Dental pronunciation of alveolar consonants before /r/ and /ər/ is a well-known feature of traditional varieties of Irish English. This PRE-R DENTALISATION (PreRD) has a number of intriguing linguistic properties, in particular an associated /r/-REALISATION EFFECT and a MORPHEME BOUNDARY CONSTRAINT. It is less well known that PreRD is (or perhaps was) also a feature of a number of English varieties outside Ireland, particularly in traditional northern English dialects. This article analyses dialect data from northern England in order to determine the nature of PreRD there and its historical relations with the phenomenon in Irish English. In addition, it explores the phonological complexities of PreRD in light of the loss of rhoticity in traditional northern English dialects.
Pre-R DentalisationDental pronunciation of (general English, ?underlying, ?historical) alveolar nonsibilant consonants before /r/ and /ər/ is a well-known (and indeed stereotyped) feature of traditional varieties of Irish English. Thus we find pronunciations such as try [t1 |aÚe], dry [d1 |aÚe], street [st1 |it], entry ["En1 t1 |e], better ["bEt1 "], wonder ["wç· 6 n1 d1 "] and dinner ["dən1 "] used by conservative speakers of Tyrone English (TyrE) in Northern Ireland. 2 This PRE-R DENTALISATION (henceforth PreRD) is a pan-Irish English feature, having been reported from locations as linguistically and geographically diverse as Wexford see also Harris 1985: 211-18 for a critical analysis), which has 1 I would like to thank Patrick Honeybone and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on this article. Any remaining deficiencies are, of course, of my own making. 2 Tyrone English data are from ongoing research on the variety by the present author. Harris (1985Harris ( , 2006) also records PreRD for /l/ in Mid-Ulster English, as in pillar ["pIl1 "], but this is not present in TyrE. 3 In Southern Irish English (but not Northern Irish English), PreRD of original /t/ and /d/ has resulted in phonemic split and merger with original /θ/ and /ð/, since the English dental fricatives, /θ/ and /ð/, have also become dental stops in all environments (Wells 1982: 429-31). Since this article deals with varieties where this is not the case, I do not discuss this aspect of Southern Irish English PreRD further.
362WA R R E N M AG U I R E (phonemic) contrasts between 'broad' dental /t d n l/ and 'slender' (palato-)alveolar /t´d´n´l´/. Furthermore, PreRD has a number of intriguing linguistic properties, in particular an associated /r/-REALISATION EFFECT (henceforth RRE), and a MORPHEME BOUNDARY CONSTRAINT (henceforth MBC). PreRD in Irish English is often associated with tapped (and possibly trilled) pronunciations of /r/, as in TyrE try [t1 |aÚe] vs cry [k®aÚe]. The RRE has been recorded in varieties of Ulster Scots (Gregg 1985), in Mid-Ulster English generally (Harris 1985), in Donegal Gaeltacht English (Ní Ghallchóir 1981, and in Wexford (Ó Muirithe 1996). Since the RRE is also present after /θ/ and /ð/ in those northern Irish English varieties w...