A Sociolinguistic Survey of (t,d) deletion, (t) glottaling, and their intersection in East Anglian English

This thesis examines two well-studied phonological features - (t,d) deletion and (t) glottaling – in East Anglian English by maintaining the structuralist roots of the variationist paradigm (e.g. Wolfram 1993; Patrick 1999). It also investigates, for the first time, the covariation between the two linguistic variables by exploring the intersection of (t) deletion and (t) glottaling in word-final consonant clusters (e.g. different). (t,d) deletion has been largely investigated in US English dialects, yet it has received comparatively little attention in the UK. (t) glottaling has been widely examined as a change in progress in England (including Norwich, Trudgill, 1974, 1988) and Scotland, yet little research on this variable has been carried out in Ipswich (Straw & Patrick, 2007) or Colchester. Data was gathered in three East Anglian speech communities: Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich, where 36 participants, equally distributed, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews, reading passages and word lists. Mixed-effects Rbrul regression analysis was carried out. (t,d) results are in line with previous US studies showing that (t,d) absence is primarily conditioned by linguistic factors and its profile is that of a stable variable. A more fine-grained analysis is suggested for the following phonological environment. For (t) glottaling, this thesis also proposes a closer inspection of the following phonological environment. The preceding phonological context - little explored in previous studies - plays a notable role. While word-final /t/ glottaling has completed its social change and is spreading in phonological space even in environments where it used to be blocked, word-medial /t/ is both phonetically and socially conditioned. The covariation between (t) glottaling and (t) deletion shows that the transition glottaling → deletion, in the lenition scale, is in feeding order and is mostly linguistically driven. In this analysis, women exhibit a higher use of glottal variants, whereas males promote deletion – the last stage of the lenition scale.