[VAR-L] The Britishisms are coming

[Damien Hall]

PLEASE NOTE MY NEW ADDRESS

Thanks for the (?)further analysis, Arnold!  (The question-mark is because the analysis is an advance on what I proposed in my rule for glottal(is)ed /t/ in words like _important_, _Clinton_, _Scranton_, but not of course an advance on what was already known.)  I'm going to take the weak way out and say "it's not really my area", or I would have included syllabic /n/ specifically in my rule.  It's also worth saying, though, that the person who thought that /t/-glottalisation in such words was new in American English, thus sparking my whole post, was not me but Ben Yagoda.

Ben's phonological Recency Illusion has also received a thorough going-over on the Variationist List, much of it aiming in the same direction as Arnold's analysis:

http://j.mp/VAR-L

You can see the archive of messages without being a list-member, but anyone here who'd be interested in joining the debate on VAR-L would be welcome to join up!

The article in question is the same one from the online _BBC Magazine_ that Benjamin wrote about here, a couple of hours later:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19670686

Most of the points it made were lexical, and well-supported with evidence:  the phonological bit that has sparked this excellent debate and clarification is only three lines long ...

Damien
VAR-L owner

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Damien Hall

Newcastle University (UK)
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 'Towards a New Linguistic Atlas of France'

Tel. +44 191 222 8521

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