Apparent time change in the articulation of onset rhotics in Southern British English

The /r/ phoneme in Anglo-English is known to correspond to a number of relatively distinct articulatory variants. However, little is known about the social structure of this variation. In this study we investigate the effect of two social factors, age and gender, on the production of /r/, in a sample of 36 speakers from the South of England. We analysed ultrasound images of pre-vocalic /r/ tokens. We measured the distances between the short tendon and the surface of the tongue along 11 equidistant radials, and compared them across speakers in representative /r/ frames. We find an apparent time difference whereby the distance between the tongue tip and the short tendon reduced in apparent time, potentially signalling an ongoing sound change from a tip-up to tip-down /r/.