Abstract
This paper looks at the use of /r/-sandhi in the speech of Queen Elizabeth II. Potential contexts of /r/-sandhi were identified and analysed for the presence or absence of rhoticity and glottalisation in a corpus of Christmas speeches over a period of seven decades. The results show that the Queen avoids intrusive /r/ altogether but that she uses linking /r/ in most potential cases, that glottalisation is common when /r/-sandhi is not used, and that linking /r/ and glottalisation can also co-occur. A comparison with a longitudinal corpus of speakers also shows that the Queen resembles group-level trends in the case of linking /r/ but differs in the case of intrusive /r/. The results also indicate that a number of phonetic and usage-based variables influence linking /r/ usage, including previously unreported factors such as vowel quality collocation frequency. The findings are discussed in the context of usage-based theory.
Highlights
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of processes that occur at word boundaries in connected speech
The results reported below correspond to the initial logistic regression since it had a lower Akaike information criterion (AIC) than the logistic regression preceded by the random forest (525.8 vs. 552.91)
The limited dataset and the zero occurrences prevent us from carrying out an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon for the variables studied in RQ3
Summary
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of processes (e.g. assimilation, elision, etc.) that occur at word boundaries in connected speech. Hay & Sudbury 2005, Hartmann & Zerbian 2009), among others, an r-sound may occur in heterosyllabic V1[–high] + V2 contexts (e.g. here it is [»hI®It ÌIz]; cf here [hI]) This type of /r/-sandhi is commonly referred to as LINKING /r/ and coexists with another type, INTRUSIVE /r/ (e.g. idea of justice [aI»dI®Ìv »dZ2stIs]; cf idea [aI»dI]). The main difference between the two types is whether or not an r-sound was pronounced at an earlier stage of the language and whether the conventional spelling still contains an Both linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ are sometimes considered to be the same linguistic phenomenon from a synchronic point of view given their similar distribution patterns, phonological context, and hiatus-breaking function (McCarthy 1993). They are, collectively referred to as /r/-liaison or /r/-sandhi
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