Articulatory and perceptual factors in /l/ vocalisations in English

Abstract

In several dialects of English notably in the southern part of Britain (but excluding Wales), a velarised or “dark” allophone of /l/ occurs syllable-finally, and post-vocalically in syllable-final consonant clusters (Wells 1982; Gimson 1980). A variant of this velarised [l], typically associated with Cockney, but increasingly admitted as a feature of South-Eastern Urban English, is a “vowelised” or vocalised form realised as a non-syllabic back vocoid (approximately [Y] or a rounded equivalent [ö] or [ʊ] (Wells 1982; Hughes and Trudgill 1986)). Thus “milk” may be realised variously as [mIlk], [mIYk], [mIök] or [mIʊk].