RHOTIC AND NON-RHOTIC ENGLISH IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC: Social and geographical distribution.

This article discusses the distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic English in the United States between 1770 and 1849. For the study, handwritten documents belonging to individuals from different social classes were inspected to identify misspellings that deviated from conventional spelling patterns (if compared to dictionaries and spellers of the time) regarding <r> or the previous vowel. The investigation shows that during the period <r> elision was never the most frequent occurrence. In fact, the results indicate that it was the quality of the previous vowel that underwent significant oscillations. Regarding the distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic English in the United States, the evidence suggests that r-lessness happened mostly in states that are predominantly non-rhotic today. In terms of social variation, there was a tendency for the middle classes to produce more non-rhotic misspellings than other classes. Lastly, the data indicates a strong possibility of a rapid expansion of non-rhotic English after 1850. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]