Kerkrade dialect phonology
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This article covers the phonology of the Kerkrade dialect, a West Ripuarian language variety spoken in parts of the Kerkrade municipality in the Netherlands (including the town of Kerkrade itself) and Herzogenrath in Germany.
Just like Colognian, the Kerkrade dialect is not uniform and there are some geographical differences. This article focuses on the variety spoken in the Dutch town of Kerkrade. The spelling used in this article is a Dutch-based one used in Kirchröadsjer dieksiejoneer.
Consonants[edit]
In contrast to Limburgish and Standard Dutch, but like other varieties of Ripuarian, the Kerkrade dialect was partially affected by the High German consonant shift. For instance, the former /t/ became an affricate /ts/ in word-initial and word-final positions, after historical /l/ and /ʀ/ as well as when doubled. Thus, the word for "two" is twee /ˈtʋeː/ in Standard Dutch, but tswai /ˈtsβai/[tone?] in the Kerkrade dialect, almost identical to Standard German zwei /ˈtsvaɪ/.[1]
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Dorsal | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | (ɡ) | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | ts | tʃ | |||
| voiced | dʒ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | χ | h |
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ʁ | ||
| Liquid | l | ʀ | ||||
| Approximant | β | j | ||||
- /m, p, b, β/ are bilabial, whereas /f, v/ are labiodental.
- Syllable-final /β, l/ tend to be velarized [w, ɫ], especially after /ɑ/. /l/ can also be velarized intervocalically after /ɑ/.[2]
- /ŋ, k, ɡ/ are velar, /ʀ/ is uvular, whereas /j/ is palatal.
- /ɡ/ occurs only intervocalically.[3]
- Most instances of historical /ɡ/ (/ɣ/ in Limburgish and (southern) Standard Dutch) have merged with /j/, so that the word for green in the Kerkrade dialect is jreun /ˈjʀøːn/ (compare Standard Dutch groen /ˈɣrun/).[4]
- After phonological back vowels, the sounds corresponding to Limburgish [x, ɣ] are likely more back than cardinal velars, more like [χ, ʁ], which is reflected in the way they are transcribed in this article. This is the only environment where /ʁ/ can occur. In fact, there may be little difference between /ʁ/ and /ʀ/ in the Kerkrade dialect. In the neighboring dialect of Lemiers, the two sounds merge to [ʁ], and in Luxembourgish, the two sounds have been reported to merge to [ʁ] or [χ] (depending on the voicing of the following consonant) between a vowel and a consonant and variably also in other positions (wherever /ʁ/ is not fronted to [ʑ] or [ɕ]).[3][5][6]
- After phonological front vowels and consonants, /χ/ surfaces as [ç]. Both [χ] and [ç] can appear within one lexeme, e.g. laoch [ˈlɔːχ][tone?] and löcher [ˈlœçəʀ].[3]
Vowels[edit]
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | |||||||
| short | long | short | long | short | short | long | ||
| Close | i | iː | y | yː | u | uː | ||
| Close-mid | e | eː | ø | øː | ə | o | oː | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɛː | œ | œː | ɔ | ɔː | ||
| Open | ɑ | aː | ||||||
| Diphthongs | closing | ɛi œy ɔi ɔu ai au | ||||||
| centering | iə yə uə eə œə oə | |||||||
- Many words that have the long rounded close-mid vowels /øː/ and /oː/ in the neighboring Limburgish dialects have the short /ø/ and /o/ in Kerkrade.
- /ø, øː, œ, œː/ can be considered the umlauted variants of /o, oː, ɔ, ɔː/.[8]
- /ə/ occurs only in unstressed syllables. It is also inserted in the historical consonant clusters of /l/ or /ʀ/ followed by a labial or a velar consonant, as in helpe /ˈhɛləpə/[tone?] and sjterk /ˈʃtɛʀək/.[tone?][9]
- /oə/ is the only centering diphthong that can occur before /ʀ/.[3] The functional load of the /oə–oː/ contrast in this position is unclear.
Phonetic realization[edit]
- Among the short front unrounded vowels, /i/ is close [i], /e/ is near-close [ɪ], whereas /ɛ/ is mid [ɛ̝]. Before /m, n, ŋ, l, ʀ/, the last two are lowered to [e] and [æ], respectively. In this article, only the allophony of /ɛ/ is marked in phonetic transcription. This means that phonetically, the rounded counterpart of the short /e/ is /y/, as both are normally near-close, whereas both /ø/ and /i/ are unpaired as far as stressable vowels are concerned. This also means that at least /eː/, /ɛː/ and possibly also /yː/ and/or /øː/ do not have exact phonetic short counterparts, just like the open central /aː/; in addition, /y/ is unique among the stressable short vowels in that it can appear in the word-final position outside of function words, which makes it a free vowel like Standard Dutch /y/.[8]
- The phonetic distance between /y/ and /ø/ is not very great; the former is a near-close vowel of unknown backness (either front [ʏ] or central [ʉ̞], like Standard Dutch ⟨uu⟩), whereas the latter is close-mid central [ɵ] (like Standard Dutch ⟨u⟩), much as in the Limburgish dialect of Hamont. Phonetically speaking, this makes /ø/ nothing more than a stressable counterpart of /ə/, although the two are phonologically distinct - just as in Standard Dutch. Word-final instances of /y/ are realized as a fully close vowel of unknown backness (either front [y] or central [ʉ]).[8][10]
- In fact, it is unclear whether any of the front rounded vowels besides /ø/ are phonetically front [ʏ, yː, øː, œ, œː] or central [ʉ̞, ʉː, ɵː, ɞ, ɞː]. In addition, the precise height of at least /yː/ and /œ/ is also unknown as the former may be as low as near-close ([ʏː ~ ʉ̞ː]), whereas the latter can be as high as true-mid ([œ̝ ~ ɞ̝]), though [ɞ̝] is an unlikely value as it would yield a (near-)merger with /ø/, and the two are kept distinct. Both /œ/ and /y/ are likely more front than /ø/, which would help to keep all three vowels apart from each other, much like in the case of the Swedish triplet /œ–ɵ–ʏ/, in which /ɵ/ is central, whereas the other two vowels are front.
- In addition to the unclear backness of /øː/, it is also unknown whether the long close-mid vowels /eː, øː, oː/ are pure monophthongs [eː, øː ~ ɵː, oː] or are slightly diphthongal [eɪ, øʏ ~ ɵʊ̈, oʊ]. Because they are never confused with /ɛi, œy, ɔu/, the diphthongal movement in /eː, øː, oː/, if present, must be very slight (as in Maastrichtian /eː, øː, oː/, when they are combined with Accent 1), which means that the starting points of those diphthongs are no more open than close-mid.
- /aː/ is a phonological back vowel like /ɑ/, and the two function as a long–short pair. The former is phonetically central [äː], whereas the latter is a genuine back vowel [ɑ].[11]
- Before /ʀ/, all of the long vowels are pronounced even longer than in Standard Dutch. In this position, the long /iː, yː, uː, eː, øː/ are realized with a slight schwa offglide [iːːə, yːːə, uːːə, eːːə, øːːə], which means that they approach the centering diphthongs /iə, yə, uə, eə, œə/, though the latter have a shorter first element (in addition to the lower starting point of /œə/). The remaining /oː/ and /aː/ are just elongated [oːː, aːː] without diphthongization in this position.[2] The lengthening is not encoded in transcriptions in this article, though the diphthongization of /iː, yː, uː, eː, øː/ is.
Pitch accent[edit]
As most other Ripuarian and Limburgish dialects, the Kerkrade dialect features a distinction between the thrusting tone (Dutch: stoottoon, German: Schärfung or Stoßton), which has a shortening effect on the syllable (not shown in transcriptions in this article) and the slurring tone (Dutch: sleeptoon, German: Schleifton). In this article, the slurring tone is transcribed as a high tone, whereas the thrusting tone is left unmarked. This is nothing more than a convention, as the phonetics of the Kerkrade pitch accent are severely under-researched. There are minimal pairs, for example moer /ˈmuːʀ/ 'wall' - moer /ˈmúːʀ/ 'carrot'.[12][13]
The pitch accent can be the only difference:[13]
- Between words differentiated only by gender, as in the minimal pair de val /də ˈvɑl/ - d'r val /dəʀ ˈvɑ́l/
- Between the plural and singular, as in the minimal pair de peëd /də ˈpeət/ - 't peëd /ət ˈpéət/.
- This is sometimes reinforced by other differences, e.g. de knieng /də ˈkniŋ/ - d'r knien /dəʀ ˈknín/. Some words have two possible plural forms, one that is differentiated from the singular form only by tone and a more distinct one; compare de boom /də ˈboːm/ with the umlauted de beum /də ˈbøːm/, which are plural forms of d'r boom /dəʀ ˈbóːm/.
- Between inflected and uninflected forms of adjectives, compare rónge /ˈʀoŋə/ with rónk /ˈʀóŋk/.
- Between the diminutive and the primitive form, compare müsje /ˈmyʃə/ with moes /ˈmús/.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), p. 36.
- ^ a b Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), p. 18.
- ^ a b c d Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), p. 17.
- ^ Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), pp. 17, 126.
- ^ Gilles & Trouvain (2013), p. 68.
- ^ Bodelier (2011), p. 19.
- ^ Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), pp. 15–17.
- ^ a b c Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), p. 16.
- ^ Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), pp. 16, 18.
- ^ Verhoeven (2007), pp. 221, 223.
- ^ Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), pp. 15, 18.
- ^ Fournier, Rachel; Gussenhoven, Carlos; Peters, Jörg; Swerts, Marc; Verhoeven, Jo. "The tones of Limburg". Archived from the original on 26 February 2012. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
- ^ a b Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997), p. 19.
Bibliography[edit]
- Bodelier, Jorina (2011). Tone and intonation in the Lemiers dialect of Ripuarian (MA General Linguistics Thesis). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
- Gilles, Peter; Trouvain, Jürgen (2013). "Luxembourgish" (PDF). Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 43 (1): 67–74. doi:10.1017/S0025100312000278.
- Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer (1997) [1987]. Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer. (in Dutch and Ripuarian) (2nd ed.). Kerkrade: Stichting Kirchröadsjer Dieksiejoneer. ISBN 90-70246-34-1.
- Verhoeven, Jo (2007). "The Belgian Limburg dialect of Hamont". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 37 (2): 219–225. doi:10.1017/S0025100307002940.