English Accents & Dialects, Fifth Edition Answers to in-text exercises

Chapter 3
1. Fill in the gaps in the following:

(a) Clear [l] and dark [ɫ] are allophones of the same phoneme. Some RP speakers use a vowel
in place of dark [ɫ] in some environments; this form of substitution is known as /l/-
vocalization.

(b) Some RP speakers make a distinction in pronunciation between saw and sore. They have
one more vowel phoneme than other RP speakers. This is an example of systemic [or
inventory] variability.

(c) When different speakers use a different series of phonemes in pronouncing the same
word, we speak of lexical variability. An example is the pronunciation of the word lure,
which may be pronounced with or without /j/.

(d) When different speakers pronounce the same phoneme in different ways in the same
phonological environment, we speak of realizational variability.

2. Name as many factors as you can think of which help to account for variability within
RP.

Examples include:
• speech style
• speech rate
• the speaker’s
(a) social class (this might relate to the school the speaker attended)
(b) age
(c) gender
(d) occupation
(e) regional background (to a small extent)
• age at which speaker began to acquire RP
• speaker’s physical state, e.g.
(a) fatigue
(b) intoxication
(c) head cold
• ‘personality’ (the example given in the text is ‘fastidiousness’)
• attitude
• beliefs about correctness of pronunciation.

3. Give the voiced equivalents of:

/p/ /b/ /θ/ /ð/

/t/ /d/ /s/ /z/
/k/ /ɡ/ /ʃ/ /ʒ/
/f/ /v/ /tʃ/ / dʒ /

copyright © 2012 Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt Published by Routledge
English Accents & Dialects, Fifth Edition Answers to in-text exercises

4. How is the glottal stop distributed in RP?

In RP and many other accents, [ʔ] may precede /p t k tʃ/ in syllable coda position,
‘reinforcing’ them, e.g. in cups, got, six, watch. This process is also known as glottalization.
In most accents in the British Isles (including RP), glottal stop may replace /t/ where /t/
precedes another consonant across a syllable boundary — as in, for example, atlas, shotgun,
Gatwick, sit still (this is known as glottalling or glottal replacement). [ʔ] can also be a
realization of /p/ and /k/ in words and phrases like upbraid, soup bowl, bookcase, back
garden, etc., where the place of articulation of the following consonant matches that of /p/ or
/k/. Glottal stops may also be inserted to mark a syllable boundary when the following
syllable is vowel-initial (e.g. in place of linking or intrusive /ɹ/), or in utterance-initial
position preceding a vowel. In non-standard accents, and increasingly in RP, [ʔ] is used word-
finally (e.g. who’s that), and intervocalically (e.g. butter, shut up).

5. When is /h/ likely to be dropped in RP?

It may be dropped when it occurs in the pronouns he, him, her, his and the auxiliary verbs
has, have, had, where these are in unstressed positions.

6. Comment on the RP pronunciation of the nasals in the words cotton, tenth, and
emphatic, and in the phrase ten girls.
• cotton: the /t/ is nasally released into the /n/, meaning that the alveolar closure is
maintained while the velum is lowered to permit nasal airflow. The /n/ is syllabic (i.e.
there is no preceding tautosyllabic (= same syllable) vowel, the /n/ acting as the syllable
nucleus on its own).
• tenth: the /n/ assimilates to the place of articulation of the following /θ/, and is realized
as [n̪]. This process is known as ‘anticipatory place assimilation’.
• emphatic: the /m/ is pronounced as [ɱ] (a labiodental nasal) because it is followed by the
labiodental fricative /f/. This is another example of anticipatory place assimilation.
• ten girls: the /n/ is realized as [ŋ] through anticipatory place assimilation to the following
/ɡ/. The presence of a word boundary does not obstruct this process.

7. Give examples of linking /ɹ/ and intrusive /ɹ/. For the latter, give examples of
intrusive /ɹ/ occurring (a) across a word boundary and (b) within a word.
• Linking /ɹ/: four apples, soar away, lore and language
• Intrusive /ɹ/: (a) across a word boundary: pizza [ɹ] oven, saw [ɹ] a way, law [ɹ] and order;
(b) within a word: saw[ɹ]ing, Obama[ɹ]ization

8. Fill in the gaps in the following:

(a) The final vowel in words like university and greedy tends in contemporary RP to have a
vowel more like /i/ than /ɪ/. Although the latter vowel may be taught to foreign learners and
is recommended as the ‘correct’ pronunciation in many dictionaries which give guidance as
to the pronunciation of RP, it is now considered rather old-fashioned, or affected when used
by younger people.

copyright © 2012 Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt Published by Routledge
English Accents & Dialects, Fifth Edition Answers to in-text exercises

(b) In some unstressed syllables (such as the first syllable of believe) there is a growing
tendency for / ɪ / to be replaced by / ə /.

(c) There is variability in RP between /a/ and /ɑː/ in such words as photograph and plastic.
[Note: other examples can be found in the text.]

(d) Most words that were once pronounced with /ʊə/ (for example, sure and tour) are now
pronounced with / ɔː / by most speakers.

(e) There is a tendency for the vowel in words like food and tune to be realized as [ʉː].

9. Give examples of ‘smoothing’ in RP.

beer /ɪə/ → [ɪː]

chair /ɛə/ → [ɛː]
cure /ʊə/ → [ɔː]
fire /aɪə/ → [ɑː]
power /aʊə/ → [ɑː]

copyright © 2012 Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt Published by Routledge