Definite article reduction Totally Explained

Everything about Definite Article Reduction totally explained

Definite Article Reduction (DAR) is the term used in recent linguistic work to refer to the use of vowel-less forms of the definite article the in Northern dialects of English English, for example in the Yorkshire dialect and accent. DAR is often represented by dialect spelling t’ or th’.

History

DAR has been recorded in textual form since 1673, and the orthographic representations t’ and th’ occur in literature (for example in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights), and are frequently encountered in the media. There is even a beer called "T' owd Tup" (The Old Ram). The historical origin is unclear. Links with Middle English te forms of the article remain unproven.
The use of "t'" can also be found in the Frisian language of the north Netherlands coast, a language thought to be most similar to the original language of the invading Anglo-Saxons. The family name "Haus in't Feld" exists in Frisian, meaning "house in the field", this sounds almost exactly like modern Yorkshire speak. DAR in the form of "t'" can also be found in the German language and this definitive article expression probably has deep roots on the Germanic languages of Europe.

Distribution

DAR isn't as widespread as it once was. The British Library's 1999 dialect collection and the 2006 BBC Voices survey found that it's now focused on Yorkshire and its borders. It has declined in Cumbria and the west coast of Lancashire, but it's still common around Blackburn and Burnley. Some of the northern fringes of Yorkshire have also lost DAR. In the midlands, it's now confined to north Derbyshire and north Nottinghamshire.
The mid 20th century Survey of English Dialects (Orton et al 1962) allows DAR to be mapped across northern England from the Irish Sea coast in the present-day county of Cumbria and further south in Lancashire, to the North Sea coast of Yorkshire. The north-south distribution is less easy to define, but runs well south of the Scottish border and well north of Birmingham. Some major urban areas within this area show DAR in the local vernacular (Leeds-Bradford, Sheffield), in others usage is less apparent (for example Manchester), and in some it's completely absent (Liverpool, Newcastle).
DAR can be heard widely across the north of England. For those outside England who wish to get a flavour of it, DAR can be heard in dialogue in recent films set in the north of England, for example The Full Monty (set in Sheffield), and in recordings available from the British Library web portal

Phonetics

The phonetic forms of DAR are very varied. The th’ form suggests a dental or interdental fricative realisation, usually voiceless [θ] (as in thin), and is restricted to the western parts of the DAR area (Lancashire and Cheshire). It was, however, found in some S.E.D. locations outside of the North - such as Himley in Staffordshire and Buckland in Berkshire. The orthographic t’ form suggests a voiceless dental or alveolar plosive realisation [t], as in tin, but also serves to represent a 'glottal' form. The glottal form is most widely encountered. Some dialects may show more than one phonetic form, but the conditioning factors for such variation are unknown. It seems that unvarying glottal forms are most widely found now (2005). Variation with a full form the is also common.
Speakers of other forms of English often find it difficult to hear, especially the 'glottal' forms which affect the pitch and duration and voice quality of surrounding words and sounds in subtle ways. This often leads to claims that the article is absent, but this isn't usually the case. True absence of the article may occur in the east of the DAR area around Hull.
Recent instrumental acoustic work (2007) shows that DAR speakers use very subtle differences in the quality and timing of glottalisation to differentiate between a glottal stop occurring as an allophone of final /t/ in a word like "seat" and a glottal stop occurring as the form of the definite article in otherwise identical sentences, for example "seat sacks" vs. "see t' sacks".

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