Vowel categories and R

The distribution of the consonant r is a well-known distinctive factor of accents of English. Some accents, like General American (GA) or Scottish Standard English (SSE), preserve all historical r’s. (These can most easily be identified based on the spelling: GA and SE have a r exactly where there is an R in the spelt form of words.) Accents of this type are referred to as rhotic.We will indicate sounds by IPA symbols and letters by capitals. So r means the sound, R means the letter. CUBE is not like this, in CUBE not all the Rs shown in spelling occur in pronunciation. Therefore CUBE is nonrhotic. Compare the GA and CUBE pronunciation of the following few words.

If we compare the forms 4–6, where we know the GA form conserves an earlier state from which the CUBE form has developed,Let it be pointed out that CUBE has not developed from GA. CUBE has developed from an earlier state of English, which GA has preserved. we may reconstruct the historical change burp bərp > bəːp. In this change not only is the r lost, but its loss is compensated for by the lengthening of the preceding vowel.We encounter compensatory lengthening elsewhere in English (palm paːm), as well as in Hungarian (alma ɑːmɑ), or Italian (Latin fiksa > Italian fissa), where it is not the preceding vowel, but the following consonant that is lengthened. This kind of change is very common in natural languages, it is called compensatory lengthening. The loss of r in CUBE always results in a long vowel, in fact, this is the primary source of long vowels in this accent. This is also one of the reason why we refer to long monophthongs as R vowels.

The case of the words 7 and 8 is more interesting in this light. At a first glance, one might think that in these forms the r was not lost because there is a vowel following, albeit at the beginning of a following suffix in 7 and a following word in 8. But if this were the case, why is the preceding vowel long? We have just claimed that a long vowel in the CUBE accent indicates the loss of an earlier r. So the r must have been lost (so that we get a long vowel) and the r we find here is “another” r. Indeed, long vowel+r sequences typically, though not exclusively, occur at the end of a word, before a vowel-initial suffix or following word. We will get back to this point further below.

Historical short vowels before R

Let us compare the stressed vowel in the word below. In the words in the first column the R standing after the stresssed vowel is word final, in the second it is before a consonant, in the third it is before a vowel. Whether there is one R in the spelling (as in spirit) or two (as in herring) is irrelevant, in either case it represents a single r.

The data in rows 1–3 meet our expectations: the historical r is lost and this loss triggers compensatory lengthening. Where the R is followed by a vowel, it is not lost and accordingly there is no lengthening. The words in the third column, which exemplify this lack of lenthening are called carrot words.

The words in rows 4–5 show that the pre-R equivalent of short i and e is not long iː and eː, but long əː, that is, the these two short vowels and ə merge before R. Since əː is called nurse, this phenomenon is called the nurse merger. These vowels do not merge when the R is followed by a vowel and is hence pronounced (i.e., in carrot words).

Thus the merger appears to be linked with the pronunciation of the R. Consider the data below. Note that this time we are using narrow transcription, that is, we indicate the vowels with phonetically more precise symbols.

The control words in the first column represent each short vowel without the influence of the following R. In Scottish Standard English (SSE) we find exactly the same short vowels irrespective of whether they are followed by r or some other consonant. In both General American (GA) and Current British English (CUBE) the quality of the vowel is dfferent before R and before other consonants (apart from one, ə). In SSE the r is pronounced “strong”, while in GA it is much “weaker” (indicated by the rhoticity of the vowel only), in BE it is gone altogether, leaving only length behind (due to compensatory lengthening). Thus the vowel is affected where the following R is “weak”.

The quality change of the short vowels before R is called broadening,Note that the two meanings of broad in this paragraph (broad transcription and broad vowels) are unrelated. the three resulting vowels, ɑ: oː əː, or aː oː əː in broad transcription, are called broad vowels.

Diphthongs before R

We have seen that short vowels may occur before R if the R is followed by a vowel (and hence is pronounced), which is the case in carrot words. The distribution of diphthongs is more curtailed in this environment, as shown below.

We see that the nonwide diphthongs, ij uw ej əw, do not occur before R (or r, for that matter) at all. Instead we can only find a long monophthong, an R vowel, in their place. This is so even where the R is pronounced because it is followed by a vowel, that is, there is no counterpart of carrot words here.

Wide diphthongs, aj aw oj, on the other hand, may occur before R, but only where it is followed by a vowel. In any other case wide diphthongs are followed by ə. While the R is not pronounced in these words (since it is not followed by a vowel), rhotic accents show us that the schwa does not replace an earlier r. Instead this schwa is inserted between the diphthong and the r: cf GA spire spajər, hour awər, etc. The diphthong oj hardly ever occurs before R.

Diphthongs before R are currently undergoing a series of changes, which are shown in the chart below.

The data above represent the development of diphthong + r clusters. The first step is the insertion (epenthesis) of ə between the offglide of diphthongs and the following r. This is traditionally called breaking. Then the r may then be lost in CUBE whenever it is not followed by a vowel.The loss of r after ə does not entail compensatory lengthening. This has to do with stress: only stressed vowels may be long in English, but these əs are never stressed. The glide part of the diphthong + ə sequence is lost and the resulting centring diphthong becomes a monophthong in a process called smoothing. The final outcome of the interaction of these two processes, breaking and smoothing, is a long vowel.

Since this is a change in progress, dictionaries do not transcribe these vowels in a uniform way. While fore has been transcribed with a long monophthong for a long time, many British dictionaries still represent the first three vowels as centring diphthongs (queer kwiə, lure luə, care keə). Others (Oxford, Wiktionary) use the long monophthong symbol for the vowel of care kɛː. In this course we will uniformly transcribe the first four vowels as long monophthongs, which is a possible pronunciation for each of them. While a long monophthong pronunciation is also possible for spire and hour, most dictionaries opt for the two-syllable transcription: spajə (or spaɪə) and awə (or aʊə).

Breaking and smoothing

We have seen above that breaking and smoothing work in tandem to produce long vowels out of historical diphthong + r sequences. The two processes can also apply independently of each other.

One example is that of the wide diphthongs above: we have just seen that the vowels of spire and hour do not necessarily undergo smoothing.

Another example is breaking before l, which is also often not followed by smoothing, resulting in a two-syllable pronunciation for words that historically contained only one vowel: e.g., feel fijl < fijəl, fail fejl > fejəl, file fajl > fajəl, foil fojl > fojəl.

Smoothing may also apply to diphthong + ə sequences that are not the result of breaking, here are some exmples:

• idea ajdijə > ajdiː
• mayor mejə > meː
• Himalayas himəlejəz > himəleːz
• lion lajən > laːn
• diamond dajəmənd > daːmənd (also dajmənd)
• vowel vawəl > vaːl

Hiatus

We have seen above that the loss of a historical r result in the lengthening of a preceding vowel due to compensatory lengthening. In carrot words, where the r is pronounced to this day, there is no compensatory lengthening (there is no loss to compensate for), hence the vowel before r is short.

However, in blurring bləːriŋ or guitarist gitaːrist we find long vowels, although an r is also present in these words.As already noted the number of Rs in the spelling is irrelevant here. How can the vowel be long if the r after it is not lost?

In fact, the historical r in blurring, guitarist, and other words like them is lost. All word-final rs are lost in CUBE, which is a nonrhotic accent. The r in the pronunciation of these words is epenthetic, which is inserted to repair hiatus.

Earlier we have seen that in English only diphthongs may occur before a vowel, neither short, nor long monophthongs are available here. This constraint holds within words, but it may also happen that a word ends in a vowel and the following word (or suffix) begins with one. Since it is only diphthongs, long vowels, and unstressed ə that occur word finally, and diphthongs freely occur before vowels, we have to deal with the last two items: long vowels and ə. Here are some examples of a word-final long vowel or ə followed by a vowel-initial word or suffix (or clitic):

• blur it bləː + it
• thawing θoː + iŋ
• guitarist gitaː + ist
• care of keː + ov
• dear Anne diː + an
• picturesque piktʃə + esk

In each case the concatenation of these morphemes results in hiatus. This hiatus is eliminated by inserting r between the two vowels. The above examples and some others are shown below, with the epenthetic r highlighted in red:

• blur it bləːrit, preferring prifəːriŋ, stir up stəːrəp
• thawing θoːriŋ, four eggs foːregz, drawer droːrə
• guitarist gitaːrist, starry staːrij, François Hollande fronswaːrolond
• care of keːrov, stare at steːrat, hairy heːrij
• dear Anne diːran, cheering tʃiːriŋ, idea of ajdiːrov
• picturesque piktʃəresk, vanilla ice vənilərajs, Sir Elton səreltən

Notice that it makes no difference whether there is an R in the spelling (as in blurring, four eggs, guitarist, starry, etc) or not (as in thaw_ing, draw_er, François_Hollande, idea_of, vanilla_ice): the hiatus is filled in the same manner in either case.

Old-school grammarians would nevertheless distinguish the two cases and refer to a hiatus-filling r that is indicated in the spelling as linking R and one that is not indicated in the spelling as intrusive R. They make this distinction so that they can then condemn the use of the latter. From a linguistic point of view this distinction makes no sense, this is simply r epenthesis aimed at avoiding hiatus.

Pre-R mergers

We conclude by surveying the various mergers that occur before R. CUBE has three sets of vowels: (i) checked vowels (short monophthongs), (ii) free vowels (diphthongs), and (iii) R vowels (long monophthongs). We have seen that there is a historical relationship between checked and R vowels on the one hand (broadening), and free and R vowels on the other (breaking and smoothing). However, in the majority of the cases these are not one-to-one relationships, as is shown by the following chart.

The two one-to-one relationships are between the free vowels ij and ej and their R vowel counterparts, iː and eː, respectively.

The R vowel ə is related to three checked vowels, i e ə, due to what we have referred to as the nurse merger. Accordingly, fir, (pre)fer, and fur are pronounced identically.

Both checked o and free əw (earlier ow) are related to the R vowel oː, this is the north–force merger. Accordingly, for and four are pronounced identically.

Those speakers who pronounce cure with oː (and not uː or əː) exhibit a further merger, the force–cure merger. They pronounce shore and sure identically.

Finally, speakers who apply smoothing to all diphthong + ə sequences will have a start–fire–power merger. They pronounce tar, tyre, and tower identically.

The checked vowel u and the free vowel oj do not have an R vowel counterpart.

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