Joined up thinking about T/D deletion in English

Dr Wyn Johnson

and

Dr Jenny Amos

What is T/D Deletion? T/D deletion, also known as ‘coronal stop’ deletion,

occurs when a /t/ or a /d/ is the right sister in a syllable coda.

For example: Word final – last night land worker worked fine raised the flag Word Medial – Christmas grandfather

However, even though the title suggests a combined

variable, can the deletion of /t/ and /d/ be treated as a single phenomenon as it has been up until now?

Previous work…

A lot of work has be conducted on the nature and distribution of deletion over the past 30yrs. This research has mainly focussed on:

– Preceding and Following environments – Morphological Issues – The Role of Frequency – Sociolinguistic Issues

However, in order to highlight some of the basic

issues surrounding t/d deletion, this presentation will focus on the domain of preceding environment

One theory which has been advanced regarding preceding environment relates to OCP violations:

Guy and Boberg (1997) suggest that the more features the preceding coda consonant shares with the /t/ or /d/, the greater chance for deletion:

However, as Tagliamonte and Temple (2005) point out, there’s no ranking relationship within each set in this OCP approach. Therefore, no ranking predictions can be made between segments with similarities in, for example,[+cor –son] and [-son –cont]. In addition, there is no allowance for the distribution of these sounds across affixed and non-affixed words. Alternatively, hierarchies of deletion probability have been constructed, such as the dialectically generalised hierarchy proposed by Labov (1989):

/s/ > stops > nasals > other fricatives > liquids

Some observations surrounding this hierarchy (based on Johnson and Amos fc)

As noted above, one common theme regarding studies of t/d deletion in both British and American studies is the treatment of /t/ and /d/ as a single variable.

However, the phonemes /t/ and /d/ do not share the same distribution with respect to final clusters within and across morpheme types….

For Example…

General (Monomorphemes):

• /t/ will only follow a voiceless left sister in the coda (e.g. last, act) while /d/ will only follow voiced left sisters (e.g. land, old)

• In British English, /t/ will generally glottalise (rather than delete) following /n/ and /l/ - therefore, glottalisation and /t/ deletion are in complementary distribution

• The classification of ‘liquids’ will only refer to /l/ in British English (and only to dialects where /r/ is present as a coda consonant, not to a rhoticised vowel)

Monomorphemes:

• /t/ can only occur after /p f s k/ (e.g. apt, gift, fast, fact)

• /d/ can only occur after /l n/ (e.g. grand, cold)

/s/ > stops > nasals > other fricatives > liquids (in relation to British English)

So, in the above hierarchy: - /s/ only relates to (t)

- ‘nasal’ can only apply to (d), where /n/ relates to

monomorphemes, and /m / relate to past tense forms

- ‘liquids’ only relates to (d) and, in British English, would only apply to /l/

- ‘stops’ and ‘other fricatives’ also contain a mixture of applicable and non-applicable environments. For example:

// can only precede /t/ when /t/ is a regular past tense marker

/v/ can only precede /d/ when /d/ is a regular past tense marker

With such disparity across the distribution of both /t/ and /d/, it does not make much scientific sense to treat them as the same variable and represent

them in the same hierarchy (especially if we are to later test for factors such as the significance of

morpheme status)

Demonstration through data

Overall Percentage of Deletion (N. 897)

0

20

40

60

80

100

t/d Deletion

Percentage

t/d Deletion

Percentage 41.69 58.31

(t) vs. (d)

0

20

40

60

80

100

T O

T

D

T O

T 32 68

D 53 47

(t) with and without ‘just and used to’

0

20

40

60

80

100

T O

With 'just' and 'usedto'

Without 'just' and'used to'

T O

With 32 68

Without 43 57

Preceding Environments – Comparison (token numbers)

(t) (d)

Free

Bound

Summarising points Should (t) and (d) be treated separately?

In short yes!

The hierarchy, while generally correct, hides a lot of internal subtleties:

- There are t/d distribution differences in both free and bound morphemes

- The inter-relationship of linguistic factors, distribution and frequency