Chapter 4. Where and what is (t,d)? 107
0reminded mem n d d m ei0.7341
Time (s)wẓFigure 3. Spectrogram showing reminded me (23); female speaker.
Examples (20) to (22) would count along with non-lenited stops as non-applica-
tions of a variable rule of coronal stop deletion, and that is how they were treated
by Tagliamonte & Temple (2005). The deletion rule would be said to have applied
only at the extreme open end of the continuum of lenition, where there is no
residual auditory or acoustic evidence of a reflex of /t/ or /d/. Once again we find
parallel cases: there are examples of fully lenited word-final singleton consonants,
as in (24), which is very rapid speech, and (25), where the vowel preceding the
deleted consonant is stressed and lengthened, indicating that this full lenition is
not necessarily dependent on a rapid speech rate:
(24) they had the coal delivered by [dɪlɪvəbə] rail
(25) and it was very vague because [vɛːɪbɪkʰʊz̥]
and examples of full lenition in non-(t,d) clusters:
(26) and my grandchildren are able to help [təɦɛlˠ]^19
(27) they didn’t ask me [ˈˈʔasˑmi] so...
- This token has no trace of labialisation, despite the fact that it is followed rapidly by an
inbreath and the word When, beginning a new sentence.