A number of recent papers have demonstrated the advantages of using a
phonological model incorporating the timing and magnitude of articulatory
gestures to account for alternations involving segments such as the
English nasals, liquids and glides (e.g. Krakow 1989, Browman &
Goldstein 1992, 1995, Sproat & Fujimura 1993, Gick, in press). Some
of these works (McMahon et al. 1994, McMahon & Foulkes 1995) have
made specific reference to the well-known phenomenon of English
intrusiver, shown in (1).
formula here
However, previous analyses have not linked the intrusive r explicitly to
other similar processes, nor viewed all of these processes as the natural
results of more general principles of phonological organisation. Thus, the
intrusive r has remained, in the eyes of most linguists, an isolated quirk of
English history, or, as one phonologist (McCarthy 1993: 191) has called
it, ‘the phonologically unnatural phenomenon of r-epenthesis’.
The present paper introduces into the discussion of intrusive r a
recently documented related phenomenon known as intrusivel (Gick
1991, 1997, in preparation, Miller 1993). It is argued that these new facts,
in conjunction with current advances in the understanding of articulatory
factors in syllable structure, support a view in which the intrusive r and l
are synchronically underlyingly present.