Didja know? A comparative study of affrication across word boundaries in Canadian and American English

Abstract

The present study investigates affrication across word boundaries as an allophonic process that distinguishes Canadian English (CE) and American English (AE). Ten CE speakers and ten northeastern AE speakers were recorded reading aloud a monologue containing words pairs with a word final /t/ or /d/ followed by a word initial /j/ (e.g. ‘did you’, ‘what you’, ‘and yet’). Compared cross-dialectically, AE speakers were found significantly more likely to produce affrication than CE speakers, particularly in final /d/ contexts. Both groups were more likely to produce affrication with a /d/ rather than a /t/. Dialectal as well as phonological factors may account for the results discussed in this survey. We propose a hierarchy of factors affecting word-boundary affrication.