Lenition inhibition in Liverpool English

Abstract

This article integrates aspects of synchronic and diachronic phonological theory with points relevant to the study of a nonreference accent in order to investigate the patterns of consonantal lenition found in the variety of English spoken in Liverpool, England. Points of contact with variationist approaches are addressed, partly because the lenitions are variable processes. An implicational understanding of lenition is developed, thanks to which it is possible to describe the prosodic and melodic environments which inhibit the lenitions. New data from a small corpus investigation into Liverpool English are presented and a theoretical and practical methodology is proposed, which enables the data to be investigated. The descriptive focus is on the segments /t/ and /k/, which are typically realized as affricates or fricatives unless the lenition is inhibited. A notion of`melodic lenition inhibition' is developed to account for some of the inhibitory patterns, whereby the sharing of autosegmental phonological elements gives a segment strength' in certain environments.English Language and Linguistics 5.2: 213±249. # Cambridge University Press 2001

Liverpool English

“…The presence of sibilant fricatives for /t/ does not lead to the loss of phonological contrast with /s/. Honeybone (2001) transcribes lenited /t/ as [D] which, following Pandeli et al (1997), implies a fricative with a flat cross-sectional tongue shape (signaled by [T]) at a precisely alveolar place of articulation (signaled by the double-underscore diacritic which is adapted from the 'extended IPA' used in the transcription of disordered speech). There are durational differences, too, with a longer phonetic fricative for /s/ than for /t/ (Sangster 2001).…”

Lenition, fortition and the status of plosive affrication: the case of spontaneous RP English/t/

“…English (Knowles 1973, Sangster 2001, Honeybone 2001, Marotta & Barth 2005, Watson 2007a, to which we have referred throughout this paper, as well as with that of plosive affrication in Pisan Italian as described by Marotta (2008).…”

“…Compared with aspirated instances, affricated ones also show a greater overall degree of obstruction to airflow: they involve a complete closure and a clearly audible transient burst, followed by oral as opposed to -or in addition to -glottal frication. The presence of a transient burst in most instances of [t s ] is crucial: this makes it particularly difficult to see /t/-affrication in our data in terms of a relative opening of stricture (Lass 1984, Honeybone 2001 In the light of these findings, we propose that instead of viewing RP English /t/-affrication as a weak degree of /t/-frication, as Honeybone (2001Honeybone ( , 2005, Sangster (2001) and others do for Liverpool English, we should treat the affricated realisations of /t/ in our data as aspirated realisations with a strong and slow release -that is, realisations of /t/ with a long-lag voice onset time produced with a relatively high degree of initiation effort and a relatively slow release gesture following the alveolar closure, which results in strong homorganic frication. In most cases, the speed of the release gesture is such that the entire release portion is audible as coronal; in some, the voice onset time is long enough to allow the tongue tip to move away from the alveolar ridge before the onset of voicing or the cessation of frication noise, resulting in the perception of a period of aspiration following the affricated release.…”

“…Attempts to formulate a unified account of the various processes involved have long focused on the phonetic parameters of sonority (Taylor 1974, Cser 2003, Vijayakrishnan 2003, Szigetvári 2008, articulatory effort (Donegan & Stampe 1979, Hock & Joseph 1996, Kirchner 2001a and degree of obstruction to airflow (Lass & Anderson 1975, Lass 1984, Honeybone 2001. Recent studies 1 We are grateful to Paul Carter, Barry Heselwood, three anonymous reviewers and the associate editor for comments on earlier versions of this paper.…”

“…To start with, following Bauer (2008) we take seriously the idea that the phonetic basis for diachronic lenition and fortition is to be found in synchronic patterns of inter-and intra-speaker variation (Honeybone 2001, Bauer 2008, and therefore, that we can improve our understanding of processes whose status is debatable, such as plosive affrication, by analysing their phonetic and phonological characteristics in patterns of synchronic variation.…”