The changing realisation of 'the' before vowels in New Zealand English 1

This paper reports on a study of the realisation of the word ‘the’ before vowels in New Zealand English. New Zealand English speakers use both ‘thuh’ (/ðә/) and ‘thee’ (/ði:/) in this position. We show that younger speakers and ‘non-professional’ speakers are more likely to use a ‘thuh’ realisation than older, ‘professional’ speakers. ‘thuh’ realisations and ‘thee’ realisations are both attested with and without glottalisation on the following vowel. When glottalisation is involved, a ‘thuh’ realisation is much more likely in infrequent phrases. When glottalisation is not involved, the frequency effect is absent. We speculate that these differences in frequency effects and in glottalisation may indicate that two separate processes are at work: one involving reduction and the other analogy.