Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-qdpjg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-27T03:11:39.092Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘An’ to ‘A’ in American speech: language change in progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2008

Penny Stewart  and
Richard F. Fawcett
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A review of the loss of an in ‘the unguarded speech of Americans’, in such phrases as ‘a apparition’

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 18 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, Charles‐James N. and Roger, W. Shuy, eds. 1973. New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1990. “The Doolittling of English,” English Today 22: 25–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butters, Ronald R. “Acceptability Judgements for Double Modals.” In Bailey and Shuy.Google Scholar
Labov, William 1972. “The Social Motivation of a Sound Change,” Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1973. “Some Features of the English of Black Americans,” Varieties of Present-Day English. eds. Richard, W. Bailey and Jay, L. Robinson. New York: Collier-Macmillan. 236–257.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin 1975. Language and Woman's Place. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary.Google Scholar
Stewart, Penny. 1976. Linguistic Signals to Ethnic Group and Socioeconomic Class among Eighty Ten year-olds in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Dissertation, University of Southern Mississippi.Google Scholar