Definite Article Reduction - Phonetics

Phonetics

The phonetic forms of DAR are very varied. The "th'" form suggests a voiceless dental fricative realisation, usually voiceless (as in thin), and is restricted to the western parts of the DAR area (Lancashire and Cheshire). It also occurred widely across northern and central Staffordshire in earlier dialect surveys (Jones 2002) and sporadic forms similar to DAR were reported to occur in localities in Berkshire, Sussex, and Essex. The "t" form suggests a voiceless alveolar plosive or a voiceless dental plosive realisation, as in tin, but also serves to represent a 'glottal' form. The glottal form is most widely encountered. Some dialects may show more than one phonetic form, but the conditioning factors for such variation are unknown. It seems that unvarying glottal forms are most widely found now (2005). Variation with a full form the is also common.

Speakers of other forms of English often find it difficult to hear, especially the 'glottal' forms that affect the pitch and duration and voice quality of surrounding words and sounds in subtle ways. This often leads to claims that the article is absent, but this is rarely the case. True absence of the article may occur in the east of the DAR area around Kingston upon Hull.

Recent instrumental acoustic work (2007) shows that DAR speakers use very subtle differences in the quality and timing of glottalisation to differentiate between a glottal stop occurring as an allophone of final /t/ in a word like "seat" and a glottal stop occurring as the form of the definite article in otherwise identical sentences (compare "seat sacks" and "see t' sacks"). Speakers of DAR dialects therefore appear to have (put somewhat simplistically) two kinds of glottal stop: one for DAR and one for word-final /t/.