Advances in Sociophonetics

chapter 4

Where and what is (t,d)?

A case study in taking a step back in order

to advance sociophonetics

Rosalind A. M. Temple

New College, Oxford

The variable deletion of /t,d/ in word-final clusters in English has garnered

much attention from sociolinguists and, more recently, phonologists, most of

whom model it as a binary variable phonological rule. This paper examines

in detail some (t,d) clusters in York English and compares them with other

word-final singleton and cluster consonants. In the light of the general literature

on English, it explores an alternative view, that in at least one variety of British

English “-t,d deletion” is in fact a function of the common connected speech

processes which apply at the boundaries between words. It thus underlines the

importance for advances in sociophonetics of taking a step back to examine

critically the basic units of analysis of variable rules.

1. Introduction^1

The ultimate aim of sociophonetics, consistent with the vision of variation-
ist sociolinguistics more broadly since its inception, goes beyond mapping the
distribution of variants across social categories to integrating variability into the
grammar (see, for example, Stuart-Smith et al.’s discussion of exemplar theory
in this volume). At the heart of sociophonetics is phonetic detail, and the crucial

1. My heartfelt thanks to the following colleagues and friends for encouraging, advising and
   challenging me during the preparation of this paper: at Pisa, Gillian Sankoff and Jane Stuart-
   Smith; in Oxford, John Coleman and Sali Tagliamonte; remotely and elsewhere, Ricardo
   Bermúdez-Otero and John Glyn. Thanks too to the editors and reviewers of this volume for
   their painstaking reading of the first draft of the paper. Its shortcomings remain, of course, my
   own.