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Show t . - Distinctive people in more than one way f Mormons have unique language characteristics Mormons are a distinctive people in more ways than one. Just ask Dr. Marianna Di Paolo. While the predominant religious m group in Utah likes to call itself "peculiar" because of its temperate lifestyle, Di Paolo has discovered language characteristics unique to Anglo Mormons in the Beehive State that lend to their distinction. Phrases common in Utah such as "He may have done,' in response to a question such as "Did he do that?" or "I could do," in response to a question such as "Can you do this? ' are highly uncommon in the United States, said Di Paolo, a University Uni-versity of Utah assistant professor of English and director of the Intermountain Language Survey. "In the English of England, these are very standard but in the United States this is not usual," Di Paolo said. She has yet to complete comparative com-parative research on other ethnic groups and non-Mormons in Utah, "but my guess is that it will pattern as a Mormon feature," she said. "The evidence I've already gotten from having people fill out questionnaires has made it pretty clear they are not only Mormon features, but they are more common among Mormons who are more isolated from gentiles like rural Mormons are. ' ' Di Paolo has a theory on why the influence of England is still felt so strongly on Utahns' language. "The U.S. English population came in the 17th and 18th centuries for the most part and after that there was a trickle here and a trickle there, but U.S. English was pretty much set and there wasn't a lot of influence after the 1 8th century, except ex-cept for Utah," she said. Di Paolo says a large influx of Mormon converts from England probably brought the "may have done" and "could do" kinds of phrases over in the late 1800s, when their usage was starting to gain popularity in England. "It's one of those things that very clearly came to this area with English-speaking Mormons," she said. Di Paolo says she has also de tected strong ties in speech between southern Utah and regions of the South such as west Texas. For example, ex-ample, "I might could do that," is rarely used outside the southern United States except for Utah. She has what she calls "very, very tentative" theories on the connections. con-nections. "One thing I suspect is that the cattle culture and language of west Texas influenced southern Utah. Another possibility is some of the Dixie settlements in southern Utah were sent converts made in the South because of the cotton growing grow-ing tried in the 19th century in southern Utah." Di Paolo says another possibility is that Mormon pioneers picked up the southern language influence during their stay in Illinois and Missouri " 'Might could' also occurs in some varieties of Scots' English and there are some Scots here, so exactly where these things come from are sometimes hard to pin down," she said. have died off, so you can't get ! evidence from them," she said. "What's really wonderful here is that all these change that we may have seen in other dialects are happening hap-pening now so it's a wonderful test case for what might have happened somewhere else or what might be happening somewhere else." Di Paolo said aside from the theoretical importance of her research, re-search, computer speech recognition recogni-tion is one of many practical applications ap-plications of research such as hers. "Remember the Jetsons kind of thing? You've got a home computer and you say 'Open the door,' and it does it and you say, 'Make dinner, and it does it "Now maybe we can program it to do it from your voice but then what if somebody else wants to buy it? That computer's either going to have to learn how the commands could be pronounced by another person or the new person is going to have to program it with every single command,' Di Paolo said. ! "The more we know about ; possible variations in language, the I closer we get to making that J technology feasible and perfecting it." ; 4 The U. of U. professor and researcher re-searcher said Utah is a wonderful laboratory for studying changes in language. She said Utahns she has surveyed who are in their 20s pronounce pro-nounce common words differently from their grandparents. For example, words such as "bang" and "ban" are pronounced similar to the vowel in "had" by older Utahns while their grandchildren grand-children may pronounce those words similar to the vowels in "hayed" and "had," respectively. "It's a systemic difference called 'raising, Di Paolo says, explaining explain-ing how the pronunciation of ' 'hayed' ' raises the tongue higher in the mouth than the pronunciation of "had." No one really knows what starts pronunciation changes, but they have been common throughout history, she said. For example, vowel raising in English has been going on since before Shakespeare's time. To see a pronunciation change so distinctive within three generations, as in Utah, is a unique opportunity, Di Paolo said. "One of the interesting things about this area is that there are several different changes going on in the vowels and there's a progress of change that can be seen by looking look-ing at the different generations and different groups of people here. "That's not true in other parts of the country necessarily, where the changes may be older and the generations ge-nerations that started the change |