What is “-t,d deletion”? A new look at an old sociolinguistic variable Rosalind A. M. Temple University of York, GB E-mail: [email protected] significant differences in rates of “-t,d deletion” between ABSTRACT monomorphemes, regular past tense forms and past tense forms with root-vowel alternation and a coronal suffix This paper represents the first step in an attempt to analyse (e.g. left, felt), referred to in the variationist literature as the much-studied sociolinguistic variable known as “-t,d “semi-weak” forms. Monomorphemes are found to have deletion” from a phonetic rather than a variationist the highest rates of deletion, regular past tense forms the perspective. It arises out of an unsuccessful attempt to lowest and semi-weak forms pattern between the two. This replicate previous studies on a corpus of York English and variability is attributed to the cyclical application of the presents a series of tokens from that corpus which variable deletion rule within a Lexical Phonology exemplify the kinds of problem posed by the data before (henceforth “LP”) framework: since the monomorphemes examining the implications of these problems for the are fully formed from the beginning of the derivational analysis of “-t,d deletion” in terms of a monolithic process, they are subject to the rule more times than the phonological variable rule. semi-weak and regular past tense verb forms, which only satisfy the conditions for the rule once they are (morphologically) fully formed. Space precludes a more 1. INTRODUCTION detailed presentation of the reasoning behind this hypothesis (see [1], [7] and references for details); the “-t,d deletion” and “coronal stop deletion” are among the points of relevance to the present paper are that the most commonly used terms to refer to the variable account rests on the assumption that “-t,d deletion” is a production of word-final consonant clusters in English phonological process and that it implies the strong claim where the second consonant is /t/ or /d/, specifically the that the hierarchy of rates of deletion will be common to presence or absence of a perceptible phonetic reflex of the all adult native speakers of English who analyse the word-final stop. The possible alternative pronunciations of morphology of the words concerned in the same way. the word left under this view are illustrated in example (1), which is taken from the corpus of York English analysed In the remainder of this paper I shall present a brief in [1], as are all the other examples in this paper, except summary of an attempt to replicate previous studies of “- where indicated. t,d deletion” and outline some of the unexpected findings, which suggest that morphological conditioning is in fact (1) I did a college course when I left [lEf] school actually, an epiphenomenon. I shall then argue that not only is it but I left [lEft] it because it was business studies mistaken to use LP to account for “-t,d deletion”, it is also misleading to begin with the basic assumption of the This sociolinguistic variable has received much attention variable-rule-based approach that there is straightforward over the years since it was first studied in African alternation between a phonetic reflex of underlying /t/ or American Vernacular English (e.g. [2],[3]) principally /d/ and <zero> in a word-final position in the segmental because the variability appears to pattern in ways which sequence. An alternative approach is thus required which suggest it is not solely attributable to phonetic continuous takes account not only of the phonetic complexities of the speech processes (henceforth “CSPs”), but is a function of data but also of what is known about CSPs more generally. higher levels of linguistic organization. For example [4] accounts for the role of preceding and following segments in conditioning the variability by extending Clements’ 2. “-t,d DELETION" AS A VARIABLE RULE sonority-based model of core syllabification [5] and [6] IN YORK ENGLISH proposes variable application of the Obligatory Contour Principle to account for the role of the preceding segment. [1] set out to replicate North American studies of “-t,d deletion” on a corpus of spoken English collected in York, These and other explanations of the variable patterns have England, in order to test the claim that “there is language- been debated by subsequent scholars, but a further wide uniformity to certain conditions on the rule” [8]. The linguistic constraint is generally accepted by the data were coded and analysed using the Goldvarb variationist community, and that is the morphological multivariate analysis package [9], which is designed to structure of the word in which the underlying cluster identify the significant factors influencing the application appears. The claim in papers such as [7] is that there are of variable rules. Consistent with previous studies, [1] found statistically significant effects of preceding and The rule states that alveolar stops are variably deleted following segments in conditioning the patterns of when they occur word-finally and with a preceding variability. However, the morphological category of the consonant. Thus the stops are either present or absent in word containing the final cluster was not found to be the output. Moreover, for the rule to operate, the preceding statistically significant or consistent across speakers, consonant (and the variable following context) must be although there was a general tendency for unambiguously present when the consonant is deleted, that monomorphemes to be subject to more “-t,d deletion” than is the rule must be ordered with respect to other rules such regular past tense forms. Further predictions of the LP that processes affecting the preceding or following account were also tested and not confirmed. The only segment occur after “-t,d deletion”. In the course of the possible explanations for this finding are either that the LP auditory analysis of the York data prior to the statistical account is wrong, or that York speakers have a different analysis referred to above, it became evident that applying morpho(phono)logical system from that of the North such an analysis is not straightforward. A comprehensive American speakers analysed hitherto. The possibility that discussion of the issues is not possible here, but there the analysis of semi-weak verbs may differ between follows a series of examples of how this is so. The cases groups of speakers has been investigated (e.g. [10]), but presented here were analysed auditorily by two further analyses of the York data with these tokens independent analysts, the second of whom used removed still failed to yield a significant effect of corroborating evidence from acoustic displays using morphological type on the variability. Although it is Xwaves. No systematic measurements were taken, since conceivable that North American and British speakers the analysis was part of the attempted replication of would have different analyses of semi-weak forms, it is variationist studies reported above. highly unlikely that the morphology of monomorphemes and regular past tense forms differs between the varieties. 4. ISSUES IN APPLYING THE VARIABLE An investigation into interactions between phonological RULE TO NATURAL DATA and morphological effects showed an even distribution of following phonological contexts across morphological In some cases, the presence or absence of the /t,d/ is type, but a very uneven distribution of preceding contexts. unambiguous, most frequently when the following A large proportion of the monomorphemes were shown to environment is a vowel or pause. It is interesting to note have /s/ preceding the final stop, whereas the distribution that these are the contexts which are consistently reported of preceding contexts amongst the regular past tense forms as disfavouring deletion. When the percept of /t,d/ was not showed almost half of these tokens had preceding stops or clear, it was often possible to see spectrographic cues but weak fricatives. Preceding /s/ had been shown in the there were also many cases where determining whether the statistical analysis to highly favour “-t,d deletion”, and token had been deleted or not was much more stops and weak fricatives to disfavour it, so it became problematic. apparent that the tendency for rates of “-t,d deletion” to be higher in monomorphemes and lower in regular past tense forms was in fact an artefact of the uneven distribution of 4.1 NEUTRALISATION phonological contexts. There is thus no evidence that the Variationist studies of “-t,d deletion” (including [1]) LP account is applicable to York English. routinely exclude tokens followed by homorganic stops on the grounds that the phonetic contrast between a surface stop and zero is “neutralised”. In many of these cases the 3. ISSUES ARISING /t,d/ is unambiguously present in the output, for example when the token is released (2): The investigation summarised above showed that the LP account of “-t,d deletion” does not hold for York English. (2) past the crematorium- [pastHD´…] In the course of that investigation we were led to question whether any version of a standard variable rule is an or when there is a clear glottal stop (3): appropriate way to model the phenomenon. (i) is taken from Labov’s characterisation of the rule in [11]: (3) they were shot as they went down - [DiwEn?daUn] -cont or when it disagrees in voicing with the following segment NEG +seg +strid and there is a clear break in the voicing visible in the ∅ +cons (i) spectrogram, as in (4), where there was also clear t,d Æ ∅ / -str +cons +voc ___# + -voc cessation of the nasal resonance of the preceding [n]: +cons # avoi avoi (4) we’d just spend time - [spend|taIm] Despite these examples, the vast majority of (ii) is a revised version of the rule with the variable “neutralisation” cases are problematic, which justifies elements of its conditions removed: their exclusion from the analyses.