This paper examined the influence of /ɹ/ on the low vowel /a/ and the possible diphthongisation of tense vowels in the Howth town dialect of Dublin English, more specifically on [u].

1. 1
A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF /ɹ/ ON /a/ AND THE
DIPHTHONGISATION OF TENSE VOWELS IN THE HOWTH
TOWN DIALECT OF DUBLIN ENGLISH
Megan Byrne
University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland
Megan.Byrne.1@ucdconnect.ie
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the influence of /ɹ/ on
the low vowel /a/ and the possible
diphthongisation of tense vowels in the
Howth town dialect of Dublin English,
more specifically on [u].
1. INTRODUCTION
This study aims to examine two phonetic
phenomena found in a dialect of Dublin
English, namely that of Howth. More
specifically, the Howth town dialect will
be analysed. Howth is famed for being a
fishing village in north Dublin. It is also a
popular tourist destination for hill walking.
The town is divided into two socio-
economic areas: the hill of Howth and the
Summit collectively make up the more
affluent area of Howth. It is associated
with the upper-middle class.
Linguistically, the stereotypical dialect
spoken here is close to that of the Dublin
„D4‟ English variety. In contrast the
village is associated with middle-lower
working class society. It is the commercial
and tourist centre for the town. The
village area stretches from the train station,
partially up the hill into the village and
ends at the church on the left hand side (to
the right hand side of the church continues
to be classified as the „village‟ to a point
rather than the „hill‟). After this point one
can see the change in social status. This is
mainly by appearance and size of housing.
The majority of studies on Dublin
English focus on the dialects associated
with inner city Dublin or the „D4‟ variety
as it is somewhat of a new linguistic area.
As Docherty stated in his 1999 paper,
sociolinguistics is now thought to play a
major role in the analysis of phonetics,
known as sociophonetics [1]. People may
choose to speak a certain dialectal variety
because of its association with social class,
group etc. There are references in the
literature on Dublin English to the
linguistic phenomena under discussion in
this paper. As Hickey notes, /a/ is raised
especially when it occurs before /ɹ/. He
also states that this feature is synonymous
with the east coast of Ireland, which is the
location of Howth [1] (see also [2]).
Hickey suggests that the pronunciation for
„part‟ would be [pɛːɹt] – could this be true
of the Howth town dialect? Secondly,
there is nothing in the literature about a
possible diphthongisation of the tense
vowels. The main tense vowel in question
is [u]. If diphthongisation occurred there
would be evidence to support the claim of
a dialectal diphthong [uɪ]. This would
certainly be something new and of interest
for phoneticians and is why an initial
analysis is necessary in this area.
2. METHOD
As this is only a small scale study only two
subjects were used. The main subject
(speaker 1) possesses the relevant dialect
under investigation. The second subject
(speaker 2) is merely used for contrastive
purposes and possesses a dialect further
north but along the same coastline as
Howth (see map below for location of
Howth in relation to Dublin city centre).

2. 2
Both subjects are 21 years old and
come from the same socio-economic
background. The data was elicited by
using word lists (see Table 1). Although
recordings were made twice and also
included carrier phrases it would be
impossible in a study as small as this to
illustrate the results from the entire data
collected due to space limitations. For this
reason the first recording of the word lists
has been used as supporting evidence for
this study. I would suggest that any
further study would make use of the entire
data recorded. This topic will be discussed
in a latter part of the paper.
Table 1: word lists, Section A and B.
The lists and phrases were divided into
two sections, A and B, which correspond
to the two areas of analysis, influence of /ɹ/
on /a/ and the possible diphthongisation of
tense vowels. The second subject was
used to provide a vowel chart based on that
of the IPA. This will facilitate a
contrastive analysis based on vowel
positioning.
The recordings were made using Praat
with a headset and microphone combined
onto a Samsung laptop at a rate of
22050Hz. Sound files were saved in the
.wav format. Praat was also used as the
software for analysis and R project was
used to plot the results on a graph. The
height of vowel position was made by
obtaining the first and second formant
values of the vowel in question and
feeding the results into R project in order
to produce a graph of the results. The
formant values were calculated by placing
the cursor at a steady point in the vowel on
the spectrogram. This was generally at the
mid-point of the vowel. However, as
Section B examined diphthongs it was
necessary to obtain F1 and F2 values from
the beginning, middle and end of the
vowel to capture the transition. Formant
values were found by pressing the F1 and
F2 buttons on the laptop from which Praat
gave the required values. The above
values can be viewed in the additional
material provided with this paper.
3. RESULTS
In order to do a comparative analysis I feel
it necessary to illustrate the IPA vowel
sounds of speaker 2 (deemed to have a
neutral Dublin accent) on a chart to
facilitate an analysis of speaker 1‟s vowel
positions. It must be stressed that this is
purely as a guideline and is not a
standardised vowel position chart. This is
shown in Figure 1 below.
Figures 2 and 3 are scatter plots of
the results from all words in the word lists
in both sections of Table 1.

3. 3
Fig 1. Speaker 2’s IPA vowel chart
Firstly, we will deal with the results in
Figure 2. It should be noted that [a1]
refers to /aɹ/ occurring before [t], [a2]
refers to occurrences before stops and [a3]
refers to instances where /aɹ/ occurs at the
end of the word – these are word lists 1, 2
and 3 in Section A respectively. As Figure
2 shows, the positioning of /a/, for the
majority, is further forward and higher
than that of speaker 2. The height of /a/ is
approximately 900-700 on the F1 axis. If
we compare this to speaker 2 we see that
this range correlates with the positioning
of [ɛ] and higher but not reaching that of
[e]. Therefore, we can conclude that [ɹ]
does in fact raise the positioning of /a/.
This evidence agrees with Hickey‟s
research.
Figure 3 shows all findings from the
Section B word lists. If we look at the
diphthongised vowels one will notice that they
are positioned towards their respective
diphthongising vowel compared to those that
are not. This is clearly seen for [iɪ] as found
in the words „mean‟ and „ice-cream‟. I
would hypothesise from analysing the
sounds that [ɪ] as a diphthongising vowel
is strongest when followed by a nasal.
Figure 4 shows the diphthongisation of [u]
such that the sound produced is [uɪ]. All
proceeding segments are nasals (see Table
1, Section B, List 1). The influence of [ɪ]
on [u] is such that the height of [u], when
compared with speaker 2, is lowered as a
direct result of diphthongisation by [ɪ].
Fig 2. Howth town results of Section A: /aɹ/
positioning
Fig 3. Howth town results of Section B:
diphthongisation of tense vowels
Fig 4. Howth town results of Section B: [uɪ]
positioning

4. 4
4. DISCUSSION
This study aimed to examine the influence
of /ɹ/ on /a/ and the possible
diphthongisation of tense vowels. The
results showed that /ɹ/ raises the
positioning of /a/ so that it becomes nearer
to the positioning of /ɛ/. In fact, the
positioning was between that of /ɛ/ and /e/,
without being fully realised as the latter.
These findings agree with Hickey‟s work
on Irish English. The study also provided
new evidence for a dialectal diphthong,
[uɪ], in the Howth town dialect. It is clear
from Figure 4 that when compared with
Figure 1, the positioning of [u] is
significantly lower so as to state that it has
been diphthongised by [ɪ] to create a new
diphthong [uɪ].
The Howth dialects have never
been studied in their own right and further
analysis of the dialects would make for an
interesting study. It would be necessary to
conduct a study on a larger scale – greater
number of participants, different age
groups, analysis of multiple recordings as
well as recording spontaneous speech in
order for the study to have linguistic
credibility. A study comparing the two
dialects of Dublin English found in Howth
is also an area yet to be researched. There
is also scope for a sociophonetic analysis
as there is much rivalry between the
„town‟ and „hill‟ dialects. This could lead
to possible comparisons with Labov‟s
study on Martha‟s Vineyard, as both are
fishing communities.
4. REFERENCES
[1] Hickey, R., “Ireland as a linguistic
area”, In: James P. Mallory (ed.) Language
in Ulster. Special issue of Ulster Folklife
(45), Holywood, Co. Down: Ulster Folk
and Transport Museum, 1999, 36-53 – see
pg. 10
[2] Wikipedia, Hiberno English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-
English#Leinster_and_Greater_Dublin –
see section on Leinster and Greater
Dublin, Rhoticity
4. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Boersma, P. & Weenink, D., Praat:
doing phonetics by computer
[Computer program]. Version 5.3.03,
2011 http://www.praat.org/
 Google maps, maps of Howth:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&t
ab=wl
 Hickey, R., “Ireland as a linguistic
area”, In: James P. Mallory (ed.)
Language in Ulster. Special issue of
Ulster Folklife (45), Holywood, Co.
Down: Ulster Folk and Transport
Museum, 1999, 36-53
 R Development Core Team, R: A
language and environment for
statistical computing. R Foundation for
Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
ISBN 3-900051-07-0, 2008
http://www.r-project.org/
 Wikipedia, Hiberno English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-
English#Leinster_and_Greater_Dublin
– Leinster and Greater Dublin,
Rhoticity