Articulation at the end stage of sound change : Derhoticisation across east Lancashire

Nance, Claire and Dewhurst, Maya and Kirkham, Sam and Nagamine, Takayuki (2026) Articulation at the end stage of sound change : Derhoticisation across east Lancashire. English Language and Linguistics. ISSN 1360-6743 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper presents a socioarticulatory analysis of sound change in English across communities. In particular, we focus on loss of coda rhoticity, a known locus of complex perceptual, acoustic, and articulatory relations which occupies an important position in the history of English dialectology. Our analysis compares two geographically close communities at different stages of sound change in order to assess the articulatory mechanisms responsible for the progression of derhoticisation. We compare recordings from participants in Blackburn and Burnley, east Lancashire. Analysis includes auditory coding for rhoticity, dynamic acoustic comparison of dialects, and Multivariate Functional Principal Component Analysis of tongue shapes across the syllable in rhoticity minimal pairs. Forty-one participants were included in the auditory and acoustic analyses and thirty-five in the articulatory analysis. Results show greater retention of coda rhoticity in Blackburn compared to Burnley, and that this residual east Lancashire rhoticity is usually produced with tip-up tongue gestures. In our cross-community comparison, Burnley speakers time tongue fronting later and reduce the magnitude and timing of the tongue root gestures for rhotic tokens. We conclude that loss of tongue root gestures is the signature of the final stage of this significant English sound change.