Patrick Honeybone

Lenition inhibition in Liverpool English

This article integrates aspects of synchronic and diachronic phonological theory with points relevant to the study of a nonreference accent in order to investigate the patterns of consonantal lenition found in the variety of English spoken in Liverpool, England. Points of contact with variationist approaches are addressed, partly because the lenitions are variable processes. An implicational understanding of lenition is developed, thanks to which it is possible to describe the prosodic and melodic environments which inhibit the lenitions. New data from a small corpus investigation into Liverpool English are presented and a theoretical and practical methodology is proposed, which enables the data to be investigated. The descriptive focus is on the segments /t/ and /k/, which are typically realized as affricates or fricatives unless the lenition is inhibited. A notion of ‘melodic lenition inhibition’ is developed to account for some of the inhibitory patterns, whereby the sharing of autosegmental phonological elements gives a segment ‘strength’ in certain environments.

T-to-R and the Northern Subject Rule: questionnaire-based spatial, social and structural linguistics

Accents and dialects of English and Scots in Britain have been under active investigation for many decades, as reported through the Survey of English Dialects (Orton et al. 1962–71) and the Linguistic Atlas of Scotland (Mather et al. 1975–86), Wells’ three-volume compendium (1982), and a host of detailed studies of individual varieties. There are also welcome recent signs of the reintegration of variation data into theoretical discussion (see Henry 2002, Cornips & Corrigan 2005a and Trousdale & Adger 2007 for morphosyntax, as well as Anttila 2002 and Coetzee & Pater 2011 for phonology). Nonetheless, the precise structural, geolinguistic and sociolinguistic patterning of many features of vernacular Englishes in the UK is still largely unknown.

The Oxford Handbook of Historical Phonology

and

I blame the government

Abstract There are many competing theories of phonology, each seeking to best explain the range of phonological processes and types of segmental inventories which are attested in the languages of the world. This paper seeks to investigate the claims and assumptions of one such theory: ‘Government Phonology’. The starting point for discussion is Shohei Yoshida’s monograph Phonological Government in Japanese , in which the author endeavours to apply the theory to a range of phonological and morphophonological data from Japanese. Certain of Yoshida’s specific claims are discussed, but the aim of this piece is wider than a simple review. The chief theoretical concepts used in the theory are introduced and critically discussed, and various connections to other theories of phonology in particular and language in general are investigated.

Structuralist Historical Phonology

and

Structuralist Historical Phonology: Systems in Segmental Change

and