The phonics discussion and the nice quide page for teachers
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/ec/accents.htm
made me think of the following, though it is perhaps of limited use to
teachers - it is aimed at speech therapists -
Sharynne McLeod's forthcoming "The International Guide to Speech
Acquisition" provides detailed overviews of different accents of English and
the paths of acquisition for them. May be very useful for educationalists
and lecturers in teacher training establishments as a resource, however. And
of course for linguists. The English English chapter is by Sara Howard, and
there are about a dozen on national English varieties.
One of the values is comparability across accents. Also, sits quite nicely
with LAGB and IPA materials and descriptions, I think. Suffers from many of
the same problems of defining a variety by downplaying variation within the
variety or gradient differences between varieties. Most of the quantitative
content is relevant to children and acquisition norms.
Here is a link describing the content.
http://convention.asha.org/2005/handouts/293_Bleile_Ken_072511_111105102121.
pdf
I must own up to the Scottish English chapter as a co-author, which no doubt
I will find out falls short in very many ways once people forward missing
information to me. :-) A draft is online at
http://www.qmced.ac.uk/ssrc/output/WP.htm
Jim Scobbie
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