Linking R and intrusive R are
sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
or ''linking'' phenomena involving the appearance of the
rhotic consonant
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthography, orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek alphabet, Greek letter Rho (letter), rho, including R, , in the Latin ...
(which normally corresponds to the letter ) between two consecutive morphemes where it would not normally be pronounced. These phenomena occur in many
non-rhotic
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic variet ...
varieties of English
Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar. For the classification of varieties of English only in terms of pronunciation, see regional accents of English.
Overview
Dialects can be defi ...
, such as those in most of England and Wales, parts of the United States, and all of the Anglophone societies of the southern hemisphere, with the exception of South Africa. These phenomena first appeared in English sometime after the year 1700.
Non-rhotic varieties
By definition, non-rhotic varieties of English pronounce only when it immediately precedes a vowel. This is called ''r''-vocalisation, ''r''-loss, ''r''-deletion, ''r''-dropping, ''r''-lessness, or non-rhoticity.
For example, in non-rhotic varieties of English, the sound does not occur in a word such as ''tuner'' when it is spoken in isolation, before an intonation break (in
pausa
In linguistics, pausa (Latin for 'break', from Greek παῦσις, ''pausis'' 'stopping, ceasing') is the hiatus between prosodic declination units. The concept is somewhat broad, as it is primarily used to refer to allophones that occur in cer ...
), or before a word beginning with a consonant. Even though the word is spelled with an (which reflects that an was pronounced in the past), non-rhotic accents do not pronounce an when there is no vowel sound to follow it. Thus, in isolation, speakers of non-rhotic accents may pronounce the words ''tuner'' and ''tuna'' identically as (or with the
yod-dropping
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
that typically occurs in the non-rhotic dialects of the northeastern United States, or with the
yod-coalescence
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
that occurs in
Southern Hemisphere English
Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar. For the classification of varieties of English only in terms of pronunciation, see regional accents of English.
Overview
Dialects can be defi ...
).
In contrast, speakers of rhotic dialects, such as those of Scotland, Ireland, and most of North America (except in some of the
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southe ...
and
Southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
), always pronounce an in ''tuner'' and never in ''tuna'' so that the two always sound distinct, even when pronounced in isolation. Hints of non-rhoticity go back as early as the 15th century, and the feature was common (at least in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
) by the early 18th century.
Linking R
In many non-rhotic accents, words historically ending in (as evidenced by an in the spelling) may be pronounced with when they are closely followed by another morpheme beginning with a vowel sound. So ''tuner amp'' may be pronounced . This is the case in such accents even though ''tuner'' would not otherwise be pronounced with an . Here, "closely" means the following word must be in the same
prosodic unit
In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...
(that is, not separated by a
pausa
In linguistics, pausa (Latin for 'break', from Greek παῦσις, ''pausis'' 'stopping, ceasing') is the hiatus between prosodic declination units. The concept is somewhat broad, as it is primarily used to refer to allophones that occur in cer ...
). This phenomenon is known as linking R. Not all non-rhotic accents feature linking R. Non-rhotic varieties of
Southern American English
Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though concentrated increasingly in more rural areas, and spoken primarily by Wh ...
are notable for not using a linking R.
Intrusive R
The phenomenon of intrusive R is an overgeneralizing reinterpretation of linking R into an r-insertion rule that affects any word that ends in the non-high vowels , , , or ; when such a word is closely followed by another word beginning in a vowel sound, an is inserted between them, even when no final was historically present. For example, the phrase ''bacteria in it'' would be pronounced . The
epenthetic
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek language, Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable (''prothesis (linguistics), prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syll ...
can be inserted to prevent
hiatus
Hiatus may refer to:
*Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure
*Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy
*''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species ''Hiatus fulvipes''
*Globa ...
(two consecutive vowel sounds).
In extreme cases an intrusive R can follow a reduced schwa, such as for the example ''if you hafta
I’ll help'' and in the following examples taken from the native speech of English speakers from Eastern Massachusetts: ''I’m gonna
sk Adrian'', ''t
rdd to his troubles'', ''a lotta
pples'' and ''the
pples''. A related phenomenon involves the dropping of a consonant at the juncture of two words and the insertion of an r in its place, sometimes this occurs in conjunction with the reduction of the final vowel in the first word to a schwa: examples of this are ''He shoulda
aten'' and ''I saw
m'' (for ''I saw them'')
Other recognisable examples are the
Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developme ...
singing: ''"I saw-r-a film today, oh boy"'' in the song "
A Day in the Life", from their 1967 ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' album; in the song "
Champagne Supernova
"Champagne Supernova" is a song by English rock band Oasis, written by Noel Gallagher. It is the closing track on the band's second studio album, '' (What's the Story) Morning Glory?'' (1995), and was released as the sixth and final single from ...
" by
Oasis
In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.”
The location of oases has been of critical imp ...
: ''"supernova-r-in the sky"''; at the
Sanctus
The Sanctus ( la, Sanctus, "Holy") is a hymn in Christian liturgy. It may also be called the ''epinikios hymnos'' ( el, ἐπινίκιος ὕμνος, "Hymn of Victory") when referring to the Greek rendition.
In Western Christianity, the ...
in the
Catholic Mass
The Mass is the central liturgical service of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, in which bread and wine are consecrated and become the body and blood of Christ. As defined by the Church at the Council of Trent, in the Mass, "the same Christ ...
: ''"Hosanna-r-in the highest"''; in the song "
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
"Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" is a song from Billy Joel's 1977 album '' The Stranger''. In 2021, Rolling Stone ranked it the 324th greatest song of all time on their updated 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
Release
Although never rel ...
" by
Billy Joel
William Martin Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, pianist and songwriter. Commonly nicknamed the "Piano Man (song), Piano Man" after his album and signature song of the same name, he has led a commercially successful career as a solo ...
: ''"Brenda-r-and Eddie"''; in the song "
Beauty and a Beat
"Beauty and a Beat" is a song by Canadian singer Justin Bieber from his third studio album ''Believe'' (2012). It features rapper Nicki Minaj, who co-wrote it with Savan Kotecha, Max Martin and Zedd. It was also produced by the latter two with a ...
" by
Justin Bieber
Justin Drew Bieber ( ; born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian singer. Bieber is recognized for his genre-melding musicianship and has played an influential role in modern-day popular music. He was discovered by American record executive Scooter ...
featuring
Nicki Minaj
Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty (; born December 8, 1982), known professionally as Nicki Minaj ( ), is a Trinidadian-born rapper based in the United States. She is known for her musical versatility, animated flow in her rapping, alter egos and accent ...
: ''"Eye out for
Selena-r"''; in the phrases, ''"Law-r-and order"'' and ''"Victoria-r-and Albert Museum"'', and even in the name ''"Maya-r-Angelou"''. This is now common enough in parts of
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
that, by 1997, the linguist
John C. Wells
John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics.
Career
Wells ea ...
considered it objectively part of
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been ...
, though he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation, as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents. Wells writes that at least in RP, "linking and intrusive are distinct only historically and orthographically".
Just as with linking R, intrusive R may also occur between a root morpheme and certain
suffixes
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the Stem (linguistics), stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the Grammatical conjugation ...
, such as ''draw(r)ing'', ''withdraw(r)al'', or ''
Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
(r)esque''.
A rhotic speaker may use alternative strategies to prevent the
hiatus
Hiatus may refer to:
*Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure
*Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy
*''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species ''Hiatus fulvipes''
*Globa ...
, such as the insertion of a
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
to clarify the boundary between the two words. Varieties that feature linking R but not intrusive R (that is, ''tuna oil'' is pronounced ), show a clear phonemic distinction between words with and without in the syllable coda.
Some speakers intrude an R at the end of a word even when there is no vowel following. An example is U.S. President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
(who is from
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
) speaking to
Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Exec ...
director Michael Brown in 2005: "The FEMA-R director's working 24/7".
Margaret Thatcher was nicknamed "Laura Norder" because of her references during her period of office to "law and order" with an intrusive /r/.
[Collins, B., & Mees, I. (2003). ''The Phonetics of English and Dutch'' (3rd ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.]
Prevalence
A 2006 study at the University of Bergen examined the pronunciation of 30 British newsreaders on nationally broadcast newscasts around the turn of the 21st century speaking what was judged to be "mainstream RP". The data used in the study consisted mostly of the newsreaders reading from prepared scripts, but also included some more informal interview segments. It was found that all the newsreaders used some linking R and 90% (27 of 30) used some intrusive R.
Overall, linking R was used in 59.8% of possible sites and intrusive R was used in 32.6% of possible sites. The factors influencing the use of both linking and intrusive R were found to be the same. Factors favouring the use of R-sandhi included adjacency to short words; adjacency to grammatical or non-lexical words; and informal style (interview rather than a prepared script). Factors disfavouring the use of R-sandhi included adjacency to proper names; occurrence immediately before a stressed syllable; the presence of another /r/ in the vicinity; and more formal style (prepared script rather than interview). The following factors were proposed as accounting for the difference between the frequency of linking and intrusive R:
* overt stigmatization of intrusive R
* the speakers being professional newsreaders and thus, presumably, speech-conscious professionals
* the speakers (in most cases) reading from a written script, making the orthographic distinction between linking and intrusive R extremely salient
* the disparity between the large number of short, grammatical words that end in possible linking R (e.g. "for", "or", "are", etc.) and the absence of such words that end in possible intrusive R.
See also
*
Diaeresis (diacritic)
The diaeresis ( ; is a diacritical mark used to indicate the separation of two distinct vowels in adjacent syllables when an instance of diaeresis (or hiatus) occurs, so as to distinguish from a digraph or diphthong.
It consists of two dots ...
*
Hiatus (linguistics)
In phonology, hiatus, diaeresis (), or dieresis describes the occurrence of two separate vowel sounds in adjacent syllables with no intervening consonant. When two vowel sounds instead occur together as part of a single syllable, the result is ...
*
Pausa
In linguistics, pausa (Latin for 'break', from Greek παῦσις, ''pausis'' 'stopping, ceasing') is the hiatus between prosodic declination units. The concept is somewhat broad, as it is primarily used to refer to allophones that occur in cer ...
*
Liaison (French)
In French, liaison () is the pronunciation of a linking consonant between two words in an appropriate phonetic and syntactic context. For example, the word ''les'' ('the') is pronounced , the word ''amis'' ('friends') is pronounced , but the ...
*
Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
*
R-colored vowel
In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulate ...
*
Movable nu
In ancient Greek grammar, movable nu, movable N or ephelcystic nu ( grc, νῦ ἐφελκυστικόν ''nû ephelkustikón'', literally "nu dragged onto" or "attracted to") is a letter nu (written ; the Greek equivalent of the letter ''n'') pl ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
*
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External links
1984 Hongkong advertisement for a Honda Accord - in this video, the person (who has a RP accent) voicing the clip clearly demonstrates the instrusive R in his pronunciation of 'Honda Accord'.{{LetterR
English phonology
Phonetics
Phonotactics