This paper shows that the Liverpool English dorsal fricative, derived through the lenition of /k/, is subject to place of articulation assimilation, driven by the preceding vowel. This is similar to the vowel-driven aspects of typical perseverative Dorsal Fricative Assimilation (a type of palatalisation), as found, for example, in the German ich-Laut~ach-Laut alternation, where (among other things) a preceding front high or mid vowel is followed by the front dorsal [ç], and other vowels are followed by a back dorsal. However, the majority Liverpool English pattern differs from previously described cases of Dorsal Fricative Assimilation in that [ç] only occurs following long front high vowels, while a back dorsal remains after their short congeners. This type of quantity-sensitive pattern in assimilation has not been reported before. We use Centre of Gravity measurements to investigate this pattern of place assimilation, and argue for the use of an innovative normalisation technique for consonant measurements, based on measurements of /k/ aspiration in a linear regression model. We thus both expand the taxonomy of what is known to be possible in phonology and also provide new detail in the description of Liverpool English (including a proposal for the featural analysis of its vowel system).

English Language and Linguistics is going from strength to strength. The journal is now in its twenty-third year, and the number of submissions to ELL is steadily increasing. This has led to two developments (both very welcome) which we thought we should let readers know about in this short editorial. We first set out a little background.

Accents and dialects of English and Scots in Britain have been under active investigation for many decades, as reported through the Survey of English Dialects (Orton et al. 1962–71) and the Linguistic Atlas of Scotland (Mather et al. 1975–86), Wells’ three-volume compendium (1982), and a host of detailed studies of individual varieties. There are also welcome recent signs of the reintegration of variation data into theoretical discussion (see Henry 2002, Cornips & Corrigan 2005a and Trousdale & Adger 2007 for morphosyntax, as well as Anttila 2002 and Coetzee & Pater 2011 for phonology). Nonetheless, the precise structural, geolinguistic and sociolinguistic patterning of many features of vernacular Englishes in the UK is still largely unknown.

This article integrates aspects of synchronic and diachronic phonological theory with points relevant to the study of a nonreference accent in order to investigate the patterns of consonantal lenition found in the variety of English spoken in Liverpool, England. Points of contact with variationist approaches are addressed, partly because the lenitions are variable processes. An implicational understanding of lenition is developed, thanks to which it is possible to describe the prosodic and melodic environments which inhibit the lenitions. New data from a small corpus investigation into Liverpool English are presented and a theoretical and practical methodology is proposed, which enables the data to be investigated. The descriptive focus is on the segments /t/ and /k/, which are typically realized as affricates or fricatives unless the lenition is inhibited. A notion of ‘melodic lenition inhibition’ is developed to account for some of the inhibitory patterns, whereby the sharing of autosegmental phonological elements gives a segment ‘strength’ in certain environments.

A further reply to Michael Bulley's criticism of Chomskyan linguistics

PATRICK HONEYBONE replies to Michael Bulley's article ‘A wild gene chase’(ET51)