week 6

Question 1

glottalisation

Answer 1

insertion of glottal stop [ʔ] before voiceless plosives (p, t, k) – pre-glottalisation
(also glottal reinforcement); e.g. pot [pɒʔt]

Question 2

/g-/-dropping

Answer 2

• alveolar [n] instead of velar [ŋ] in –ing endings; e.g. doin’
• Dropped /g/ stigmatised because of strong relation to orthography

Question 3

th-fronting

Answer 3

• Dental fricatives replaced by labio-dental ones; thus /ð/ and /θ/ are replaced by /f/ and /v/
  respectively

Question 4

h-dropping

Answer 4

omission of /h/ from initial positions

Question 5

/l/-vocalisation

Answer 5

• Dark /l/ [ɫ] is not released laterally (sides of tongue) and becomes a rounded vowel.
• The vowel is somewhere between [o] and [ʊ].
• Spreading rapidly, but not accepted in RP yet.
• If it becomes an RP feature, then new diphthongs silk /ɪʊ/ and help /ɛʊ/ appear.

Question 6

/r/-dropping

Answer 6

• Dropped /r/ created new diphthongs, namely /ɪə/, /ɛə/, /ɔə/, and /ʊə/
  o Interestingly, in modern RP there is no /ɛə/ and /ɔə/ and the status of /ʊə/ is
  increasingly less certain.

Question 7

labio-dental /r/

Answer 7

• /r/ is replaced by a labio-dental approximant [ʋ].
• No phonemic contrast between ring v. wing.
• Considered a speech defect (imperfect children’s pronunciation maintained into
  adulthood) by some, for others it is a modern variant of the phoneme.

Question 8

intrusive /r/

Answer 8

• Linking /r/ supported by spelling (e.g. here is).
• Intrusive /r/ not supported by spelling but inserted to avoid a vocalic hiatus across word
  boundaries (e.g. I saw him, law and order) as well as word-internally (e.g. drawing).
• Used after /ɑ:/, /ɔ:/ and, in particular /ə/.

Question 9

yod-dropping

Answer 9

• Yod refers to the /j/ sound present in some words of the GOOSE and CURE sets (boom v.
  mute; poor v. pure)
• In the past, yod was far more common: (e.g. chew, juice, rude, crew, blue, flew, etc.; now
  in RP these words are /j/-less)
• Yod can be dropped in tune, student, duke, reduce, new, numerous, suit, solution; in RP
  all of them are /j/-full apart from the last two; in US English all of them /j/-less.

Question 10

yod-coalescence

Answer 10

Alternatively, yod can coalesce (merge) with the preceding plosives and fricatives to
produce palatalised consonants:

o within one word: tune, duke, issue;

o across word boundaries: could you, don’t you, this year.

Question 11

whale-wale merger

Answer 11

• In the past, two different phonemes /hw/ v. /w/ (phonetically [ʍ] v. [w].