Each p[ɚ]son does it th[εː] way: Rhoticity variation and the community grammar

Abstract

This paper examines individual differences in constraints on linguistic variation in light of Labov's (2007) proposal that adult change (diffusion) disrupts systems of constraints and Tamminga, MacKenzie, and Embick's (2016) typology of constraints. It is shown that, in pooling data from multiple speakers, some of the complexity in structured community variation may be overlooked. Data on rhoticity from speakers of Bristol English are compared to 34 previous studies of rhoticity in varieties of English around the world. Constraints found to be consistent across varieties are also found to be consistent across speakers of Bristol English, whereas those that differ between varieties also differ between individuals, implying that only those which differ are truly part of the grammar, and that these are indeed disrupted by diffusion.

Singing to a Genre: Constraints on Variable Rhoticity in British Americana

“…By and large, the patterns for rhotic stylization reported here show similarities with the linguistic path of dialect change observed in English varieties. Lexical words favor rhoticity in changing dialects, as reported for rhotic loss (Blaxter et al 2019) and gain (Becker 2014). In their study of rhotic loss in Lancashire, England, Turton and Lennon (2023) report that function words are near-categorically non-rhotic, which, while illustrating a more advanced case of rhotic adoption, mirrors the finding for singing stylization.…”

“…Tokens were coded for several linguistic factors that have been shown to affect variable phenomena in general and variable rhotic production in dialects of English in particular (Nagy and Irwin 2010;Blaxter et al 2019;Gibson 2019). These factors include: word class of the lexical item containing the rhotic (function vs. content word); preceding vowel according to the word's lexical set (Wells 1982); complexity of the preceding vowel (monophthong vs. diphthong); syllable complexity (simple, i.e., <r> as the only coda consonant vs. complex, i.e., <r> followed by another coda element, e.g., far vs. heart); stress (stressed vs. unstressed); following context (consonant vs. pause); location within the word (medial vs. final); and location within the phrase (medial vs. final).…”

Voice quality and coda /r/ in Glasgow English in the early 20th century

“…The choice and coding of these control variables was guided by (i) preliminary visual exploration of our data, and (ii) limits on the size of our dataset. Previous work (e.g., Blaxter, Beeching, Coates, Murphy, & Robinson, 2019;Nagy & Irwin, 2010) has identified other variables, such as morphological position and lexical frequency that also influence the realization of =r=, and has also demonstrated effects of the preceding vowel context that go beyond what can be captured by our preceding vowel frontness and stress variables. Such effects are important both from a descriptive and theoretical point of view, but they are typically relatively small and also orthogonal to the main research questions in this paper.…”

Voice quality and coda /r/ in Glasgow English in the early 20th century

“…Previous work (e.g. Nagy & Irwin 2010, Blaxter et al 2019 has identified other variables such as morphological position and lexical frequency that also influence the realisation of /r/; and has also demonstrated effects of the preceding vowel context that go beyond what can be captured by our preceding vowel frontness and stress variables. Such effects are important both from a descriptive and theoretical point of view, but they are typically relatively small and also orthogonal to the main research questions in this paper.…”