PHONETIC FACTORS IN /r/-LIAISON USAGE: A FIRST REPORT

Pilar Mompean-Guillamon & Jose Antonio Mompean-Gonzalez
University of Murcia

ID 1090
[full paper]

Variability in /r/-liaison usage in non-rhotic accents of English has been explained by reference to linguistic, sociolinguistic and phonetic factors. This paper looks at two phonetic factors that might condition such variability: a) the type of vowel phoneme at the end of the syllable likely to make the link; and b) the presence/absence of /r/ at the beginning of that syllable. A corpus of Received Pronunciation (RP) English newscasts from the years 2004 and 2005 available from the BBC Learning English website [16] was investigated. Potential contexts were detected and analysed auditorily. The results show that intrusive /r/ is more frequent after back vowels than after central vowels and that the presence of /r/ in the syllable that would make the /r/-link does not seem to have a great effect on the presence of /r/-link.