English

Alternative forms

• pre-rhotic

Adjective

prerhotic ‎(not comparable)

1. (linguistics, rare) Occurring before the letter ⟨r⟩ or before any one of the sounds that letter tends to represent (e.g., [r], [ɽ], [ɹ], [ɻ], [ʀ], [ʁ], etc.).
   • 1986, Raymond Hickey, “Possible phonological parallels between Irish and Irish English” in English World-Wide VII, № 1, page 9, § 1.6.2:

     While /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ lost their distinctiveness in pre-rhotic, tautosyllabic positions, the basic distinction back ~ front was maintained in forms such as the following: fern [fɛɹn], General IrE [fərn]; turn [tʌɹn], General IrE [tərn].

   • 1993 Summer, Ralph H. Emerson, “The Distribution of Eighteenth-Century Prerhotic O-Phonemes in Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary” in American Speech LXVIII, № 2, pages 115–138
   • 2001, James Harris, “Spanish Negative in-: Morphology, Phonology, Semantics”, chapter 5 in Ken Hale: A Life in Language, ed. Michael J. Kenstowicz, MIT Press, ISBN 0262112574 (hbk), ISBN 0262611600 (pbk), page 179:

     We turn now to the prerhotic context in (15)–(17).