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An Empirical Look at Variation and Change in Received Pronunciation

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An Empirical Look at Variation and Change in Received Pronunciation What’s happening in RP? An empirical look at variation and change in Received Pronunciation Bente Rebecca Hannisdal University of Bergen Introduction Received Pronunciation, or RP, is probably the most thoroughly described accent of English. There has, however, been very little quantitative empirical research into the accent. The RP tradition is dominated by informal, impressionistic observations, or introspection. The RP accent has been somewhat neglected in the field of language variation and change, where the focus tends to be on non-standard varieties. Also, the codification of RP carries with it the danger of perceiving the accent as static and uniform, and the phonetic properties of RP are often taken for granted. This paper presents some results from a recent study of variation and change in RP, which aims to fill some of the empirical gap by supplying quantitative corpus- based data on current RP usage. Empirical data 30 hours of speech from 30 television newsreaders (15 males and 15 females) from BBC World, Sky News and ITV News. Phonological variables 1. CURE lowering, which involves the increasing use of / N9 / instead of traditional / T? / in words such as sure , pure , tourist , etc. 2. Smoothing, which refers to the reduction of the sequences / `H?+ `T? /, as in fire and power , to [ `? ] or [ `9 ]. 3. GOAT allophony, which refers to the realisation of / ?T / as [ PT ] before non-prevocalic /l/ in goal , hold , shoulder , etc. 4. R-sandhi, which comprises the use of linking and intrusive /r/ to avoid vowel hiatus, in phrases such as here /r/ and there , law /r/ and order , etc. 5. T-voicing, which involves the realisation of intervocalic /t/ as a voiced tap [3] rather than a fortis plosive, in e.g. getting , British , a lot of , etc. 6. Yod coalescence, which involves the coalescent assimilation of / si+ ci / to / sR+ cY / in stressed environments, as in tune , studio , endure , etc. 1 Results 1. CURE lowering CURE lowering is a change that has been going on for quite a long time. The / T? /-diphthong has often been predicted to disappear altogether from the phoneme system of RP (see e.g. Gimson 1964, Brown 1990, Nolan 1999). The results reported here, however, revealed that all 30 speakers have / T? / as an active member of their phonological system. They actually prefer the diphthong in the majority of CURE words, and lowering is established only in a few items (see Table 1). Table 1. The lexical distribution of /T? / and /N9 / in CURE word /T? / /N9 / word /T? / /N9 / bureau 6 - sure 7 38 cure 4 - assure 6 11 during 171 - assurance 2 1 Europe 360 - ensure 6 11 furious 10 - insurance 10 4 jury 12 2 tour 20 31 lure 2 - touring 1 2 moor 1 3 tourism 12 3 poor - 28 tourist 49 17 purely 4 - tournament 8 28 secure 18 1 Uruguay 1 - security 239 - your/you’re - 129 Based on these findings, there is apparently still a long way to go before / T? / is replaced by /N9 /. A closer look at the distribution further shows that the two vowels seem to be preferred in different phonetic environments: / T? / is used after a consonant + /j/, as in during , secure , furious , etc., and before prevocalic /r/, as in Europe , tourist , while / N9 / is preferred in other contexts, in words like poor , sure , tour , etc. The variability between / T? / and / N9 / in CURE seems, then, to be largely determined by the phonetic context, though not so systematically that it can be reduced to an allophonic split. 2. Smoothing The reduction of / `H?+ `T? / to monosyllabic [ `?+ `9 ] is also a traditional RP feature, mentioned already in the first edition of Jones’ English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917). My analysis showed that reduction of / `H?+ `T? / remains a common process in RP, as almost half the tokens were realised with Smoothing (see Table 2). The phonetic outcome of Smoothing is in most cases a centring diphthong [ `? ]. It is occasionally reduced to a monophthong, but usually with a front quality, avoiding a merging with the phoneme / @9 /. 2 Table 2. Smoothing: total scores N % [`?+ `9 ] 621 46.4 [`H?+ `T? ] 718 53.6 Smoothing seems to represent a case of stable variation rather than change in progress. It can be viewed as an alternative pronunciation of FIRE and POWER words, which some RP speakers have as part of their phonetic inventory. It can also be viewed as a feature of phonological reduction and simplification. In this perspective, Smoothing would be expected to vary according to the level of speech attention and the nature of the linguistic surroundings. 3. GOAT allophony The back rounded [ PT ] variant in pre-/l/ GOAT items is common in London English, where the realisational variability has resulted in a phoneme split. It has also been described as typical of Estuary English (e.g. Wells 1994). GOAT allophony is generally not recognised as a feature of RP, and is not included in the traditional descriptions. Based on my findings, however, GOAT allophony is becoming firmly established in modern RP. As Table 2 shows, 24 of the 30 speakers use this allophone categorically, while only two speakers lack the allophone. The extensive use of GOAT allophony is a clear indication that this feature should be considered a part of modern RP, and that it extends beyond Estuary English or London accents. Table 3. The use of GOAT allophony Categorical Variable No allophony allophony allophony Number of speakers 24 4 2 4. R-sandhi R-sandhi is one of the most common connected speech phenomena in RP and other non-rhotic accents. Linking and intrusive /r/ represent the same phonetic process, but they have different evaluative status. The use of linking /r/ is generally considered correct and desirable, and is, according to Cruttenden (2001: 289) “generally present” in RP speech, whereas stigmatisation has arisen for intrusive /r/. As expected, then, linking /r/ was found to be considerably more frequent than intrusive /r/ (see Table 4). Table 4. R-sandhi: total scores Linking /r/ Intrusive /r/ N % N % /r/ 3612 59.8 182 32.6 Ø 2433 40.2 376 67.4 3 Although /r/ is the dominant variant, a total percentage score of 59.8 is lower than expected, and suggests that linking /r/ may not be so categorical in RP as is often claimed, and that its status as “correct” RP usage is of less relevance. At the same time, it is possible that the low usage levels for sandhi /r/ may be a direct result of the nature of the speech situation. The newsreaders’ focus on clarity may be one reason why so many sandhi r’s are omitted: there may be a general conception that separating the words by leaving out the r-link leads to greater articulatory distinctness. The analysis further revealed a strong conditioning by certain linguistic environments on the use of sandhi /r/, motivated mainly by prosodic, semantic and articulatory considerations. Linking and intrusive /r/ are significantly disfavoured - before a stressed syllable for !hours, were !injured, Malaga !airport - before proper nouns Mr Annan, Doctor Austen, Katya Adler - in the vicinity of another /r/ terror attacks, extra information, area around 5. T-voicing T-voicing is one of the many phenomena that are known to affect /t/ in English accents. Within Britain, t-glottalling is the feature that has been most extensively discussed and investigated, also with reference to RP (cf. Fabricius 2000). Voicing of /t/ has not been subject to the same scholarly attention. To the extent that it is mentioned, it is said to be characteristic of casual, colloquial style or vernacular varieties. RP is generally not thought of as having t-voicing, and RP /t/ is said to be a voiceless plosive in all environments (cf. e.g. Wells 1982, Chambers 2002). This study investigated t-voicing in intervocalic environments following a short vowel. The findings showed an overall usage level of 35.2% for [ 3], which is strikingly high, especially considering the relative formality of the newscast setting. It clearly demonstrates that the tap is a common realisational variant for /t/ in RP, and that it is not limited to vernacular speech or casual style. Table 5.1. T-voicing: total scores N % [3] 1976 35.2 [s] 3639 64.8 A morphological analysis further showed that voicing of intervocalic /t/ is primarily a feature of connected speech: the percentage score for the voiced variant across word boundaries (what about, a lot of ) was a staggering 66.9%, which establishes t-voicing as one of the most common connected speech processes in modern RP. T-voicing was largely resisted word-internally, except in certain frequent items, such as British , getting . Table 5.2. T-voicing according to word position Word-final Word-medial N % N % [3] 1344 66.9 632 17.5 [t] 664 33.1 2975 82.5 4 6. Yod coalescence Yod coalescence is also traditionally perceived as non-standard or non-RP (cf. Wells 1994, Taylor 1998, Wells 2000). But in line with the general spread of the feature, pronunciations such as / sRt9a / tube and / cYt9m / dune have become increasingly accepted as part of modern RP (see e.g. Cruttenden 2001, Upton 2004). The results from the present study show that yod coalescence has penetrated the boundaries of RP. Almost half the tokens (46.4%) are realised with affricates (see Table 6). This is a very high figure, in view of the status of stressed yod coalescence in RP and the formality of the speech situation, and is a clear indication that yod coalescence in stressed syllables is becoming an established feature in RP and should be included in updated descriptions of the accent.
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