ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the proposal put forward by N. Chomsky & M. Halle, that English has an underlying velar fricative, in the light of a number of British English dialects and their historical development. It also explains how dependency phonology can help us to elucidate that development. In both Northern and Southern dialects of English a diphthongisation process in the vowel preceding original /x/ in the gh-forms has rearranged earlier distinctions, but their subsequent development has been different in each case, producing a number of distinctions in the North not found in the South. In English there seem to be three deletion paths: lenition, de-articulation of fricatives and dearticulation of stops. These are all related to vocal cord activity: lenition involves vibrating vocal cords, de-articulation of fricatives open vocal cords, and de-articulation of stops closed vocal cords. The velar fricative is meant to account for the alternation right — righteous in contradistinction to delight — delicious.
