2) Below is a comparison of the phonemic interpretation of the dialect (l) with the speech of the cultured speaker from Asheville, North Carolina (2) cited in PEAS: ear care barn hornet2 door poor 1) /ir/ /ar,£r/ /ar/ /or/ /or/ /or/ 2) /ir/ /aer/ /ar/ /or/ /or/ /or/ THE VOWELS IN ear, here, beard, queer (PEAS Section 4.4 and Maps 34-37) /Ir«~ igmea~j3/ According to PEAS, the vowel phoneme /i~I/ occurs in _e_a_r_, 133532, etc., in the South Midland and Upper South, and in dialects that preserve postvocalic /r/ the vowel is likely to be pronounced [I]. This we find to be true in coastal Carteret County where, in this position, the usual tendency to raise [I] to [i] seems to be inhibited by the following /r/ . There was no evidence of the other two variants listed in the heading above although instances of each appear on PEAS Map 34 (_e_a_r), of /j3/ on PEAS Map 35 (here). of each on PEAS Map 36 (beard), and of 2Recordings in our data were more complete for hornet than for corn, the word which PEAS used for this vowel. 41 each on PEAS Map 37 (115191;)- T-Eowever. the scale of the maps is such that it is not possible to tell whether the instances occurred in Craven or Carteret County. Perhaps we have here an instance of the tendency of /i-’~I/ to spread. which PEAS notes is the case generally. There has been, after all. some time lapse since the data for that study were gathered in 1935-1937 . THE VOWELS IN stairs . theirs . care, chair (PEAS Section 4.5 and Maps 38-41) /keg-’~ k8 r—r‘ keg w kaer’kw’a‘r klr’ki’a‘wkja/ The situation in the dialect with respect to the vowel used in these words is. like that which PEAS reports for the Lower South and New England, "diversified and unsettled." Only two speakers were consistent in using the same vowel in all four words; the others differed within the words and from each other. The following tabulation lists the code numbers of the speakers beneath the vowel they used for each word, and gives a clear indication of the general confusion: /a/ /a/ /£/ /88/ /3/ stairs 2.3,9.10,12 1.6.8 4,11 5 7 theirs 3.5.6 4,7 11 care l,3,6,10 2,4,7,ll,12 5,9 chair l.2,3,5,6,9.10 4,7,11,12 PEAS notes an [a’a] variant for the Virginia piedmont and adjoining parts of North Carolina, which is presumably what we have in our dialect. This and the extensive use of /ae/ (of which we have only three examples) in the South are pointed out as strictly American developments . 42 THE VOWELS IN poor . sure (PEAS Section 4.6 and Map 42) /pur-’ru§v~pUr~/~pU§¢ por-r- pog / According to PEAS' findings, we should expect to find our informants following the typical Southern practice of using only /0/ in E9}; and sugg, so that these words rhyme with four, shore . Actually, this is the pattern in the coastal Carolina region, and all but two of our informants use /0/ . The only two who use /u/ are the two men who were born elsewhere and spent some of their child- hoods in other parts of the state. THE VOWELS IN four, boar, door, hoarse (PEAS Section 4.7 and Maps 43 -44) /for-/‘fog~/‘fo-/‘fo r’fDQv” f3 / As PEAS has noted, the pronunciation of the vowel in these words in the parts of eastern North Carolina where postvocalic /r/ is retained is commonly [an~], phonemically /or/ . Among our coastal Carteret County informants the pronun- ciation was either [an-] or [an]. In this dialect, the words barge and W contrast, the former having the vowel /3 / instead of /o/ . PEAS remarks that the preservation of the contrast (in eastern New England as well as the South) points to a late coalescence of these vowels in Standard British English. THE VOWELS IN forty, morning. horse (PEAS Section 4.8 and Map 45) /forti~/‘forti-" fati wfoti / According to PEAS, with a few exceptions all areas in the Eastern states have /3 on/ in these words . For a complete discussion, see PEAS Section 4.8 . In the speech of the residents along Bogue and Core Sounds. however. there is a 43 variation . In forty and horse the pronunciation is invariably [ Ja~ ]. but in morning only three informants use [33‘ ]; the rest all say [an~]. THE VOWELS IN barn , car, garden (PEAS Section 4.9 and Map 46) /barn -" born’ born J" b’rn J“ ban/ PEAS finds that except in Western Pennsylvania and Delmarva, areas that preserve postvocalic /r/ have the checked vowel /a/ of £393, pe_g_t, etc . in these words. Western Pennsylvania has [a v0] phones which, in this dialect. PEAS analyzes as allophones of /D/ . In the Carteret County dialect, which in this feature resembles the other nearby coastal areas. the vowel before /r/ is an allophone of /a/, but pronounced farther back than it is in crop: [0b]. THE VOWELS IN wire , tired (PEAS Section 4.10 and Map 47) Throughout the South Midland, PEAS finds that the phoneme /a‘/ is habituallyused in wire, tired, etc., and that the sequence /air/ is sometimes merged with /ar/ in eastern North Carolina. This we find to be the case in coastal Carteret County. Most of the informants said [aw Liv-61>], but three had versions of /air/ . THE VOWELS IN flower (PEAS Section 4.11) In flower, according to PEAS, the phoneme /au/ has the usual regional and social diaphones . Disyllablc versions are regular where postvocalic /r/ is lost; where it is preserved, both monosyllabic and disyllabic variants occur, especially under stress . Among our informants we found only the disyllabic type, [aU 8]. THE VOWELS BEFORE INTERSYLLABIC /r/ (PEAS Section 4.12) For a complete discussion of the problems inherent in the analysis of vowels before intersyllabic /r/, see PEAS Section 4.12 . The situationincoastal Carteret Countyis interesting, though confused. There seem to be two tendencies at work. One is 44 the typical Southern tendency to preserve the /r/ for the initial consonant of the succeeding syllable, producing [mt -r}]. Thatis to say. itis typical ofdialects in which postvocalic /r/ is not preserved; in such dialects, the /r/ is treated as if it were presyllabic, as an apical alveolar consonant. The other tendency is common to dialects which preserve postvocalic /r/ . Such dialects habitually pronounce m as [mm-1*]. Phonemically, the difference is /msri/ versus /m£gri/. In a wordlike m, the difference tends to be between /f‘\'ro/ and /f3ro/. although it is not always so clear-cut. THE VOWELS IN diphtheria (PEAS Section 4.13 and Map 48) Although PEAS finds that the most common vowel in this word in the South is the free vowel /i/, the checked /I/ is "fairly common" in parts of North Carolina and survives to "some extent" in Tidewater Virginia. This is the vowel we find to be common in coastal Carteret County. The vowel is always /I/. but sometimes the syllable is pronounced /Ir/ and sometimes /1Qr/, four of the former to seven of the latter among our informants. In typical Southern fashion, the consonant preceding this syllable is always /p/, not /f/. THE VOWELS IN cher ry. me rry (PEAS Section 4. 14 and Map 49) In the dialect the vowel in such words is always /£/, with the usual difference in pronunciation of /.s r/ and /5 gr/ . In passing, it is interesting that when PEAS collected its data for the salutation merry Christmas'. it was little used south of Pennsylvania. It now seems to be considerably more common, probably from the influence of radio- and television -disseminated popular songs which use the phrase. We found no evidence of American pronounced as /amaerlkan/ which PEAS reports for northeastern North Carolina. It does not seem to extend south to Carteret County. 45 THE VOWELS IN Mary. dairy (PEAS Section 4.15 and Map 50) According to PEAS, "broadly speaking" _Mgry rhymes with _rnggry in the Midland but not in the South. However, it is not uncommon for it to do so in northeastern North Carolina, and on Map 50 it is shown to do so regularly in the Carteret - Craven County area. This we found to be the case with our informants . Only one pronounced _M_a_rywith /e/, but he also pronounced it with /£/; another pronounced it with /3/ . The situation with regard to d_a_i_ry_was less uniform . Here two in- formants used the vowel /e/, and one used /ae/ . The usual mixture of /£r/ and /e§r/ was present in all three words . THE VOWELS IN married, wheelbarrow, harrow, barrel (PEAS Section 4. 16 and Maps 51 -52) As PEAS finds, the /ae/ phoneme is common in married throughout the Eastern states, with few exceptions. Our dialect is no exception. All informants used /ae/ . In wheelbarrow PEAS finds the vowel /a/ much more common, especially in folk speech, than it is in married. This vowel varies regionally from [air] to [0']. All but two of our informants said /ae/; those two said [a] and [a]. Our findings were less satisfactory for 11w. Coastal Carteret County is not notably agricul - tural, and the word for the most part had only a literary familiarity (the few who were familiar with the implement called it a <_i_1;ag). Respondents seemed almost uniformly to be giving it a spelling pronunciation with /ae/ . Pronunciations of the vowel in barrel were similar to those in wheelbarrow: All but three informants said /a-3/, and those said [a] (one) and [a] (two). THE VOWELSIN tomorrow , borrow , orange (PEAS Section 4.17, Maps 53-54) PEAS finds that the South and South Midland have /01-“C1/ regularly in tomorrow. with the possible exception of the South Carolina Low Country. and /O-~D/ only in 46 certain areas of the Eastern states, none of which have any connection with eastern North Carolina. Yet we find that our informants along Bogue and Core Sounds were divided between the two phonemes . Four used /D/, and the rest said [62>], on two occasions slightly rounded. In borrow the informants showed a similar range of pronunciation. Five used /:)/, and the rest the same kinds of variants of /a'/ as before. Orange exhibited a different balance of variants. Nine informants used /.)/ while only three used the /(i/ phoneme. THE VOWELS IN furrow , worry (PEAS Section 4.18 and Map 55) According to PEAS, the disyllabic /fAra/ with apical /r/ occurs by the side of /f3ra/ in the South, and this we find true of the coastal Carteret County speakers. Three used the vowel /3/ and the rest [;\< ~-~/\]. In W221 there was one less /3 / user. Both types occur in English folk speech. THE VOWELS IN squirrel, stirrup, syrup (PEAS Section 4.19 and Maps 56-58) The most common pronunciation of the vowel in squirrel in the Eastern states is /3/, and this is true of our respondents as well. In stirrup the vowels /3/ and /A / predominate generally, and among our informants we find /3/ seven times and /A/ five. In §_yr_up roughly the same distribution prevails as we found in stirrup. Seven said /3/, three said /A/, and one said [U], perhaps an individual idiosyncrasy . CHAPTER VII THE INCIDENCE OF VOWELS AND CONSONANTS In view of the increasing influence of standardized education. as well as of radio and television in the United States. it seems reasonable to conclude that the so-called folk variants of pronunciation are survivals of older usage, especially when they are losing out rapidly to forms which are considered standard in educated use. The vocabulary of conservative speech areas such as that of coastal Carteret County along Bogue and Core Sounds in North Carolina retains many such survivals by reason of their relative isolation until fairly recently from outside influences . Among the discussion of the incidence of vowels and consonants in this dialect which follows. we find a fair number of survivals of these forms. The relative infrequency of many of them is probably a measure of the speed of the encroachment of "standard" forms brought in by the school sys- tem, the increased ease of access to these communities from outside, and the influence of radio and television within the past quarter-centuryor so. The words used to indicate the incidence of vowels and consonants are those chosen for discussion in Chapter 5 of The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States1 (hereafter referred to as PEAS). Organization and ordering follow Chap- ter 5 closely, with references to the section numbers of that chapter, so as to lHans Kurath and Raven I. McDavid, Jr. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961). 47 48 facilitate comparison of the Carteret County version of the Banks dialect with the findings for the general Atlantic region. No effort is made to equate the findings of this study with the social differences discussed in PEAS. since there was no significant difference in social status among the Carteret County informants . Their ages range from 16 to 54. and their education from grade school through two years of college. Most have from two to four years of high school. STRESSED VOWELS /I/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.1) bristle (PEAS Map 59) All informants pronounced the stressed vowel of this word with the /I/ of _s_i_x neither backing nor rounding it. According to PEAS, this pronunciation is universal among all social classes in the South. As is common in this dialect, however, /I/ is frequently raised and fronted. sometimes almost to /i/. rinse Although PEAS reports that the stressed vowel of this word is sometimes pro- nounced with the /e/ of paip in the folk speech of eastern North Carolina, the usual folk pronunciation in the Upper South being /€/, neither was true of the Carteret County informants. They all used the /I/ of pig. usually somewhat fronted . /C/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.2) 49 again (PEAS Maps 60-61) The four informants who responded to this item used the /E / of peg for the stressed vowel. Two raised it slightly. and in all cases it was followed by a slight glide back from it, giving [2 a] and [53 ]. This accords with the general statement for the cultured and middle-class users given by PEAS. but does not agree with that study's finding of a pronunciation of the /e/ of pain in eastern North Carolina . deaf (PEAS Map 62) All but one informant gave the vowel in this word the /£/ of _b.e_t_. The lone exception used the /i/ of 1ga_f. According to PEAS, /i/ in this word is generally yielding ground to /e/, which is the predominant and preferred pronunciation of the middle as well as the cultured group in most areas of the Atlantic states . egg (PEAS Map 63) According to PEAS, in North Carolina the vowel in this word is commonly the /e/ of _e_iglg among the folk. less so among the middle-class speakers, and least among the cultured, who prefer /5/ two or three to one. Among our informants. eight said [a], [’5‘]. [£5] or [’15 I] and four said [e£ ]. keg (PEAS Map 64) PEAS found that keg rhyming with peg was distinctly a cultured and middle-class pronunciation south of Pennsylvania, but rare among the middle group in North Carolina. _lggg rhyming with peg was found to be in general use in North Carolina except among cultured speakers . A variant rhyming with plagi_ie, historically 50 derived from /ktg/. was found in New England. Virginia. and South Carolina. The Carteret County informants divided evenly among the three variants. four saying [8 ]. four [are], and four [e1]. k e t t1 e According to PEAS, the general pronunciation of this word among cultured speakers has the vowel /£ / of peg. while the older pronunciation with the /I/ of pig is "rather regular" in folk speech. /I/ was found to be common in the rural areas of North Carolina among the middle group. Among the Carteret County informants only two used /I/; all the rest used /E/. muskmelon (PEAS Map 65) The stressed vowel of the second syllable was found by PEAS to be popularly pronounced -millon in the greater part of the South, and to be especially frequent along the Atlantic coast from the Chesapeake to the Neuse valley in North Carolina (just north of Carteret County) where it is also widely used by the better educated. Nevertheless, the findings of this study produced only one speaker who gave the vowel /I/ in the second syllable. The rest all used /£/. yellow This word is commonly pronounced with the vowel /£ / of s31] in cultivated speech throughout the Atlantic states. according to PEAS, while folk speech shows a wide variety of other pronunciations. In Carteret County, however, pronunciation with /8/ was universal among the informants . 51 yesterday All informants gave the first syllable of this word the /g/ of .551- PEAS found this to be the common pronunciation of the cultured speakers, but found /I/ to be common not only among the folk but among the middle-class speakers in eastern North Carolina . /38/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.3) aunt (PEAS Map 67) As PEAS indicates. outside of New England (except for a scattering of cultured speakers in a few urban areas) the general pronunciation of the vowel in this word is the /ae/ of p_a_n_t. The Carteret County speakers are no exception. All used /ae/. There was no evidence of the /e/ of paintwhich PEAS reports for folk speech in eastern North Carolina. calf, glass, dance (PEAS Map 68) According to PEAS words of this type (in which the vowel is followed by a voiceless fricative or by /n/ + dental) have the vowel /ae/ of PEI-E in all sections of the Atlantic States except in eastern New England, a scattering of cultured urban speakers, and non-cultured speakers from Charleston, South Carolina, southward along the coast. It is therefore not surprising that all the informants in this study used /ae/. can ' t (PEAS Map 69) Although PEAS reports a pronunciation of the vowel in this word with the /e/ of paint in the common speech of the greater part of North Carolina, the Carteret 52 County informants use the /ae/ ( [ae]. [ae-J. [33*] or [329]) which PEAS finds among the cultured speakers of the immediate vicinity. p a s tu r e (PEAS Map 70) The first syllable of this word is found by PEAS to be /0/ (which the authors think is "presumably derived from the /a/ that prevails in English folk speech over large areas") in "highly conservative" northeastern North Carolina from Albemarle Sound to the lower Neuse valley. Carteret County. only a few miles south of the river, escapes this pronunciation. All informants used /ae/. I have, myself, never heard the /q/ pronunciation even in New Bern, which is in the lower Neuse valley. This is perhaps an indication that the older conservative pronunciation is dying out. raspberry (PEAS Map 71) The first syllable of this word. according to PEAS, has the vowel /ae/ in all of the Eastern states except in New England and among a few cultivated speakers in Northern urban areas. All of the Carteret County informants used the vowel /ae/. rather (PEAS Maps 72-73) Without exception the informants gave the stressed vowel in this word the pronun- ciation of /ee/ in ggtley. None used the /A/ shown on PEAS Map 72. In the historical discussion of the pronunciation of this word in PEAS, it is interesting that American /ae/ as a prestige pronunciation is attributed to standard British usage of the eighteenth century. The use of the vowel /a-a«~q/ is "almost 53 certainly" attributable to later importation from Standard British English. The use of /39/ along Bogue and Core Sounds thus accords with the general date of the settlement of this conservative speech area. stamp (one's foot) This word has a great variety of vowels in the Eastern states. according to PEAS, but /ae/ predominates only in New England, metropolitan New York and a few other urban centers . Elsewhere it is "largely a cultivated pronunciation Among the Carteret County speakers. only two said /ae/. two said /g /. and the rest said /a/ . c atch (PEAS Map 74) Pronunciation of this word with the vowel /£ / of fgtgh is by far the most common in the Eastern states, according to PEAS. This was the only vowel used by the informants of this study. PEAS reports. in its historical discussion. that it was widely used not only by the folk but by cultured English speakers until after the American Revolution . hammer, Saturday (PEAS Map 75) According to PEAS, these words regularly have the /are/ of pig except in Eastern New England, the Virginia tidewater and piedmont areas, and the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Our findings agree. Without exception all informants used /ae/ in these words . radish (PEAS Map 76) According to the findings of PEAS, it would appear that the American pattern of 54 pronunciation of this word follows its historical development in England where, as late as 1797. John Walker was complaining of the common use of /£/ for the stressed vowel. Standard British English today has /ae/ as does cultivated American speech, /£ / remaining common in conservative speech areas and rural sections. Among our informants, seven said /ae/, two said /ae/ slightly raised, while three still said /£/. 3 u m a c Not all informants were familiar with this word, which is not surprising in view of the plant's scarcity in the extreme coastal region. The ones who knew of it gave its second syllable the vowel /ae/ of 1121315, common to cultivated speech almost everywhere in the Atlantic States except the Lower South. No evidence was found of the /e/ reported by PEAS for common and folk speech in the South. tassel According to PEAS the /ae/ of sack predominates in cultivated speech throughout the Eastern states and in the Upper South generally. Except for one speaker who said /a/ only, and another who said both that and /ae/. all informants said /ae/. /a‘/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.4) c a l m (PEAS Map 77) The informants pronounced the vowel in this word in three different ways: two said [a], five said [(1, (19], two said [0-] , and only one said [sea]. The first two variants PEAS finds to be common for cultured speakers throughout the Atlantic States, with minor exceptions; this is the /a-':a"(!/ of barn. Except for cultivated 55 speech in the Midland and Southern areas, PEAS reports a widespread use of the /ae/ of Egg. The vowel /;)/ of l_a_w_ is noted as a sporadic survival in eastern Pennsylvania, deriving from the Scotch-Irish who settled there in large numbers. Presumably both /39/ and /o/ are survivals of older forms remaining in the coastal Carteret County dialect. pal m According to PEAS the vowel of 951311 is "decidedly more common" in the South in palm than in (_:_al_m_. Our informants bear this out. saying only [Cl]. [m], and [a-]. There is no evidence of the pap [§_i__c_] which PEAS reports as replacing the word in the folk speech of the South and South Midland. c artridge (PEAS Map 78) The stressed vowel of this word is pronounced only as [a>] in this dialect, which agrees with the distribution accorded it by PEAS. There is no evidence of the survival of /EB/ . m a r s h (PEAS Map 79) Although in this dialect the word almost always refers to a salt marsh, there is no evidence for the pronunciation /ae/ for the vowel which PEAS found in folk speech in coastal areas . All informants said [62>]. hearth (PEAS Map 80) The informants had only one pronunciation for the vowel in this word, the /a/ of barn. This accords with the PEAS findings for the cultured and middle group in the Upper South . 56 c ro p (PEAS Map 81) The only vowel the informants used was /a/ in this word. which agrees with the general finding of PEAS of this as the usual vowel. However. there is no evidence of the /$/ of gap which PEAS reports finding along the Atlantic coast from Chesapeake Bay to the Neuse River (which is just north of Carteret County). yonder (PEAS Map 82) As PEAS reports, this word was recorded in the phrase over yonder, which has limited currency. Only four informants used it. but they all pronounced its stressed vowel /a/, which PEAS gives as the usual pronunciation. /A/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.5) brush As PEAS reports, the regular vowel in this word is /A/. However. in the speech of the Carteret County informants it is typically fronted to [A<]. bulge. bulk (PEAS Map 84) According to PEAS, the vowel in 132182 is //\/ along the coast from the Chesapeake to Florida. The usage of the informants of this study agrees with this finding. although (as in b_1_'_u_§h_, above) the vowel is generally fronted to [A<]. Again in accord with PEAS, the situation is the same for bulk. gum s (PEAS Map 85) In accordance with the findings of PEAS for the South, our informants regularly give this word the vowel /A/ of sun . As usual, most of them front it to [A<]. 57 judge (PEAS Map 86) In the South, except among cultured or urban speakers. the authors of PEAS find both the constricted and unconstricted / 3 / of t_h_i_r;ty in this word. They attribute this to assimilation between two palatals . As they go on to explain, where the same speaker may have both constricted and unconstricted [3], it is not easy to assign it to the phoneme /3/ or take it as an allophone of /A/. They discuss this with particular reference to northeastern North Carolina . This phenomenon does not seem to apply to the speech of Carteret County, where the phone is not quite so far fronted, and where the only version of /3 / is constricted. The pronunciation of the informants covers a range from [A] to [(3]. Specifically, two said [A], nine said [A4], and one said [(3]. As far as this dialect is concerned, the fronted vowel which usually replaces [A] wherever it occurs is clearly an allophone of /A/. mu sh (PEAS Map 87) Among the informants this vowel, like the others discussed in this section, was [A] or [A<] only. There was no evidence of the upgliding allophone ascribed by PEAS to the region . nothing (PEAS Map 88) According to PEAS. throughout the South this word has only the vowel //\/ of pp_t. Our findings agree. The informants used either [A] or [A<], with the usual front- ing common to the dialect. Rus sia (PEAS Map 89) As l'EAS found, the vowel /A / of r_u_s_h is regularly used by the cultured and most of the middle group. The Carteret County informants all said [A] or [v], except one who used [u]. This, according to PEAS, is rare in the South. though Map 89 shows one instance of it in the Craven -Carteret County area. s hut (PEAS Map 90) Only one informant gave the pronunciation of the vowel in this word the /£ / which PEAS finds common to folk and some middle-class speech in the South. The rest used [A], [A<], or [G], as is common for /A/ in this dialect. touch (PEAS Map 91) PEAS finds that cultured and most middle-class speakers in the South use an allophone of /A/ in this word, though in folk speech it commonly has the vowel /£ / of fefgh. The Carteret County informants all said [A] or [A<], with the typical fronting . tu 5 he s (PEAS Map 92) Although PEAS reports that tushes is the usual variant for tusks in the Eastern states (except in cultivated speech), only one of our informants used it. All the others said tusks . The one user gave it the usual fronted variant [A<] of /A / . This informant's immediate ancestors came from the Outer Banks, where usage would tend to be more conservative. 59 /U/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.6) butcher (PEAS Map 93) All informants pronounced the stressed vowel in this word with a (generally fronted) allophone of /U/. which accords with the PEAS findings for the South. The fronting of this vowel is as typical of the Carteret County speech as is the fronting of //\/, and comes out as [U]. [U<]. or [8]. There was no evidence of the /u/ which PEAS found in the estuary of the Neuse, just north of Carteret County. bushel. push (PEAS Map 94) The informants all gave the stressed vowel in these words the /U/ of p_i_i_l_l_. occasionally fronted. The range was thus [U"U<]. There was no evidence of the upgliding allophone which PEAS found in large areas of the South; possibly the upglide is precluded by the fronting tendency. put (PEAS Map 95) All informants pronounced the vowel in this word as either [U] or [U<]. the typical fronting. There was no evidence of the /A/ which PEAS finds among the folk and some middle-class speakers in the South. took (PEAS Map 96) All informants gave the vowel in this word the typical [U] or [U<] which are their allophones for /U/ . There was no evidence of the /A / which PEAS found "rather frequently" in the folk speech of the Carolinas . 60 /i/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.7) c re ek (PEAS Map 97) PEAS finds the /i/ of peak in this word in general use in the South, and our study finds this true of coastal Carteret County. Some of the informants displayed the interesting upglide to the vowel which is frequent among these people. Their allophones are thus [i] and [”i ]. either, neither (PEAS Map 98) The vowel /i/ in these words, as PEAS finds, "predominates decidedly on all social levels in all sections of the Eastern States . . . and is almost the only pronunciation current in the North and the Lower South l-EAS, however. finds the vowel /A/ in use in folk speech in North Carolina, showing one instance of it in the Craven-Carteret County area on Map 98; Of this there is no evidence among our informants . All used /i/ as follows: one said [i] and eight said [3i ]. N egro (PEAS Maps 99 ~100) As PEAS found for the old plantation country of the South, the usual neutral pro- nunciation of this word is /nlgra/, with the vowel of pig. Coastal Carteret County was not big plantation (country. but the same pattern applies. The only informants who said anything else for neutral use said colored people. The speakers who admitted to using contemptuous terms said [nlga], shine, j_ig_. and jigaboo, though there were few who did. 61 /e/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.8) afraid As PEAS found, the vowel /e/ of eight is commonly used in this word. All informants used this vowel, some of them with the same type of preliminary upglide as was found in /i/. Pronunciation was thus [el'] or [9 e1]. drain (I'EAS Map 101) This word is pronounced by our informants with the /e/ of {912, which PEAS finds typical of the cultured speakers throughout the Eastern states and fairly common among the middle group. There was no evidence of the /i/ of ESE-‘1 which PEAS finds typical of folk speech and shows instances of in the Craven- Carteret County area on Map 101. With their tendency to use a preliminary upglide. our speakers said [ei’] or [aet]. parents (PEAS Maps 102-104) The strong retroflection of coastal Carteret County speech makes its pronuncia- tion of this word quite atypical of the general region. It does not in the least resemble the pronunciation of _Mgpyor gaigy, as PEAS finds common, but is almost always pronounced in one syllable as either [pa.rnts] or [pErnts]. Only one informant gave the word the two-syllable form and the vowel /£ / . s c a r c e (PEAS Map 105) PEAS finds that the vowel in this word has a similar incidence to those in care, chair. (For a complete discussion of those vowels, see PEAS Section 4.5.) Most of our informants said [a] or [83], though four said [a] or [as], all the vowels 62 preceding a marked /r/. tomato (PEAS Map 106) As PEAS finds, the /e/ of eight is the most common stressed vowel in this word. All of our informants said [eP] except for a couple who used the preliminary upglide and said Pei]. /u/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.9) broom (PEAS Map 107) According to the findings of PEAS. all the residents of North Carolina should say /brum/. except for a few urban instances where /erm/ is a prestige borrowing. Coastal Carteret County fits neatly into this pattern; all informants said /brum/ . coop (PEAS Map 108) Although PEAS finds that the predominant pronunciation of the vowel in this word is the /U/ of p911 in the South, four of our informants said /kup/ . The other four who responded to the item said [U], [U<], or [8]. There seems to be no explanation of the presence of the four /u/ users, although it seems possible that the dialect originally contained both variants and has since been feeling the influence of the surrounding /U/ users in neighboring areas. There is no evidence of the /kUb/ which PEAS finds predominant in the coastal plain of the Carolinas in the middle and folk groups. Cooper (PEAS Map 109) Like the vowel in coop, the pronunciation of the one in Cooper is found by PEAS 63 to be the /U/ of book in the South. iiere the Carteret County speakers are more uniform -- all said [U] or [U<] except one who said [u]. This lone /u/ user was not one of those who said /kup/. hoop (PEAS Map 110) PEAS is very definite about the restriction of the pronunciation of /u/ as the vowel in this word: predominant in central and western Pennsylvania and central and western Massachusetts. occasional in southern New England and parts of New York State, and scattered in the Pennsylvania settlements of the southern highlands and in the low country of South Carolina. None of this explains why half of the Carteret County informants used /u/ while the other half used the expected /U/ (in the usual forms [U] and [U<]). The situation is similar to that noted for coop and Cooper, above. roof (PEAS Map 111) The distribution of /u/ or /U/ in this word is more complex than that of the same vowels in hpgp, above. PEAS finds that while /u/ is predominant in the Upper South. there are scatterings of /U/ along the coast. including the strip from the Chesapeake to the Neuse (just north of Carteret County). It seems. therefore, quite straightforward to find ten informants saying [U] or [U<] while only two say /u/. However, one of the /u/ users also used /u/ unpredictably in Cooper, which adds a little weight to the suggestion that the /u/ pronunciation is an old variant in this dialect which is now dying out. 64 hoofs (PEAS Map 112) According to PEAS. the vowel /u/' in this word is "barely as common" as /U/ and /A / in North Carolina. Among the Carteret County informants /U/ predominates absolutely. in the usual range of [Ur U<*B] thanks to the general tendency to front this vowel. root (PEAS Map 113) According to PEAS. the vowel /u/ in this word is universal in the South. The Carteret County informants with only one exception said [u] or [u<]; the exception's vowel was [UA]. markedly raised, which may be an idiosyncratic case of a lowered /u/. soot (PEAS Maps 114-115) According to PEAS. this word should have the vowel /A / in folk speech and, with some exceptions. among the middle class in this general region. The pattern among our informants is in accord with this. Eight said [A ] or [A<]. while four said /U/. food (PEAS Map 116) The usual vowel in this word is /u/ except in Pennsylvania and some adjoining districts. according to PEAS. All our informants said [u] or [u<]. wound. wounded (PEAS Map 117) PEAS finds that the stressed vowel in this word is /u/ for all groups outside of New England. All our informants used /u/. though the allophones show aninter- esting variation as a result ofcoming after /w/. In all but afew cases the /u/ is 65 G E preceded by a central glide upward. giving [9u. eu. u] or [Qua u<]. goober, cooter (PEAS Map 118) These words for 'peanut' and 'turtle' respectively are reported by PEAS in Virginia. South Carolina, Georgia, and immediately surrounding areas. None of our informants used either word. even though Map 118 shows the Craven- Carteret County area as one in which goober is used. 5 pook (PEAS Map 119) As PEAS says. the word comes into American English from Pennsylvania German and from the Dutch of the Hudson Valley. PEAS found it unfamiliar to many Southerners. although it has, I believe, become more common through literary influence. The informants generally did not use it, using [13% or gh_o_s_t_§ instead. The three who did use it gave its vowel the usual range of pronunciation for /u/: [u, u<, ti]. ewe (PEAS Maps 120-121) According to PEAS, the pronunciation of /ju/ for this word is common among cultured speakers throughout the Eastern states. The older /jo/ form is rather general in the South. and instances of it are shown on Map 121 for the Craven- Carteret County area. Since sheep are scarce to non-existent in coastal Carteret County. however, it is not surprising to find most speakers giving the literary pronunciation /ju/. Only one speaker retained /jo/-. which he pronounced [jeu]. 66 /0/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.10) goal (PEAS Map 122) As PEAS reports, the word regularly rhymes with p_o_lg in the South; it does the same in Carteret County. All informants pronounced the vowel /o/. using the usual allophones [0“] and [6”]. home (PEAS Map 123) In the South. PEAS finds that this word generally has the free vowel /o/ of m. Although Map 123 shows one instance of /U/ in the Craven -Carteret County area. all informants used /o/. giving it the pronunciation [6“] so common to this dialect . won 't (PEAS Map 125) According to PEAS. usage in southeastern North Carolina is rather evenly divided between /0/ and /u~U/. However. the vowel /u/ of _mppp is a "striking feature" of the speech of the Carolina coast. It is certainly the general pronun- ciation in neighboring Craven County. but our Carteret County informants with only one exception said /0/ -- either as [on] or [3“]; the lone exception said [u< ]. yolk (I‘EAS Maps 126-128) PEAS found the two major pronunciations of the vowel of this word to be /0/ and /£/- According to PEAS, both were tolerated types in Standard British English well beyond the American Revolution. Today /j£lk/ is the common folk pronun- ciation in most of the Eastern states, and is widely used by middle-class speakers as well through the tidewater areas of the South. Among the cultivated it is gradually being replaced by /jok/ or /jolk/. Maps 126 and 127 show both /jok/ 67 and /j£lk/ in the Craven-Carteret County area. but the majority of our informants said [jeuk]. There were two who said [jelk] only, and one who said [j Elk] one time and [jouk] another. /3/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.11) daughter (PEAS Map 129) PEAS reports that in the greater part of the Eastern states daughter has the vowel /3/ of law. All our informants said this without exception. There was no evidence of the scattered instances reported for /ae/ as survivals in eastern North Carolina . faucet (PEAS Map 130) Although PEAS finds this term largely confined to the North. it does occur in the South, and when it does it has the /.)/ of law or the /a/ of fallen This is borne out in the findings of this study. Eight informants of the nine who used the word gave it the vowel /.‘)/; the other said /(l/. Two other informants used the synonym /spIkIt/. haunted (PEAS Map 131) PEAS reports that the use of the vowel /.9/ in this word south of the Potomac is "fairly definitely restricted" to cultivated speech. This vowel it considers a relative newcomer which is gaining ground. PEAS found /ee/ to be the regular vowel in folk speech and the predominant one in middle-class speech in the South. and shows instances of it for the Craven-Carteret County area on Map 131 . It is my impression that the spread of /.’)/ has considerably accelerated in the South 68 since the PEAS study was made. probably through the attacks of school -teachers on superstition and the influence of the spelling. The responses of our informants bear this out. Only one said /ae/ only; one said both /ae/ and /3/. while the rest said /9/ only. s an 5 age (PEAS Map 132) The responses of our informants agree with what we should expect from the PEAS findings for the South. All gave the stressed vowel in this word the /D/ of 13w. bec au se (PEAS Map 133) All informants gave the stressed vowel in this word the sound of /:)/. which is in accord with the findings of PEAS for the South. There was no evidence of the /e/ reported to occur in the folk speech of the South. water (PEAS Map 134) According to PEAS, the majority pronunciation of the stressed vowel in this word is a rounded back vowel belonging to the phoneme /3/. and this is shown for eastern North Carolina on Map 134. This was found to be true of all the Carteret County informants . wash (PEAS Map 135) Although the national incidence of the /a/ and /3 / phoneme is complex for this word. in the South the /a/ is predominant (see PEAS for a complete discussion of /a/ and /3/ after /w/). Our informants were no exception: all said /f‘/. using [a]. [w] or [at]. [a3]. 69 fog (PEAS Map 136) PEAS found the use of /-)/ in this word "infrequent to rare" in eastern North Carolina. but shows instances of it in the Craven-Carteret County area on Map 136; it was the most common vowel among our informants. All used it but two who said [a] and [g] In neighboring Craven County. /r./ is predominant. long. strong (PEAS Map 137) PEAS found the predominant pronunciation of the vowel in these words to be /(1/ in eastern Virginia and all of North Carolina, but /.)/ in neighboring regions. The Carteret speakers do not fall into this pattern . All said /.')/ but one lone M/ user. on (PEAS Map 138) PEAS finds that /.)/. "always well rounded and often an upgliding diphthong," is nearly universal in the South and South Midland. This is true for our informants, all of whom said [J] or [39]. fought forward PEAS did not report on these words. but it seems worthwhile to comment that one user each (a mother and son whose ancestors came from the more conservative Outer Banks) gave the vowel the sound of the diphthong /au/. This is an infrequent but not unheard-of survival in the area surrounding the lower Neuse valley, as I know from my childhood. 70 /C!/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.12) grandma. grandpa. ma. pa Since only three informants used any of these words, there is insufficient evidence on which to base any general conclusions. All gave the final syllable the m/ of fa_t_h_e_1:, which PEAS finds common in the South. and there was no evidence of the /A/ which PEAS found in the Neuse valley. /ai/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.13) appendicitis (PEAS Map 139) In line with the PEAS findings for general use in the Eastern states. all of our informants used in this word the vowel /ai/ of gigpp. As is common in this dialect. it was most often pronounced [01*] or [iii ], although a couple used the more typically Southern [a- ]. iodine (PEAS Map 140) As PEAS reports, the last syllable of this word in North Carolina is given the vowel /ai/ of sight. As in the case of appendicitis, most of our informants pro- nounced it [mi] or [51"]; the same two as before said [a-]. quinine (l’EAS Map 141) For a general discussion of the distribution of variant pronunciations of this word, see PEAS, page 166. In accord with its findings for North Carolina. how- ever, our informants predominantly said /kwInain/; only two used the /kwainain/ which PEAS feels is a spelling pronunciation disseminated by the American drug store . 71 /au/ AND VARIANT (IEAS Section 5.14) drought (PEAS Map 142) According to PEAS, /draut/. rhyming with 93$, is common only in cultivated speech but has some currency in the middle group. while /drau9/, with the same vowel, is nearly universal in folk speech. Most of the Carteret County informants used "dry spell," but the three who used drought pronounced it to rhyme with p_u_t_. /:)i/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.15) joint (PEAS Maps 143-146) This word. according to PEAS, has the vowel /o i/ of bpy in cultivated and common speech everywhere. It is quite frequent in folk speech in parts of North Carolina as well. Our informants used no other pronunciation. They used the same for the words joined, boiled, spoiled, boil, oyster, andpily. displaying none of the variants which PEAS finds in some coastal districts . Boiled, spoiled. boil, and (_)_i_l_ tended to be pronounced with the allophone [39]. /iu/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.16) blue, chew, suit (PEAS Map 147) As PEAS finds, after /1, E. s/ all dialects in the Atlantic states have /u/ in words of this sort without a preceding / j / , except for a certain incidence in New England of a variant with /iu/ . The pronunciation of our informants followed that of the majority. 72 UNSTRESSED VOWELS /9-" I/ (PEAS Section 5.17) bucket, skillet. careless. houses, towel. funnel. mountain (PEAS Map 148) As PEAS finds for the entire South. the vowel in the unstressed syllable of such words is usually checked /l/. usually articulated as [1], except before /n/ and /l/ as in mountain and towel. In the latter cases these words end in /-an, -al/, articulated as [-an. -31] or as syllabic [1.1, 1 ]. This was true of the Carteret County informants, though it is perhaps appropriate to note that towel was given the typical Southern pronunciation of nearly monosyllabic [taeal] in most cases . /av- 3 wi/ (PEAS Section 5.18) sofa, china (PEAS Map 149) As PEAS notes, the usual pronunciation of the final vowel in these words is /9/. This is what we find among the Carteret County speakers, although Map 149 shows an instance of the /I/ reported for some dialect areas in this general region . Missouri. Cincinnati (PEAS Map 150) Although PEAS reports finding /8/ as the final vowel in these words in parts of North Carolina including the Craven-Carteret County area. our informants had only /I/. 73 father . mother (PEAS Map 151) Although coastal North Carolina usually has /a / as the final syllable of these words, the speech of coastal Carteret County is marked by strong retroflection . Our informants therefore had [3‘] only. (Instances of this are shown for the area on Map 151.) / 0w- 9 J- 3/ (PEAS Section 5.19) borrow (PEAS Maps 152-153) The final syllable of this word has three possible pronunciations: /o/, /a/, or [i]. PEAS reports /0/ as rare in the South, /3/ as widely used by the cultured and less so by the middle group, and /i/ as being characteristic of folk speech. Our informants covered the whole range: one said /o/, eight said /a /, and two said /i/. tomato (PEAS Map 154) In accordance with the PEAS finding that the ending /a / predominates decisively for this word among all social classes in the South, all but one of our informants said that. The exception used the constricted /3 / which PEAS notes for parts of North Carolina . widow, meadow, yellow (PEAS Map 155) According to PEAS, the final ending /0/ for these words is rare in the South, /9 / being the predominant vowel except that in areas where _f_a_t_lle_1; ends with constricted /3/, these words tend to do likewise. This latter includes eastern North Carolina. Our findings agree. There were lone instances of /o/ in 74 yellow and widow, one instance of constricted /3/ in yellow and two in widow; all other informants said /9 / throughout. CONSONANTS /r/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.20) door (PEAS Map 156) As PEAS notes, postvocalic /r/ as in door, care, poor. etc. is preserved "to a 1' considerable extent in coastal North Carolina. Map 156 shows instances of this in our general area, and we find it to be true of our informants' pronunciation of the word door . Two only had the general Southern /3 / ; all others had /r/ . your aunt (PEAS Map 157) The presence or absence of "linking" /r/ in such contexts as this phrase is con- fused in coastal Carteret County by a strong tendency to interpose a slight glottal stop before a stressed word beginning with a vowel, whatever the final consonant of the precedingword. Since, coastal Carteret County speech is not /r/- less. we should expect on the basis of PEAS' findings a high incidence of "linking" /r/ . Actually, we found this for only four informants; the other eight said [ -r?ae-]. law and order (PEAS Map 158) PEAS found that "intrusive" linking /r/ does not occur in the South in this phrase . This is true also of our informants, none of whom inserted an /r/ after law . swallow it (PEAS Map 159) PEAS finds that a linking /r/ in this phrase occurs chiefly in the South, South 75 Midland. and eastern New England. It is particularly common in the South and South Midland, and Map 159 shows instances of it in the Craven-Carteret County area. PEAS attributes it to British folk speech, whether in areas lacking postvocalic /r/ or not. In our dialect area, six used the linking /r/ and five did not . wash, ought to (PEAS Map 160) Intrusive /r/ does not occur in either of these contexts in the speech of our coastal. Carteret County informants. library (PEAS Maps 161-162) Only one informant used the disyllabic variant PEAS notes for northeastern North Carolina, /'laibri/. All the rest used the trisyllabic version /'lai1beri/, which PEAS finds frequent in folk speech and among the middle group in North Carolina. /j/ AND VARIANTS (PEAS Section 5.21) new , due. Tuesday (PEAS Maps 163-165) All of the informants used the /nju. dju, tjuzde/ which PEAS finds has general currency in the South. Many fronted the vowel slightly to [us]. as is common for this dialect. ye a s t (PEAS Map 166) PEAS finds the pronunciation /ist/ for this word the most common way of saying it in the Midland and the South, and Map 166 shows it as predominant in central coastal North Carolina. However, our informants do not follow this pattern . One said /ist/ only, one said both /ist/ and /jist/, and the rest said /jist/. 76 Perhaps this reflects a tendency (which PEAS notes only for Southern cities) to adopt the spelling pronunciation. garden (PEAS Map 167) PEAS reports that in eastern North Carolina this word with the initial cluster /gj/ is largely restricted to folk speech . It does not occur among our informants at all. Massachusetts (PEAS Map 168) PEAS finds that the usual pronunciation of the third syllable of this word in the South is /tju-/ as in _tppg. All of our informants said this except one who said /tu-/, a variant for which PEAS finds evidence in some scattered instances in the coastal plain of the Carolinas. FRICATIVES (PEAS Section 5 . 22) nephew (PEAS Map 169) PEAS reports that /na fju/ is the usual pronunciation of this word in the Eastern states. This is true of our informants; all said it. hoofs (PEAS Map 169) According to PEAS, the plural form of this word has the voiceless fricative /f/ nearly everywhere in the Atlantic States . /huvz/ is common only in central Pennsylvania and western South Carolina. although scattered instances occur else- where. Nine of our informants said /ths/, but three said /hUvz/. which PEAS says is "exceedingly rare ." 77 without (PEAS Map 170) PEAS reports that this word has the voiced fricative / 'b/ nearly universally in an area that includes all of North Carolina. Seven of our informants used this pronunciation. However. five of them used the voiceless fricative /0/, which PEAS finds common only in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the Valley of Virginia, as well as the Lower South. It also has some frequency in tidewater Virginia, however, and Map 170 shows scattered instances in northeastern North Carolina. gr e a s y (PEAS Map 171) The use of voiced /z/ in this word. according to PEAS, is universal throughout the South except for a few instances along the coast of the Carolinas . All of our informants used /z/ . vase All our informants produced /ves/, which PEAS finds the usual pronunciation of this word except in some eastern cities . M r s . (PEAS Map 172) According to PEAS, except in North Carolina the prevalent pronunciation of this word in the South is /mIzIz/ or /mIz/ . In North Carolina the usage situation is "confused." Six of our informants said /mIz/, including one who also joined with another four in saying /mIzIz/; in addition, two said /mIerz/ and three said /mIzarz/. 78 sumac (PEAS Map 173) Aside from a few urban speakers. mainly along the seaboard. PEAS finds that most people in the Atlantic States pronounce this word with an initial /§/ as in 31193. Among our informants the picture was confused by a relative lack of acquaintance with the word. Four speakers said /§/. one said /s/. and the rest didn't know how it was pronounced. wheelbarrow, whinny. wharf (PEAS Maps 174-175) PEAS reports that initial /h/ is preserved before /w/ in stressed syllables in such words as wheelbarrow. whip. whinny, whicker, in the greater part of the Eastern states. This area includes eastern North Carolina, and all of our informants follow this pattern . The word \ylyapf is the only one which has lost /h/ widely outside the area in which lost /h/ is common. According to PEAS, /w/ is common in this word throughout the coastal plain of the Southern states; it shows instances of it for our area on Map 175. We find it to be true among our informants, although seven followed a pattern PEAS reports for New York State and the Southern upland, using dock instead of wharf. and one used both. Only one used wharf only. humor (PEAS Map 176) According to PEAS the prevalent pronunciation of the initial part of this word is /j-/, and initial /h/ occurs with few exceptions only in New England and Upstate New York. Our informants fall largely among the exceptions. Seven used initial /h/, and only three initial / j / . It is not possible to say whether this results from the encroachment of a spelling pronunciation, or if it is a survival of an 79 older form imported by ancestors who first settled in the North and then moved to North Carolina . MISCELLANEOUS CONSONANTS (PEAS Section 5.23) coop Among our informants this word follows the general pattern PEAS finds in the Eastern states of /kup/ or /kUp/. There is no incidence of the variant /kUb/ reported outside the Albemarle-Pamlico region of the coastal South. mushroom (PEAS Map 177) Although PEAS found in this general eastern North Carolina region a trisyllabic version of this word ending in /m/. our informants all used a variant that was disyllabic and ended in /m/ . The general pattern of regional variants for this word is so complex that this does not seem very surprising. walnut (PEAS Map 178) PEAS reports that in two subareas of the Atlantic coast -- southern New England, including Long Island. and eastern Virginia with adjoining parts of Maryland and North Carolina - /l/ is often lost in m. Only one of our informants had lost this /l/; all the others retained it. once, twice (PEAS Map 179) An added final /t/ is found in these words by PEAS throughout the Midland and the South, widely used by folk and middle-class speakers . Three of the eleven informants who responded to this item added /t/ to once. and three added it to 80 twice . This means that four informants added the /t/. since only two did it to both words . turtle (PEAS Map 180) PEAS finds that the second /t/ in this word is largely replaced by /k/ in folk speech in the South and South Midland. Map 180 shows one instance of this in the Craven-Carteret County area. All our informants said £u_£t_1_e_ but two who replaced the /t/ with a /k/. These two were a mother and son whose ancestors came from the Outer Banks. CHAPTER VIII A SURVEY OF VERB FORMS For convenience in comparing the usage of the coastal Carteret County communities with that of other areas of the Eastern Atlantic states, this chapter follows the organization and ordering ofwordlists of E. Bagby Atwood's A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1953). This volume will be hereafter referred to as VFEUS. References are given throughout to page numbers and Figures (maps) within that volume . Much stress is laid in VFEUS on the social and educational differences between the classes of informants; these have virtually no relevance for our Carteret County speakers, who have no significant differences in social status. Their ages range from 16 to 54. their education from grade school through two years of college. Most have from two to four years of high school, and there seems to be no correlation between educational level and adherence to "standard" grammatical forms . If they are to be placed anywhere within Atwood's categories, they would seem to fall closer to Type 11 than any other: "younger, more modern. better educated ." The most notable difference between our findings and those of VFEUS, if our informants are to be considered essentially Type 11's, is a considerably greater tendency toward the use of more modern, less rural forms. As noted before for the vocabulary items. this may result from the time lapse between the 81 82 studies and the increasing tendency toward standardization of usage because of general education, the impact of radio and television. and the decreasing isola- tion of the communities . I. TENSE FORMS ask (VFEUS page 5 and Figure 2) The only present form of this verb used by the coastal Carteret County informants is /aesk/ . In forming the preterite. all but three used the combination ask : asked (the latter frequently being pronounced [aest]). The three exceptions used the leveled combination ask : ask. VFEUS reports both combinations for the Eastern states, the latter being scattered and less common. begin (VFEUS page 6) The preterite is recorded in the context "He began to talk. Only one of our informants used the form begin; all the rest said began. VFEUS reports both forms, the first occurring in less than half the communities and being very slightly more common in Type I than Type II. bite (VFEUS page 6 and Figure 3) The past participle is recorded in "He was bitten by a dog." The form bitten was used by all but three of our informants. Of these three, two used the form bit, '9 while the third used the more colorful "eat up by a dog. The form bitten is, as VFEUS reports, strongly favored by the cultured informants everywhere. 83 blow (VFEUS page 6) In the context "It blew and blew," all our informants said blew for the preterite of this verb. VFEUS found that Mwas used by nine-tenths of the Type I informants in North Carolina and about four ~fifths of the Type II's . It is not at all common among cultured speakers. Since our informants fall more or less into Type 11, they diverge from what VFEUS found to be the usual pattern. boil (VFEUS page 6) The past participle (adjective) form of this word was uniformly l_)_o_i_l_e_(_i_ among our informants in the phrase "boiled eggs There was no evidence of the bglt which VFEUS reports as occurring with fair frequency throughout the South Atlantic states . break (VFEUS page 7) The past participle was recorded in "The glass is broken"; only three informants used the form broke. The rest all said broken . VFEUS finds that the latter is almost universal in cultured speech, and predominates in Type II speech through~ out the Eastern states . bring (VFEUS page 7) The past participle was recorded in the context "I have brought your coat." All our informants said brought, which is in accord with the findings of VFEUS, which reports that it is "very heavily predominant" in all major areas and all classes. 84 burst (VFEUS page 7) The preterite was recorded in the sentence "The pipe burst." VFEUS finds that the form b3r_s_t_ predominates among all types in New England, and among Type 11's in all areas except parts of the South Midland. It is "strongly preferred" by cultured informants in all areas. It was strongly preferred among our coastal Carteret County informants also. Only two said busted; all the rest said burst. catch (VFEUS page 8 and Figure 4) The standard form for the preterite of this verb, according to VF EUS, is caught in all areas in all classes. although variant forms are found among Type I speakers. Among our informants we found only the dominant form caught. climb (VFEUS page 8 and Figure 5) Although VF EUS reports various interesting preterite forms of this verb, including the strong form clim in northeastern North Carolina, all our informants used only climbed. come (VFEUS page 9) The preterite form came is, according to VFEUS, favored by cultured informants in all areas, while the form come is widely used by Type I speakers and Type 11's, with frequency increasing in the South. Seven of our Carteret County informants used came; three used come. dive (VFEUS page 9 and Figure 6) The form under investigation here is the preterite . VF EUS found that dived predominates in the South Atlantic states on all levels, whereas in the North and 85 New England dove is very common. Of our informants. two said dove. and all the rest said dived. do (VFEUS page 9) The preterite form of this verb, on which VF EUS reports, was not recorded in the study of the coastal Carteret County inhabitants. drag (VFEUS page 9) The preterite form of this verb, dragged, predominates among cultured speakers everywhere, according to VFEUS. Among other types it is limited by the com- peting form gug. This form, except in certain specified areas not affecting coastal North Carolina, predominates rather strongly in both Types I and II. Among our informants we find seven instances of drug to three of dragged. draw (VFEUS page 10) According to VFEUS, the preterite form drew predominates in cultured and Type II speech in all areas. The form drawed it considers clearly rustic and rapidly receding. It was not found at all among our informants, all of whom said drew . dream (VFEUS page 10) VFEUS finds that only about a third of the inhabitants of the Eastern states use the preterite dreamed, "without any significant geographical concentration . " Although the form dreamt was used by the majority of speakers, there is some evidence toward dreamed in several areas, and dreamt is clearly receding through- out the South Atlantic states . Our informants without exception used dreamed. 86 drink (VFEUS page 10 and Figure 7) The preterite form drank, VFEUS finds, predominates among all classes with a few regional exceptions. Although it found _c_l_1_'_i_1_n_l£ very common among Type I speakers in coastal North Carolina south of the Neuse River. we find only three of our informants using it. All the rest said drank. In the South Atlantic states the preterite- past participle combination drank : drunk predominates in cultured speech but is much less common in popular speech, according to VFEUS, although it was gaining ground among Type II informants . Among our informants we found the same proportion as for the use of the "standard" preterite: three used drag}: for the past participle and the rest used @313. They were not, however, the same three who used drunk as a preterite. drive (VFEUS page 11 and Figure 8) The preterite form 9:913 predominates in all areas among all classes, according to VF EUS, except for a few regional variants which do not affect our area. All our informants said £15233. The use of the "standard" form driven for the past participle becomes less and less frequent as you go South, until VFEUS found two thirds of its North Carolina informants using some other form . Among our Carteret County residents, however, we found 95.1199 to be overwhelmingly predominant. Only two informants used the leveled form drove. drown (VFEUS page 12) The past participle drowned is found to predominate in cultured speech everywhere. according to VFEUS. The only variant, drownded, is south of New England a Type I form, and was used by about a quarter of the Type 11 speakers in North 87 Carolina. Among our informants only two used drownded; the rest said drowned. eat (VFEUS page 12 and Figure 9) The preterite form ate is ”strongly favored" by cultured informants in all areas, VF EUS finds. The variant eat was particularly prevalent in North Carolina, where nine-tenths of Type I informants used it. and more than half of the Type Il's. Three of our Carteret County residents used _e_a_t; the others said a_t_e_. Although VFEUS finds that where the preterite _e_a_t is used, the past participle is almost invariably leveled, only one of the three who used it leveled the participle. However, another gave a response elsewhere in which he leveled it: "eat up by a dog. All the rest said eaten. fight (VFEUS page 14 and Figure 10) VFEUS surveyed only the Middle and South Atlantic states for the preterite of this verb, finding that although m is predominant generally in cultured speech, there is a large area of coastal North Carolina (among other areas) in which the form /faut/ occurs frequently. not only among Type I informants but Type 11's as well. Only the oldest of our informants (whose parents came from the Outer Banks) said /faut/; all the others said M. According to VFEUS. informants who did not use this or the other variant, fit, classified them as "old" or "old- fashioned." It is my impression that the form has been dying out in North Carolina for some time; it was not common in the Neuse River area even during my childhood . 88 fit (VFEUS page 14) The preterite of this verb was recorded in the context "His coat fitted me VF EUS found that the form _f_i_t_t__e_d predominated only in eastern North Carolina in the Middle and South Atlantic states . This we find to be true among our informants: two said fit to eight who said fitted. freeze (VFEUS page 14 and Figure 11) Although VFEUS reports a number of variants of the preterite of this verb beside the "standard" froze, they are sporadic and mainly confined to Type I speakers. All our informants said froze. give (VFEUS page 15) As VFEUS finds, the preterite of this verb is 83313 nearly universally in cultured speech and it predominates in Type II speech in all areas. Among our informants, all used gal/g except one who used give. However, in the case of the participle, as a synonym for "tired, exhausted," four used the expression "give out." grow (VFEUS page 15) The preterite form m, according to VFEUS, is universal in cultured speech and predominates among Type 11's in all areas; growed is scattered, but shows considerable frequency in Type I speech . Only one of our informants used the latter form. Although the past participle of this verb was not investigated in our study, one informant supplied it instead of the preterite, rephrasing the sentence "Bob grew a lot" as "Bob sure has growed." 89 h ang (VFEUS page 16) The past participle of this verb was recorded in the context "The murderer was hanged." VFEUS finds that the form l_1_u_n_g predominates in all areas and among all types. Hanged was rare, especially in the South. Only one of our informants used hanged; all the rest said hung. hear (VFEUS page 16 and Figure 12) The past participle form heard is, according to VF EUS, standard except for Type I speakers, especially the Southern ones. None of the variants of these latter which VFEUS found were used by any of our informants . All said heard. help (VFEUS page 16 and Figure 13) Although VF EUS finds a strong pattern of incidence of the variant holp for the preterite or past participle of this verb in eastern North Carolina, none of our informants used anything but the standard helped. kneel (VFEUS page 17) In the South Atlantic states VFEUS found that about two ~fifths of the informants used the form kneeled; in North Carolina it was considerably more common among Type I than Type 11. Three of our Carteret County informants used kneeled only, and seven used knelt only; one used both. 5291}: according to VFEUS, is the dominant form in all areas, and heavily favored by the cultured. know (VFEUS page 17) According to VFEUS, the preterite form knew is predominant throughout the Eastern states . We found no evidence in our study of the weak form knowed 90 which was found to be very common among both Type I and Type 11 speakers . All of our informants said knew. learn (VFEUS page 17) VFEUS found that half the New England informants and about half to three- quarters of speakers from other areas substituted the verb learn in the context "Who taught you that?" None of our informants performed this substitution. All used taught. lie (VFEUS page 18) The present infinitive and the preterite of this verb were recorded in the contexts "I'm going to lie down” and "He lay in bed all day" VFEUS found that the combination Lie : Lay is the dominant popular usage throughout most of North Carolina. and that Lie : _l_a_i_d was uncommon. A considerable number in the state used the leveled combination Lay : Lay. Usage among our Carteret County speakers was mixed. Three said l_ay_: laid; two said Lay : lay; the rest said l_i_e_ : lay. might (VFEUS page 18 and Figure 14) Among our informants we found no evidence of the form _mgughl which VFEUS found among more than half the Type I inhabitants in Virginia and North Carolina but among less than one sixth of the Type II's . All of the Carteret County speakers said might. ride (VFEUS page 19 and Figure 15) VF EUS found the form rode very common for the past participle of this verb in the South Atlantic states among speakers of Types I and 11, while ridden is 91 universal in cultured speech. Among our informants. only two used rode; the rest used ridden. rise (VFEUS page 19 and Figure 16) Only the preterite of this verb was recorded in our study. The standard form r9_s_e_ predominates, according to VFEUS, with a scattering of r_i_z_, which occurs with especial frequency in New England but is also found elsewhere. It is the dominant form in the South among Type I speakers, and has some currency among Type 11's. The dominant form in coastal Carteret County, according to our study, is rose. Only one speaker said riz. *— r un (VFEUS page 20) The preterite was recorded in the context "He ran a boat ashore." VF EUS found that run was used by nearly all Type I and Type II informants in Virginia and North Carolina, and that in general 531 was normally used south of the Potomac only by cultured speakers . Our informants differed from this pattern. One of the three who used runwas a young man with two years of college. All the rest used ran, which included people with less than a high school education. -———.—‘ see (VFEUS page 20 and Figure 17) Although VFEUS reports a wide divergence of usage from the standard preterite form saw among all but cultured users in all areas. there was only a uniform use of saw among our informants. shrink (VFEUS page 20) The preterite form shrunk, VF EUS found, predominates among all types in all 92 areas; shrank is scattered throughout the East. but is more common in the North and "almost unknown in the South However. although four of our informants said shrunk, all the rest said shrank. sit (VFEUS page 21 and Figure 18) VFEUS found that two present forms (or separate verbs) were current: _s_i_t and set. Further, it found that south of Pennsylvania _si_t was rather uncommon except in cultured and urban speech. Informants who use sit tend to use the preterite _s__a_t_ in the coastal areas. The preterite _s__o_t_ was found (and shown in Figure 18) to be quite common in North Carolina. However, all of our Carteret County informants said _s_i_t : sat except one who used set : set. ——.—-—.———- spoil (VFEUS page 21) The past participle (adjective) form was recorded in the context "The meat is spoiled. VFEUS found that two forms were in use in the East, spoiled and spoilt . Although the form with /t/ was found to be common south of New York (used by three -fourths of Type I. about half of Type II, and in the South by over a third of the cultured speakers). our informants without exception used the /d/ form . s te al (VFEUS page 22) VF EUS reports that its data on this verb is incomplete, since the item "Who swiped my pencil?" was designed to elicit synonyms of steal. Their data shows that most informants in the South used _s__t9_l_e_, and so we find to be the case among our Carteret County speakers . Only two said swiped; eight said stole . 93 sweat (VFEUS page 22) VFEUS finds that the uninflected preterite sweat is practically universal through- out the North. and the inflected sweated is increasingly common as one moves South (four-fifths of the speakers in North Carolina used it). Among our informants. six used the inflected form, while three said sweat. sw ell (VFEUS page 22) The preterite of this verb was recorded in the context "My hand swelled up" and the past participle (or adjective) in "It is swollen." VFEUS found that the com- bination swelled : swollen was almost universal in cultured speech. and very common in Type II; it was used by about one third of the latter in North Carolina. VFEUS found only two informants anywhere who used the combination swole : swelled. Curiously, this is what we found in Carteret County. Two said swole : swelled, and all the rest said swelled : swollen. swim (VFEUS page 23) The preterite swam. VFEUS found. is universal in cultured speech and favored in Type II speech nearly everywhere. M is a popular variant which predom- inates in Type I in the South and is frequent among the Type II speakers . Of our informants, three said swum. while the rest said swam. take (VFEUS page 23 and Figure 19) VF EUS finds that the standard preterite took is practically universal in cultured speech . South of the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary it is dominant in Type II speech and not uncommon in Type I. The variant tuck is reported to be fairly 94 common in North Carolina. and taken rather less so. Of the various past participle forms, taken is by far the most common. The most usual combination is took : taken, though there are many variations . Among our informants, the predominant combination was took : taken (eight); two said taken : took, and two said took : took. teach (VFEUS page 24) VF EUS found that those who used teach in the context "Who taught you that?" invariably used the form taught. Our findings agree. All of our informants said taught . te a r (VFEUS page 24) The preterite form was recorded in the context "The road was all torn up." The form torn, VFEUS found, is almost universal in cultured speech. In the South, the form £933 is "all but universal" in Type I and in most areas predominates in Type II. Three of our informants said tore, while all the rest said torn. throw (VFEUS page 24) The preterite form m, VF EUS finds, occurs among all types in all areas. The form throwed tends to predominate among Type I speakers, and to be used by a third to a fifth of the Type II's . Only two of our informants (brothers) used throwed. All the rest used threw. w ake (VFEUS page 25 and Figure 20) VFEUS found that woke is by far the most common preterite of this verb in major areas. In the South waked is fairly common, though VF EUS finds a tendency for 95 areas in which waked occurs to substitute woke: "this is especially striking in N. C . . where 310.13? is chosen by the younger informant in about three fourths of the communities of divided usage." VFEUS goes on to comment that in North Carolina about two -thirds of the cultured informants prefer "the more old- fashioned" form w__al_<_e_(_i_; everywhere else woke predominates among this group. All of our Carteret County speakers said w_o_l_<_e_ except one undecided lady who said, "Woke up; no, waked up; no, wakened." wear (VFEUS page 25) The past participle was recorded in the context "He is worn out." VFEUS finds that the standard @111 predominates on all levels in most of the North. Among Type I speakers in the South, wg.1_‘_e_ is used by two -thirds to nine -tenths in different areas, and by a fourth to two -thirds of Type II's. All but three of our informants used worn; the three said wore . w rite (VFEUS page 26) Outside of New England, VF EUS finds, the past participle of this verb is predom- inant in the form we among Type I and Type II informants in most areas . VFEUS considers this form to be an uneducated rather than an older form, which perhaps accounts for our results in Carteret County. Only one informant used wrote. All the others used written . II. PERSONAL FORMS OF THE PRESENT INDICATIVE I work, we work (VFEUS page 26) According to VFEUS, the inflected forms I works and we works occur only among 96 Type I informants. especially the more old-fashioned Negroes. Neither occurred among our informants . I have (VFEUS page 26) VFEUS finds that this first person singular of h_a_vs_ as the principal verb in "I have my troubles" is almost the only form recorded in New England, but becomes much less frequent south of that region. The only form recorded for our informants was "I've got my troubles." As an auxiliary, as in "I've been thinking" or "I have heard it," VFEUS finds that the usual form everywhere is I've. This is true of our informants also . I be, he be, etc. (VFEUS page 27 and Figure 21) The present personal forms of to be were recorded in the contexts "Am I going I! H to get some?", "He isn't as tall as I am, I'm not as tall as he is" and "How are you?" VFEUS found the use of b3 for is very common in New England; it occurred sporadically as far south as Pennsylvania. It did not occur in the South, nor does it occur among our informants . Neither do the forms "Is I going?" or "Is they?" which are common among Southern Negroes . he does (VFEUS page 27 and Figure 22) VFEUS found dies to be the most common form in the contexts "He does it all the time," "Does he do that sort of thing?" and "He does" (emphatic), although the uninflected form d9 occurred with some frequency in Virginia, eastern North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, largely among Type I informants. We found no evidence of this among our informants . All used does. 97 he doesn't (VFEUS page 28) The negative third person singular of this verb was recorded in the context "He doesn't care. Although VFEUS finds that the form don't is "universal in Types I and II" in the South Atlantic states. we find only one of our informants using it in this context. All the rest said doesn' t , although in an aside on another item one said, "It don't make no difference.’ VFEUS found a surprising incidence of don't among cultured informants, about half of such informants in the South using it; this has not been a common pattern in my experience in North Carolina and Georgia, and I suspect it is an older form that is being displaced by the school system . what makes (VFEUS page 28 and Figure 23) In the context "What makes him do it?” VFEUS found an incidence of make in a distribution similar to that of he do (q.v.), mainly among Type I informants . There was no evidence of this usage among our Carteret County speakers . All said makes . he looks like, favors, etc. (VFEUS page 28) This verb was recorded in the context "He looks like his father VF EUS finds the inflected form practically universal except for a scattering of coastal Southerners, almost half of whom were Negroes . All of our informants used the inflected form . she rinses (VFEUS page 28) The third person singular form was recorded in the context "She rinses the dishes 98 VFEUS finds the inflected form with /s/ universal in the Middle Atlantic states and practically so in the South. This was the only form used among our informants . it costs (VFEUS page 28) The third person singular form was recorded in the context "It costs too much." According to VF EUS, the inflected form with /s/, frequently reduced phonetically, is strongly predominant in the South . This we found true of our informants, most Of whom said [k0 5]. There is no way to tell whether the form is reduced from 'costs' or 'cost'. III. NUMBER AND CONCORD you were (VFEUS page 28) The second person preterite was recorded in the context "You were talking to him." VFEUS found in the New England data that _w_e__r_e_ is the newer form, "occurring invariably among the more modern informants in communities where usage is divided ." The singular form was was practically universal in the South among Type I informants, and strongly predominant among Type II's . Our informants used only were . we were (VFEUS page 29) The first person plural preterite form was recorded in the South in the context "We were going to do it." VFEUS found that in the South we was predominated in Type I and Type II. Our informants used we were. people think (VFEUS page 29) The present plural form was recorded in the context "People think he did it." 99 VFEUS found the singular thinks to be the "universal popular form" in the South, being used by nine-tenths or more of Types I and II. It was rare in cultured speech. All our informants said think . they say (VFEUS page 29 In the context "They say he did it" VFEUS found that the plural form say was almost universally used. This was true of all our informants . here are (VFEUS page 29) The present tense form was recorded in the context "Here are your clothes VFEUS found that not only was the singular form 1131333 universal in Type I in the South and almost so in Type II, but about half the cultured informants used it as well. All of our informants used here's . there are (VFEUS page 29) The present tense form was recorded in the context "There are many people who think so Although VFEUS found that the distribution of the singular form there's was similar to sergsin the preceding item, we did not find this to be true of our informants . Only two said there's; all the rest said there are. oats are (VFEUS page 30) The present tense form was recorded in the context "Oats are thrashed." VFEUS finds that the singular form is predominated in the South only among the Type I informants; it was not common among the Type II's and hardly used at all by cultured speakers . None of our informants used the singular form. 100 cabbages are (VFEUS page 30) The present tense was recorded in the context "Those cabbages are big. The singular form. VFEUS found, was common only among Type I Southerners. All of our informants used the plural form, including those who used an uninflected form for the noun, saying those cabbags. IV . NEGATIVE FORMS am not (VFEUS page 30) The present tense negative form is recorded in two contexts: "I am not going to hurt him" and ”I'm right, am I not?" VFEUS reports that ain't I is extremely common in the South Atlantic states, where it "is about as universal as a form H can be. This, from my own experience, is true of coastal Carteret County as well. However, as VF EUS observed, there is a strong pattern of inhibition about the use of sin: , and a resultant tendency to avoid where possible what is recognized as a disapproved form. All of the informants were aware that their responses were being recorded and would be scrutinized by strangers in the North, and thus, in "I'm not going to hurt him," where sin: is relatively easy to H avoid. only two of them used it, while eight said "I'm not. Even in "I'm right, am I not?", where the choice was between saying ain't or using an awkward circumlocution, only five said ain't; four said am I not, and three refused to answer the item at all. have not (VFEUS page 31) In the Carteret County study the present negative forms were studied in the 101 contexts "I haven't seen him" and "I ain't done nothing." There seems to be some likelihood that the respective phraseology of the work-sheet items affected the responses. since in the first one six informants said haven't to three who said 9.191: and in the second, one said haven't to nine who said 932:. (The one excep- tion said primly, "I haven't done nothing.") As VFEUS observes, nearly all the inhabitants in the East know and use the form haven't. alongside the less standard variants . The variants (_a_i_n_'t or hain't) occur with increasing frequency as you go South, though less common among cultured speakers. Despite the earnest efforts of generations of school teachers, most Southerners are not basically convinced that there is anything wrong with using 319:5: except in situations where "correctness" is an issue. In my childhood in Craven County, North Carolina, l_i_a_i_r_1_'_t_ was considered flatly low class, but the use of sin: was merely venial except in school, where both were forbidden. This attitude may underlie the lack of examples of hain't among the Carteret County informants . was not (VFEUS page 32) In the context "No, it wasn't me," most of our informants said wasn't. Two. however, used the variant weren't which VFEUS also found in communities in coastal North Carolina . will not (VFEUS page 32 and Figure 25) According to VFEUS, in the South Atlantic states will not contracts to /wont/, with scattered variants, among which is /wunt/ . Ten of the Carteret County informants said /wont/, while one said /wunt/ . 102 ought not (VFEUS page 32 and Figure 26) VFEUS finds that oughtn't is in universal use in all types south of the northern third of Pennsylvania and most of New Jersey, except for a portion of northeastern North Carolina. In this portion the expression hadn't ought to is current (though not universal as it is in New England, New York, northern Pennsylvania and most of New jersey). Since Carteret County falls within this portion of North Carolina, it is not surprising that all our informants but one said hadn't ought to . The exception said shouldn't. dare not (VFEUS page 33) The negative form was recorded in the context "You dare not go VF EUS finds that most cultured speakers lack a negative contraction of this verb. though outside southern New England nearly all Type I and Type II informants use contracted forms . Among our informants. only one used a contraction, daren't. Five said don't dare. one said shouldn't, and six gave no answer to the item at all . didn't use to (VFEUS page 33) The negative form of used to is recorded in the context "She didn't use to be afraid." VFEUS finds that didn't use to is "almost universal in all areas and among all 1' types. This is the form that all of our informants used. V. INFINITIVE AND PRESENT PARTICIPLE to tell (VFEUS page 34) The infinitive was recorded in the context "He came over to tell me about it." VFEUS found the form for to tell variously common throughout the Eastern states. 103 and concluded that it was an older form of the infinitive. It reports it as being used by over half the Type I and a little less than a quarter of the Type II informants as far south as North Carolina in the South Atlantic states . None of our Carteret County speakers used it at all; they all said to tell. singing and laughing (VFEUS page 34) The present participle was recorded in the context "She was singing and laughing." VFEUS discusses first the ending of the participle, finding that it alternates between / -In/ and / -19 / . In the South Atlantic states the / -In/ is most common in Types 1 and II: more than nine -tenths of both groups used it in both verbs . Usage is about evenly divided among cultured informants . Among the Carteret County speakers who responded to the item, seven used / -In/ and one used / -Ig/ . VFEUS next discusses the incidence of the forms a-singin(g) and a-laughin(g). In the South Atlantic states the form a-laughing is given by about seven -eighths of Type I and over half of Type II informants, but a-singing is only about a third as frequent. In Virginia and eastern North Carolina "the statement is usually recorded as 'She was singin' and a~1aughin' ." What we found in Carteret County, however, was a predominance of "She was singin(g) and laughin( g) ." One speaker said "a-singin' and a-laughin'" and one said "singin' and a-laughin . All the rest omitted the 3:. Four informants skipped the item entirely. going (VFEUS page 35 and Figure 27) Aside from recognizing that this present participle is more common in the form ending in / ~In/ than in /-11)/, and that there are innumerable phonetic reductions of it in the phrase going to, VFEUS mainly discusses the incidence of gwine. 104 This form is found quite frequently along the coast from Delmarva south among Type I informants, and in the form /gain/ on the Eastern Shore and in north- eastern North Carolina around Albemarle Sound and the lower Neuse River. This, of course, is north of coastal Carteret County; the form does not occur among our informants, nor does gwine. VI. PH RAS ES might could (VFEUS page 35 and Figure 28) This phrase. in the context "I might could do it" (future), was recorded only in the Middle and South Atlantic states . VFEUS finds it almost universal in North Carolina among Type I informants, and used by practically all the Type 11 speakers . Cultured informants, according to VFEUS, "as a rule avoid the con- struction. Among our informants, six avoided the item. Of the remainder, five said might could, and one said probably could. belongs to be (VFEUS page 35 and Figure 29) Although VFEUS finds this construction ("He belongs to be careful") scattered with "some regularity" in eastern North Carolina, almost as common among Type II as Type I, we found no evidence of its use among our informants . All said ought to be . like to fell (VFEUS page 36) The phrase like to fell in the context and meaning "almost fell down" is very briefly discussed in VFEUS, which found it very nearly universal in the South 105 Atlantic states in Types I and II. and in use among cultured speakers as well. Among our informants. three said like to fell down, two said like to have fallen down, and two said almost fell down . The remaining five avoided the item. BIBLIOGRAPHY Atwood, E. Bagby. A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1953. Connor. R. D. North Carolina: Rebuilding an Ancient Commonwealth, 1584-1925. Vol. 1. Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, 1929. Delaney. Norman C. "The Outer Banks of North Carolina During the Revolutionary War," North Carolina Historical Review, XXXVI, No. 1(January, 1959), 1-11. English Dialect Dictionary. Joseph Wright, ed. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1962. Hawks, Francis L. History of North Carolina. Fayetteville, N. C., 1858.- Kurath, Hans and McDavid, Raven I. , jr. The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961. Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933. Salisbury, F. C. How Carteret County Had Its 18th Century Beginning. Morehead City. N. C.: Carteret County Historical Society, 1964. (Multilithed.) 106