1. America
1.1. 1584: Walter Raleigh – Roanoke
1.2. 1607: Chesapeake Bay (Jamestown)
1.3. 1620: Cape Cod Bay – Plymouth
1.4. Earlier (Southern) settlers < West Counties
1.5. Later (Northern) settlers < East of England
1.6. Other 17th-century British features
1.7. 17th century settlers
1.7.1. From different linguistic backgrounds
1.7.2. Dialect boundaries blurred in close contact
1.7.3. Melting pot!
1.8. 18th century settlers
1.8.1. From Ireland and Scotland
1.8.2. By the Declaration (1776): 1/7 Scots-Irish
1.8.3. Moved down the coast and inwards
1.8.4. Broad accent
1.9. Population increase
1.10. Three major dialect areas reflecting original settlements and later population movements
1.10.1. Northern (< East of England)
1.10.2. Southern (< West Counties)
1.10.3. Midland (< Scots/Irish)
1.10.4. Picture not “neat”
1.10.5. Continuing influx of new immigrants from different parts of the world: 18'th century
1.10.6. Personal names
1.10.7. Origins of American state names
1.10.8. New words and phrases from inter-cultural contact
1.11. American distinctiveness:
1.11.1. pronunciation
1.11.2. Spelling
1.11.3. Grammar
1.11.4. Vocabulary
2. Canada
2.1. 1497
2.1.1. John Cabot
2.1.2. Newfoundland
2.2. 17th century
2.2.1. English speaking settlers
2.2.2. Trade, farming, fishing
2.3. 18th century
2.3.1. Conflict with the French
2.3.2. Won out! French deported, replaced by New England settlers
2.3.3. Direct migration from England, Ireland and Scotland
2.4. 1776
2.4.1. Declaration of Independence
2.4.2. British loyalists moved to Canada
2.4.3. late loyalists” moved further up into Canada
2.5. Officially bilingual (English – French)
2.6. Canadian distinctiveness
2.6.1. From outset mixture of American and British models
2.6.2. Close contact with French
2.6.3. Some features from within Canada (independent of AmE or BrE)
2.6.4. Some features from outside Canada (used by all)
2.6.5. Some features from AmE (only by sections)
2.6.6. Some features from BrE (only by sections)
3. Pidgins, creoles and the Caribbean
3.1. 16th century
3.1.1. Spain starts slave trade between Africa and “the Indies
3.2. 17th century
3.2.1. Atlantic triangular trade
3.3. Developing population
3.3.1. 1619: 20 slaves in Virginia
3.3.2. 1776 (American Revolution): half a million
3.3.3. 1865 (end American Civil War + abolition slavery): 4 millio
3.4. Slaves from radically different linguistic background
3.4.1. Unable to plot against owners
3.4.2. Pidgin because they still had to communicate
3.4.3. From pidgin to creole
3.4.4. Influence of political history
3.4.4.1. Some based on English, some on French, some on Spanish
3.4.4.2. Interacted with each other
3.4.4.3. Interacted with prestige variety British English
3.4.5. After abolition geographical mobility
3.5. Caribbean distinctiveness: linguistic complexity
3.5.1. Standard English (AmE or BrE)
3.5.2. Variety of Standard English
3.5.3. Standard West Indian English
3.5.4. Creoles
3.5.5. No clearly definable boundaries
3.5.6. Also some English based creoles in Spanish dominated countries (e.g., Nicaragua and Colombia)
4. Grammatical rigour
4.1. By the end of 18th century very close to Present Day English, but
4.1.1. Grammatical differences
4.1.2. Pronunciation differences
4.2. Between 1750 and 1800: more than 200 works on grammar and rhetoric
4.2.1. Robert Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar
4.2.2. Lindley Murray’s English Grammar
4.3. Origin of grammatical controversies
4.3.1. reflect usage by simply describing it
4.3.2. evaluate usage by prescribing certain forms as correct and proscribing others as incorrect
4.3.2.1. no preposition stranding
4.3.2.2. no double negation
4.4. Grammatical controversies: prescriptive grammar
4.5. Grammatical controversies: descriptive grammar
5. Across the pond
5.1. Britain 18th c
5.1.1. Lowth’s grammar
5.1.2. Johnson’s dictionary
5.2. Same linguistic issues and developments preoccupied American scholars nearly half a century late
5.2.1. Murray’s grammar (1794)
5.3. Noah Webster (1758 – 1843)
5.3.1. Call for an “American standard”
5.3.2. American Spelling Book (1783)
5.3.3. Social and political distance from Great Britain
5.3.4. Lexicographic adventures
5.3.5. An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)
5.4. Literature spoke back
6. Accent, dialect and variety
6.1. Accent: a distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class
6.2. Dialect: a particular form of a language which is peculiar to a specific region or social group
6.3. Variety: the quality or state of being different or diverse; the absence of uniformity or monotony
6.4. Linguistic snobbery
6.4.1. Connotations related to accents
6.4.2. Thinking some accents, dialects, varieties are better than others
6.4.3. Thinking some accents, dialects, varieties are better than others
7. African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)
7.1. Through slave trade from Africa to Americas
7.2. Complex history in the US
7.3. William Labov congressional testimony
7.4. AAVE distinctiveness
7.4.1. Grammar
7.4.2. Vocabulary: influx of new informal vocabulary into general vocabulary