Prerhotic

Alternative forms

• pre-rhotic

Origin

- + rhotic

Full definition of prerhotic

Adjective

1. (linguistics, rare) Occurring before the letter ⟨r⟩ or before any one of the sounds that letter tends to represent (e.g., , , , , , , etc.).
• 1986, Raymond Hickey, “Possible phonological parallels between Irish and Irish English” in English World-Wide VII, â„– 1, page 9, § 1.6.2:While and lost their distinctiveness in pre-rhotic, tautosyllabic positions, the basic distinction back ~ front was maintained in forms such as the following: fern , General IrE ; turn , General IrE .
• 1993 Summer, Ralph H. Emerson, “The Distribution of Eighteenth-Century Prerhotic O-Phonemes in Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary” in American Speech LXVIII, â„– 2, pages 115–138
• 2001, James Harris, “Spanish Negative in-: Morphology, Phonology, Semantics”, chapter 5 in Kenneth L. Hale: A Life in Language, ed. , MIT Press, ISBN 0262112574 (hbk), ISBN 0262611600 (pbk), page 179:We turn now to the prerhotic context in (15)–(17).