t/d deletion

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

from a thesis draft by Laura Staum Casasanto, Experimental
Investigations of Sociolinguistic Knowledge:

The variable this dissertation will focus on is called t/d deletion, a
specific case of
consonant cluster reduction; it is a phonetic variable in English in
which final coronal
stops in consonant clusters may be deleted in some environments. Final
t/d deletion is
defined as the absence of a pronounced oral stop segment corresponding
to a final t or d
in words (Gregory et al. 1999).

... This variable makes a good test case for the current hypothesis
because “…over the
past thirty-five years, this phenomenon has been studied in more
detail than probably any
other variable phonological phenomenon,”  (Coetzee, 2004).

quotation from (Patrick, 2006):

The study of (TD) has been the vehicle for several significant
advances in variationist practice and theory: it has set standards for
quantitative description (Labov et al 1968; Guy 1980), initiated
quantitative cross-dialectal studies (Labov 1975), expanded the use of
statistical methods within the discipline (Neu 1980), illuminated the
acquisition of variable constraints by children (Labov 1989, Roberts
1995) and adults (Bayley 1991), and their continuing development among
adult native speakers (Guy & Boyd 1990), identified contrasts and
similarities between English and related Creole languages (Patrick
1992, 1999), and grounded explanations for variable processes in
formal linguistic theory (Guy 1991, Reynolds 1994, Santa Ana 1996, Guy
& Boberg 1997; but see Hudson 1997 for some interesting arguments).
For these reasons, (TD) is a “showcase variable” (Patrick 1999), and
its study has been crucial to our knowledge of language variation and
change. - (Patrick, 2006)

Staum Casasanto supplies still more bibliography on (TD).

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