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Linguistics

Notes Though this is not impossible to pronounce, something like sks rθw c É n or swksrc•n is a more
likely pronunciation for the last two words. In clusters of three plosives or two plosives plus a
fricative, the middle plosive may disappear, so that the following pronunciations result:
‘acts’ F ks , ‘looked back’ l• k bk , ‘scripts’ skrwps
F
4. Loss of final v in ‘of before consonants; for example:
‘lots of them’ lZts c xcm, ‘waste of money’ wewst c m• ni
This last example is typical of very casual speech, and would be regarded as substandard by
conservative listeners. A more common case is where the vowel of ‘of is lost, leaving either v in a
voiced context (e.g. ‘all of mine’ ]+l v mawn) or f in a voiceless context (e.g. ‘best of three’ best f θ ri+).
It is difficult to know whether contractions of grammatical words should be regarded as examples of
elision or not. The fact that they are regularly represented with special spelling forms makes them
seem rather different from the above examples. The best-known cases are:
• ‘had’, ‘would’: spelt’d, pronounced d (after vowels), cd (after consonants);
• ‘is’, ‘has’: spelt’s, pronounced s (after fortis consonants), z (after lenis consonants), except that
after s, z, ∫ , ¥, t ∫ , d¥ ‘is’ is pronounced wz and ‘has’ is pronounced cz in contracted form;

• ‘will’: spelt ’ll, pronounced l (after vowels), l (after consonants);
'
• ‘have’: spelt’ve, pronounced v (after vowels), cv (after consonants);
• ‘not’: spelt n’t, pronounced nt (after vowels), n t (after consonants). There are also vowel changes
,
associated with n’t (e.g. ‘can’ knF - ‘can’t’ kY+nt; ‘do’ du+ -’don’t’ dc•nt; ‘shall’ ∫ F l - ‘shan’t’

∫ Y+nt);
• ‘are’: spelt ‘re, pronounced c after vowels, usually with some change in the preceding vowel
(e.g. ‘you’ ju+ - ‘you’re’ j•c or j]+, ‘we’ wi+ - ‘we’re’ wic, ‘they’ xew - ‘they’re’ xec); linking is
used when a vowel follows, as explained in the next section. Contracted ‘are’ is also pronounced
as c or cr when following a consonant.
17.5 Linking

In our hypothetical “mechanical speech” all words would be separate units placed next to each other
in sequence; in real connected speech, however, we link words together in a number of ways. The
most familiar case is the use of linking r; the phoneme r does not occur in syllable-final position in
the BBC accent, but when the spelling of a word suggests a final r, and a word beginning with a
vowel follows, the usual pronunciation is to pronounce with r. For example:
‘here’ hwc but ‘here are’ hwcr c
‘four’ f]+ but ‘four eggs’ f]+r egz
BBC speakers often use r in a similar way to link words ending with a vowel, even when there is no
“justification” from the spelling, as in:
‘Formula A’ f]+mjclcr ew
‘Australia all out’ Zstrewlicr ]+l a• t
‘media event’ miwdicr wvent
This has been called intrusive r; some English speakers and teachers still regard this as incorrect or
substandard pronunciation, but it is undoubtedly widespread.
“Linking r” and “intrusive r” are special cases of juncture; we need to consider the relationship
between one sound and the sounds that immediately precede and follow it. If we take the two words
‘my turn’ maw tf+n, we know that the sounds m and aw, t and f+, and f+, and n are closely linked. The
problem lies in deciding what the relationship is between ai and t; since we do not usually pause
between words, there is no silence to indicate word division and to justify the space left in the

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