Liquid Vocalization in the Dialectal Varieties of English

This article claims that English liquid consonants are characterized by the presence of complex place nodes, regardless of dialectal varieties. The primary difference between rhotic and laterals can be pursued in a phonological sense. The level of subbranching nodes is in charge of the disparities among two types of liquids: the branching immediately below the Coronal node with laterals, while branching at the secondary sublevel with rhotics. In this context, the processes of rhotic deletion and lateral vocalization can be understood as those motivated to get rid of complex place nodes. That is, those processes take place as part of phonological attrition. Next, the onset/coda asymmetry regarding liquids stems from the dispreference of vocoid at the onset position, which is readily accounted for by the series of constraints on the well-formedness on the onset, namely Harmonic Onset. The rationale of gradualness and harmonic improvement proposed by Harmonic Serialism is useful to separate the attested outputs from unattested ones across the whole gamut of English varieties. All in all, the primary benefits of our analysis can be found in the consistence in the explanation for the operations running through the sounds regarded as belonging to liquid consonants, comprising the whole range of rhotic and lateral consonants.