Wells doesn’t discuss the DRESS vowel before /l/ explicitly in _Accents of English_ - he has a long section in vol. 2 on vowel + /l/ in London (1982: 313-317), but none of his examples happen to be with DRESS. However, in his characterisation of the phonetic quality of the word-classes in London (1982: 303-4), he does characterise DRESS as being phonetically /e/. (This also chimes with my own intuition as a Londoner, FWIW.)
So I wouldn't necessarily think of <will> for <well> as being connected to L-vocalisation, though this speaker did probably have L-vocalisation - but it does seem true that Cockneys raise DRESS, as it were, so, although the raising isn't usually as far as [I], perhaps that could account for the confusion.
I don't have by me any of the other extensive literature on London, so others who have it or know it better are welcome to contradict!
Damien
--
Damien Hall
Newcastle University (UK)
============================
From: Julia Fernández Cuesta [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 10 February 2015 12:12
Subject: Query
Dear collegues,
We recently came across an unpublished letter written by a soldier in WWI containing a spelling <will> for discourse marker well (5x). In the same letter adverb well ((1x) and aux. will (1x) are spelt according to standard. The writer was born in Leyton, West Ham, London. There are a number of other non-standard spellings. Could <will> for <well> be related to the vocalization of final /l/? Any thoughts that might shed light on this would be welcome.
Julia Fernández Cuesta and Christopher Langmuir
--
Dr. Julia Fernández Cuesta
Associate Professor
Universidad de Sevilla
Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
C/ Palos de la Frontera s/n
Sevilla 41004
Spain
Tel.: +34 954 55 15 45
Fax: +34 954 55 15 16
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
########################################################################
The Variationist List - discussion of everything related to variationist sociolinguistics.
To send messages to the VAR-L list (subscribers only), write to:
[log in to unmask]
To unsubscribe from the VAR-L list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=VAR-L&A=1
|