An acoustic analysis of rhoticity in Lancashire, England

This paper presents the first systematic acoustic analysis of a rhotic accent in present-day England. The dataset comprises spontaneous and elicited speech of 28 speakers from Blackburn in Lancashire, Northern England, where residual rhoticity remains, having never been lost in the earlier sound change which rendered most of England non-rhotic. Although sociolinguistic studies of rhoticity in England exist, we have almost no description of its phonetic properties. Moreover, most sociolinguistic studies focus on the South West of England and relatively little is known about rhoticity in the North. Our study is timely because Northern rhoticity is predicted to disappear in the next few generations, a process which is now complete in many areas of the South West. Our results demonstrate that rhoticity is still present in Blackburn, although non-prevocalic /r/ is weaker when compared to other rhotic varieties of English such as those in Scotland and North America. We find that non-prevocalic /r/ is phonetically weakening in apparent time, with the F3-F2 difference being larger for younger speakers as well as females. We present additional social and linguistic factors affecting its potential demise, and discuss how our results contribute to our understanding of historical /r/-loss in Anglo-English.