Pacific Northwest English, as spoken in the area of Seattle

PHONOLOGY

• The vowels in words such as Mary, marry, merry are merged to the open-mid front unrounded vowel [ɛ];

• Rhotic accent;

• “Cot-caught merger”: no distintion between the open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔ] and open back unrounded vowel [ɑ], characteristic of the A (most of people);

• The sound /æ/ is lowered in the direction of [a];

• The merger of /ɑ/ and /ɒ/, making father and bother rhyme;

• The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle) and at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever);

• The pin-pen merger, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous.

MORPHOLOGY

• Tendency to use nouns as verbs, for example: interview, vacuum, lobby, room, pressure, torch, exit, gun;

• Compounds, for example: teenager, brainstorm, hitchhike, frontman; non-profit, free-for-all, ready-to-wear; happy hour, road trip; (verb plus preposition) add-on, stopover, lineup, shakedown, figure out, check in and check out;

• Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive;

• Verbs ending in -ize, for example: accessorize, itemize, editorialize, customize;

• Syntactical constructions as outside of, headed for, meet up with;

• Alteration of existing words: phony,buddy, sundae;

LEXIS:

• Some words are typical of American English variety: apartment, argument, can, elevator, gas, guy, line, garbage, pants, vacation

• Some words are typically used in Pacific Northwest English: crummy, grip, packing a card (to be a member of a union), pop (carbonated beverages), Skid road or Skid Row (part of a city), weak sauce (slang term);

SYNTAX

• different use of some verbal auxiliaries; ????

• the past participle of the verb get is gotten;

• Use of “have -> do you have? he doesn't have etc.”;

• Formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns;

• Preference for the past simple forms of verbs, as: learned/learnt (AmE/BrE), burned/burnt;

• different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts, as “in school” (BrE at school);

TEXTUALITY:

Most used conjunctions in American English: and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet; after, although, as, because, before, how, if, once, since, than, that, though, till, until, when, where, whether, while; both...and, either...or, neither...nor, not only...but also, so...as, whether...or.

(Normative) Pragamatic rules?

MASSIME:

1. A DIFFERENT + BETTER WORLD IS POSSIBLE 

2. THE ENVIRONMENT FIRST!

3. TIME IS PRECIOUS (I won’t be late!)

4. DIRECT SPEECH, CLEAR SPEECH

5. I DON’T KNOW YOU, BUT I WILL IN THE NEXT 2 MINUTES!... HY EDDIE!

6. RELAX YOURSELF!

You didn't do part A and part B (see Annarita's corrected paper).

Your maxims should also include salient features of General American, because the NorthWest variety is, nonetheless, still General American.