GEORGE GODDARD LG 405

FOLLOWING A BRIEF EXPLANATION of –t/d deletion and why it may occur, an account of its

variable distribution in speech will be sought. A fundamental aspect of this is

phonological context, but it will also be shown that other factors may well have an

effect. Hudson (1997:3) for example believes that, although there is phonetic

motivation, Gregory Guy’s statistical analysis (1980 to 1993) has shown ‘beyond

reasonable doubt’ that this feature’s variation is ‘not a simple phonetic matter’. Since,

as Bayley (1994:304) puts it, -t/d deletion is ‘one of the most extensively studied

variable processes in English’, it will not be possible to address every angle from which

it has been approached, however.

An elementary explanation of this feature is the coronal stops /t/ and /d/ not

being produced word finally after a consonant. The complete non-production of a

segment is known as deletion and represents the final stage of lenition, the process of

phonological weakening. There is no scale of –t/d deletion, however; the segment is

either present or it is not, which excludes any notion of hierarchy or gradation, such as

glottalisation. Although Bybee (2002) argues that ‘a final /t/ or /d/ may vary in length’

and that ‘reduction ... can be gradual’ (p265). There are some complexities though

which effect –t/d deletion or the possibility of analysing it. For example, the preceding

consonant: if /t,d/ follow a nasal /n,m/, this is only favourable for /d/ deletion, while

/t/ will tend to remain with an altered place of articulation, generally being produced as

[ʔ]. This debuccalisation probably happens after /l/ also, as in [fɛlt sʌm tɹiːz] → [fɛlʔ sʌm

tɹiːz] (felt some trees) versus [fɛld sʌm tɹiːz] → [fɛl sʌm tɹiːz] (felled some trees). Also

/ɹ/: in a non-rhotic variety, /t,d/ will not follow /ɹ/ word finally, but where there is

rhoticity a word such as fort may be produced as [fɔɹt], and, while deletion may occur

here, it is difficult to hear owing largely to /ɹ/ and /t,d/ being homorganic. The

following consonant can produce difficulty likewise by also being /t,d/, since [dʒəst] or

[dʒəs] preceding [teɪk] will both sound very similar to [dʒəsteɪk] (just take), for example.

Wolfram (1969: 48) highlighted this ‘neutralising’ problem, discounting ‘clusters which

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are immediately followed by a homorganic stop’. Temple (2009) looked at such effects,

taking instances of neutralisation and ‘masking’, the hiding of a (potential) articulatory

gesture by surrounding consonants, in natural speech data, and raising the question of

whether /t,d/ not being heard in these contexts is enough to categorise them as

deletion. Leading on from this, the fact that –t/d deletion study is modelled primarily on

production rather than perception is highlighted and its status as a phonological rule at

all is challenged: ‘there is no phonological contrast between /t,d/ and zero’ (p168). It

could be said, therefore, that exactly what –t/d deletion is in terms of linguistic study is

not entirely clear, especially in light of recent work.

As to why –t/d deletion occurs, Hudson (1997:3) mentions the ‘universal

tendency to reduce consonant clusters’ while Spencer (1996:64) refers to this ‘common

strategy’ as truncation and cites some examples from Russian where –t/d deletion

inter-consonantally is obligatory (ibid:65). More generally, Barber (1993:49) explains

the ‘constant conflict between the principle of minimum effort and the demands of

communication’, and mentions ‘short cuts in the movements of our speech-organs’ as

a force for change (p45). It would seem then that if a speaker can get away with

deleting –t/d, that is, if the hearer can comprehend their speech without it, the fact that

doing so requires less effort is a real motivation. To the extent, in fact, that t/d-

deletion is ‘universally variable’, according to Guy and Boberg (1997). They assert that

‘every speaker that has been observed deletes some, but not all, of their final stops’

(p151). The analytical question therefore is not whether or not it happens but why the

deletion-retention variability is distributed the way it is.

FOCUSING ON THE LINGUISTIC CONSTRAINTS, Labov (1989:90) brings together the work up to

that point, summarising the rule application-favouring factors identified by seven

different authors. These will now be taken individually and discussed in light of recent

findings.

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Firstly, the effect of the following phonological segment. Since –t/d deletion only occurs

word-finally, this constraint relates to the onset of the following word, or a pause.

Bayley (1994:304-305) puts it that speakers of all dialects in which –t/d deletion has

been studied are ‘more likely to delete/t,d/ when it is followed by a vowel than when it

is followed by a consonant’. This statement, however, seems to contradict the figures

from all other studies, including his own, the functional explanation of cluster

simplification and the notion of saliency (that is, /t,d/ before a vowel is more likely to

be heard to due to the contrast in sonority and the loss will therefore be more

noticeable, presumably leading to less deletion). His figures show 70% deletion before

obstruents, the highest rate, versus 25% before vowels, the lowest rate (p310). The

hierarchy summarised by Labov (1989:90) is represented in (1).

(1) Obstruents Greater probability of deletion

Liquids

Glides

Vowels

Pause Less probability of deletion

It could be concluded then that Bayley was simply mistaken is his statement. The

situation is not so clear-cut, however. Bybee (2002) considers –t/d deletion in relation

to the probability of /t,d/ occurring in certain phonological contexts, arguing that there

is a correlation between frequency of occurrence and reduction processes. In relation to

the following segment, she argues it is less uniformly present than the preceding

(word-internal) environment, discussed below, for a particular item and therefore has

less effect: ‘for example, the t in words ending in –nt actually deletes more often before

vowels than consonants’ (p274). The preceding n was found to condition more

consistently than the preceding segment in Guy (1991). This finding is not universally

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accepted, however; in fact, Temple (2009) summaries that in ‘most if not all studies’ of

–t/d deletion (including hers), following segment has been found to have the strongest

effect (p147). This seems to cast doubt on that aspect of Bybee’s argument.

More convincingly substantiated are her arguments relating to contexts where

the probability of a following vowel is greater, such as: verbs occurring before vowel-

initial particles and prepositions (picked on, pulled away, pulled out, and so on), before

vowel-initial pronouns ([ɪt, ʌs, ɪm, ɜ(ː/ɹ), ɛm] (it, us, him, her, them), and, commonly

used phrases (looked alike), or the indefinite article, the sequence may become stored

and processed together as ‘conventionalised units’ (p279), and lead to more deletion

before a vowel than a consonant.

The two sequences in (2) are identical in relation to every constraint except

following segment, most studies suggest that if a speaker had never heard or spoken

them before, they would be more likely to delete (a) than (b) since their reduction would

not be as salient while making the production easier. After using these phrases for a

period of time, however, it may be that if (b) was used more often, which seems likely

due to the relative frequency of the words bout and out, the chance of deletion would

increase since it would become stored as a single unit while (a) would be re-constructed

every time.

(2) (a) missed bout [mist baʊt]

(b) missed out [mist aʊt]

Bybee (2002:264) presents figures from a previous study which show 45.6% retention in

high frequency words (occurring 35 times or more per million) versus 65.7% where the

frequency was lower. She cite results showing similar or even more substantial

differentiation from two other, independent studies. This effect, then, seems very well

established.

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The second constraint to be accounted for has already been mentioned: preceding

phonological environment. This could more specifically be phrased as preceding

consonant since, as Guy and Boberg (1997:155) list it in their Table 2, preceding vowels

result in ‘nearly categorical retention’. The statistical significance of the preceding

consonant’s effect seems to depend on the nature of the analysis. Labov (1989:90), for

example, lists it as a ‘relatively weak constraint’ and Guy and Boberg (1997:153)

concur, highlighting the statistical insignificance of some of the distinctions using a

similar analysis. This involved grouping preceding consonants according to their

manner of articulation, with differentiation also being drawn between sibilant and non-

sibilant fricatives, and between lateral consonants and /ɹ/ for liquids, since this seemed

to produce clearer patterns of distribution. A fairly consistent hierarchy can be

established this way, which is represented in (3).

(3) Sibilant fricatives Greater probability of deletion

Stops

Nasals

Non-sibilant fricatives

Laterals Less probability of deletion

According to (3) therefore [kist] (kissed) will generally be produced without /t/ more

than [kilt] (kilt). This seems to be indisputable cross-dialectally, but the distinctions

between some of the intermediate groupings are far more tenuous. Guy and Boberg’s

factor weight of the non-sibilant fricatives is 0.66, for example, while for laterals it is

0.69, giving a difference of 0.03 (ibid). To say that [mift] (miffed) is more likely to delete

/t/ than [mist] (mist), then, is almost insupportable according the those data. Indeed

the data in Temple (2009:146), taken from an earlier study, produces a rather dissimilar

ranking: /s/ > other sibilant > nasal > /l/ > stop > other fricative. It clear from these

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analyses that preceding consonant does have an effect, but the exact nature of that

effect is somewhat indeterminate.

The innovation of Guy and Boberg (1997) was to apply the Obligatory Contour

Principle (OCP) to this problem and the resultant statistics seem far more convincing. In

the strictest sense, the principle states the prohibition of elements occurring adjacently

which are identical. Guy and Boberg water this down somewhat, taking the notion that

identical elements together are disfavoured and therefore less likely to be produced.

The features for three phonemes are given in (4).

(4) /t/ [+cor, -son, -cont]

/s/ [+cor, -son, +cont]

/l/ [-cor, +son, -cont]

(4) shows /s/ sharing two features with /t/ while /l/ shares only one, which also

provides an explanation for the kissed/kilt example. The former is more likely to delete

the /t/ than /l/ because they have more shared features, which the OCP states is

prohibited, or undesirable. One aspect which illustrates this well is the nasal group:

while /n/ shares two features [+con, -cont] with /t,d/, /m,ŋ/ share only one [-cont],

and separating them produces a ‘big difference’ as Guy and Boberg’s proposal

predicted. The percentage of deletion for /m,ŋ/ was 11 while for [n] it was 46, a

difference of 35%. It could be argued that this points directly to superiority of the OCP

explanation over manner of articulation, which groups nasals together and produces

variable results.

Interestingly, Neu (1980) identified a ‘definite correlation’ between deletion rate

and the place of articulation of the preceding segment, providing data for deletion

being more likely following a ‘homorganic alveolar’: 29.5% versus 21.0% (p50). This

also seems to support Guy and Boberg’s OCP-based analysis.

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Against this, examples such as just deleting more than bust would imply that the

OCP explanation is either incorrect (since the phonological features of the preceding

segment in this pair are identical) or is only part of the picture. It may be that deletion

is effected by both the OCP and other factors simultaneously. Bybee’s (2002) analysis,

for example, provides a model which involves every phonetic variant of a word which is

experienced being stored in a cluster of exemplars, and those which are repeated more

often grow stronger while the less frequent ones fade. The model posits that the more

frequent a word, the greater the chance that the reduced exemplar will be chosen in a

given context, thus advancing the reductive change. Since just then is more frequent, as

mentioned by Labov (1989), than bust, the exemplars which have undergone reduction

are more likely to stronger and therefore produced.

Temple (2009: 151) also adds complexity to the preceding segment constraint

with a distributional issue: the cross-tabulation of morphological category with

preceding segment leads to unevenness in the figures for her data, which suggests an

interaction between the two, which could be argued to lessen the significance of each.

The morphological constraint will now be considered.

This constraint has been phrased in various ways, but it is generally agreed that there

are three morphosyntactic groupings for –t/d deletion contexts: monomorphemic, and

bimorphemic, which is subcategorised into regular and non-regular past tense verbs.

The tokens in the last group are often referred to as ‘semi-weak’ verbs and represent

more distributional complexity than the other two categories. Disregarding this for now,

most works1 agree that /t,d/ is less likely to be deleted if it is functioning as a regular

past tense or participle suffix than if it appears as part of a stem’s makeup. There is a

straightforward functional explanation of this: in mist, /t/ has the same function as

/m,i,s/, in that it distinguishes the mist stem from any other stem, for example most,

1
Neu (1980) provides results to this effect and cites 6 other works with which her findings
are ‘consistent’ (p44).
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whilst in missed, /t/ is a separate morpheme with the function of distinguishing this

verb form from its root lexeme MISS. It carries more information then that the /t/ of

mist. Also mist and most, for example, differ in their vocalic element, [i] ~ [oʊ] which

carries greater sonority and phonological contrast than [t] ~ [Ø]. Consequently, the /t/

of missed is more likely to be retained. In Guy and Boyd (1990), for example, the

figures for probability of deletion in uninflected tokens is .65 versus .31 for regular past

tense verbs (p7). This statistically significant differentiation seems to apply cross-

dialectically and for all social factors.

For semi-weak tokens, however, this is not the case. There is a distributional

pattern correlating to the social variable of age: Guy and Boyd’s paper demonstrates

that ‘the probability of deletion declines with increasing age’ (ibid). The explanation

given is that the separate categorisation of semi-weak verbs takes a minimum period of

time to develop. Children group them with strong verbs which ablaut like semi-weak

verbs but do not add /t,d/, such as meet, which has the past form met [miːt → mɛt].

This means there is no underlying /t,d/ until the semi-weak group develops, leading to

stored pairs such as [liːv → lɛf] for leave → left. Any production of /t,d/ is argued to be

the result of borrowing from speakers for whom it is underlying, and during the

transition into the mature stage, a speaker is argued to view the /t,d/ as irregular

phonological change, but not inflection (ibid:11,12).

Despite the this complexity, the morphological property constraint has been

argued to have regular distribution to the extent that it can be predicted fairly

accurately on the basis of a mathematical model. Guy (1991) proposed the Exponential

Model which Hudson (1997:3) argues, from the literature up until that point, there is no

reason to doubt as a ‘real phenomenon’. Put simply, it states that the probability of

-t/d deletion in semi-weak verbs is that of regular past tense verbs squared, while in

the monomorphemic group it is the same cubed. Guy (1994) demonstrates that

predictions using this theory are correct to within 1% in all but the semi-weak category

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for three separate corpora. While one did not include semi-weak verbs, for the other

two the predictions for this group were within 3% and 6.2% respectively. Although these

latter figures are less convincing, Guy (1991:10) cites low token numbers and age

variability as possible reasons. The Exponential Model then seems to be borne out

statistically and represents a convincing analysis. Temple (2009), however, while

acknowledging that the Model has ‘become generally accepted’, and despite the trend

identified being in the direction it would predict, did not select the morphological

constraint as significant (p148). While for the other two constraints analysed, following

and preceding segment, the range of weight factors was 65 (.84 - .20) and 41 (.68 - .

27) respectively, for morphological class it was a 8 (.53 - .45), which is relatively

insignificant. These figures are taken from Table 1 (p146). Although ultimately it is the

theoretical explanation proposed by Guy, as discussed below, and the whether –t/d

deletion should be considered as a phonological rule at all which is questioned in

Temple (2009:167), these data do cast some doubt on the Exponential Model. This

could be attributed to methodological aspects, however. Firstly, Temple’s data uniquely

consider British English as opposed to American and represent an ‘attempt to replicate’

the American studies (p145). Also, it does seem to contradict many other studies and

could therefore be viewed as somewhat anomalous. On the other hand, the

methodology described does appear to be careful and well implemented, so it may be

these data are damaging the notion of the Exponential Model.

As was mentioned, one of the primary objections of Temple (2009) is Guy’s

(1991) explanation of the Model, which uses Lexical Phonology to account for the

mathematical consistency. He theorised that a –t/d deletion rule or process which

applied three times to the monomorphemic group, twice to the semi-weak group and

only once to the regularly inflected group would explain the Model. Lexical Phonology

proposed such an infrastructure with all lexical items having to pass through at least

three levels before being realised, two within the lexicon and one post-lexically which

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take into account the context of the production outside of the word boundaries. In

short, a regularly inflected form is supposed to undergo affixation, and therefore

acquire underlying /t,d/, at level 2, while a semi-weak form undergoes it at level 1, and

a monomorphemic form has /t,d/ from the earliest stage of derivation (p7). Guy goes

on to argue that since –t/d deletion has been shown to be affected by the following

segment and morphological structure, the rule which deletes it could be applied at any

of the stages, lexical or post-lexical therefore being able to be applied to a

monomorphemic form three times, a semi-weak form twice and a regularly inflected

form just once. This analysis is not accepted by Hudson (1997), Temple (2009) and

Bybee (2002).

Hudson accepts the Exponential Model but not the Lexical Phonology

explanation, while Temple disagrees with both based on her data. Hudson (1997) does

not question the internal structure of Guy’s argument but objects to some of the

underlying assumptions, such as the ability of the deletion rule to apply on any level,

while Lexical Phonology assigns rules to specific levels (p4). He also believes Guy’s

exempting of –t/d deletion from the Strict Cycle Condition on the basis that it is a

variable rule and not a categorical one requires there to be a formal distinction between

the two, which he seems to doubt (p4), while Temple (2009) argues that it has not been

possible firstly to show that the distribution of –t/d deletion variability is consistent

with the predictions of Lexical Phonology or secondly to establish that it is a ‘(lexical)

phonological rule’ at all (p167). While Hudson proposes an alternative explanation

making use of networks of prototypes, Temple prefers an explanation which ‘obviates

the need to justify a more abstract phonological analysis’, such as it being a Continuous

Speech Process which varies and has some patterns which can be aligned with other

English CSPs (p168). This may include other linguistic constraints which have not yet

been mentioned such as the number of preceding consonants, where the more there

are, the more deletion is favoured due to ease of production; syllabic stress, where

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deletion is more likely in an unstressed syllable as would be expected due to saliency,

since they are less likely to be ‘missed’ by the hearer; and voicing agreement, where the

preceding and following sound agreeing favours deletion due to.

It seems somewhat insupportable to account for –t/d deletion without some

reference to frequency effects, however. Bybee (2002) also contends Guy’s Lexical

Phonology explanation, preferring instead a usage-based model. It will be argued here

that –t/d deletion can best be accounted for primarily as a variable Continuous Speech

Process without a unifying abstract explanation, but one which does seem to pattern

according to the OCP to some extent and is effected by the frequency of each word’s

usage as well as the probability of each word appearing in certain phonological

contexts. In short, -t/d deletion variability is the result of interaction between these

factors leading to patterns but not without exceptions or complexities. The Exponential

Model, for example, seems dubious in light of the data presented in Temple (2009).

2
Word count: 3,400
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REFERENCES

Barber, Charles Laurence. 1993. The English Language: a historical introduction .

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bayley, Robert James. 1994. "Consonant cluster reduction in Tejano English." Language
Variation and Change 6(3): 303-326.

Bybee, Joan. 2002. “Word frequency and context of use in lexical diffusion of
phonetically conditioned sound change.” Language Variation & Change 14(3): 261-290.

Guy, Gregory. 1991. "Explanation in variable phonology: An exponential model of

morphological constraints." Language Variation & Change 3(1): 1-22.

Guy, Gregory and Charles Boberg. 1997. "Inherent variability and the obligatory contour
principle." Language Variation and Change 9(2): 149-164.

Guy, Gregory & Sally Boyd. 1990. "The development of a morphological class."
Language Variation & Change 2(1): 1-18.

Hudson, Richard. 1997. “Inherent variability and linguistic theory.” Cognitive Linguistics
8: 73-108.

Labov, William. 1989. "The child as linguistic historian." Language Variation & Change
1(1): 85-97.

Neu, Helene. 1980. "Ranking of constraints on /t,d/ deletion in American English: A

statistical analysis." In William Labov, ed., Locating language in time and space. New
York: Academic Press: 37-54.

Spenser, Andrew. 1995. Phonology: Theory and Description (Introducing Linguistics,

Vol. 1). London: Wiley Blackwell.

Temple, Rosalind. 2009. “(t,d): the variable status of a variable rule.” Oxford University
Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics Vol 12.

Wolfram, Walt. 1969. A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. Washington

DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

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