Non-Vowel Phonology

Abstract

The discussion of the nature and extent of obstruent affricativization in pre-[j] contexts in items (famously) such as tune and tutor, which was of such concern to eighteenth-century observers, continues with almost as much intensity in the nineteenth. While the general term CH-ING seems to have been the invention of Cooley (1861: liv footnote 64), almost all observers have some (usually extended) comment to make on this phenomenon. Batchelor (1809: 67–8) illustrates the phenomenon through continuous speech examples such as: I wis you would and Are the fis your own?, observing how ‘the omission of h in wish and fish, is so far supplied by the following initial y, that the defect would not be perceived in common conversation. In the following instances, it will be obvious that the contact of the contiguous words, presents instantly the idea of usher, glazier, notcher, badger and ledger, especially of the accent be laid upon the words which precede your. Tell us your will; Glaze your window; ‘Tis not your horse; So bad yourself; He led your nag’. While he admits that d, t, s or z plus (y) consonant ‘makes a hissing combination’, ‘this hissing is considerably diminished if the distance between d, t etc and the teeth is increased’. Indeed, affricativization of the dentals seems to be at very best a rare phenomenon: if d and t are produced in this soft manner the ‘rushing of the breath will scarcely be perceived and the (y) will be pronounced as slenderly as possible so the hissing will be entirely lost’. The use of [tʃ]and [dʒ] onsets for items like tune and duel, he places at the door of Sheridan as a usage he, like Stephen Jones,²⁵⁷ condemns (1809: 92): ‘This mode of pronouncing u (yuw) after d, t and s, is common in Ireland and some parts of England, and has at least the merits of regularity, though it obtains no reputation among polite speakers’.