How and why do languages change? This new introduction offers a guide to the types of
change at all levels of linguistic structure, as well as the mechanisms behind each type …

In this article we define and illustrate sociophonetic variation within speech, highlighting
both its pervasiveness and also the relatively minor role it has played in the development of …

We examine the weakening of intervocalic voiceless stops in Spanish in order to gain insight
on historical processes of intervocalic lenition. In our corpus, about a third of all tokens of …

Given the common intuition that consonant lenition occurs more often than fortition, we
formulate this as a hypothesis, defining these sound change types in terms of decrease or …

Liverpool English (LE) is the variety of English spoken in Liverpool and much of the
surrounding county of Merseyside, in the north-west of England. After London, the north …

Based on the responses of 32 British teachers, I report on a sample of three teachers who
were told to modify their accents to varieties deemed more “professional.” The teachers …

This paper builds on growing evidence that aspirated or fortis obstruents in languages like
English and German are laryngeally marked, but that phonetic voicing in the (unmarked) …

The British Isles are home to a vast range of different spoken and signed languages and
dialects. Language continues to evolve rapidly, in its diversity, in the number and the …

In this article we investigate a phenomenon in which non-standard spelling is normal in
professionally produced, published English. Specifically, we discuss the literary genre of …

Over the past few decades, studies of dialect levelling have concluded that phonological
convergence amongst varieties of British English is rife. This review attempts to demonstrate …