Revealing new phonological insights into (t,d) deletion: An ol’ variable unexplored in the South East of England
(t,d) deletion - word-final consonant clusters C(C)T/C(C)D – has been widely investigated in US English dialects (e.g. Labov, 1989), yet received comparably little attention in the UK (Tagliamonte & Temple 2005; Baranowski & Turton 2016). We investigate (t,d) in three East Anglian communities: Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich. 4879 tokens, analysed through mixed-effects Rbrul regression analysis, were collected among 36 speakers stratified by class, sex and age. The obstruent category of following phonetic segments is subdivided into stops, nasals, sibilants, and non-sibilant fricatives: sibilants favour deletion, yet non-sibilant fricatives disfavour it, with following consonantal [h] playing a notable role. Results from linguistic factors (preceding and following environments, morphological class, voicing agreement, and stress) are consistent across the three locations, despite slight constraint ranking differences. However, the behaviour of liquids is inconsistent. Word frequency, stress and social factors are not significant, except for sex in Norwich.
References Labov, W. (1989). The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change, 1, 85-97. Baranowski, M. & Turton D. (2016). The morphological effect in British English T/D-deletion. Paper presented at the Linguistic Association of Great Britain, 7th September 2016, University of York. Tagliamonte, S., & Temple, R. (2005). New perspectives on an ol’variable: (t,d) in British English. Language Variation and Change, 17, 281-302.
