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Peter SundkvistProfessor

About me

Peter Sundkvist received his Ph.D. in English Linguistics from Stockholm University (2004), with a thesis on the phonology of Shetland English. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Linguistics, Yale University, 2005–2007. His research interests concern phonology, phonetics, and dialectology, relating to varieties of English and Germanic languages more generally. He has conducted extensive linguistic fieldwork in the Shetland Islands. His earliest research focused on the local form of Scottish Standard English as spoken in Lerwick, Shetland’s urban centre. Subsequently he was the Principal Investigator of a project on the phonology of Shetland Scots, funded by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (RJ), for which he completed a regional phonological survey of the Shetland archipelago 2010–2012. More recently he has conducted empirical research on English as spoken in various parts of Asia including China and Vietnam, and has published on accent stereotypes and pulmonic ingressive speech. He is the author of the monograph The Shetland Dialect (2021, Routledge), and co-author of the third edition of the textbook World Englishes (2019, Routledge). Professor Sundkvist is also a contributor to The Handbook of Asian Englishes (2020, Wiley-Blackwell), The New Cambridge History of the English Language (forthcoming, CUP), and The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes (2025), for which he is the Associate Editor responsible for phonetics and phonology entries.

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • The Shetland Dialect

    2021. Peter Sundkvist.

    Book

    The traditional dialect spoken in the Shetland Isles, the northernmost part of Scotland and Britain, is highly distinct. It displays distinct, characteristic features on all linguistic levels and particularly in its sound system, or its phonology. The dialect is one of the lesser- known varieties of English within the Inner Circle. Increasing interest in the lesser- known varieties of English in recent years has brought a realization that there are still blanks on the map, even within the very core of the Inner Circle. Sundkvist’s comprehensive treatise draws upon results from a three- year research project funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, for which a phonological survey of the Shetland dialect was carried out between 2010 and 2012. This book is a useful resource for those working on historical linguistics and is intended to serve as a comprehensive description and accessible reference source on one of the most distinct lesser- known varieties of English within Britain. It documents and offers a systematic account of the rich regional variation as well as being a reference source for those studying the historical formation and emergence of the Shetland dialect and language variation and change in Shetland, as well as those within the broader field of Germanic linguistics.

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  • Rhoticity in Yunnan English

    2016. Peter Sundkvist, Man Gao. World Englishes 35 (1), 42-59

    Article

    This paper presents a study of the pronunciation of English by speakers from Yunnan Province in Southwest China. Eight non-English major undergraduate students participated in three tasks: an informal interview, reading a text, and a dialectological-style questionnaire. The degree of rhoticity was assessed based on auditory analysis, with an inter-rater agreement of 97 per cent. The results revealed significant inter-speaker variation: two informants were virtually non-rhotic whereas the remaining six were rhotic to a considerable degree. Intra-speaker variation among these six was furthermore systematic: the degree of rhoticity was lowest in the interview, intermediate in reading, and highest in the questionnaire. These results are discussed with reference to several factors, including the level of formality and attention to speech triggered by the tasks, potentially emerging norms for rhoticity, and the stage of development of a local form of ‘Yunnan English’.

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  • A regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in Shetland Scots

    2015. Peter Sundkvist, Man Gao. Folia linguistica 49 (1), 57-83

    Article

    The local dialect spoken in the Shetland Isles constitutes a form of Lowland Scots. It has been suggested that stressed syllables in Shetland Scots tend to contain either a long vowel followed by a short consonant (V:C) or a short vowel followed by a long consonant ( C:), and furthermore that this pattern constitutes a trace of complementary quantity in Norn, a Nordic language spoken in Shetland approximately until the end of the eighteenth century. The existence of such a pattern has also been supported by acoustic measurements. Following a summary and overview of Norn's demise in the Shetland Isles, this paper presents a regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in stressed syllables in Shetland Scots. Based on acoustic data from 43 speakers, representing ten separate regions across the Shetland Isles, the inverse correlation between vowel and consonant duration is assessed. The results reveal that the inverse correlation is strongest in the northern part of Shetland and weakest in the south, and displays a general north-to-south decline across Shetland. The results are thus generally consistent with predictions that follow from regional variation concerning Norn's death; evidence suggests that it survived the longest in the northern parts of Shetland.

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  • From clerks to corpora

    2015. .

    Book (ed)

    Why is the Isle of Dogs in the Thames called Isle of Dogs? Did King Canute’s men bring English usage back to Jutland? How can we find out where English speakers suck their breath in to give a short response? And what did the Brontës do about dialect and think about foreign languages? The answers are in this collection of empirical work on English past and present in honour of Nils-Lennart Johannesson, Professor of English Language at Stockholm University. The first five chapters report individual studies forming an overview of current issues in the study of Old and Middle English phonology, lexis and syntax. The next six look at Early Modern and Modern English from a historical point of view, using data from corpora, manuscript archives, and fiction. Two more look at the Old English scholar JRR Tolkien and his work. The remaining chapters discuss aspects of Modern English. Several use corpora to look at English usage in itself or in relation to Swedish, French, or Norwegian. The last three look at grammatical models, the pragmatics of second language use, and modern English semantics.

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  • Stylistic and Phonological Conditioning of Rhoticity among Chinese (Yunnan) Speakers of English

    2015. Peter Sundkvist, Man Gao. Workshop Chinese "Accents and Accented Chinese"

    Conference

    In recent years, the presence and importance of English has increased significantly in China, which is now regarded as belonging to the ‘Expanding circles’ of English (Kachru, 1982). Although this has triggered scholarly attention tothe status, function, and features of English in China, research on pronunciation remains limited (Bolton & Graddol, 2012). Spoken forms of English are commonly classified as ‘rhotic’ or ‘non-rhotic’, depending on whether or not /r/ is pronounced in non-prevocalic positions (e.g. car, cart). Although it constitute some of the most salient English pronunciation features globally, little is known about the patterning of rhoticity among Chinese speakers of English. Rhoticity is generally affected by such factors as L1(s), teaching models, and exposure; its presence is often also taken as a sign of growing influence of American English. This paper presents a study of the pronunciation of English by speakers from Yunnan Province. In part 1, ten non-English major undergraduate students participated in three speech tasks of different formality levels, enabling investigation of inter-and intra-speaker variation. The degree of rhoticity was assessed based on auditory analysis (inter-rater agreement 97%). The results point to considerable inter-speaker variation; they further reveal systematic intra-speaker variation: increasing formality is associated with an increase in the degree of rhoticity. In part 2, additional data was collected to examine phonological conditioning of rhoticity in greater detail. Factors assessed include transference andvowel quality. Finally, implications of the present findings for norm emergence among Yunnan speakers of English (cf. Ao & Low, 2012) are considered.

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