As we saw, English dialects are classed as either rhotic or non-rhotic. Rhotic dialects are those where [r] is pronounced after vowels: so words like ‘car’, ‘weird’, ‘born’ are pronounced with [r]. In these dialects, word pairs like ‘sauce’ – ‘source’ and ‘law’ – ‘lore’ are not homophones; the second item of the pair is pronounced with [r], while the first one is not; and the two words might have different vowel qualities too.

Non-rhotic dialects are ones where [r] is pronounced only before a vowel. After a vowel, [r] is not pronounced; but usually the vowel has a centring off-glide, producing diphthongs like [iə uə εə], or is long, as in [i: ε: ɔ: ɑ:]. Non-rhotic varieties include much of England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and some parts of North America. In these varieties, pairs like ‘sauce’ – ‘source’ and ‘law’ – ‘lore’ are frequently homophones (check the north and thought vowels in Table 5.2). But these varieties usually have [r] as a linking sound. When r-final words join with vowel-initial words, [r] is inserted. So while ‘I fear nothing’ has no [r], ‘I fear evil’ usually does. This is often called linking-r.

This principle is often overgeneralized by non-rhotic speakers. If we take two verbs, ‘saw’ and ‘soar’, both pronounced [sɔ:] by non-rhotic Anglo-English speakers, and add the suffix <-ing>, we get ‘sawing’ and ‘soaring’. While ‘sawing’ can be pronounced , it can also be pronounced , homophonous with ‘soaring’. This is often called intrusive-r, because in these cases [r] is pronounced where historically there is no warrant for it. It happens between words too, as in ‘law[r] and order’, ‘Pizza[r] Express’, ‘vodka[r] and lime’. On the other hand, African American Vernacular English, which is reported by Labov (1972) as being mostly non-rhotic, sometimes drops [r] where rhotic speakers have it, e.g. story , Paris [pæs], Carol [kal].

From the point of view of modern speakers, linking- and intrusive-r are the same phenomenon: a way to join two vowels together by using an alveolar approximant. The term intrusive-r has its basis in the spelling system of English: the only difference between linking-r and intrusive-r is that intrusive-r refers to a linking-r when there is no in the spelling.

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