Advances in Sociophonetics

106 Rosalind A. M. Temple

explicitness” whether or not another consonant follows. Examples (20)^18 and

(21) show somewhat lenited prevocalic /t/ and /d/, the latter also being devoiced,

along with the preceding and following segments, and (22) shows a rather greater

degree of gestural weakening, to a retracted fricative articulation. (20) is illus-

trated in Figure 2.

(20) (it) was the discipline I liked and [lɐɪt ̞s̞ən] that was all there was to it

(21) she wa’n’t very pleased w a’n’ t [pl̥ˠi̞z̥t ̞ʰʍɒnʔ] my mum

(22) they went and knocked on [nɒ ̰ʂɔn] Andrew’s door

0

I liked an’

a: l ə n

0.6654

Time (s)

s

Figure 2. Spectrogram showing I liked a n’ (20); male speaker.

Parallel examples of lenition are found with singleton /t,d/ and other stops but

again these are relatively uncommon. (23), illustrated in Figure 3, is a very lax,

slightly fricativised articulation:

(23) it really reminded me [ɹ̩ʷmɑ̟nd̥ʊ̟d̞ʷᶻ̥mei]

18. There is some debate in the literature (Buizza 2010, 2011) as to whether affricated release
    constitutes lenition or fortition, but the York data seem similar in this respect to the alveolar
    affrication found in “Modern RP” by Buizza and to be further instances of lenition, often co-
    occurring with a lenited stop articulation, as here.