Allomorphic Variation in the English Article System

Abstract

This chapter addresses variation in allomorphy of the indefinite and definite article system, which has not been subject to empirical analysis within the British variationist paradigm up to now. Allomorphy of the indefinite article — realised as ‘a’ or ‘an’ — depending on the following phoneme is generally observed in most English accents, no doubt influenced by the fact that there is a change in orthography as well as pronunciation. Perhaps less obviously, the definite article ‘the’ has a similar allomorphic (though not orthographic) alternation and in standard accents is realised as ‘thuh’ /ðə/ before a consonant and ‘thee’ /ðiː/ before a vowel. While not all varieties of English adhere to the standard rule, they do appear to adhere to a more subtle and more complex rule-governed system — that of hiatus avoidance. In this chapter I discuss variation in the alternations of the definite and indefinite articles and consider this in relation to the avoidance of hiatus in V#V contexts.