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Definite Article Reduction and The Obligatory Contour Principle in York English 1
Author(s) -
Roeder Rebecca V.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-968x.2012.01305.x
Subject(s) - vowel , realisation , linguistics , reduction (mathematics) , variation (astronomy) , class (philosophy) , history , psychology , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology , physics , geometry , quantum mechanics , astrophysics
This paper provides a phonological explanation for an observed pattern of Definite Article Reduction (DAR) in the city of York, northeast Yorkshire, England. Following a pattern common among very high frequency function words in English, the vowel‐less reduced definite article variably attaches leftward as s clitic. The cliticised definite article is subsequently affaected by the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP). The phonetic realisations accommodated by this explanation include a non‐glottalised variant that is perceptually a zero realisation. Sociolinguistic observations indicate that older speakers and more locally‐oriented young, working‐class men are most likely to have acquired the phonological subtleties of this pattern.