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Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ English pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary Mariana NEAGU 2006

Transcript of fonetica lb. engleza

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Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ

English pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary

Mariana NEAGU

2006

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© 2006 Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural Nici o parte a acestei lucrări nu poate fi reprodusă fără acordul scris al Ministerului Educaţiei şi Cercetării

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Anca Cehan and Dean Hufstetler for their helpful comments and constructive suggestions on the entire manuscript. Their generous help meant a lot to me.

I would also like to acknowledge the considerate help of my students, Andreea Ali, Andreea Cruceanu, Vica Horinceanu and Codruţ Mirică who offered feedback, support and cheerful encouragement at various stages in the complex process of writing this coursebook.

Finally, I owe a special debt to my family and close friends for their forbearance, for supporting my efforts on the project and for giving the time I needed to complete it. ISBN 10 973-0-04573-9; ISBN 13 978-973-0-04573-4.

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Table of contents

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction iv Unit 1 The Sounds of English 1 Unit objectives 2 1.1 Phonetics and phonology 2 1.2 The connection of phonetics and phonology with non-

linguistic and linguistic sciences 3

1.3 The importance of phonetic studies 5 1.4 Phonetic symbols and types of transcription 6 1.5 Types of standard pronunciation 9 1.5.1 Received Pronunciation 9 1.5.2 General American 10 Summary 11 Key concepts 11 Further reading 12 Answers to SAQs 12 Unit 2 Differences between British English and American

English 13

Unit objectives 14 2.1. Pronunciation differences 14 2.1.1 The vowel system 14 2.1.2 The consonant system 16 2.2. Differences in spelling 18 2.2.1 Phonetic spelling tendencies 19 2.2.2 The omission of superfluous letters 19 2.3 Lexical differences in main subject areas 21 2.3.1 People and their immediate environment 22 2.3.2 Human interaction and communication 22 2.3.3 Social institutions 23 2.3.4 Natural environment 24 Summary 24 Key concepts 25 Further reading 25 SAA No. 1 25 Answers to SAQs 25 Unit 3 Pronunciation and Spelling 27 Unit objectives 28 3.1 The spelling of consonants 28 3.2 Vowel markers 29 3.3 Keeping a spelling constant 30 3.4 Silent letters 33 3.5 Homographs and homophones 34 3.6 Pronunciation and etymology 35

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Summary 36 Key concepts 37 Further reading 37 SAA No. 2 37 Answers to SAQs 38 Unit 4 Aspects of Connected Speech 40 Unit objectives 41 4.1 Linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ 41 4.2 Assimilation 42 4.2.1 Regressive assimilation 42 4.2.2 Progressive assimilation 43 4.2.3 Reciprocal assimilation 44 4.2.4 Obligatory and non-obligatory assimilation 45 4.3 Elision 46 4.3.1 Vowel elision 46 4.3.2 Consonant elision 47 4.4 Strong and weak forms of function words 48 4.4.1 Uses of weak forms 48 4.4.2 Uses of strong forms 50 Summary 52 Key concepts 52 Further reading 52 SAA No. 3 53 Answers to SAQs 53 Unit 5 Syllables and Stress in English 55 Unit objectives 56 5.1 The nature of the syllable 56 5.2 The structure of the English syllable 57 5.3 Types of syllable 58 5.4 The nature of stress 59 5.5 Primary and secondary stress 61 5.6 Stress and vowels 62 5.7 Predicting stress in derivatives 63 5.7.1 Strong suffixes 64 5.7.2 Weak suffixes 65 5.7.3 Prefixes 66 5.8 Stress in compounds 66 5.9 Rhythm and its influence on word stress 67 5.10 Stress shift and semantic implications 68 Summary 70 Key concepts 70 Further reading 71 SAA No. 4 71 Answers to SAQs 72 Unit 6 English as an Intonation Language 74 Unit objectives 75 6.1 Definition and components of intonation 75 6.2 The tone unit as a basic unit of intonation 77 6.3 Tone-patterns in English 78 6.4 Functions of intonation 81

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6.5 Intonation and sentence types 82 6.5.1 Declaratives 83 6.5.2 Imperatives and exclamations 83 6.5.3 Questions 84 6.6 Contrastive analysis of intonation in English and Romanian 87 Summary 88 Key concepts 88 Further reading 89 Answers to SAQs 89 Bibliography 91 Appendix 1. List of symbols used 93 Appendix 2. Glossary 95 Appendix 3. Practice sets 127

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Introduction

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INTRODUCTION

The present course is primarily meant for Romanian teachers of English engaged in open and distance education. In this course we discuss the most important issues from the fields of phonetics, phonology, orthography and lexis, focusing on difficulties encountered in the articulation and perception of English sounds and in the acquisition of pronunciation and spelling rules.

Phonetics is the study and description of speech sounds and of the elements of pronunciation at large, since pronunciation is a complex of sounds (vowels and consonants), syllables, word accent and intonation.

Phonology studies the way in which phonetic elements function in a language, the way in which phonemes are organized in a given language, i.e. their combinatorial possibilities. The phoneme is the minimal unit in the sound system of a language.

Orthography is very closely connected with phonetics, which in its turn is connected with lexicology, grammar and stylistics. Because of the notoriously confusing nature of English spelling, it is particularly important to think of English pronunciation in terms of phonemes rather than letters of the alphabet.

Why is this course important?

Theoretically, the general theory about speech sounds and how they are used in language, i.e. phonetics and phonology, is needed by people who are going to work with English at an advanced level (teachers included) and who need a deeper understanding of the principles regulating the use of sounds in spoken English. Ideally, the teacher and the learner of a foreign language should be able to recognize and to produce the sounds of the studied language just like a native speaker.

More specifically, phonetics is important because it formulates the rules of pronunciation for separate sounds and sound combinations. Thus, through the system of reading rules, phonetics helps to pronounce correctly singular and plural forms of nouns, the past tense and past participle forms of English regular verbs (see sections 1.2 and 4.2.2).

Secondly, through its intonation component, phonetics can serve to single out the logical predicate of a sentence to show that an affirmative sentence is a question, etc.

Thirdly, through the right placement of stress we can distinguish certain nouns from verbs (e.g. ‘object - ob’ject), homonymous words and word groups (e.g. ‘blackbird - black ‘bird).

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Course objectives

At the end of this course you will be able to:

- recognize and produce the sounds of English just like a native speaker

- be aware of and explain the phonetic and phonological phenomena that occur in connected speech

- use stress and intonation patters correctly in English - understand the complex relationship between pronunciation,

spelling and vocabulary.

How is this course book organized?

The first unit of the course is concerned with defining phonetics and phonology, explaining the connection of phonetics with other branches of science, introducing the symbols used for teaching the pronunciation of English and identifying the main types of English standard pronunciation.

As an important purpose of this course is to explain how English is pronounced in the accents normally chosen as the standards for people learning English, unit 2 is devoted to discriminating British English from American English in terms of pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary.

Unit 3 looks more closely at the connection between pronunciation and spelling in English and shows that, because of the etymological nature of English orthography, learners of English have to cope with the discrepancy between spelling and present-day pronunciation.

Although English spelling is not a reliable indicator of pronunciation, the chapter presents some pronunciation patterns and markers that can still be found.

Unit 4 deals with speech sounds as they occur in normal, connected speech, i.e. sounds that are not isolated, fixed and unchangeable, but units that undergo modifications and affect one another. This unit explains phonetic phenomena that occur in casual speech: linking and intrusive /r/, assimilation, elision, etc. As it is practically impossible to speak English fluently unless the phenomenon of function word reduction is properly understood and applied, the unit ends with the use of the strong and weak forms of function (grammatical) words (articles, auxiliaries, modals, pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions).

Unit 5 focuses on larger units of speech such as the syllable and on aspects of speech such as stress. While Romanian is a syllable-timed language (a language which has each syllable pronounced with roughly the same duration), English is a stressed-timed language (a language which has the stressed syllables occurring at regular intervals). This unit also highlights the connection between phonology and lexicology in section 5.4 (stress and conversion), in section 5.7 (stress and derivation) and section 5.8 (stress and compounding).

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Unit 6 discusses English as an intonation language by considering tone patterns in English, functions of intonation and the link between intonation and sentence types. The final goal of the unit is to make Romanian learners of English avoid transferring intonation patterns from the mother tongue in the foreign language.

Each of the units presented above ends with a summary of the main issues discussed in the chapter, a list of key concepts meant as a check list for revising the main notions before going on, and a brief section called ‘further reading’.

Each new technical term that is introduced in the course is printed in bold type and followed by an asterisk (*), meaning that the term will be explained in the glossary at the end of the book.

The course book closes with three appendices containing a list of symbols used (Appendix 1), a complete glossary of technical terms (Appendix 2) and four practice sets (Appendix 3).

The practice sets in Appendix 3 are based on exercises taken from Malcolm Mann and Steve Taylore-Knowles. 2003. Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking. Oxford: Macmillan. The tasks included in this last section are correlated with the units in this course and adapted to its specific objectives. Each practice set is allotted a four-hour session of Assisted Activities.

The assignments

Every chapter contains reflection points (Think first!) and

exercises of two types: SAQs (self-assessed questions) and SAAs (send-away assignments). The former type, SAQs, signalled by a question mark, is based on the information you have just read and consists in questions that break down the texts in order to clarify and consolidate certain teaching points. You will find suggested answers to SAQs at the end of each unit.

The latter type, SAAs, signalled by an envelope, generally involves knowledge of the whole chapter and is placed at its end. There are four assignments of this type (in units 2, 3, 4 and 5) that have to be sent to the tutor, following the instructions given in each particular case. Their assessment will take into account knowledge of the information contained in the chapter and correct use of the English language.

At the end of the course, your final grade will include the following:

• attendance of and contribution to face-to-face meetings with the tutor and to assisted activities, solving of SAQs and SAAs: 40%;

• final examination – 60%.

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UNIT 1 THE SOUNDS OF THE LANGUAGE

Unit outline

Unit objectives 2 1.1 Phonetics and phonology 2 1.2 The connection of phonetics and phonology with non-

linguistic and linguistic sciences 3

1.3 The importance of phonetic studies 5 1.4 Phonetic symbols and types of transcription 6 1.5 Types of standard pronunciation 9 1.5.1 Received Pronunciation 9 1.5.2 General American 10 Summary 11 Key concepts 11 Further reading 12 Answers to SAQs 12

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After you have completed the study of this unit you should be

able to: • define phonetics • explain the connection of phonetics with other branches of

science • point out the importance of phonetics for a teacher of a

foreign language • recognize the symbols used for teaching the pronunciation of

English • identify the main type of English standard pronunciation.

1.1. Phonetics and phonology • Definition of phonetics Phonetics is the science which studies the sounds used in

speech and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription*. (Crystal D., 1992: 259).

Speech sounds* can be analysed from several points of view: a. acoustic b. articulatory c. auditory d. functional. • Types of phonetics a. The acoustic aspect falls under the scope of what is

commonly called acoustic phonetics* which studies the physical (acoustic) properties of speech sounds as transmitted between the mouth and the ear.

b. The articulatory aspect of speech sound is analysed by the branch called articulatory phonetics which deals with speech sounds from the point of view of their production, i.e. what organs are used to produce them and what precise movements they perform in order to articulate them.

c. Auditory phonetics* studies speech sounds from the point of view of their perception, i.e. the perceptual response to speech sounds as mediated by the ear, the auditory nerve and the brain.

d. Functional phonetics or phonology investigates the functional aspect of sounds, accent*, syllable and intonation.

• Definition of phonology While phonetics studies speech sounds as sounds, in all their

complexity and diversity, independent of their role in language, phonology studies speech sounds, as these are categorised by speakers of a given language; its study unit is called phoneme. The actually pronounced speech sounds are called variants or allophones* of phonemes.

In standard British English, there are 44 different categories of speech sounds called phonemes. Phonemes are said to differ from each other in terms of certain distinctive features* such as voice, nasality, etc. Phonologists study both phonemes (vowels* and

Unit objectives

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consonants*) and prosody* (stress and intonation) as subsystems of a spoken language.

• Branches of phonology The study of speech into distinctive units or phonemes is called

segmental* phonology, whereas the analysis of prosodic and paralinguistic features in connected utterances of speech is called non-segmental/suprasegmental phonology*.

SAQ 1

In the spaces provided, mention which branch of phonetics

is concerned with the following: a. the perception of the sounds and their interpretation in the receiver …. ………………………………………….. b. the physical (acoustic) properties of speech sounds …. …………………………………………… c. the functional aspects of sounds ….. …………………………………………… d. the activity involved in the production of speech sounds … ……………………………………………..

Check your answers against those given in the Answer Key.

1.2 The connection of phonetics and phonology with non-linguistic and linguistic sciences

• The connection with grammar Phonetics is connected with non-linguistic sciences such as

anatomy, acoustics and physiology. For example, sounds can be described with reference to anatomical places of articulation (dental*, palatal*), to their physical structure (the frequency and amplitude characteristics of the sound waves) and are articulated by our organs of speech.

Phonetics is connected with grammar because, through the system or reading rules, it helps to pronounce the singular and plural forms of nouns correctly, the singular third form of verbs, the past tense forms and past participles of English regular verbs.

The study of the phonological, i.e. sound structure of morphemes is called morphophonology*. In many languages, English included, there are phonological rules which can only be described with reference to morphological structure. Thus, the morpheme ‘s’ can be pronounced /iz/ (e.g. peaches, judges), /z/ (e.g. apples, rides) or /s/ (e.g. maps, lacks) depending on the final consonant* of the base form of the verb to which it is attached.

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Think first! Give some examples of the phonetic variation morphemes

undergo in combination with one another (e.g. hoof - hooves, half - halves).

In the next paragraph you will find more examples of this

kind.

One of the most important phonetic phenomena - sound interchange - is another manifestation of the connection of phonetics with grammar. For instance, this connection can be noticed in the category of NUMBER. Thus, the interchange / f-v /, /s-z /, /θ −ð/ helps to distinguish singular and plural forms of such nouns as: calf-calves, house - houses, mouth - mouths, etc.

Vowel interchange helps to discriminate the singular and the plural of nouns of foreign origin: basis - bases / ‘beisis - beisi:z / and also of irregular nouns such as man - men /mæn - men/.

Vowel interchange is connected with the TENSE forms of irregular verbs, for instance: sing - sang - sung.

• Lexicology, semantics, stylistics and pragmatics Phonetics is also connected with lexicology and semantics.

Homographs* can be differentiated only due to pronunciation because they are identical in spelling:

bow /bəu/ - bow /bau/ lead /li:d / - lead /led/ row /rəu/ - row /rau/ tear /teə/ - tear /tiə/ wind /wind / - wind /waind/ Phonetics is connected with stylistics through repetition of

words, phrases and sounds, lying at the basis of rhyme, alliteration*, etc.

The connection with the other linguistic branches (i.e. semantics, pragmatics) is obvious due the role played by accent, stress and intonation in the act of communication. For example, the position of word accent in units higher than a word may have far - reaching semantic consequences. If we consider compounds such as blackbird, yellow-hammer, blue-stocking, cheap-jack (in which the stress falls on the first syllable) and phrases containing apparently the same words blackbird, yellowhammer, bluestocking, cheapjack (in which the stress falls on the second syllable) we notice that the difference in stress engenders differences in meaning.

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SAQ 2 Which non-linguistic and linguistic sciences are connected

with phonetics? Fill in the blanks with the corresponding term.

1. Since speech sounds are articulated by our organs of speech, phonetics is connected with...................... 2. Since the sounds are transmitted in the form of sound waves, phonetics is connected with …………………... 3. Since some sounds can be described with reference to anatomical places of articulation, phonetics is connected with …………………..… 4. The connection between phonetics and ……………………… can be proved by the different pronunciations of the grammatical morphemes -s and –ed. 5. Homography is a study area common to both phonetics and ……………………….. 6. The close interrelationship between phonetics and ….………………….….. can be seen in commands and requests that are distinguished by means of intonation patterns. 7. When phrases coincide with compounds, the semantic difference is made by means of stress, an issue studied by ……………………….. phonetics or phonology.

The answer is given at the end of this unit.

1.3 The importance of phonetic studies

Think First! Before reading the next section, think of the importance of

phonetics for the foreign language teacher and write down your ideas in the space provided below. Your answer should not be longer than two paragraphs.

You will find some ideas as you read this section.

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The connection of phonetics with linguistic sciences (grammar,

lexicology, stylistics, semantics and pragmatics) points to its importance from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. Theoretically, a complete understanding and description of a language is not possible without a description of its sound structure and system. For instance, the loss of inflections in English is a grammatical phenomenon which has phonetic causes, i.e. the strong dynamic stress on the first syllable of words resulted in the reduction, weakening and loss of the final unstressed syllable.

Practically, knowledge of phonetics is indispensable in the study and teaching of foreign languages. The teacher and the learner of a foreign language should ideally be able to recognize and produce the sounds of the studied language just like a native speaker.

1.4 Phonetic symbols and types of transcription

• The International Phonetic Alphabet To describe the sounds of English (or of any other language)

one cannot depend on the spelling of the words. The most accurate method of representing sounds is through the International Phonetic Alphabet* (IPA) developed by the International Phonetic Association in 1888; this can be used to symbolize the sounds found in all languages.

The symbols are based on the Roman alphabet, with further symbols created by inverting or reversing Roman letters or taken from the Greek alphabet. The main characters are supplemented when necessary by diacritics.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is less used in North America than elsewhere, but it is widely used as a pronunciation aid for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and ESL (English as a Second Language), especially by British publishers and increasingly in British dictionaries of English.

• The broad/phonemic/phonological transcription When the sounds of a language are represented without going

into any details about variations, the method of broad/phonemic/phonological transcription is used. For example, in English, the /t/ phoneme is represented by this symbol in all situations, regardless of the fact that the phoneme is realized by various allophones, e.g. being aspirated* in a stressed initial position (time) and unaspirated* after –s (stay), and ignoring also the fact that it may not always have alveolar* articulation.

A broad phonemic transcription is generally felt to be simplest to use, but knowledge of the allophonic systems of the language is needed if such a transcription is to be read aloud, with approximate accuracy.

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• The narrow/allophonic/phonetic transcription Variations may be represented by what is known as

narrow//phonetic/allophonic i.e. a transcription which mirrors all that is known about a sound in a given environment.

The large number of diacritics makes it possible to mark minute shades of sound.

Conventionally, the narrow transcription* is given between square brackets, while the broad transcription* uses slashes (slant lines).

Think first! Look at the table below and consider the difference in

number between the phonemes of English and those of Romanian. Which sounds do you think are found in English but not in Romanian?

Language Consonants Vowels Total

English 24 20 44 Romanian 22 7 29

You can find such instances if you read the next section.

• The English phonemic system According to traditional phonological theories, the minimal unit

in the sound system* of a language is the phoneme. Each language operates with a relatively small number of phonemes (Japanese has about 20 phonemes, Romanian has 29 and English has 44); no two languages have the same phonemic system. The English phonemic system contains 24 consonants* and 20 vowels, while Romanian has 22 consonants and 7 vowels.

The symbols used for teaching the pronunciation of English are the following:

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Symbols Examples

[p] appear [ə’piə] [b] bubble [bΛbl] [t] attend [ə’tend] [d] hiding [haidiη] [k] conquer [‘knkə] [g] begin [bi’gin] [f] offer [fə] [v] cover] [kΛvə] [s] assist [ə’sist] [z] razor [reizə] [Θ] ether [i:θə] [ð] mother [mΛðə] [S] nation [neiSn] [Z] measure [meZə] [tS] cheese [tSi:z] [dZ-] joke [dZəuk] [m] summer [sΛmə] [n] any [eni] [η] finger [fiηgə] [l] palace [pælis] [r] caress [kə’res] [w] queen [kwi:n] [j] yes [jes]

[i:] Pete [pi:t] [i] pit [pit] [e] pet [pet] [æ] pat [pæt] [A:] part [pA:t] [] pot

[pt]

[:] port [p:t] [u] put [put] [u:] pool [pu:l] [Λ] pun [pΛn] [ə:] perm [pə:m] [ə] parade [pə’reid] [ei] pain [pein] [ai] pine [pain] [i] point [pint] [Au] pouch [pautS] [əu] poach [pəutS] [iə] peer [piə] [εə] pair [pεə] [uə] poor [puə]

Symbols for vowels and diphthongs

Symbols for consonants

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SAQ 3 What terms correspond to the following definitions? Write

your answers in the spaces provided below.

1. A systematic method of representing in a rather general way (normally using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet) how spoken language sounds. ………………………………….. 2. A system of written symbols designed to enable the speech

sounds* of any language to be consistently represented. ……………………………………… 3. A method which gives a much more accurate indication of

actual speech sounds but requires more symbols and diacritics. ……………………………………….

The answer is given at the end of this unit.

1.5 Types of standard pronunciation

1.5.1 Received Pronunciation* (RP) • Definition RP is the name for the accent generally associated with

educated British English and used as the pronunciation model for teaching it to foreign learners.

• Origin Received Pronunciation originates from the prestige accent of

the Court, well established in England by the 17th century. During the First World War, Daniel Jones (1917) called it PSP (Public School Pronunciation) because it was most usually heard in everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons who had been educated at the great public boarding-schools.

• Who uses RP? RP is the pronunciation used by national announcers and

presenters on the BBC since its founding in the 1920s because it was the form of pronunciation most likely to be nationally understood and to attract least regional criticism – hence the association of RP with the phrase BBC English*.

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• Is RP still popular on radio and television? However in the 1970s-1980s there has been a move towards

modified regional accent among announcers and presenters and towards distinct (but generally modified) regional accents among presenters on popular radio channels and meteorologists and sports commentators on television. In spite of the regionally marked forms of accent that can be heard on some channels, RP remains the reference norm that is used for the descriptions of other varieties of English.

• Why are there differences in pronunciation? Differences in pronunciation result from various factors such

geographical origin, one’s age and sex, social class, educational background, occupation and personality. In addition, Roach (1994: 190) mentions situation factors such as the social relationship between speaker and hearer, whether one is speaking publicly or privately and the purposes for which one is using language.

• RP and EFL teaching RP is the accent that foreign learners of English are expected

to learn for the sake of convenience and simplicity; learners of English need to be aware of the fact that this style/accent/variety is far from being the only one they can meet. In practice, EFL teachers should do their best to expose their pupils to other varieties. Actually, in EFL teaching RP competes more and more with GA (General American*).

1.5.2 General American (GA) • Definition An accent of English used in the United States that lacks the

especially marked regional characteristics of the north-east (New England, New York State) and the south-east (the ‘Southern States’).

As a concept, GA corresponds to the layman’s perception of an American accent without marked regional characteristics. It is sometimes referred to as “Network English” being the variety most acceptable on the television networks covering the whole United States. (Wells, 1981: 471).

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Summary

This unit has introduced some major issues meant to underline

the idea that an understanding of the principles of phonetics is a necessary basis for the study of other branches of linguistics, in the sense that many language phenomena can be explained only in terms of phonetics. Therefore, phonetics is equally necessary in the theoretical and practical study of language.

The difference between phonemes and allophones or in other words, between phonology and phonetics is so important that we also note this difference in transcription: phonetic (or narrow transcription) for which we use square brackets and phonological (phonemic, broad transcription) for which we use slashes.

Phonemic variants or allophones are very important for language learning and language teaching because they are pronounced in actual speech and though their mispronunciation does not influence the meaning of the words, their misuse makes a person’ s speech sound “foreign”.

Because spelling is not a faithful representation of language, it is useful to have a set of special symbols whose values are generally agreed upon. This is the function of the phonetic symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

English is the national language in many countries, including the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland, and South Africa. There are great differences in the pronunciation of English in these countries and even within the same country one may hear different pronunciations. From this variety of pronunciations, for practical purposes, it has been necessary to choose those which are best suited for learning and using English, i.e. Received Pronunciation and General American.

Key concepts

The following key concepts have been introduced in this unit. Use this list and others found at the end of each chapter as a checklist to make sure that you are familiar with each before going on.

• acoustic phonetics • allophone • articulatory phonetics • auditory phonetics • broad transcription • functional phonetics or phonology • General American • morphophonology • narrow transcription • phoneme • phonemic system • Received Pronunciation

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• segmental phonology • suprasegmental phonology • the International Phonetic Alphabet

Further reading 1. Finch, Geoffrey. 2000. Linguistic Terms and Concepts. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 33-77. 2. Roach, Peter. 1994. English Phonetics and Phonology. A Practical Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-47.

Answers to SAQs

If your answer to SAQ 1 is not comparable to the one suggested below, please reread section 1.1.

SAQ 1 a. auditory phonetics b. acoustic phonetics c. functional acoustics or phonology d. articulatory phonetics

If your answer to SAQ 2 is not comparable to the one suggested below, please reread section 1.2.

SAQ 2 1. physiology 2. physics 3. anatomy 4. grammar 5. lexicology 6. pragmatics 7. functional phonetics or phonology

If your answer to SAQ 3 is not comparable to the one suggested below, please reread section 1.4.

SAQ 3 1. broad transcription 2. the International Phonetic Alphabet 3. narrow transcription

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UNIT 2 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH

Unit outline

Unit objectives 14 2.1 Pronunciation differences 14 2.1.1 The vowel system 14 2.1.2 The consonant system 16 2.2 Differences in spelling 18 2.2.1 Phonetic spelling tendencies 19 2.2.2 The omission of superfluous letters in American English 19 2.3 Lexical differences in main subject areas 21 2.3.1 People and their immediate environment 22 2.3.2 Human interaction and communication 22 2.3.3 Social institutions 23 2.3.4 Natural environment 24 Summary 24 Key concepts 25 Further reading 25 SAA No. 1 25 Answers to SAQs 25

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After you have completed the study of this unit you should be

able to: • discriminate British English from American English in terms

of pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary • avoid a potential source of confusion caused by some lexical

items in the two varieties of English • try to develop a consistent way of speaking and writing in

English English in the USA differs considerably from British English.

Pronunciation is the most striking difference but there are also a number of differences in vocabulary and grammar as well as slight differences in spelling.

Think First!

Before continuing to read this unit, think of which variety of

English you tend to pronounce. Note down some of the distinguishing features you are aware of and compare them with the information given in the section below.

2.1 Pronunciation differences 2.1.1 The vowel system

• American drawl Some Americans are noted for their drawl, i.e. a lengthening of

stressed vowels; this is especially characteristic of Southern pronunciation.

In contrast with the drawled nature of the way many Americans speak is the so-called ‘clipped’ diction of British English. This is accounted for by the greater tension and lesser degree of lengthening in stressed vowels.

The American drawl has to do with a less effortful way of producing sounds and is an aspect of informality of American English (Kovecses, 2000: 241)

Unit objectives

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• American nasality Vowels are often nasalized* in American English (the

American nasality or nasal twang*) especially by speakers from the Middle West. The nasal quality of American vowels is explained by the longer duration* of the nasalized portion of a vowel following a nasal consonant

Many British people pronounce /A:/ in some words where Americans pronounce /æ /, when this vowel is followed by fricatives* such as /f/, /θ/, /s/; therefore, the pronunciation with /æ/ before the fricatives /f, s, θ/ and before the nasals* /m/, /n/ is typical of American English:

British English American

English Examples

/A:/+ /f/, /θ/, /s/ /A:/+ /n/, /m/

/æ/ + /f /, /θ /, /s/ /æ/+/n/, /m/

laugh, after, bath, math, ask, chance, example

The vowel // is pronounced without lip-rounding and sounds like /A:/ in American English: stop, body, common, novel, problem: British English

American English

Examples

//| /Λ/ Tom, dollar, lot, hot, box, rock, dog, frog, crop, body, conflict, novel

The Americans have a tendency to pronounce /ə/ instead of /i/ in unstressed syllables:

• The reduction of diphthongs* to simple vowels In British English, words like home, no, are pronounced with

the diphthong /əu/ while in American English the diphthong* is reduced to /ə/, especially in unstressed final position (in very casual or informal speech): potato, tomato, fellow, window, piano, mellow, etc. This points to the well known American tendency towards simplification. The same tendency can be noticed in the reduction of /ai/ to /a:/ and of /ei/ to /æ/.

Similarly, the semi-vowel /j/ is dropped into /u/ when preceded by /t/ or /d/, a characteristic which shows that the Americans pronounce the words almost the same way as they are written:

British English American English

Examples

/i/ /ə/ minute, started, greatest

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British English American English Examples

/əu/ /ai/ /ei/ /t/, /d/ or /n/ +/j/+/u/

/ə/ /A:/ /t/, /d/ or /n/ +/u/

potato, tomato, fellow fire, buyer, tired, five date, fate, great student, tulip, during, numerous

SAQ 1 Group the following words according to the vowel sound they

contain in American English: class, aunt, dollar, glass, greatness, fast, pass, castle, window, due, nuclear, Tom, nude, got, interest, bottle, piano, tigress, mellow, dance, rock, frog, tune.

1. /æ/: class, glass, … 2. /Λ/: dollar, … 3. /ə/ in unstressed syllable: greatness, … 4. /ə/ in unstressed final position: window, … 5. /u/: due, …

Check your answers against those given at the end of this

unit.

2.1.2 The consonant system

• The flap* In British English /t/ remains unvoiced* between two vowels or

between a vowel and a voiced* consonant but in American English intervocalic* /t/ is very close to /d/. This type of sound is called ‘the flap’ because the tongue flaps against the alveolar ridge. In many areas of the United States, where it can be heard, the flap* makes words such as matter and madder, writer and rider, latter and ladder, whiter and wider sound nearly or exactly the same:

British English American English Examples

Intervocalic unvoiced /t/|

Intervocalic voiced /t/, resembling /d/

writer, latter, whiter

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• Post-nasal /t/ A well known distinguishing feature of American pronunciation

is complete disappearance or voicing of /t/ in post-nasal position that is after a nasal consonant. Cases in point are winter, pronounced as winner, enter as enner and intercity as innercity, in which the voiceless consonant /t/ is pronounced as voiced /d/.

Further, /t/ and /d/ may be dropped altogether in casual speech after nasals: twenty /’tweni/, candidate, /’kænə,deit/, understand /;Λnər’stænd/

• Rhotacity In standard British English /r/ is only pronounced before a

vowel. In American English /r/ is pronounced in all positions in a word and it changes the quality* of a vowel that comes after it. So, words like turn and offer sound very different in British and American speech.

Consequently, American English is considered to be a rhotic* accent of English, one in which /r/ is pronounced in post-vocalic (e.g. bird) and final position (e.g. car). Pronouncing /r/ is the norm in the Northern, Midland, and Western dialect region, that is, the greatest part of the country. Exceptions to this are New England and New York, which although geographically belonging to the North, do not pronounce the /r/ in a post-vocalic position and at the end of words.

• Word stress Word stress tends to fall on the first syllable in American

English: princess, address, research, entire, museum, resource:

British English American English

Examples

second syllable is stressed

first syllable is stressed

princess, address, research, entire, museum, resource

Most of the disyllabic verbs ending in -ate have the stress on

the first syllable: dictate, frustrate, migrate, vibrate. As for the borrowings, they keep their original stress in American English: barrage, bouquet, chalet, café, gourmet, pâté, ballet. In words that have three syllables, Americans emphasize the ending: secretary, dictionary, laboratory, conservatory, inflammatory.

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SAQ 2

What British - American differences do you know relative to: 1. consonants 2. word stress

Write your answers in the space provided below. Compare them with the suggested answer given at the end of the unit.

2.2 Differences in spelling

Think first !

Before moving on to differences in spelling, look at the way some words are spelt in the two standards of English: British English American English 1. labour 1. labor 2. centre 2. center 3. hospitalised 3. hospitalized

Can you give other examples?

You will find further examples as you read sections 2.2.1.and 2.2.2.

American spelling, in the majority of cases is simpler and

consistently shorter than British spelling. The process of simplification in spelling started with the spelling reforms at the end of the eighteenth century, when ‘big names’ including Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster and Mark Twain attempted at changing the complicated system of English.

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2.2.1 Phonetic spelling tendencies

• The change from -re to -er American spelling closely follows the sequence in which the

sounds are actually pronounced, namely it tends to have what is called ‘phonetic spelling’.

For example, when we pronounce words like theatre (BE) - theater (AmE) and centre (BE) - center (AmE) the sequence of the final sounds is /tə(r)/. Notice that in the British spelling the sequence of the actual sounds, /ə+r/, is reversed, yielding -re in writing.

• The shift from -ce to -se Another best known case of change related to the phonetic

spelling reforms proposed by Webster in 1788, and subsequently preserved in American spelling is the shift from -ce to -se, as in defense, pretense, offense.

• The change from –ise to -ize Both the ending -ise and -ize are pronounced with a /z/ sound.

As the letter z is a more conventional representation of the sound /z/ than the letter /s/, American English favours the spelling -ize as in analyze.

2.2.2 The omission of ‘superfluous’ letters in American English A ‘faithful’ orthographic representation of the pronunciation of

words implies the omission of letters that are believed to be superfluous, e.g. silent* letters.

• The shift from -ll to -l, and from -mme to -m Words that normally have -ll in British English are spelled with -l

in American English: counsel(l), wol(l)en. Similarly, -mme in British English turns into -m in American

English: program(me), kilogram(me). • The shift from –our to -or In British English words ending in -our end in -or in American

English, e.g. colour /color. • The shift from -AmE, -oe to -e British English seems to have retained both -ae and -oe

spellings in addition to the -e spellings in words like mediaeval, foetus, paediatrician, oesophagus, manoeuvre, anaemia, amoeba. American English seems to prefer the simplified -e spellings in these cases. Thus, in American English, the usual spellings of these words are medieval, fetus, pediatrician, esophagus, maneuver, anemia and ameba.

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SAQ 3

How do you spell these words in American English?

1. behaviour ....................

2. humour ....................

3. honour ....................

4. metre ....................

5. criticise ....................

6. organise ....................

7. industrialise ....................

8. defence ....................

9. offence ....................

10. licence ....................

11. mediaeval ....................

12. enquiry ....................

13. gipsy ....................

14. traveller ....................

15. marvellous ....................

16. woollen ....................

17. kidnapped ....................

18. focussed ....................

Check your answers against those given at the end of this unit.

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Think first!

Can you avoid some of the most common confusions arising between British and American speakers? Try the following quiz.

1. Where would you take (a) an American visitor (b) a British visitor who said they wanted to wash up - the kitchen or the bathroom? 2. Would (a) an American (b) a Brit be expected to get something hot or something cold if they asked for some potato chips? 3. Which would surprise you more - an American or a British man telling you that he wanted to go and change his pants? 4. You have just come into an unknown office block. If (a) an American (b) a Brit says that the office you need is on the second floor, how many flights of stairs do you need to climb? 5. If (a) an American (b) a Brit asks for a bill, is he or she more likely to be in a bank or a cafe?

Check your answers against the information given in section 2.3.1.

2.3 Lexical differences in main subject areas

The main causes of the vocabulary differences between British

and American English are related to social and cultural developments, technology and linguistic processes. The range of lexical differences can be suggested by the large number of lexical entries marked as Americanisms in Webster’s New World Dictionary, i.e. 11,000 items, out of which 4,000 items belong to ordinary vocabulary.

Concerning the subject areas which provide most of the lexical differences, Kovecses (2000: 148) mentions the central theme of ’people and their immediate environment’; slightly removed from this central theme we have the theme ‘human interaction and communication’; next we can set up the theme ‘social institutions’ and finally, the theme of ‘natural environment’.

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2.3.1 People and their immediate environment

This theme includes the subcategories household and building,

clothing, food and shopping: British American ground floor first floor lift elevator tap faucet flat (rented) apartment cupboard closet flat (owned) condominium dustbin trashcan dinner jacket tuxedo trousers pants underpants shorts waistcoat vest

tin can sweets candy chips French fries jam jelly biscuit cookie bill check queue line shop assistant sales clerk

2.3.2 Human interaction and communication

This subject area involves such subcategories as travel and accommodation, personal communication (telephone and post) and transportation (car, train, road). luggage baggage left luggage office baggage room receptionist desk clerk to book to make reservations timetable schedule toilet(s) restroom return ticket round trip ticket single ticket one way ticket

Building and household

Food

Shopping

Clothes

Accommodation and travel

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post code zip code ring up call up postman mailman parcel package car park parking lot pavement sidewalk motorway freeway roundabout traffic circle taxi/cab cab/taxi traffic lights stop lights high street main street underground subway coach bus tram street car sledge sled

2.3.3 Social institutions

This theme contains such subcategories as school and education, business and banking, as well as media and entertainment. lecturer instructor senior lecturer assistant professor reader associate professor professor (full) professor hall of residence dormitory mark grade postgraduate graduate secondary school high school university college/university maths math current account checking account deposit account savings account shares stocks note bill booking office ticket office film/movie movie cinema movie theater interval intermission

Road, traffic and transportation

Telephone and post office

School and education

Entertainment

Business and finance

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2.3.4 Natural environment

The subcategories of plants and animals can be viewed as

parts of this theme: maize corn insect bug ladybird ladybug cock rooster Alsatian German shepherd

SAQ 4 Change the following into British English.

1. Pass me the cookies. ……………………………. 2. One-way or round trip? ……………………………. 3. It’s in the closet. …………………………….. 4. He left the faucet on. …………………………….. 5. Open the drapes. …………………………….. 6. We’re leaving in the fall. ……………………………… 7. We’ve run out of gas ………………………………. 8. I hate waiting in line. ……………………………

Check your answer against the suggested answer given at

the end of the unit.

Summary

Speakers of American English have developed a form of communication that requires less attention and effort. This is reflected by the casual nature of their way of speaking, generally characterized by nasalizing and drawing out certain vowels. In contrast with this, the British way of speaking has a so called ‘clipped’ nature.

Unlike British English, American English discloses a tendency towards simplification proved by (1) the reduction of certain diphthongs* to simple vowels and (2) the elimination of some unnecessary letters in spelling.

American spelling differs from British spelling in that the former usually tries to correspond more closely to pronunciation (showing a

Plants and animals

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tendency towards phonetic spelling) while the latter preserves its etymological spelling.

British and American vocabularies also reveal differences related to general themes such as (1) people and their immediate environment (2) human interaction and communication (3) social institutions and (4) natural environment.

Key concepts

• American drawl • American nasality • flap • phonetic spelling • postnasal /t/ • rhotacity

Further reading

1. Iarovici, Edith. 1994. Engleza Americană. Bucureşti: Editura Teora, pp.99-111

2. Kovecses, Zoltan. 2000. American English. An Introduction. Ontario: Broad View Press, pp.139-155, 240-247

3. Neagu Mariana. 2001. Variety and Style in English. Buzău: Alpha, pp. 123-148.

SAA No. 1

Which variety of English is taught and preferred by Romanian teachers and students? Try to find out why that particular variety is preferred and point out its characteristics, using the information in Unit 2 and in the books recommended under Further reading.

Write a 250 word essay and send it to your tutor. The maximum score for this assignment is 20 points: - 10 points for providing solid arguments - 5 points for language accuracy - 3 points for identifying the variety features correctly - 2 points for organizing ideas in paragraphs.

Answers to SAQs

If your answers to SAQ 1 and SAQ 2 are not comparable to the ones suggested below, please reread section 2.1.

SAQ 1 1. /A:/ in British English (BE) is turned into /æ/ in American

English (AmE), when this vowel is followed by fricatives such as /s/:

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class, glass, fast, pass, castle. The same change, that is /A:/ in BrE becomes /æ/ in AmE when it is followed by the nasals /n/, /m/ followed by other consonants: aunt, dance

2. // in BrE is pronounced without lip-rounding and sounds like /Λ/ in AmE: Tom, dollar, got, bottle, rock, frog

3. /i/ in unstressed syllables in BrE is replaced by /ə/ in AmE: greatness, tigress, interest

4. /əu/ in unstressed final position in British English is replaced by /ə/ in American English: window, piano, mellow

5. /ju/ in BrE is reduced to /u/| in AmE when preceded by /t/ or /d/: tune, due. The same reduction, that of /ju/ to /u/, occurs when /ju/ is preceded by /n/: nuclear, nude

SAQ 2 • Intervocalic* /t/ in British English sounds like /d/ in

American English: writer, latter, whiter • /r/ is pronounced in all positions in a word in American

English, while in standard British English /r/ is only pronounced before a vowel: offer, turn, etc.

• word stress tends to fall on the first syllable in American English and on the second syllable in British English: princess, address, research, entire, museum, resource.

• disyllabic verbs ending in –ate have the stress on the first syllable in American English: dictate, frustrate, migrate, vibrate. In words that have three syllables, Americans emphasize the ending: secretary, dictionary, laboratory, conservatory, inflammatory

If your answer to SAQ 3 is not comparable to the one suggested below, please reread section 2.2.

SAQ 3

behavior, humor, honor, meter, criticize, organize, industrialize, defense, offense, license, medieval, inquiry, gypsy, traveler, marvelous, woolen, kidnaped, focused

If your answer to SAQ 4 is not comparable to the one suggested below, please reread section 2.3.

SAQ 4

1. Pass me the cakes 2. Single or return (trip)? 3. It’s in the cupboard 4. He left the tap on. 5. Open the curtains! 6. We’re leaving in autumn. 7. We’ve run out of petrol 8. I hate standing in a queue.

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UNIT 3 PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING

Unit outline

Unit objectives 28 3.1 The spelling of consonants 28 3.2 Vowel markers 29 3.3 Keeping a spelling constant 30 3.4 Silent letters 33 3.5 Homographs and homophones 34 3.6 Pronunciation and etymology 35 Summary 36 Key concepts 37 Further reading 37 SAA No. 2 37 Answers to SAQs 38

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After you have completed the study of this unit you should be

able to: • discriminate words or parts of words that are spelled exactly

the same way but which are pronounced entirely differently. • acquire the markers, pronunciation patterns and spelling rules

provided in the unit Ideally, the spelling system should closely reflect pronunciation,

as is the case in Romanian, but not in English, which nevertheless presents many regularities between sound and written symbol. The problem in English is twofold – each sound is represented by more than one letter or by sequences of letters, and any letters represents more than one sound, or it may not represent any sound at all.

Think first! What group of letters corresponds to the /S/ sound? Think

of words such as ship, passion, ration, Asian, conscious, Confucian, issue, machine and luxury.

………….. Check your answer against the information given in

section 3.1.

3.1 The spelling of consonants

• Consonants with a single spelling Most consonants, at least some of the time, may have a single-

letter 'alphabetic' spelling: <b, d, f, g, h, j, 1, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, y, z>; /k/ has a choice of <c> or <k>. But there is often 'divergence', where one speech-sound has several different spellings and spelling may stand for different speech-sounds.

• Consonants with multiple letter spelling In spite of the available single-letter spelling <f>, the consonant

at the beginning of foot has more complex spellings in physics, enough, offer. The <s> in easy represents /z/, the <u> in quick represents /w/ and the <f> in of represents /v/. The consonant at the beginning of yet, yellow can also be found as part of the vowel spelt <u(e)> in cue, cute, pure.

The most divergent consonant is /k/, which has different spellings in cool, chemistry, sack, accolade, chukker, key, quay, quite, and as part of the /ks/ in axe.

Six consonants, that is /Θ, ð S, Z, tS, η / do not have a single-letter-spelling of their own and require at least two letters, such as <th>, <sh> or <ch>. These are the consonants found in the middle of the following words: method, bother, wishing, measure, patches and the consonant represented by <ng> in singer when no actual /gl is pronounced.

Unit objectives

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The main cause responsible for the departure of English spelling from the phonemic principle* is that conservative principles in orthography cannot keep pace with the phonetic changes in the language.

SAQ 1

Identify the graphs corresponding to /f/, /k/, /s/, /z/, /S/ in

the following words. The first has been done for you as an example:

1.saphhire: phh: /f/ 2. back …………………………… 3. acclaim …………………………… 4. biscuit …………………………… 5. school …………………………… 6. dress …………………………… 7. scene …………………………… 8. racing …………………………… 9. cousin …………………………… 10. dissolve …………………………… 11. dessert …………………………… 12. mission …………………………… 13. option …………………………… 14. ancient …………………………… 15. conscious …………………………… 16. ocean ……………………………

Fill in the blanks with your answers and then check them with the suggested answers given at the end of this unit.

3.2 Vowel markers

Five pairs of vowels can have single-letter spellings: <a> in scrap, scraping, <e> in met, meter, <i> in pip, piper, <o> in cop, coping, <u> in rub, ruby. There is also <y> in cryptic, cry, which duplicates the <i> spellings. The examples given in each pair represent a 'short' and a 'long' vowel or diphthong.

For this letter-sharing to work, 'markers' are needed in some contexts to tell you which value the letter has.

• Final silent -e To get the long value of <a> in a single-syllable word, you have

to add a marker <-e>, as in scrape. The <-e> in bathe, breathe, loathe, wreathe not only marks the vowel as long but also marks the last consonant as 'voiced' rather than the 'voiceless'* one in bath, breath, loath, wreath. Other examples are lathe, lithe, swathe. Mouth and smooth used as verbs lack this marking.

The marker <-e> in browse, copse, lapse, please, tease, tense is used to prevent confusion with the plural forms brows, cops, laps, pleas, teas, tens. It marks the browse group as single units and as such is called 'lexical <-e>'.

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• The double consonant rule To get the short value before a suffix beginning with a vowel

like <-ing>, you double a final consonant letter, as in scrapping. Therefore, the double consonant rule says that a final

consonant in a stressed syllable must be doubled to preserve the short pronunciation of the vowel when followed by a syllable beginning with a vowel. Note, for example, the difference in length between // and /əu/ in the pair hopping - hoping.

• The y to i rule This rule states that final y preceded by a consonant becomes -

i before a suffix (e.g. –ed, -s) not beginning with –i (e.g. -ing): try – tried, tries hurry – hurries, hurried but but try – trying hurry – hurrying

SAQ 2

Can you give examples of a single vowel letter which can be used with two values, i.e. short and long, as in scrap - scrape, scrapping - scraping?

Write your answers in the space provided below.

Contrast them with the suggested answer given at the end of unit 3.

3.3 Keeping a spelling constant

Think first!

Do you believe it would be a good idea if English spelling represented pronunciation more closely? Before you read the section below, think of possible disadvantages if English spelling were 100% phonemic.

Check your answer against the information given in this section.

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• The morphological principle English spelling is based not only on the etymological

principle* but also on the morphological principle, according to which spelling has to preserve unchanged the graphic form of every meaningful part of the word (morpheme) even its actual pronunciation changes, which happens when the given morpheme is combined with some other morphemes.

Well-known examples are the grammatical (bound) morphemes

-s and -ed. For instance, the three homonymic morphemes representing (1) the third person singular present tense -(e)s, (2) the possessive case of nouns ’s and (3) the plural of nouns -(e)s may have three pronunciations, each depending on the phonetic environment:

a. /z/ when preceded by a vowel or a voiced consonant: stays, kills.

b. /s/ after a voiceless* consonant: takes. c. /iz/ after consonants such as /s, z, S, Z, tS, dZ/:

sneezes, washes, watch, etc. The verbal ending -ed sounds quite different in wished,

begged, and wanted. If you think that they would be better spelt phonetically as * <wisht>, '’ <begd>, you are losing the advantage of a constant spelling for the regular past-tense ending. Therefore, -ed is pronounced:

• /d/ after vowels and voiced consonants: opened • /t/ after voiceless* consonants: worked • /id/ after /t/, /d/: wanted, divided

SAQ 3

What do you think of Mark Twain’s plans for the improvement of English spelling? Try to remake the etymological spelling of the words in italics and then rewrite the text.

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped to be replased either by “k” or “s”, and likewise, “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish “y” replasing it with “i” and iear 4 might fiks the “g/j” anomali wonse and for all. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c”, “y” and “x” – bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez – tu riplais “ch”, “sh”, and “th” rispektivli. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Compare your answer with the one given at the end of this unit

• Phonemic variation in derivatives The morphological principle is also of great help in the case of

derivatives. For example, one may think it awkward to have Is/ spelt differently in sent and cent. That may be, but the <c> spelling of both /k/ in electric and Is/ in electricity keeps the spelling of that unit constant.

Another good example of this principle is provided by the long and short pronunciations of single vowel letters seen in word pairs such as:

atrocious - atrocity female - feminine omen - omenous austere - austerity grateful - gratitude reside – residual chaste - chastity legal - legislate sole - solitude crime - criminal mine - mineral supreme - supremacy In these pairs the basic long vowel is shortened when it comes

three syllables from the end of the word.

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3.4 Silent letters

• Silent g, w, h and k Keeping a constant spelling may involve the use of so-called

'silent' letters. The <g> does not represent /g/ in sign, but it does in derived forms resignation, signal, signature, signify. Similarly we have malign and malignant. Changing to "<sine>, "<maline> would spoil the visual link. Should we keep the <w> of two because twenty, twin, between are remotely related? Should shepherd be re-spelt as * <sheppard>, a regularized spelling when used as a name?

On the other hand the <g> of gnarled, gnat, gnash, gnaw, gnome and the <k> of knee, knife, knight, knock, know, knuckle are quite empty letters. They are the debris of history and are never pronounced in any derived word (except for acknowledge). It would be no loss to change to "<naded>, '"<nab, *<nife>, "<nuckle>, etc.

SAQ 4

Underscore all the silent letters in each of the following

sentences, e.g.:

The psychiatrist was knifed in the knee as he was walking home. The psychiatrist was knifed in the knee as he was walking home.

1. He should have whistled as he fastened his sword to his belt.2. You should have left me half the Christmas cake on

Wednesday. 3. They sang a psalm to honour the memory of the world-

famous psychologist as he was laid to rest in the family tomb.

Compare your answer with the one in the key at the end of

the unit.

• Other markers Some marking is needed to sort out the two distinct consonants

represented by <g>. Before <a, o, u> we have /g/, as in gap, got, gum and the consonant spelt <j> in jam before <i, e> in gin, gem. The problem is that there are some exceptions with /g/ before <i, e>: gear, geese, get, giddy, gild, gilt, gimmick, girl, give. Some words however have used the letter <u> as a marker for /g/ in guess, guest, guide, guild, guilt, guise, guitar. Its use is not very consistent, since guard, guarantee do not need any <u> marker (e.g. garden).

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3.5 Homographs and homophones

• Definition Words spelt the same but pronounced differently are called

homographs*: <minute> may be an adjective (a really minute insect) or a noun (half a minute). A minute steak has to be interpreted by the reader: either a very small steak or one cooked for a minute.

Words pronounced the same but spelt differently are called homophones*: <vain>, <vane>, <vein>, or <foul>, <fowl> or <meat>, <meet>, <mete>. These variant vowel spellings clearly make it harder for the writer, but it is often claimed that such divergence is not always a bad thing for the reader, since different words should look different on the printed page.

Even so, a good number of words are both homographs* and homophones: sounding the same and looking the same. These are sometimes called homonyms. For instance, hamper represents two completely different unrelated words: either 'a basket' or 'to hinder'. Quarry means either 'a stone quarry’ or 'a hunted animal'.

SAQ 5 Give the correct pronunciation of the marked homographs in

the following sentences. Write your answers in the spaces provided.

1 a The lead singer in the group is great. …. b Lead pipes are dangerous. …. 2 a The wind blew the tree down. …. b Don’t forget to wind your watch. …. 3 a Some students in Oxford spent more time learning to row well than studying. …. b They shared a flat for ages until they had a row over money and they split up. …. 4 a They live in a large old house. …. b The buildings house a library and two concert halls as well as a theatre. …. 5 a The sow has five piglets. …. b The farmers sow the weeds in spring. …. 6 a I bathed the baby this morning. …. b We bathed in the sea every day when we were on holiday.

….

Check your answers against the ones given at the end of the chapter.

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3.6 Pronunciation and etymology

• French loans The Old English of the Anglo-Saxons has given the English

their basic stock of words: life, death, earth, heaven, sun, moon, day, night, black, white, broad, narrow, teach, learn, seek, find, eat, drink, food, meat, fire, wood, tree, eye, knee, hand, foot and so on.

Words borrowed from French have sometimes been altered by anxious academics looking beyond the French spelling to the distant Latin original. The words debt, doubt, were medieval borrowings of French delle 'debt', doute 'doubt' without a <b>. The 'silent' <b> was inserted in the sixteenth century to resemble the original Latin debitum, dubitare, and to draw attention to the shared meaning of related English words derived from the same roots, such as debit, dubitative.

The <c> spelling of the early French loan grocer is a regular English spelling (racer, slicer), so why not have gross spelt: <groce> on the lines of race, truce, slice? As it is, gross is the only English word in which <oss> does not sound as it does in boss, cross, doss, dross, floss. Ironically, the regular <groce> was a common medieval spelling that did not survive.

Since medieval times English has adopted cultural loanwords from French. The early ones included attach, certain, chance, conquer, courage, language, money, place, pleasant, royal, strange, sure, tender, value, and even a word as common now as very, which at first meant ‘true'. Modern loanwords from French come with their present French spelling and a close approximation to French pronunciation: collage, entourage, rage, piquant, pirouette.

SAQ 6

The list of words given below includes loans from Latin,

Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and German. apparatus, avalanche, capricio, bourgeois, mosquito, chamois, banana, champagne, hurricane, chandelier, tobacco, charade, cruise, coup, mirage, landscape, etiquette, brochure, plunder, burlesque, catastrophe, connoiseur, critique, circus, climax, memoir, drama, nuance, exit, genre, genius, symphony, omen, glacier, pathetic, picnic, pneumonia, espionnage, scheme, chauffeur, chef, catastrophe, chic, restaurant, stanza, depot, umbrella, café, prairie, malaise, alligator, penchant, moto, essay, progress, atmosphere, , rendez-vous, moustache, debris, detail.

Underscore recognizably French loan words and compare your choices with the suggested answers given at the end of this unit.

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• Latin and Greek loans Technical terms for use in science are often derived from Latin

or Greek. For example, aqueduct, subaquatic are Latinate counterparts in meaning to ordinary English waterway, underwater. Similarly, Greek elements make up scientific terms such as photosynthesis, polyglot, pyromania. The <-rrh(o)ea> of diarrhoea ('through-How') recurs in other Greek-based words such as catarrh ('down-flow'), seborrhoea ('grease-flow').

Scientists have to learn a mini-language of such elements. When such terms escape into common use they often cause spelling problems for the ordinary person. That leaves a whole array of loanwords that are variously ‘exotic': kayak is from Eskimo, felucca is from Arabic by way of Italian. The now familiar tobacco comes from Arawak, an American-Indian language.

These various subsystems are often marked by their own peculiar spelling correspondences. If you know a yucca to be an exotic plant, you will not spell it *yuker. The <ch> of chief, an early French loan, has the same sound as in native cheap, cheese. The modern loan chef retains its present French value of <ch> (like the <sh> of shop), as do chauffeur, charade. The spelling is not altered to * <shef>. This same <ch> will also spell /k/ in Greek-based words such as character, chemist, synchronic. Similarly, <ph> is a (Greek' spelling for If I, as in diaphragm, philosophy, phobia, symphony.

Borrowing foreign spellings along with foreign loanwords is not the only way of doing it. In Swedish, for example, foreign loans are usually spelt with ordinary Swedish spelling. So French loans coiffure, pirouette are spell in Swedish as <koaffyr> and <piruett.

Summary

In English a final silent e is said to make a vowel long and the last consonant voiced, whereas absence of this silent e makes the vowel of the word short and the last consonant voiceless: bath - bathe, breath - breathe.

The short pronunciation of a vowel is maintained before adding a suffix if the final consonant is doubled: hopping – hoping, scrapping – scraping.

English orthography transparently connects words related in form and meaning. For example, a regular pattern of alternation of long and short vowels is noticed when endings are added to stems: mine - mineral, supreme – supremacy.

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Key concepts

• double consonant rule • etymological principle • final silent –e lexical –e • homograph • homonym • homophone • morphological principle • phonemic principle • silent letter • vowel marker

Further reading 1. Carney Edward. 1998. “English Spelling is Kattastroffic”. In

Bauer Laurie and Peter Trudgil. eds. Language Myths. London: Penguin Books, pp. 32-41.

2. Doboş Daniela. 2001. A Handbook of English Phonetics and Phonology. Iaşi: Casa Editorială Demiurg, pp. 174-196.

3. Makarenko, Tatiana. 1998. Contemporary English Phonetics. Cluj: Editura Echinox, pp. 32-45

SAA No. 2 After you have studied this unit, use the knowledge you

acquired to do the following exercises:

1. What spelling differences correspond to these pronunciations? /tu:/ ………. /rait/ ………. /ail/ ………. /meil/ ………. /rein/ ………..

2. Exemplify the reduction of these consonant clusters*:

kn -> n ……… gn ->n ………. wr->r ………… mn->m ………. mb->m ……….

3. Give the transcription of these loan words:

queue ………. buoy ………. silhouette ………..

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Write your answers in the space provided. Send this

assignment to your tutor. The maximum score for this assignment is 20 points:

- 7 points for identifying the homophones correctly. - 10 points for exemplifying the reduction of the consonant clusters - 3 points for the correct phonemic transcription.

Answers to SAQs

Should your answer to SAQ 1 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 3.1. SAQ 1 ck (back), cc (acclaim), cu (biscuit), ch (school): /k/ ss (dress), sc (scene), c (racing): /s/ s (cousin), ss (dissolve, dessert): /z/ si (tension), ssi (mission), ti (option), ci (ancient), sci (conscious), ce (ocean): /S/

Should your answer to SAQ 2 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 3.2. SAQ 2 The letter o in hop - hope and hopping – hoping. Should your answer to SAQ 3 be different from the one suggested below, please reread sections 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3. SAQ 3

The fragment highlights the difficulties due to the discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation in English, where, in many instances, the same sound may be represented by a variety of spellings and the same spelling is used for different sounds.

What Mark Twain seems to suggest is the greater trouble the reader and speller might have if the English etymological spelling were reformed and turned into phonemic spelling.

Here is the etymological spelling of Twain‘s text: For example, in Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped

to be replaced either by “k” or “s”, and likewise, “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only case in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later.

Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same consonant, while year 3 might well abolish “y” replacing it with “i” and year 4 might fix the “g/j” anomaly once and for all.

Generally, then, the improvement would continue year by year with year 5 doing away with useless double consonants, and years 6-12 or so modifying vowels and remaining voiced and unvoiced consonants. By year 15 or so, it would finally be possible to make

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use of the redundant letters “c”, “y” and “x” – by now just a memory in the minds of old dodders – to replace “ch”, “sh”, and “th” respectively.

Finally, then, after some 20 years of orthographical reform, we would have a logical, coherent spelling in use throughout the English-speaking world Should your answer to SAQ 4 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 3.4. SAQ 4 1. The psychiatrist was knifed in the knee as he was walking home. 2. He should have whistled as he fastened his sword to his belt. 3. You should have left me half the Christmas cake on Wednesday. 4. They sang a psalm to honour the memory of the world-famous

psychologist as he was laid to rest in the family tomb. Should your answer to SAQ 5 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 3.5 SAQ 5 1 a The lead /li:d/ singer in the group is great. b Lead /led/ pipes are dangerous. 2 a The wind /wind/ blew the tree down. b Don’t forget to wind /waind/ your watch. 3 a Some students in Oxford spent more time learning to row /rəu/ well than studying. b They shared a flat for ages until they had a row /rau/ over money and they split up. 4 a They live in a large old house /haus/. b The buildings house /hauz/ a library and two concert halls as well as a theatre. 5 a The sow /sau/ has five piglets. b The farmers sow /səu/ the weeds in spring. 6 a I bathed /bθτ/ the baby this morning. b We bathed /beiðd/ in the sea every day when we were on holiday. Should your answer to SAQ 6 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 3.6.

SAQ 6 avalanche, bourgeois, chamois, champagne, chandelier, charade, coup, mirage, etiquette, brochure, burlesque, connoiseur, critique, memoir, nuance, genre, symphony, glacier, picnic, espionnage, chauffeur, chef, chic, restaurant, depot, café, prairie, malaise, penchant, essay, progress, rendez-vous, moustache, debris, detail.

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UNIT 4 ASPECTS OF CONNECTED SPEECH

Unit outline

Unit objectives 41 4.1 Linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ 41 4.2 Assimilation 42 4.2.1 Regressive assimilation 42 4.2.2 Progressive assimilation 43 4.2.3 Reciprocal assimilation 44 4.2.4 Obligatory and non-obligatory assimilation 45 4.3 Elision 46 4.3.1 Vowel elision 46 4.3.2 Consonant elision 47 4.4 Strong and weak forms of function words 48 4.4.1 Uses of weak forms 48 4.4.2 Uses of strong forms 50 Summary 52 Key concepts 52 Further reading 52 SAA No. 3 53 Answers to SAQs 53

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After you have completed the study of this unit you should be able to:

• explain the phonetic phenomena that occur in casual speech. i.e. assimilation*, elision*, etc

• distinguish carefully between cases when function words* are in focal and non-focal positions

• use the strong and weak forms* of function words properly, thus avoiding an unnatural, visibly foreign pronunciation (that can be a potential barrier to fluency and a source of misunderstanding)

• discriminate careful, standard speech from rapid, non-standard speech pronunciations

• distinguish British from American pronunciation variants • produce casual pronunciations of frequent sound

sequences Normal speech cannot be imagined to be spoken “one word at

a time”, with pauses* corresponding to the spaces of the written language. Spoken language is a continuous sequence in which each separate unit of sound is not pronounced in isolation but as part of a larger unit. In this process, sounds undergo modifications due to the transition* from one sound unit to another.

4.1 Linking r* and intrusive /r/* • Linking /r/ Although British speakers pronounce car without the final r, the

r often does emerge if the following word begins with a vowel. Linking /r/ is the phoneme /r/ in word final position which is pronounced when the next word begins with a vowel. In standard RP a written word-final r is not pronounced before a pause* or a following consonant sound. Compare, for example, the car is there with the car was there. In the first example the r is pronounced and gets attached to the following syllable. This is the linking /r/. Further occurrences of linking /r/ can be found in: Here it is, Far away or they’re at home.

• Intrusive /r/ There are instances when the presence of an intervocalic /r/ is

not orthographically justified, as in law and order /’l:r ənd ’:də/. This inserted /r/ between two words or syllables in sequence, where the first ends in a vowel sound and the second begins with one, and which has no correspondent r in spelling is called intrusive /r/.

Intrusive /r/ is much criticized, but is quite commonly heard in standard RP and other non-rhotic accents. It occurs after the vowels, e.g.:

/ə/: idea (r) of it, umbrella (r) organization /:/: law (r) and order /α׃/: grandpa (r) is ill /з׃/ a milieu (r) in which…

Unit objectives

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Both linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ are used in non-rhotic accents to prevent the vowels of two adjacent syllables to directly succeed one another. By adding an /r/ the utterance* gains in fluidity. (Meyer, 2002: 91)

4.2 Assimilation The effect on a speech sound of the articulation of other

adjacent sounds is called assimilation. This is a common feature of speech, though one that many native speakers are unaware of. Assimilation varies according to speaking rate and style; it is more likely to be found in rapid, casual speech and less likely, in slow, careful speech. In every assimilation process we distinguish between assimilating and assimilated* phonemes.

4.2.1 Regressive assimilation • Types of assimilation Assimilation is regressive when the preceding sound is

influenced by the immediately following one. Regressive assimilation or assimilation of place (Roach, 1994:124) is most clearly noticeable in some cases where a final consonant with alveolar place of articulation (e.g. /t/, /d/) is followed by an initial consonant with a place of articulation* that is not alveolar. For instance, the final consonant in that

/ðæt/ is alveolar /t/. In rapid, casual speech, the /t/ will become /p/ before a bilabial* consonant (e.g. /p/, /b/) as in that person /ðæp p3:sn/, the /d/ will become /b/ as in good people /gub pi:pl/, etc.

SAQ 1

Transcribe the unassimilated* and assimilated

pronunciations of these phrases: 1. light blue ………………….….. 2 . good boy ……………………… 3. a good man ……………………... 4. this shop ………………………. 5. ten more .……………………….

Check your transcriptions against those given in the answer section.

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Think First! Look at these spellings:

• stay – stays – stayed – staying

• convey – conveys – conveyed – conveying

• study – studies – studied – studying

• cry – cries – cried - crying Can you remember the y to i rule stated in the previous

chapter? If you do, write it down in the space provided below; if you don’t, find it in section 3.2 and then copy it in the space provided below. ……………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

4.2.2 Progressive assimilation*

A reverse type of assimilation (progressive assimilation) is found when a sound is changed by the influence of a previous one.

For instance, the third person singular -s suffix, the -s plural suffix and the 's possessive suffix, are pronounced /s/ if the preceding consonant is fortis* (“voiceless”) and /z / if the preceding consonant is lenis* (“voiced”): jumps /dZΛmps/ cats kæts/, Pat’ s /pæts vs. runs /rΛnz/, dogs /dgz/, Pam’ s /pæmz/.

• The pronunciation of the endings –s and -ed Progressive assimilation is an established and regular feature

of the ending –s of verbs and nouns, which usually has a voiced /z/ sound (or /ız/ after all sibilants*) but after voiceless sounds other than sibilants is /s/ (e.g. taps – tabs, hats - heeds, dock’s - dog’s, griefs - grieves). Similarly, the past tense –ed ending /d/ or /ıd/ is devoiced* to a /t/ sound after a voiceless consonant other than /t/ itself: roped, lacked, roofed, pushed versus robed, lagged, grooved, hated, headed, etc.

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SAQ 2 Give the phonemic transcription of these words to show the

progressive type of assimilation that can occur: 1. Keith’s ….

2. youths …..

3. eyes ….

4. seems ….

5. runs ….

6. dolls ….

7. pieces ….

8. daisies ….

9. offered ….

10. fitted ….

11. kidnapped ….

Write your answers in the spaces provided and then

compare them to those given at the end of the unit.

4.2.3 Reciprocal assimilation

Assimilation is reciprocal (double) when both sounds (the

assimilating and the assimilated one) undergo changes. In twice /w / becomes partly devoiced under the influence of /t/, while /t/ is rounded because of /w/.

A particular type of double assimilation is coalescence* in which two adjacent phonemes mix to such an extent that a third phoneme emerges. Historically this has occurred in words like soldier, picture, or fissure, where the reconstructable earlier pronunciation /‘soυldjər/, /‘pıktu:r/, /‘fısju:r/ has become /‘səυldзə/, /‘pıkt∫ə/, /fı∫ə/.

In current colloquial English, similar assimilation occurs in phrases such as What d’you want? /wt∫ə wnt/ or Could you? /‘kυdZu:/. This coalescent* assimilation is also known as yod coalescence or palatalization*.

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SAQ 3 Historically, the phonemes /d/ and /j/ coalesced, i.e. mixed

to such an extent that gave birth to /dZ/ in a word like soldier. In the same manner /t/ and /j/ fused and finally produced the affricate* /t∫/ in question.

What coalescent* variants can be heard nowadays in:

a. intuition …. b. grandeur …. c. duel ….

Write your answers in the space provided at the right-hand

side. Compare your transcriptions with the pronunciations given at the end of the unit.

4.2.4 Obligatory and non-obligatory assimilation

Synchronic assimilation may be obligatory (or established) and accidental (or non-obligatory).

Certain occurrences of assimilation are obligatory in the sense that they represent the norm in the language. Here are such instances:

− unaspiratedness* of /p, t, k/ after /s/ : speak, stake, school − devoicing* of /l, r, w, j/ after voiceless plosives*: close,

from − devoicing of /m, n/ after /s/: smile, snake − rounding of preceding consonants by /w/: twenty Non-obligatory assimilation may be illustrated by these

pronunciations: give me /givmi:/ or /gimmi/ did you /didju:/ or /diddZ-u:/ let me /letmi/ or / lemmi/ was sure /w∂z∫u∂/ or /w∂ ∫u∂/ You need to be aware of the phenomenon of assimilation in

order to understand colloquial English and to make a proper use of assimilated* variants just like English speakers do.

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4.3 Elision

Elision is usually referred to as the omission of a sound

(sounds) in connected speech*. This phenomenon occurs when sounds occur in clusters which are difficult to pronounce (e.g. last month, cost price, next shop, landscape) or when they appear in unstressed syllables(e.g. round the corner, night time, handbag). Elision may involve both vowels and consonants

Like assimilation, elision is typical of rapid, casual speech, and it can be historical* and contextual or synchronic*. For foreign learners of English it is important to know that when native speakers of English talk to each other; quite a number of phonemes that the foreigner might expect to hear are not actually pronounced.

4.3.1 Vowel elision

• Elision of schwa* /∂/ Elision of vowels takes place in unstressed syllables. The

common vowels which are usually omitted are /∂ / and /i/. /∂/ (schwa*) may be lost in an initial unstressed syllable when

the next vowel in the word is stressed as in correct /krekt/. The consonant which usually follows schwa can be /l/ as in

police /plis/, buffalo /bΛfl∂u/, /r/ as in history /histri/, temporary /tempr∂ri/, reference /refr∂ns/, or /n/ as in reasonable.

In British English the elision of schwa is firmly established in many words ending in -ory (territory) -ery (nursery), -ary (customary), -ury, -ily, and adverbs ending in -fully, e.g. carefully.

• Elision of /i/ /i/ may be lost in such words as geography /dZgr∂fi/,

university /ju:ni'v∂siti/.

SAQ 4 Give the corresponding spellings of these pronunciations that can occur in casual speech:

a. /spəuz/ ………………… b. /præps/ ………………….

c. /kεəfli/ ………………….

d. /t’nait/ ………………….

Write your answers in the spaces provided. Compare them

to the spellings given in the answer section.

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4.3.2 Consonant elision

• Elision of /t/ and /d/ The consonants that are most likely to be elided are /t/ and /d/

occurring medially in consonant clusters*. The elision of /t/ occurs when /t/ follows a fortis consonant and

precedes any consonant (e.g. mostly, exactly, first time /fə:s taim/). The dropping of /d/ occurs when /d/ follows any consonant and

precedes any consonant (e.g. handsome, handbag, friendship) Final /d/ of the grammatical word and can be omitted before

vowels as well as consonants (e.g. ham and / ∂n / eggs). • Elision of /k/, /θ/, /ð/ /k/ is deleted only in a few forms, e.g. extraordinary /i’str:dnri/,

expected /i’spektid/, excursion /i’skə:Sn/. Elision also affects /l/ in rapid speech, when preceded by /:/

and followed by a consonant: alright, already. /θ, ð/ are omitted in clusters which are difficult to pronounce:

sixth, months, twelfths, clothes. In rhetorical terms, the removal of an element from the

beginning of a word is known as aphaeresis (I' ve); the loss of a sound or letter in word-medial position as called syncope (e’er instead of ever) and in word-final position apocope (snakes and /∂n/ ladders).

SAQ 5

In casual speech /t/, /d/ and /k/ when medial in three-

consonant clusters may be dropped. Practise and transcribe these words and phrases to illustrate the process:

a. last year …………………… b. thousand points …………………….

c. kindness …………………….

d. asked him ……………………..

Write your answers in the spaces provided. You will find an

answer in the key section at the end of this unit

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4.4 Strong and weak forms of function words

A phonological phenomenon which is characteristic of the

English language and has no equivalent in Romanian is the existence of two possible pronunciations for the grammatical function) words. Thus, about sixty words including articles, auxiliaries, modals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions adverbs, pronominal adjectives, may display two forms: a strong one, when they occur in accented (focal) position and a weak one, when they are unaccented (in a non-focal position).

• Disadvantages of using only strong forms* It is possible to use only strong forms in speaking and some

foreigners do this. Usually they can still be understood by other speakers of English, but it is important to learn how weak forms are used. There are two main reasons: first, most native speakers of English find an ”all-strong-form” pronunciation unnatural and foreign-sounding, something that most learners would wish to avoid.

Second, and more importantly, speakers who are not familiar with the use of weak forms are likely to have difficulty in understanding speakers who do use weak forms; since practically all native speakers of British English use them, learners of the language need to learn about these weak forms to help them to understand what they hear (Roach, 1994:102).

4.4.1 Uses of weak forms

• Conjunctions and prepositions The most frequently used form is the weak one. Several words

in English have more than one weak form: and /ænd/ can be /∂nd/, /∂n/, /n/: fish and chips, food and drink.

Prepositions are used with their weak form whenever they carry no accent:

• for is pronounced /f∂ / when the word which follows begins with a consonant (They called John for me) and /f∂r/ when it starts with a vowel.

• from /fr∂m/ becomes /frm/ in: from time to time, we walked from school to school

• of has the weak form /∂v/ in: a cup of tea, the end of the road.

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SAQ 6

Practise and transcribe the following phrases, using the weak form of the function words*:

• as fast as he can ….

• for love nor money ….

• for ever and ever ….

• students and teachers ….

• time and money ….

Check your transcriptions against those given at the end of the unit.

• Auxiliaries Auxiliaries and modals are usually pronounced in their weak

form: • am pronounced /∂m, m/: I'm in a hurry /aim in ∂ hΛri/ • are pronounced /∂, ∂r /: When are they coming /wen ∂ ðei

kΛmiη/ • does pronounced /d∂z, z, s/: What does it mean? /w∂t d∂z

it 'mi:n/ • have pronounced /h∂v, ∂v, v/: Where have you been? /we∂

∂v ju bin/ • was pronounced /w∂z/ : He was seen by everybody /hi

w∂z si:n bai evri bdi / • were pronounced /w∂/ + consonant: Where were they

working? /we∂ w∂ ðei w3:kiη/ • will pronounced /l/: I think I'll stop here /ai θiηk ail stp hi∂/

Think first!

Must is pronounced in its weak form /məst/, or in its strong

form, /mΛst/, depending on whether it shows:

• supposition (You must be exhausted) or • obligation (You must study those books as indicated).

Give the pronunciation of must in the following sentences: 1. You must be tired. ………………………………………………………

2. Of course we must try. ………………………………………………………

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3. They must obey the rules of the game. ………………………………………………………

4. You must have met him in England. ………………………………………………………. 5. He must buy it and so must I. ………………………………………………………..

6. We must learn it by heart. ………………………………………………………..

Compare your answers with the information below.

• Modals • could pronounced /k∂d/: He could have been more helpful /hi

k∂d ∂v bin m: helpful/ • should pronounced /∫∂d/: They should come earlier /ðei ∫∂d

k∂m 3:li∂/ • must pronounced /m∂st/: I must answer that letter /ai m∂st

ans∂ ðæt let∂/.

Weak forms of modal verbs are more often used in colloquial speech than strong forms.

SAQ 7

Practise reducing the auxiliary and modal verbs in the

following:

• have watched ……………………………… • were to do ………………………………

• could try ………………………………

• should go ………………………………

• would make ………………………………

You can find the suggested answer in the key section at the end of unit 4.

4.4.2 Uses of strong forms

In general, function words are used in their strong (unreduced) form when they are uttered in isolation and for reasons of contrast (when emphasis is implied).

• Prepositions Prepositions are used in their accented form when they are

situated at the end of sentences or sense groups:

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• at /æt/: He was being laughed at. • for /f:/: I was called for at ten. • of /v /: What is it made of? • to /tu/: Who are you talking to? The strong or weak forms of prepositions may be used when

they occur before unstressed pronouns: He was unknown to me. /hi wəz Λn’nəun tə/tu: mi/. • Auxiliaries and modals The strong forms of auxiliary and modal verbs are used when

they act as main verb substitutes: • does pronounced /dΛz/: Of course, he does. • should pronounced /∫ud/: Yes, I should. • can pronounced /kæn/: Of course, he can. • must pronounced / mΛst / yes, I must.

The strong form of modals is also compulsory when they are

used in the negative contracted form. Compare: You can do it /ju kən du: it/ with You can’t do it /ju kA:nt du: it/

The modal verb have is always used in its strong form, /hæv/:

I have to leave now.

• There adverb and empty pronoun (in there is/are) As for there, it is pronounced /ðe∂(r)/ when it is a demonstrative

(Don't go there) and /ð∂(r)/ in the verbal phrase there is, there are (There aren't any flowers).

SAQ 8 Read and transcribe these phrases and sentences, noting carefully the difference between there as an adverb and as a semantically empty pronoun: a. over there ……………… b. There’s a car in front of the house …………………………………………. c. Is there any coffee left? ……………………………… d. What’s there? ………………….

Check your answers against those suggested in the answer section.

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• That (demonstrative and conjunction) The demonstrative that is pronounced /ð∂t/ when it is a

conjunction or a relative pronoun: I hope that he will. Its strong form /ðæt/ is used when it is a demonstrative: I don't like that book.

Summary

Connected speech causes individual words to be adapted in various ways. Linking elements may have to be added between words ending and beginning with a vowel, elision may be needed, and especially consonants may be adapted to each other, which is known assimilation.

Many function words (e.g. articles, auxiliaries, modals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) change in quality and/or quantity according to whether they are unstressed (as is usual) or stressed (in special situations or when in isolation).

The tendency to weaken vowels towards schwa in conversational English may be to be a difficult aspect of English to learn for most non-native speakers, partly because of an over-reliance on spelling as a guide to pronunciation.

Key concepts

• accidental assimilation • intrusive /r/ • linking /r/ • obligatory assimilation • progressive assimilation • reciprocal assimilation • regressive assimilation • consonant elision • strong form • vowel elision • weak form

Further reading

1. Chiţoran, Dumitru şi Hortensia Pârlog. 1989. Ghid de pronunţie a limbii engleze. Bucureşti: Editura ştiinţifică şi enciclopedică, pp. 140-147

2. Meyer, Paul Georg et al. 2002. Synchronic English Linguistics. An Introduction. Tubingen: Gunter NarrVerlag Tubingen, p. 87-91

3. Pârlog, Hortensia. 1997. English Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureşti: Editura ALL, pp. 114-119.

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SAA No. 3 Give the transcription of the following phrases and

sentences. Identify the phonetic phenomena which may occur in rapid, colloquial speech:

1. closed door 2. blocked passage 3. in my room 4. What you want? 5. Would you? 6. In case you want? 7. Has your car come? 8. We sang and danced. 9. I saw Helen and Nick and Bob. 10. The car that is broken belongs to their firm. 11. What’s that for? 12. Which book do they need? 13. I do try to cook your lunch. 14. He must buy it and so must I. 15. We must learn it by heart.

Send your answer to the tutor. The maximum score for this assignment is 20 points: - 15 points for correct phonemic transcription; - 5 points for correct identification of phonetic phenomena.

Answers to SAQs

Should your answers to SAQ 1, SAQ 2 and SAQ 3 be different from the ones suggested below, please reread section 4.2.

SAQ 1 a. /’lait ‘blu:/ and /’laip ‘blu:/ b. /gud bi/ and /gub bi/ c. /ə gud mæn/ and /ə gub mæn/ d. /ðis ∫p /and /ðı∫ ∫p/ e. /ten m:/ and /tem m:/ SAQ 2 a. /kiθs/ b. /ju:θ s/ c. /aiz/ d. /si:mz/ e. /rΛnz/ f. /dlz/ g. /pi:siz/ h. /deiziz/ i. /:fəd/ j. /fitid/ k. /kidnæpt/

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SAQ 3 a. intuition /Int∫u׃’I∫(ə)n/ b. grandeur /’grǽndZ-ə/ c. duel /’dZ-u׃əl/ Should your answer to SAQ 4 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 4.3.1.

SAQ 4 8. suppose 9. perhaps 10. carefully 11. tonight

Should your answer to SAQ 5 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 4.3.2.

SAQ 5 a. /lA:s jiə:/ b. /Θauzn pints/ c. /kainnəs/ d. asked him /A:st im/ Should your answer to SAQ 6 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 4.4.1.

SAQ 6 • as fast as he can /əz/ • for love nor money /fə/ • for ever and ever /fər/, /nd/ • students and teachers /ən/ • time and money /n/

Should your answer to SAQ 7 be different from the one suggested below, please reread sections 4.4.1 and 4.4.2.

SAQ 7 • /həv wətSt/ • /wə tə du/ • /kəd trai/ • /Səd gəu/ • /wəd meik/ Should your answer to SAQ 8 be different from the one suggested below, please reread section 4.4.2

SAQ 8 a. /əuvə ‘ðεə/ b. /ðər’iz ə ‘kA: in frnt əv ðə ‘hAus/ c. /iz ðər æni ‘kfi left/ d. /wts 'ðεə/

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UNIT 5 SYLLABLES AND STRESS IN ENGLISH

Unit outline Unit objectives 56 5.1 The nature of the syllable 56 5.2 The structure of the English syllable 57 5.3 Types of syllable 58 5.4 The nature of stress 59 5.5 Primary and secondary stress 61 5.6 Stress and vowels 62 5.7 Predicting stress in derivatives 63 5.7.1 Strong suffixes 64 5.7.2 Weak suffixes 65 5.7.3 Prefixes 66 5.8 Stress in compounds 66 5.9 Rhythm and its influence on word stress 67 5.10 Stress shift and semantic implications 68 Summary 70 Key concepts 70 Further reading 71 SAA No. 4 71 Answers to SAQs 72

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After you have completed the study of this unit you should be able to:

• use stress correctly in English noun-verb pairs • explain the correlation between stress and the phonetic

duration of vowels • show how the pronunciation of words changes when certain

affixes are added • discriminate stress placement in compound words from stress

placement in corresponding noun phrases • distinguish the rhythm of English, a stressed-time language,

from the rhythm of Romanian, a syllable-timed language.

As pointed out in a previous chapter, in spoken language it is unusual to find isolated sounds, because sounds string together to form larger units. Thus, sounds group themselves to form syllables, syllables will form words, words will form phrases and phrases will form sentences.

5.1 The nature of the syllable

• What is a syllable? Physiologically, the syllable corresponds to one chest pulse

resulting from the movement of the intercostal muscles. Phonologically, the syllable is the lowest phonological unit into which phonemes are combined. A syllable may be defined as a unit of pronunciation which consists of a vocalic sound either alone or surrounded by consonants (one or more) arranged in a certain sequence.

Think first!

Think of examples of English monosyllabic words made up of a vowel only.

Write your answers in the space provided below.

If you read through section 5.3 carefully you will find such examples.

Unit objectives

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5.2 The structure of the English syllable

In structural terms, syllables must contain a vowel or vowel-like

sound. Syllables are constructed according to the principle of sonority. The sonority theory holds that there are as many syllables in a word as there are peaks of prominence or sonority.

The sonority peak is preceded or followed by a sequence of segments with progressively decreasing sonority values. The most sonorant* sounds are vowels, then semi-vowels*, liquids* /l, r/, nasals /m, n, η/, voiced consonants /b, d, g, v, ð, z, dZ, Z/ Consonants which act like vowels are called syllabic consonants*.

• The syllabic nucleus The centre of a syllable (the syllabic nucleus) is defined as the

place where sonority is greatest. This central segment of a syllable, also called its peak, is compulsory. Some monosyllabic words consist of the central segments only: err, are, awe, ear, oh, I, eye. In English, the vowels /e/, /æ /, //, /Λ/ do not occur in final position and /u/ does not occur in initial position.

The sounds which can serve as peaks in English are all the vowels and /m, n, I, r/ when situated in final position, e.g.: rhythm, button, bottle.

The basic (C) V (C) structure of the syllable can be expanded by additions of initial and final segments.

• The onset In addition to the nucleus, syllables may have one, two or three

consonants preceding them. This initial segment of a syllable is called the onset and is optional. It may have the structure C- (tea), CC- (three), CCC- (straw).

• The coda The final segment is called coda and may consist of:

• a single consonant (-c) as in egg, it, of, art • two consonants (-cc) as in east, beans, cast • three consonants (-ccc) as in asked, ants, aunts • four consonants (-cccc) as in attempts, instincts.

The English consonants, /r/ (in British English) /η/, /h/, can never end a syllable. The generalized formula that can be ultimately reached is CCC V CCCC (strengths). The group of consonants in final and initial positions are called clusters. Final clusters in English are much more complex than initial ones. While Romanian employs more consonant clusters than English in initial position, English is far richer in such clusters in final position.

English consonant clusters in final position express different grammatical categories such as NUMBER (texts), TENSE (mixed, breathes) or indicate PART OF SPEECH such as nouns (depth, width), verbs (deepen, harden), etc.

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SAQ 1

The following words display characteristic syllabic structures in English. Can you mention the pattern for each of them?

1. owned ………....…. 2. ropes ………....…. 3. ground ………....…. 4. snake ………....…. 5. strives ………....…. 6. against ………....…. 7. even ………....…. 8. civil ………....…. 9. relaxed ………....…. 10. hasn’t ………....….

Write your answers in the space provided and check them against those in the key section.

5.3 Types of syllable

A study of the syllable in English and Romanian involves a distinction between open and closed syllables.

• The open syllable A syllable is open / free / unchecked when it ends in a vowel,

i.e. it is of the type V, CV, e.g.: oh, no, tea, do, raw. While Romanian is a language in which free syllables predominate (nu, sta, spre, pui), English is a language of the checked-syllable type (shirt, failed, smoke, drive)

• The closed syllable A syllable is closed / checked when it ends in a consonant, i.e.

it is of the type VC, CVC: art, ought, I'd, it, keep, sheep, cheap.

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5.4 The nature of stress

• Definition of stress Stress is defined as the perceived prominence of one or more

syllabic elements over others in a word. It is an aspect of the suprasegmental phonology of English and it can be a property of syllables (word stress*) or of larger utterances (sentence or syntactic stress*).

Stress can be considered from both the point of view of the speaker and of the hearer. To the latter, stressed syllables appear to be louder than unstressed syllables, whereas for the speaker, stressed syllables give the impression of being produced with greater effort. Stress is thus both a phenomenon of perception and a phenomenon of production.

Following Roach (1994:86) we can maintain that stress is a combination of loudness* (i.e. the degree of force with which a sound or a syllable is uttered), pitch* i.e. the relative height of the tone* with which it is pronounced), quality (i.e. vowels are more prominent than consonants; among the vowels the more open ones are the more prominent) and quantity (i.e. long vowels and diphthongs will always render the syllable prominent).

In English, all these factors, i.e. loudness (intensity)*, pitch, quality and quantity (duration), are associated with prominence. Accordingly, the English stressed syllable – especially its nucleus, tends to have a greater degree of length, loudness and pitch associated with it. It therefore tends to be much longer, much louder and either much higher or much lower in pitch – i.e. to be the locus of a dramatic pitch change in comparison to the surrounding context than the unstressed syllable.

• Stress shift* in noun-verb pairs Like the segmental* phonemes, stress has a distinctive

function since it can signal differences in meaning. For instance, comparing the verb record as in “I’m going to record the tune” and the noun record as in “I’ve got a record” the contrast in word accent between the verb and the noun is made by the syllables differing in loudness, pitch, quality and quantity.

Generally, these four variables work together in combination, though syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only one or two of them. Experimental work has shown that the strongest effect is produced by pitch and length: loudness and quality have much less effect. The four variables will also be found in the notion of sentence or syntactic stress.

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SAQ 2 What syllable is stressed in the italicized words? Note that in some noun - verb pairs, the vowel in the first syllable is different in the noun and the verb. In other pairs, the vowel is the same. Read these sentences and transcribe the words in italics: e.g.

The rebels in the hills will never surrender. /’rebəlz/ Every child rebels against authority at some stage. /ri’belz/

a. The perfume smelled nicely. ………………… b. I never perfume my clothes. ………………… c. They won’t let you in without a permit. ………………… d. The coming floods do not permit any delay. ……………… e. They could see every detail in the picture. ……………..…..f. They couldn’t detail all the facts. …………………. g. He gave way without protest. …………………. h. I protest being called a fool. …………………. i. There has been a decrease in the birth rate.

………………. j. The number of members is expected to decrease. ………………….

Write your answers in the space provided and then

compare them with the ones given at the end of unit 5. • Place of accent and types of languages According to the place within a word where stress falls,

languages have been grouped into:

• free-accent languages in which stress may fall on any syllable (e.g. English, Romanian, Russian).

• fixed-accent languages in which stress is tied to a particular place in all the words. For example, in Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish, stress regularly falls on the first syllable, in French, Armenian and Turkish it is commonly on the last syllable and in Italian, Welsh and Polish, it is on the last but one syllable.

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5.5 Primary and secondary stress

• Monosyllabic and polysyllabic words When they are pronounced singly, all monosyllabic words carry

what is called primary stress*, the strongest type of stress. In dictionaries, it is represented in transcription with a high mark or superscript (‘).

Polysyllabic words, those which consist of more than one syllable, all have one primary stressed syllable - just like monosyllabic words. But in addition, they also have a secondary*-stressed syllable and/or syllables with no stress. In the examples below primary stressed syllables are marked with a superscript while secondary stressed syllables are marked with a subscript:

• two syllable: ,an ’ti que, ‘cot ton • three syllables: ,mag a ’zine, ‘inn o ,cence • four syllables: re ’mar ka ble, ,cir cu ’la tion • The English secondary stress English differs from Romanian as regards the use of secondary

accent in polysyllabic words. A word like university /uni’və:siti/ has a secondary* accent in English which is absent in the Romanian universitate /universi’tate/. The secondary stress precedes the primary stress, but it may also follow it: granddaughter /’græn,d:tə/.

• Is English primary stress predictable? In English, which is free-accent language, stress is more

unpredictable than in Romanian; while in Romanian stress generally falls on one of the last three syllables of a word (e.g. dezi’rabil, accep’tabil, admi’rabil, prefe’rabil) in English words (e.g. de’sirable, ac’ceptable, ‘admirable, ‘preferable) there is no such regularity.

Words with the same number of syllables may have different accentual* patterns as in amateur /’æmətə/, illicit /i’lisit/, cigarette /,sigə’ret/. This is why the unpredictability of primary stress is one of the significant difficulties foreign learners of English have to cope with.

• English and American patterns In American English the secondary stress is used more

frequently than in British English. Verbs ending in -ate have a secondary stress on the suffix in order to render the contrast with the corresponding adjectives more evident.

BE AmE alternate /':ltəneit/ alternate /':ltə,neit/ moderate /’m:dəreit/ moderate /’m:də,reit/ Verbs ending in -ment have a secondary stress on the suffix in

order to differenciate them from the nouns having the same suffix. BE AmE

ornament /’:nəment/ ornament /’:rnə,ment/ supplement /’sΛpliment/ supplement /’sΛplə,ment/

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Some disyllabic words have a secondary stress while the same

words in British English have not: contract /’k:nt,rækt/, syntax /‘sin,tæks/.

This secondary stress may be explained by an association with the corresponding verbs which have their second syllable stressed.

In longer words ending in -ary, -ery, -ory, Americans use a secondary stress on these suffixes.

BE AmE

dictionary /’dik∫ənəri/ dictionary /’dik∫ən,eri/

SAQ 3 Give the phonetic transcription of the following words to illustrate the accentual pattern used in British English and in American English: e.g. adversary BrE /’ædvəsəri/ - AmE /’ædvə,seri/

BrE AmE

1. stationery ………….. …………… 2. ceremony ………….. …………… 3. January ………….. …………… 4. territory ………….. …………… 5. milkman …………... …………… 6. secretary ………….. ……………

Compare your transcription with those given in the key section.

5.6 Stress and vowels

• The unstressed (reduced) schwa vowel In English, there is an important relationship between vowels

and stress. Some vowels occur mainly in stressed syllables, others may occur in both stressed and unstressed syllables. One unstressed vowel, /∂/ or schwa appears only in unstressed syllables: better, about, confusion. It can be observed in pairs of related words that show different stress placement such as considerate /kən’siderət/ versus consideration /kənsidə’reiSn/. Note that the fourth vowel, which is unstressed in the word considerate, is pronounced /ə/. But when the same vowel is stressed, as in consideration, it is pronounced as /ei/.

The reduction or weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables is a fundamental and very important phenomenon in English. A change of stress in a word, perhaps as a result of adding a certain ending (called ‘strong suffix’) may have a significant effect on pronunciation. Similarly, if we add -y to photograph /’fəutəgrA:f/, stress changes and with it the quality of all the vowels: e.g.

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photography /fə’tgrəfi/, i.e the first vowel is pronounced /əu/ when stressed and /ə/ when unstressed.

• Stressed, full vowels are longer In conclusion, we can say that vowels in stressed or stressable

syllables (i.e. the full vowels) are significantly longer than those in unstressed syllables (the reduced vowels). Failure to use correct reduced vowels in unstressable syllables may result in severe problems of rhythm* which make the whole stream of speech difficult to understand.

SAQ 4

Transcribe the following words, noting the place of the primary stress and the changes in the vowel quality* induced by the shift of stress:

Write your answers in the space provided below each word.

1. decorate decorative decoration 2. explain explanatory explanation 3. locate locative location

Check your transcriptions against those given in the answer section.

5.7 Predicting stress in derivatives

Despite the fact that English words have a variety of different stress patterns, a number of regular principles can help us to determine where the stressed syllables are likely to occur (Taylor, 1996: 49). Therefore stress in English may not be fixed, but it is to a certain extent predictable.

The first principle states that two stressed syllables do not normally occur next to each other in a single word (this does not apply in words containing prefixes such as re-, un- as in unknown, for instance).

The second principle is that certain endings partly determine the place of stressed syllables in words. From the point of view of their influence on the position of the accent in the word, suffixes can be grouped into strong and weak.

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5.7.1 Strong suffixes

• The suffixes –ion and -ic Strong endings affect the stress pattern of a word; this class of

endings include -ion, -ic, -ity, -ial, etc. If we compare fascinate or fascinating with fascination we can see that the -ion suffix has attracted the stress to the syllable preceding it. Similarly, the -ic suffix almost always attracts a stress to the preceding syllable as we can see if we compare linguist with linguistic, telephone with telephonic. The ending –ical behaves like -ic: mechanical, methodical.

SAQ 5

How does the use of the strong suffixes -ion and -ic determine stress placement? Transcribe the following pairs:

a. continue – continuation …………………………………

b. inaugurate – inauguration …………………………………

c. interpret – interpretation ………………………………….

d. irony – ironic ………………………………….

e. optimism – optimistic …………………………………

f. diplomacy – diplomatic …………………………………

Check your transcriptions against those given in the answer section.

Other strong endings which attract stress to the syllable

immediately preceding the ending are:

-ity: stupidity, university, nationality -ety: variety, anxiety, society -ial: remedial, official, industrial -ify: exemplify, identify, personify -efy: stupefy, liquefy -ian: phonetician, comedian, librarian -ious: superstitious, ostentatious, suspicious -eous: adventageous, simultaneous, erroneous In Romanian, suffixes also tend to attract stress onto

themselves and accordingly towards the final syllables of the derived words, e.g. băietan, aluniş, atrăgator, muncitor, românesc.

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• Strong suffixes in loan words Some derivational morphemes (suffixes) attract the primary

stress onto themselves in loan words that preserve their original accentual* structure:

-ee: employee, addressee, trainee, trustee, invitee -eer: engineer, profiteer, mountaineer, volunteer -ette: silhouette, casette, kitchinette, suffragette -et: castanet, quartet, clarinet, minaret

-oo: shampoo, tattoo, kangaroo, taboo, bamboo, -oon: ballon, cartoon, lagoon, saloon, typhoon -ique: technique, antique, physique, unique -esque: picturesque, burlesque, grotesque, arabesque

5.7.2 Weak suffixes

Suffixes that do not influence the position of word accent are called weak suffixes. Examples of weak endings are -ing (‘fascinate – ‘fascinating), -ed (‘expect – ‘expected), -ness (‘kind – ‘kindness), -ship (‘friend – ‘friendship), -able (‘honour – ‘honourable), –ful (‘beauty-‘beautiful), -al (‘propose - ‘proposal), -hood (‘mother - ‘motherhood), -ment (‘develop - ‘development), -er/or (‘teach - ‘teacher), -ly (‘beautiful - ‘beautifully), -ist (‘organ - ‘organist), -ous (‘scandal - ‘scandalous), -dom (‘wise - ‘wisdom),- less (‘child - ‘childless).

SAQ 6

Use the suffixes -ly, -or, -er, -est, -ing and -able to derive

words from these bases: cool, expect, clean, translate, will, publish. Is there a primary stress shift entailed by this derivation?

Write your answers in the space provided below.

e.g. cool/-ing/-er/-est expect/-ing

Check your transcriptions against those given in the answer section.

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5.7.3 Prefixes

In English, prefixes which are very productive and have quite

an obvious meaning of their own (e.g. mis-, over-, under-, un-) almost always carry a secondary accent: e.g. misrepresent /,misrepri’zent/, overestimate /,əuvər’estəmeit/.

The main difference between English and Romanian is that while English prefixes are stressable, Romanian prefixes, in most cases, are not stressable unless this is required by necessities of emphasis or contrast, e.g. a îmbrăca, a dezbrăca.

5.8 Stress in compounds

• Primary stress on the first element In most instances it is the first syllable in a compound which

carries the primary accent, a fact which corresponds to the general tendency in English of placing the main accent towards the beginning of words, rather than towards their end: typewriter, car- fery, sunrise, suitcase, tea-cup.

A rather large class of compound words whose first element is stressed is represented by nouns made up of a gerund and a noun: booking-office, mowing machine, reading-lamp, sleeping-pill, gaming-house, swimming-pool, walking stick, dining-room, eating house, fishing-rod.

There are compound words that have a primary stress on the first element and a secondary stress on the second element: gun-fire /’gΛn,faiə/, granddaughter /’græn,d:tə/. In this group are included the compounds made up of two nouns, the second being derived with the suffix -er, denoting occupations: grave-digger, /’greiv,digə/, peace-maker /’pi:s,meikə/, Wall Streeter (person professionally employed on Wall Street) /w:l stri:tə:/.

• Primary stress on the second element There are many compounds whose first element has a

secondary accent while the primary accent falls on the second element: handmade /,hænd’meid/, headmaster /,hed’mA:stə/, clearcut /,kliə’kΛt/.

Unlike compounds made up of two nouns which have the stress on the first element, compounds with an adjectival first element and the -ed morpheme at the end receive primary stress on the second element: bad-‘tempered, half-‘timbered, heavy-‘handed.

Compounds made of a numeral and a noun also tend to have final stress: three-‘wheeler, second-‘class, five-‘finger. Compounds functioning as adverbs are usually final-stressed: head-‘first, North-‘East, down ‘stream.

Compounds functioning as verbs and having an adverbial first element take final stress: down-‘grade, back-‘pedal, ill-‘treat.

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• Primary stress on each element Some compound words made up of words considered equally

important or having five or more than five syllables, may take two primary accents: self-determination /’selfdi,təmi’neiSn/, queen mother /’kwi:n’mΛðə/.

SAQ 7

Transcribe and mark the stressed syllables in the following

compounds as they are said when used on their own:

a. cupboard ……………………

b. saucepan ……………………

c. topmost ……………………

d. two pence ……………………

e. nonsense ……………………

f. vineyard ……………………

Check your transcriptions against those given in the answer section.

5.9 Rhythm and its influence on word stress

The English language has quite a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables – in other words, the rhythm is regular (Roach, 1994: 69). This is why English compound words with two equally strong stresses when used in isolation (e.g. ‘good-’looking) tend to lose one of the stresses in connected speech when either preceded or followed by a stressed word (e.g. The ‘girl is good-‘looking).

• English has a stressed-time rhythm In English, the stressed syllables in connected speech tend to

occur at roughly regular intervals. The more unstressed syllables there are after a stress, the quicker they must be pronounced. The time taken by the pronunciation of an utterance depends primarily on the number of stressed syllables. This is known as stressed-timed rhythm. For example, each of the following phrases has an extra syllable, but in each phrase there is only one stressed syllable; all phrases are said in the same amount of time:

read reading reading it he was reading he was reading it

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• Romanian has a syllable-timed rhythm In Romanian, the length of an utterance depends on the total

number of syllables; the syllables of an utterance are spoken with the same amount of time allotted to each of them, irrespective of whether they are stressed or not.

Therefore, the Romanian learner of English has to be careful not to pronounce the unstressed syllables with the same force and in the same time which is allotted to the stressed ones.

Another issue foreign learners of English should be aware of is that stress position may vary because not all speakers of RP agree on the placement of stress in some words. A well-known example is controversy which is pronounced by some speakers as /’kntrəvə:si/ and by others as /kən’trvəsi/. Other different possibilities he mentions are ice-cream /’aiskri:m/ or /ais’kri:m/, kilometre /‘kiləmi:tə/ or /’ki’lmitə/ and formidable /’f:midəbl/ or /fə’midəbl/.

Think first! Notice the primary stress of these words and phrases and

then translate them into Romanian:

1. a ‘mad-doctor …………………….

2. a mad ‘doctor ……………………

3. a ‘French teacher …………………..

4. a French ‘ teacher …………………..

5. a ‘bluebottle ………………………

6. a blue ‘bottle ……………………... Compare your answers with the information contained in

section 5.10.

5.10 Stress shift and semantic implications

• Compounds and noun phrases The distinctive function of stress and the far-reaching effects of

changing the accent pattern in English are obvious if we consider some compounds and their corresponding noun phrases: Compounds Noun phrases ‘bookworm (person who book ‘worm (insect) reads a lot ) ‘crosswords (puzzle) cross ‘words (words showing anger) ‘pighead (stubborn) pig ‘head (head of a pig) ‘blackshirt (fascist thug) black ‘shirt (a shirt that is black).

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In the compounds, the accent falls on the first element while in

the noun phrases the primary stress is on the second element. In general, the accentuation of the compound words made up of an adjective as the first element differs from that of corresponding noun phrases made up of an adjective and a noun: the former have the primary stress on the first element and possibly a secondary stress on the second element, while the latter have their primary stress on the second element and a secondary stress on the first element: hotbed /’htbed/ vs hot bed / ht ‘bed/.

The distribution of stresses in units higher than the word also may have far-reaching semantic implications:

An 'English, teacher (one who teaches English) An ,English' teacher (one who is English) A 'toy, factory (produces toys) A ,toy' factory (a model of a factory used as a toy)

• Utterances The accentual pattern of whole utterances is, to a certain

extent, comparable to that of polysyllabic words. The basic difference between the accentuation of isolated words and that of longer utterances is the following: while isolated words have a single accentual pattern there are more possible patterns for the latter.

Therefore, larger utterances allow for more changes of pattern than isolated words. The choice of the word to be stressed depends on the speaker's will and the meaning (s)he wishes to convey:

I've got a red coat. (not a green one) I've got a red coat. (not a red hat) A venit înaintea voastră. (he came to meet you) A venit înaintea voastră. (he arrived before you) As a rule, full-meaning words (nouns, verbs, adjectives,

adverbs) always carry an accent while grammatical words (auxiliaries, modals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) do not, unless the sentence requires it.

SAQ 8 Mark the stress patterns of these words and phrases:

1. a briefcase ………………… 2. a blacksmith ………………… 3. a sleeping-car ………………… 4. growing children ………………… 5. a get-together ………………… 6. drinking water …………………

Write your answers in the spaces provided and compare

them to the suggestions made at the end of the unit

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Summary

English derivational suffixes can be grouped into strong and

weak. The former group includes endings that (1) cause stress to fall upon a preceding syllable (e.g. -ion, -ic, -ity, -ial) (2) attract stress upon themselves (e. g. -ee, -eer, -oo, -oon, -ette, -esque).

English prefixes that may have a meaning of their own are completely fused with the root to which they are attached so the word is no longer felt as a derivative and is treated as a single word. Prefixes of this kind (e.g. mis-, over-, under-, un-) normally carry a secondary stress.

Some word pairs, involving two different parts of speech, are distinguished by stress: ‘Export rose in the second quarter vs. We still need to ex’port more and They have a ‘green ‘house, but not a ‘greenhouse.

In connected speech, stress is more variable than in isolated words; the choice of the word to be stressed depends on the speaker's will and the meaning (s)he wishes to convey.

English is a language that distinguishes very clearly between stressed and unstressed syllables; what is very important to note is that in English, the recurrence of stressed syllables at regular intervals gives speech its rhythmical qualities which are quite different from those with which other languages, Romanian included, are spoken.

Key concepts

• closed/checked syllable • coda • fixed accent-language • free accent-language • loudness • nucleus • onset • open/free/unchecked syllable • pitch • primary stress • quality • quantity • rhythm • secondary stress • stress • strong suffix • syllabic consonant • syllable • vowel reduction • weak suffix

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Further reading

1. Chiţoran, Dumitru and Petri, Lucreţia. 1977. Workbook in

English Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureşti: Editura didactică şi pedagogică, pp.130-138, pp. 161-166.

2. Gogălniceanu, Călina. 1993. The English Phonetics and Phonology. Iaşi: Editura Fundaţiei "Chemarea", pp. 105-114.

SAA No. 4

Transcribe the following words phonemically and try to state a rule for the pronunciation of the suffix -s and the prefix in- :

1. wants

2. sees

3. wishes

4. grins

5. buzzes

6. scrambles

7. laughs

8. omits

9. adds

10. clips

11. kisses

12. budges

13. sobs

14. goes

15. impossible

16. incongruent

17. infinite

18. indivisible

19. insipid.

Send this assignment to your tutor. The maximum score for this assignment is 20 points : - 10 points for correct phonemic transcription - 5 points for stating the rule for the pronunciation of the

suffix -s - 5 points for stating the rule for the pronunciation of the

prefix in-

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Answers to SAQs

If you find mistakes in your answer, you need to reread section 5.2. SAQ 1 a. VVCC b. CVVCC c. CCVVCC d. CCVVC e. CCCVVCC f. V-CVCCC g. V-CC h. CV-CC i. CV-CVCCC j. CV-CCC. If you notice mistakes in your answer to SAQ 2, please revise section 5.4. SAQ 2 (a) /’pə:fjum/ (b) /pə’fju:m/ (c) /’pə:mit/ (d) /pə’mit/ (e) /’diteil/ (f) /di’teil/ (g) /’prəutəst/ (h) /prə’test/ (i) /’di:kri:s/ (j) /di’kri:s/ If you notice mistakes in your answer to SAQ 3, please revise section 5.5 SAQ 3 a) /’steiSənəri/ - /’steiSə,neri/ b) /’serəməni/ - /’serə,məuni/ c) /’dZænjuəri/ - /’dZæ,njueri/ d) /’teritəri/ - /’teri,t:ri/ e) /’milkmən/ - /’milk,mæn/ f) /’sekretəri/ - /’sekrə,teri If you notice mistakes in your answer to SAQ 4, please revise sections 5.6 and 5.7. 1. SAQ 4 /’dekəreit/ /’dekərətiv/ /dekə’reiSn/ /ik’splein/ /ik’splænətəri/ /,eksplə’neiSən/ /,ləukeit/ /lkətiv/ /ləu’keiSn/ If you notice mistakes in your answer to SAQ 5, please revise section 5.7.1 SAQ 5 a. /kən’tinju:/ - /kən’tinju:eiSən/ b. /i’n:gjureit/ - /in:gju’reiSən/ c. /in’tə:prət/ - /intə:prə’teiSən/ d. /‘aiərəni/ - /ai’rnik/ e. /’ptimism/ - /pti’mistik/ f. /di’pləməsi/ - /diplə’mætik/

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If you notice mistakes in your answer to SAQ 6, please revise section 5.7.1. and 5.7.2. SAQ 6 cool/-ing/-er/-est expect-ing clean-er/-est/-ing translat-or/-ing/-able will-ing/-y publish-ing/-able All the attached suffixes, i.e. -ing, -er, -est, -or, -able, -ly are weak, so there is no primary stress shift in the derived words. If you notice mistakes in your answers to SAQ 7 and SAQ8, please revise section 5.8. SAQ 7 • /’kΛbəd/ • /’s:spən/ • /’tpməust/ • /’tΛpəns/ • /’nnsəns/ • /’vinjA:d/ SAQ 8 1. ‘brief,case 2. a ‘black,smith 3. a ‘sleeping-,car 4. ,growing ‘children 5. a ‘get-,together 6. ‘drinking ,water

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UNIT 6 ENGLISH AS AN INTONATION LANGUAGE

Unit outline

Unit objectives 75 6.1 Definition and components of intonation 75 6.2 The tone unit as a basic unit of intonation 77 6.3 Tone-patterns in English 78 6.4 Functions of intonation 81 6.5 Intonation and sentence types 82 6.5.1 Declaratives 83 6.5.2 Imperatives and exclamations 83 6.5.3 Questions 84 6.6 Contrastive analysis of intonation in English and

Romanian 87

Summary 88 Key concepts 88 Further reading 89 Answers to SAQs 89

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After you have completed the study of this unit you should be able to:

• avoid transferring intonation patterns by realizing that the shapes of the English tunes differ from the normal tunes of Romanian.

• practise English intonation patterns that occur with a variety of sentence types.

• distinguish between isolated sentences, which generally can take several intonation contours, and the intonation* of ongoing discourse, in which case only one intonation contour is generally appropriate.

• apply English intonation patterns over short exchanges and longer stretches of discourse that resemble authentic conversation.

6.1 Definition and components of intonation Intonation* is a term used in the study of suprasegmental

phonology. In a narrow sense, intonation refers to the fluctuations in pitch level (i.e. the height on which sounds are pronounced) and pitch direction (i.e. the point towards which the movement in pitch takes place). In a wider sense, intonation includes other prosodic* elements such as loudness*, tempo of speech, rhythm. The most important of all components of intonation is pitch.

Pitch is also a component of accent. Pitch consists of pronouncing a syllable on a higher pitch level than the others, or in giving that syllable a certain melodic shape: a falling one, a rising one, or a combination of the two. In acoustic terms it means the number of vibrations per second of the vocal cords*. Pitch contrasts are more easily perceived with voiced sounds.

Think first! To give you an idea of how difficult intonation may be to master for nonnative speakers of English, read the following remarks about the intonation of yes/no questions produced by two native speakers of Greek, in comparison with that of two native speakers of North American English: “The two native speakers of Greek, who were advanced level and highly fluent in English, tended to superimpose the falling Greek intonation for yes/no questions onto the English yes/no questions they uttered:

Are you CO

MING? This made the Greeks seem impatient and rude to the English speakers who evaluated the questions of all four speakers. The native English speakers intonation, by contrast, tended to rise on

Unit objectives

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such questions:

Are you CO

MING? (From a study by Argyres, Z. J. 1996. The cross-cultural pragmatics of intonation: The case of Greek-English)

Can you recall any particular instances when you felt your intonation of yes/no questions sounded like Romanian English?

Write your answer in the space provided below. Compare your answer with the information contained in

section 6.3.

• Tone languages and intonation languages Languages where word meanings or grammatical categories

(such as TENSE) are dependent on pitch level are known as tone languages. Many languages of South-East Asia (Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese), Africa (particularly those in the South and West) and a considerable number of Amerindian languages are tone languages.

In Chinese the pitch variations are carried by the syllable as a phonetic unit so that by varying the pitch of individual syllables, differences in meaning are obtained. For example, the word ma may mean 1) mother, 2) hemp, 3) horse (when pronounced in a falling-rising tone), 4) to scold.

Languages where pitch conveys meaning not at lexical item level but at the phrasal or clausal level are called intonation languages. Virtually all European and Middle Eastern languages are intonation languages.

In general, if learners speak an intonation language* as their first language, it is assumed that they will learn the intonation of another language more easily than will someone who speaks a tone language as their first language or vice versa. However, just because two languages happen to be intonation languages does not mean that their utterance-level pitch patterns will be the same. They

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rarely are. For, example, while English uses up to four pitch levels, Spanish uses only two or at most three with the result that Spanish speakers seem to have a somewhat flat intonation in English which signals disinterest to English speakers. (Celce-Murcia Marianne and Elite Olshtain. 2000. Discourse and Context in Language Teaching, p. 33)

6.2 The tone-unit as the basic unit of intonation

Variations of pitch occur in chunks of speech called tone units. A tone-unit* is the phonological unit greater in size than the syllable, and it is the basic unit of intonation. In its smallest form a tone-unit may consist of only one syllable so it would in fact be wrong to say that it is always composed of more than one syllable. For example, both you and is it you may be regarded as tone units; the former is a one-syllable utterance which carries a tone* while the latter is an utterance of three syllables in which only the third one carries a tone. A syllable which carries a tone is called a tonic syllable* or nucleus*.

• The conventional structure of the tone unit Conventionally, the structure of a tone-unit/intonation pattern or

tune* is made up of the following components: − a nucleus or tonic syllable (an obligatory element) - carried

by the stressed syllable of the most important word in the utterance. − a pre-nuclear component part (non-obligatory) consisting

of an optional head (that part of a tune starting with the first accented syllable and continuing up to the nucleus) and a pre-head* (all the unaccented syllables before a head).

- a post-nuclear part (optional) - called tail which usually consists of the unstressed syllables after the nucleus.

Sometimes a tail can contain stressed words but without pitch change as in Well, ‘say something, then!

The tone-unit structure can be summarized as follows: (pre-head)(head) nucleus (tail) (Ph) (H) N (T) The following examples illustrate various structures of intonation patterns: There's / nothing I can do / about it / Ph H N T It's im / po / ssible for me to do it. Ph N T This was more than I had expected. Ph N T Isn't she pretty ? N T

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SAQ 1

Identify the nucleus, the head, the pre-head and the tail of

this utterance. Pronounce it with the corresponding intonation pattern: There is no need to be so upset about it. ……………………………………………….

Check your answer against the one suggested in the answer section.

The choice of the nucleus in an utterance depends on the speech

situation. The shift in nucleus location is accompanied by a change in meaning.

a) Tom sells 'cars. (This is his job) b) Tom 'sells cars. (He doesn't make or buy them) c) 'Tom sells cars. (It is Tom, not another person who sells cars). d)

Think first! Read these paired sentences paying attention to how the punctuation found in written English reflects the intonation of spoken English: 1. a. “Father”, said mother, “is late”. b. Father said, “Mother is late”. 2. a. Have you met my brother Fred? b. Have you met my brother, Fred?

You can find a clue to your answer in the following sections.

6.3 Tone patterns in English

The study of the notions of tone and intonation in English involves the introduction of the following basic tones: fall*, rise, fall-rise*, rise-fall and level.

• The falling or fall pattern A falling pitch usually called ‘a fall’* is one that goes from a

higher pitch to a lower one: This tone is usually regarded as more or less neutral. The fall*

is usually associated with an impression of finality, with ending a conversation. For instance, in a dialogue between speakers A and B, one possible reply from B would be YES \ implying the question is answered and that there is nothing more to be said:

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A: Do you know John Smith? B: YES (or YES \).

SAQ 2

Say the words now, fine, oh, where with falls. Then give their

transcription showing the falling tone. …………………………….. …………………………….. …………………………….. ……………………………..

Write your answers in the space provided. Then check your transcriptions against the suggested answers given at the end of the unit.

• The rising or rise pattern The rising tone or ‘rise’ conveys an impression that something

more is to follow. If in the dialogue above B's reply were YES /, this means that B invites A to continue with what he/she intends to say about John Smith after establishing that B knows him:

A: Do you know John Smith? B: YES, (or YES /).

SAQ 3 Say the same words, now, fine, oh, where with rises. Give their transcription showing the rising tone.

Write your answers in the space provided. …………………………….. …………………………….. …………………………….. ……………………………..

Check them against the suggested answer given at the end of this unit.

• The fall-rise tone The fall-rise tone is used a lot in English, and it usually

indicates limited agreement or hesitation. In the example below, B's reply should be taken to mean that he/she would not completely agree with what A said:

A: Did you know she quitted? B: It’s POSSIBLE

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• The rise-fall tone The rise-fall tone is used to convey rather strong feelings of

approval, disapproval or surprise: A: Do you like this? B: DE LIGHTFUL! Note that the rise part of the tone takes place on the first tonic

syllable and the fall part on the second: e.g. NO ONE, NO SIR • The level tone The level tone almost always conveys a feeling of saying

something routine, uninteresting or boring. For instance, a student's answering yes when his/her name was called by the teacher uses a level tone.

A: John Smith? B: YES. SAQ 4

Pronounce the following utterances showing a neutral, uninterested tone:

a. I don’t mind. ………………….

b. I’ m easy. ……………………….

Give their phonemic transcription in the spaces provided and then check it against the answer given at the end of the unit.

In a one-syllable utterance, the single syllable must have one of

the five tones presented briefly above. In a tone unit of more than one syllable, the tonic syllable must have one of those tones. When a tonic syllable is followed by a tail, that tail continues and completes the tone begun on the tonic syllable.

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6.4 Functions of intonation

In communication, intonation may perform several functions:

• The accentual function The accentual function is expressed by the accent component

of intonation. This function is closely connected to the primary accent carried

by the most prominent word in an utterance. In these sentences, the nuclear or tonic stress* falls on the last

important lexical item: He must 'come, Put the book in the 'box, John and Mary must 'do, it. • The attitudinal function The attitudinal function expresses the connection between

tones and attitudes (e.g. joy, anger, irony, indignation, surprise, incredulity, arrogance). This function is superimposed on the accentual function and cannot be clearly separated from it.

John 'and Mary must do it (not only John) 'He must come (not she) Put the book 'in the box (not on the box)

An attitude that is expressed could be an attitude towards the

listener, towards what is being said or towards some external event or situation.

To the foreign learner of English who wants to learn "correct intonation" a few generalisations can be made:

- finality or definiteness is expressed by the fall tone: That is the end of the news. I'm absolutely certain. Stop talking. - encouraging is expressed by the rise tone: It won't hurt. - uncertainty, doubt or request are expressed by the fall-

rise: You may be right. Will you lend it to me. - surprise is expressed by the rise fall: All of them

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However, linking tones with attitudes remains a difficult task, especially because the same intonation pattern can accompany different attitudes depending on the nature of the utterance and the context in which it is used. For example, the rise-fall followed by a fall is used in utterance 1 to accompany exasperation and in utterance 2 to accompany delight.

(1) If you opened your EYES you’d SEE it. (2) I’m delighted to SAY you’ve WON it. Actually, the rise-fall pattern is generally considered an

emphatic tone which accompanies utterances that show strong feelings.

SAQ 5

Mark the rise-fall tone in the following sentences to express attitudes such as surprise and indignation: a. All of them! ………………………… b. You didn’t ask me. ………………………… c. I was first. ………………………….

You can find the answer at the end of this unit.

• The grammatical function The relationship between grammar and intonation takes the

form of correspondences between certain grammatical structures and certain intonation patterns. In other words, certain grammatical structures have the tendency to go with certain intonation patterns.

6.5 Intonation and sentence types

From a grammatical point of view, what is relevant for intonation analysis is not the number of words in an utterance but the syntactic structures they form and the grammatical categories to which they belong.

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Think first!

Read the following paired grammatical structures and note

how intonation helps to distinguish between them. Remember that the placement of the tone boundary is

important.

a The Conservatives who like the proposal are pleased. ………………………………………………………… b The Conservatives, who like the proposal, are pleased. …………………………………………………………..

Check your answer against the explanation below.

The intonational pattern used should make clear the difference between (a) restrictive and (b) non-restrictive relative clauses; (a) implies that only some Conservatives like the proposal, while (b) implies that all the Conservatives like it.

An instance where a given intonation pattern is associated with a certain grammatical structure is represented by complex sentences. Subordinate clauses usually end in a rising tune especially when initial in the sentence:

By the time he gets there, it will be much too late. If I can get a job, I'll pay it back at once.

6.5.1 Declaratives

Most English declarative sentences, in their neutral, unmarked

version, take rise-fall intonation contour and the tonic stress on the last lexically important word in the utterance:

I have to leave. I’ll give it to John.

6.5.2 Imperatives and exclamations

Like declaratives, imperatives (often referred to as commands or requests when viewed pragmatically) generally have rising-falling intonation, but they are often more forceful or affectively loaded than declarative sentences:

Write more POEMS!

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Like declaratives and imperatives, exclamations also exhibit

rising-falling intonation, but they sometimes give prominence to two constituents rather than one:

WHAT a perFORmance!

` 6.5.3 Questions

• YES/NO questions Neutral or unmarked YES/NO questions (i.e. questions that

involve the inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb or the addition of do as the auxiliary in sentences that have no lexical auxiliary verb) generally follow the rising intonation. Different realizations of the rising contour are possible depending on which constituent of the utterance is being emphasized:

Does John write POEMS? (emphasis on “poems” ) Does JOHN write poems? (emphasis on “John”).

• WH-questions Neutral or unmarked WH-questions (i.e. questions where the

constituent being questioned appears in the form of a wh-word (what, who, when, where, etc) are accompanied by the rising-falling intonation. Again, different realizations of the contour depend on which constituent of the utterance is in focus:

What does John WRITE? (focus on the result/product) What does JOHN write? (focus on agent). Such rising-falling intonation surprises some non-native

speakers of English, who assume that all questions, regardless of type, should be spoken with rising intonation.

SAQ 6

Transcribe the pronunciation of the following utterances, paying attention to the meanings given within brackets:

What does John WRITE? (Tell me more exactly what John writes) ………………………………………………………………… What does JOHN do? (Tell me more clearly what John in particular does. …………………………………………………………………….

You can find the answer at the end of this unit.

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• Question tags As question tags are used most frequently to seek confirmation

or to make a point, the (pitch) contour which usually accompanies them in English is the rising-falling pattern:

It’s a nice DAY, IS n’t it? People are worried about eCONomy, ARE n’t they? This is a problem for non-native speakers as many of them

speak native languages where all question tags have rising intonation regardless of discourse function. The solution proposed by discourse analysts is this:

“Students must learn that in English the speaker has a

choice between using a tag to confirm an assumption (using the rising-falling pattern) or to ask an informal type of yes/no question (using rising intonation)”. (Celce-Murcia and Olshtein, 2000: 42)

The intonation of question-tags is often quoted as a case of a

difference in meaning due to the difference between falling and rising tone. When the question-tag has a falling tone, like in (1) the implication is that the speaker is certain that the information is correct, and he simply expects the listener to provide confirmation. The rising tone of the question-tag indicates a lesser degree of certainty so that the question-tag functions more like a request for information as in (2):

(1)They are coming on Tuesday, aren’t they? (2) They are coming on Tuesday, aren’t they?

• Alternative questions True alternative questions generally show a rise on the first

part, a pause* and then a rise-fall* on the second part: Would you like JUICE or COFfee? Sometimes question-like utterances are not actually questions

but statements or exclamations. One can distinguish between them by means of the intonation pattern that is used:

Isn't she cute? (question) Isn't she cute! (exclamation).

• The discourse function

Intonation may be studied in relation with discourse in terms of “attention focussing”, i.e. the use of intonation to focus the listener's attention on aspects of the message that are most important.

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For example, the tone chosen can indicate whether the tone-unit in which it occurs is being used to present new information or to refer to information which is felt to be already possessed by speaker or listener.

Thus, in a sentence like / Since the last time we met / when we had that huge dinner / I've been on a diet / the first two units present information which is relevant to what the speaker is saying but which is not something new and unknown to the listener. The new information is present in the final tone-unit.

Researchers have shown that words expressing old or given information are generally spoken with weak stress and low* pitch whereas words expressing new information are spoken with strong stress and high pitch. For example, in the conversational exchange given below, whatever information is new, tends to receive special prosodic attention, namely the word is stressed and receives high pitch:

A: I’ve lost an umBRELla. B: A LAdy’s umbrella? A: YES. With STARS on it. GREEN stars.

SAQ 7

Which syllables are the speakers most likely to make prominent? Remember that new information tends to come toward the end of the utterance.

Write your answers in the spaces provided below. A: Can I help you? …………………….. B: Yes, please, I’m looking for a blazer. ………………………………………………. A: Something casual? ………………………….. B: Yes, something casual in wool. ………………………………………..

You can find the answer at the end of this unit.

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6.6 Contrastive analysis of intonation in English and Romanian

Starting from the rule of compensation at work in language, one

can notice that the more rigid or fixed a grammatical structure, the richer the use of intonation.

Since English has a more rigid word order than Romanian, it has a relatively free placement of stress, depending on what part of the utterance the speaker wants to render more prominent:

JOE Callaher left home yesterday. (not George, the baker) Joe CALLAHER left home yesterday. (not Joe Smith) Joe Callaher LEFT home yesterday. (not came home yesterday) Joe Callaher left HOME yesterday. (not the hospital) Joe Callaher left home YESTERDAY. (not last week) Both in English and Romanian there are rising and falling

tunes. While a fall-rise seems to operate in both languages, the rise-fall is peculiar to English only and consequently difficult to acquire by Romanian learners:

Isn't it awful! Human attitudes indicated by intonation are expressed roughly

by the same patterns in both languages. An area of contrast between the intonation patterns of the two languages refers to the way in which they correlate with grammatical structures.

Romanian and English show an important contrast in relation to the use of intonation in interrogative sentences; while in Romanian the use of a rising tune is the only formal means of signalling the interrogative nature of a sentence, in English a similar change in tune normally accompanies other changes in the structure of an affirmative sentence in order to function as a question:

A plecat la mare. (statement) A plecat la mare? (question) He has left for the seaside. (statement) Has he left for the seaside? (question)

There are instances in which connotative shades of meanings are expressed:

- by specific intonational contours in English: You know how he is. Wouldn't it be better to postpone our departure? - by lexical devices in Romanian (e.g. doar, oare) Il stii doar cum e el. N-ar fi mai bine oare să amânăm plecarea?

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Since English is a language with a fairly strict word order, it will be more difficult to use word order alone as a device of emphasising certain parts of the utterance. In Romanian, one can arrange the sentence components more freely and they do not have to resort very often to prosodic features.

Summary

Effective oral communication in English requires control of

prosody perhaps as much as (if not more than) control of the target language vowel and consonant sounds.

The choice of the nucleus in an utterance depends on the speech situation. The shift in nucleus location is accompanied by a change in meaning.

The attitudinal use of intonation is something that is best acquired through talking with and listening to English speakers.

At discourse level, the general pragmatic strategy used by English speakers is to emphasis new information and de-emphasis old or shared information.

The connection between intonation and grammar can be seen in the associations between intonation patterns and various types of sentences. Thus, a falling pattern is appropriate for statements, wh- questions, commands and exclamations, while a rising pattern is associated with yes / no questions and requests.

Intonation must be learnt and taught not on the basis of isolated sentences or tone-units but within their linguistic and situational context.

Key concepts

• accentual function • attitudinal function • discourse function • fall • fall-rise • functions of intonation • grammatical function • head • level • loudness • pitch • pre-head • rhythm • rise • rise-fall • tail • tone language • tone unit/intonation pattern/tune • tonic syllable/nucleus

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Further reading

1. Celce-Murcia M. and Olshtain, E.. 2000. Discourse and

Context in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 30-50

2. Thorne, S. 1997. Mastering Advanced English Language, London: Macmillan, pp. 48 – 72.

3. Rogers, H.. 2000. The Sounds of Language. An Introduction to Phonetics. Harlow Essex: Pearson Education Ltd., pp. 96-108.

Answers to SAQs

Should your answer to SAQ 1 be different from the one suggested below, please read again section 6.2. SAQ 1 There is no need to be so upSET about it.

• the nucleus is the syllable SET in upSET • the head is no need to be so • the pre-head is There’s… • the tail is about it

Should your answers to SAQ 2, SAQ 3 and SAQ 4 be different from the ones suggested below, please read again section 6.3. SAQ 2 /`nau/ /`fain/ /`au/ /`wea/ SAQ 3 /’nau/ /’fain/ /’au/ /’wea/ SAQ 4 I don’t MIND. c. I’ m EASY.

Should your answer to SAQ 5 be different from the one suggested below, please read again sections 6.3.and 6.4. SAQ 5

a. All OF THEM!

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b. You DIDN’T ASK me. c. I WAS first.

Should your answers to SAQ 6 and SAQ 7 be different from the ones suggested below, please read again section 6.5.3.

SAQ 6 What does John WRITE? (Tell me more exactly what John writes) What does JOHN do? (Tell me more clearly what John in particular does. SAQ 7 A: Can I HELP you? B: YES, please, I’m looking for a BLAser. A: Something CASual? B: Yes, something casual in WOOL.

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Bibliography

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Bibliography

1. Balan Rada, Cehan Anca, and al. 2003. In-service Distance

Training Course for Teachers of English. Iaşi: Polirom. 2. Bejan N. and Elena Croitoru. 1979. Contemporary English

Language. Galati: Tipografia Universităţii, pp. 3-59. 3. Carney Edward. 1998. “English Spelling is Kattastroffic”. In

Bauer Laurie and Peter Trudgil. (eds.) Language Myths. London: Penguin Books, pp. 32 – 41.

4. Celce-Murcia Marianne and Elite Olshtain. 2000. Discourse and Context in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 30-50.

5. Chiţoran, Dumitru. 1978. English Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureşti: Editura didactică şi Pedagogică.

6. Chiţoran, Dumitru and Hortensia Pârlog. 1989. Ghid de pronunţie a limbii engleze. Bucureşti: Editura stiintifică şi enciclopedică.

7. Chiţoran Dumitru, Augerot, James and Hortensia Pârlog. 1984. The Sounds of English and Romanian. Bucureşti: Bucharest University Press.

8. Chiţoran, Dumitru and Lucreţia Petri. 1977. Workbook in English Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureşti: Editura didactică şi pedagogică.

9. Crystal, David 1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Oxford: Blackwell.

10. Dauer, Rebecca. 1993. Accurate English. A Complete Course in Pronunciation. New Jersey: Printice Hall.

11. Dima, Gabriela. 1996. Outlines of English Phonetics and Phonology. With Pronunciation Drills for Learners of English. Brăila: Evrika.

12. Dirven, Rene and Marjolin Verspoor. 1998. Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Bejamins, pp. 107-137.

13. Doboş Daniela. 2001. A Handbook of English Phonetics and Phonology. Iaşi: Casa Editorială Demiurg.

14. Finch, Geoffrey. 2000. Linguistic Terms and Concepts. Palgrave Macmillan, 33 - 77.

15. Gogălniceanu, Călina. 1993. The English Phonetics and Phonology. Iaşi: Editura Fundaţiei "Chemarea"

16. Hulban, H., Lăcătuşu T., Gogălniceanu, T. C. 1983. Competenţă şi performanţă, exerciţii şi teste de limba engleză. Bucureşti: Editura stiinţifică şi enciclopedică.

17. Iarovici, Edith. 1994. Engleza Americană. Bucureşti: Editura Teora, pp.99 – 111.

18. Ilovici, Edith. 1972. Indreptar de ortografie şi punctuaţie a limbii engleze. Cu exercţii practice. Bucureşti: Editura didactică şi pedagogică.

19. Jones, Daniel. 1963. [1956] Everyman’s English Pronouncing Dictionary, 11th Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

20. Knowles, G. 1987. Patterns of Spoken English. London: Longman Group Ltd.

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21. Kovecses, Zoltan. 2000. American English. An Introduction. Ontario: Broad View Press

22. Leontyeva, S. F. 1988. A Theoretical Course of English Phonetics, Moscow.

23. Malcolm Mann and Steve Taylore-Knowles. 2003. Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking. Oxford: Macmillan

24. Makarenko, Tatiana. 1998. Contemporary English Phonetics. Cluj: Editura Echinox.

25. Matthews, P.H. 1997. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press

26. Meyer, Paul Georg et al. 2002. Synchronic English Linguistics. An Introduction. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag Tubingen, pp. 56-94 (Chapter 2 Phonetics and Phonology)

27. Mc Carthy, Michael and Felicity O’Dell. 1994. English Vocabulary in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

28. Neagu Mariana. 1997. English Phonetics and Phonology: A Coursebook. Braila: Editura Evrika.

29. Neagu Mariana. 2000. Language, Culture and Civilization. English In and Outside the British Isles. Galaţi: Editura Fundaţiei “Dunărea de Jos”. pp.106-124.

30. Neagu Mariana. 2001. Variety and Style in English. Buzău: Alpha. pp. 123-148.

31. Nicolescu, Adrian. 1977. Tendinţe în engleza britanică contemporană. Bucureşti: Editura Universităţii Bucureşti

32. Pârlog Hortensia. 1997. English Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureşti: Editura ALL.

33. Roach, Peter. 1994. [1983]. English Phonetics and Phonology. A Practical Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

34. Rogers, Henry. 2000. The Sounds of Language. An Introduction to Phonetics. Harlow Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.

35. O'Connor, J. P. 1978. Phonetics, London: Penguin Books 36. Taylor, D. 1996. “Demystifying Word Stress” in English Today.

vol. 12, No.4 (October 1996), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

37. The Oxford Spelling Dictionary.1990 [1986]. Oxford: Oxford University Press

38. Thorne, Sara. 1997. Mastering Advanced English Language, London: Macmillan, pp. 48-72 (Chapter 2. Phonetics and Phonology)

39. Wells, J. C. 1982. Accents of English, vol. I - III, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

40. Yule, George. 2006. [1985].The Study of Language. Third Edition. Thoroughly revised and updated. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.29-52.

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Symbols for vowels and diphthongs

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[i:] as in bead, Pete [i] as in bid, pit [e] as in bed, pet [æ] as in bad, pat [A:] as in barred, part [] as in rod,

pot [:] as in roared, port [u] as in hood, put [u:] as in rude, pool [Λ] as in bud, pun [ə:] or [з:] as in heard, perm [ə] as in alive, parade [ei] as in bay, pain [ai] as in by, pine [i] as in boy, point [Au] as in bow (noun), pouch [əu] as in bow (verb), poach [iə] as in beer, peer [εə] or [eə] as in bear, pair [uə] as in boor, poor

Symbols for vowels and diphthongs

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[p] as in pin, appear [b] as in bin, bubble [t] as in tin, attend [d] as in din, hiding [k] as in kin, conquer [g] as in give, begin [f] as in fought, offer [v] as in vine, cover [s] as in sip, assist [z] as in zero, razor [Θ] as in thought, ether [ð] as in there, mother [S] as in ship, nation [Z] as in pleasure, measure [tS] as in chin, cheese [dZ-] as in gin, joke [m] as in moon, summer [n] as in noon, any [η] as in song, finger [l] as in lip, palace [r] as in road, caress [w] as in well, queen [j] as in yell, yes

Symbols for consonants

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Glossary accent

(a) The same as stress. (b) Stress (in its narrower sense) accompanied by pitch change. Loosely, accent and stress and their associated pairs of terms (accented, stress, etc.) are used interchangeably. But some phoneticians distinguish between accent, defined as including PITCH change, and stress, which is due to the amount of force or energy used to produce a sound, but which does not include a pitch change. By this sort of definition, accent can only occur on a stressed syllable (whereas stress may not involve accent).

accentual Relating to phonetic, accent, particularly in the sense of word stress (rather than nuclear pitch).

acoustic phonetics That branch of phonetics concerned with the way in which the air vibrates as sounds pass from speaker to listener. Acoustic phonetics involves the measuring of sounds with instruments and electronic equipment that then present the information in visual form.

affricate A consonant sound that combines the articulatory characteristics of a PLOSIVE and a FRICATIVE; there is a complete closure in the vocal tract so that the following release is a plosive, but the release is slow enough for there to be accompanying friction. A speech sound consisting in a stop and a fricative. Two affricates are recognized in Standard English: /tf/, the voiceless sound heard at the beginning and end of church, in the middle of feature, and at the end of catch; and, the voiced sound at the beginning of gin and jam, the middle of soldier, and the end of judge.

alliteration

The repetition of the same sound in initial position in a sequence of words.

allophone

Any of the variants in which an idealized phoneme is actually realized. Many allophones, that are actual articulations, are possible for any phoneme of a language, depending on individual people’s pronunciation, but the main allophones of any particular language are conditioned by their relationship to the surrounding sounds. Thus in standard English, the phoneme has a CLEAR sound when it precedes a vowel (as in listen or fall in); a somewhat DEVOICED sound when preceded by word-finally after a vowel (as in fall down) or when it is syllabic (as in muddle).

allophonic Of or pertaining to an allophone.

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alveolar Pronounced with the constriction of the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. The main alveolar in English are ⏐t⏐ and ⏐d⏐ (often dental consonants in other languages), which are alveolar plosives; ⏐n⏐ an alveolar nasal; and ⏐s⏐ and ⏐z⏐, which are alveolar fricatives. The actual articulation of these alveolar phonemes is affected by adjacent sounds so that not all their allophones are in fact alveolar.

apical

Made with the APEX (tongue tip). The tip of the tongue is not normally involved in the formation of English speech sounds, though it is used in the articulation of a trilled /r/.

approximant

A sound made with an unimpeded airflow; contrasted with STOP and FRICATIVE. Phoneticians group speech sounds in different ways. Approximant is used as a general term covering sounds made in various manners of articulation.

articulation The physical production of speech sounds. Speech sounds are described in terms of both their PLACE and their MANNER of articulation. According to PLACE of articulation, consonants may be bilabial, labio-dental, dental, alveolar, palato- alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal. From the point of view of their MANNER of articulation, consonants are classified as plosives, affricates, fricatives, nasals, laterals, flaps and semivowels.

articulator

Any vocal organ, moving or not, involved in the production of speech sounds.

articulatory phonetics

The branch of phonetics concerned with the ways in which speech sounds are physically articulated.

aspirated

Articulated with an audible release of air (contrasted with UNASPIRATED). Aspirated and voiceless articulations often occur together, but are distinct phenomena. Voiced and voiceless refer to the state of the vocal cords throughout the articulation of a phoneme; aspirated and unaspirated refer to the final release stage of plosion.

aspiration Articulation accompanied by an audible release of air. The fortis consonants /p, t, k /, when occurring initially in an accented syllable, are accompanied by aspiration, i.e. there is a voiceless interval of strongly expelled breath between the release of the plosive and the onset of a following vowel. When /l, r, w, j/ follow /p, t, k/ in such position, the aspiration is manifested in the devoicing

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of /l, r, w, j /, e.g. please, pray, try, clean, twice, quick, pew, tune, queue.

assimilate Make or become more similar in articulation (to an adjacent sound) (cause to) undergo assimilation. For example, in the word Tuesday the opening sequence /tj/ can readily assimilate to /t∫/, in Did you? /dj/ to /dз/ and in What you? /tj/ to /t∫/.

assimilated

A speech sound which undergoes assimilation.

assimilating A speech sound that changes one feature (e.g. voicing, labialization) of a neighbouring sound.

assimilation The effect on a speech sound of the articulation of other adjacent sounds; a kind of COARTICULATION. This is a common feature of speech, though one that many native speakers are unaware of. In anticipatory assimilation (or regressive assimilation), the sound is influenced in its articulation by the following sound and not pronounced as it would be in isolation. For example, in some people’s pronunciation of width the voiced /d/ has been assimilated to /t/ by the following voiceless /θ/ and in some people’s pronunciation of length, the velar /ŋ/ has been assimilated to /n/ by the following dental /θ/. In current speech, assimilation frequently occurs across word boundaries, as when that case becomes /ðǽk keıs/ or this shop becomes /ðı∫ ∫ρp/ or ten more becomes /tem m:/. A reverse type of assimilation (progressive assimilation) is found when a sound is changed by the influence of a previous one. This is an established and regular feature of the ending –s of verbs and nouns, which usually has a voiced /z/ sound (or /ız/ after all sibilants) but after voiceless sounds other than sibilants is /s/ (e.g. taps, hats, dock’s, griefs, Keith’s; compare tabs, heeds, dog’s, grieves, youths, eyes, seems, runs, dolls, pieces, daisies). Similarly, the past tense /ed/ ending /d/ or /ıd/ is devoiced to a /t/ sound after a voiceless consonant other than –t itself (roped, lacked, busses, roofed, pushed versus robed, lagged, buzzed, grooved, rouged, hated, headed).

auditory phonetics

The study of speech sounds from the point of view of the listener, concerned with the way the ears and brain process and perceive speech sounds reaching them.

back Of speech sound: made in the back part of the mouth. Vowel sounds are traditionally classified into BACK, CENTRAL and FRONT vowels, the back vowels being made with the tongue humped towards the back of the mouth. Examples of back vowels are /u, , A:/.

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BBC English Standard English, as supposedly spoken by professional BBC broadcasters. In its early days, the British Broadcasting Corporation encouraged a standard non-regional ‘educated’ accent among its broadcasters. BBC English’ is now only one accent heard from newsreaders, announcers and other programme presenters.

bilabial Pronounced with the constriction of the two lips. The English bilabials are /p/, /b/, and /m/, as in pan, ban and man.

bilateral With the air released around both sides of the tongue. A bilateral articulation is the normal articulation of LATERAL sounds English. It contrasts with unilateral articulation, by which the air, unusually, is released around one side only.

binary Designating or relating to a pair o features in language which are mutually exclusive, or the opposition between them. The contrasts between nasal and non-nasal or voiced and voiceless articulation are said to be binary oppositions or binary features. Such features are sometimes marked with a plus or minus sign. Thus /p/ is characterized as [-voice] and /b/ as [+voice].

blade The tapering section of the front of the tongue, immediately behind the tip. In describing how speech sounds are articulated it is useful to label the speech organs in some detail. Tip, blade and sides (rims) of the tongue articulate with the teeth in making the English /th/ sounds, /θ/ as in theatre and /ð/ as in then. Consonants primarily involving the blade of the tongue are /t/, /d/, and /z/.

broad transcription A systematic method of representing in a rather general way (normally using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet) how spoken language sounds. A broad (phonemic) transcription is generally felt to be the simplest to use, but a knowledge of the allophonic system of the languages is needed if such transcription is to be read aloud with even approximate accuracy. A phonetic transcription omitting details that are judged to be inessential; hence identical with, or close to, a representation of phonemes.

cardinal vowel One of a standard set of 18 vowels, devised by the phonetician Daniel Jones (1881 – 1967) as a basis for describing the vowels of any language. The system is mainly physiological. The vowels are described primarily in terms of tongue position, and the amount of lip-rounding is specified. There are 8 primary vowels: 4 front vowels, defined according to the height of the front of the tongue and 4 back vowels*, where the height of the back of the tongue is relevant. The

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8 secondary cardinal vowels have the same tongue positions, but the lip-rounding or lip-spreading is different. Two further vowels are identified as depending on the center of the tongue being raised.

central vowel A vowel made with the center of the tongue raised towards the middle of the roof of the mouth, where the hard and soft palates meet. In standard English (PR) the central vowels are: /Λ / the sound in hut, come, blood; [ə:] /з:/ the sound in bird, nurse, worm; /ə/ the sound at the beginning of ago and the end of mother; /υ/ the sound in foot, put, wolf, could.

centring diphthong

A a diphthong that moves towards a central position for its second element. Contrasted with CLOSING DIPHTHONG. Standard RP has 3 centring diphthongs: /ıə/ as in dear, here, idea; /υə/ as in tour, during; /eə/ as in fair, whare, stare.

close Of a vowel: made with the tongue high in the mouth; contrasted with OPEN. In English /ı:/ as in feet or sea is a fairly close front vowel, and /u:/ as in food, group, move is a close back vowel. Close vowels are sometimes called high vowels.

closing diphthong

A diphthong which glides towards a closer sound. This includes all the diphthongs ending in /ı/ and /υ/, and contrasts with CENTRING DIPHTHONG.

closure A closing of the air passage by some part of the vocal organs in the production of certain speech sounds, also called constriction. A complete closure is a feature of plosives, affricates and nasal. Most other consonants are produced with incomplete or partial closure.

coalescence A process whereby two separate speech sounds merge to form a single new phoneme. (Also called coalescent assimilation or reciprocal assimilation).

coalescent Participating in or resulting from coalescence. These terms are particularly applied to the process (yod coalescence) in which /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, merge with /j/ and become /t∫/, /dZ/, /∫/, /Z/ respectively. In present day speech coalescent variants are heard in certain words, e.g. intuition /ıntju:‘ı∫(ə)n/ or /ınt∫u:‘ı∫(ə)n/, grandeur /‘græ

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ndjə/ or /‘grændZə/, duel /‘dju:əl/ or /‘dZu:əl/, and across word boundaries, e.g. /‘kυdZu:/ as an alternative to /‘kυdju:/ for Could you? Except where historically established, coalescence tends to be regarded as colloquial or non-standard.

connected speech

Speech without pauses between words. In normal speech several words are usually run together in a single TONE UNIT. This affects the pronunciation of speech sounds, and results in words being said differently from the way they would be said in isolation.

consonant

A speech sound that is characterized by constriction in some part of the mouth and is accompanied by audible friction. The commonly accepted use of the term consonant is potentially ambiguous. Most consonants are defined in articulatory terms, but also share the linguistic or phonological characteristics of being marginal to a syllable. Some speech sounds, however, overlap the two categories of vowel and consonant. Southern British /l/ and /r/ have vowel-like articulations, but are usually syllable-marginal; /m/ and /n/ can be either marginal (e.g. man) or syllabic (e.g. frighten); /w/ and /j/ (the initial sounds in wet and yet) are phonetically vowel-like but phonologically consonant-like are classified as SEMI-VOWELS (or semi-consonants). There are 22 consonants in standard English (RP): 6 PLOSIVES; 9 FRICATIVES; 2 AFFRICATES; 3 NASALS; 1 LABIAL; 1 FRICTIONLESS CONTINUANT.

consonant cluster

A series of consonants, occurring at the beginning or end of a syllable and pronounced together without any intervening vowels. Also called consonant sequence. English has some quite complicated consonant clusters. Initial clusters can have up to 3 consonants, if the cluster begins with s (e.g. spread, splendid, street, squint /skwınt/. Two-consonants clusters are much more usual, but only some combinations can occur. Initial clusters are heard in beauty /‘bju:tı/, quite /kwaıt/, shred /∫red/, through /θ ru:/, view /vju:/⏐. Final clusters can contain as many as 4 consonants, because of inflectional endings, e.g. texts /teksts/, twelfths /twelfθs/, glimpsed /glımpst/.

continuant

A speech sound made without a complete closure of the vocal organs. All vowels are by this definition among the continuants, but use of the term is often restricted to the classification of sounds with a consonantal role. The continuants of English therefore include the fricatives, the lateral /l/, the semi-vowels and /r/ - i.e., all the consonants except the plosives and affricates, which involve total closure (the nasal may or may not be included).

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contrastive stress Stress used to avoid a misinterpretation.

dental Produced with the constriction of the tongue against the teeth. A consonant made with the tongue coming in contact with the teeth. The English dental consonants are the voiceless fricative /θ/ as in thick and thin and the voiced fricative /ð/ as in this, them.

denasalization

Change or process by which a sound is no longer nasal or nasalized.

devoiced

English voiced sounds are often partly devoiced under the influence of surrounding sounds. Thus the voiced plosives /b/, /d/, and /g/ are normally devoiced or may even be completely voiceless in word-final position. Similarly, voiced fricatives tend to be partly devoiced except when occurring between voiced sounds; and /l/, /r/, /w/ and /j/ are usually devoiced when following initial voiceless sounds, as in please, tray, twice, queue /kju:/.

digraph

A group of 2 letters representing one sound, as ph in phone, or ey in key.

diphthong A vowel that changes its quality within the same single syllable. (Also called gliding vowel). The English diphthongs in modern standard RP are: - 3 that glide towards an /ı/ sound from different starting points: /ei/ as in day, late, rain, weigh, hey, great; /ai/ as in time, cry, high, height, die, dye, aisle, eider; /i/ as in boy, voice; - 2 that glides towards /u/: /əu/ as in so, road, toe, soul, know; /au/ as in house, now; - 3 that glides towards /ə/: /eə/ as in care, wear, their, there; /uə/ as in pure, during, tourist; /ıə/ as in dear, here, weird, idea. A diphthong gliding to a closer sound (i.e. one ending in /ı/ or /υ/ in English) is called a CLOSING DIHPTHONG; a diphthong finishing at /e/ is called CENTRING DIPHTHONG.

distinctive feature

A characteristic of a speech sound within the phonology of the language that distinguishes it from another speech sound. For example, the set of sounds /p/, /t/, /tS/ can be distinguished from the set /b/, /d/, /dZ-/ and /z/ by the feature [voice]. Other distinctive features of the English consonants refer to orality (-nasal) / nasality (+nasal), plosiveness, labiality, etc.

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distribution The set of contexts in which a linguistic unit characteristically occurs. Every speech sound and every word or phrase is limited in some way as to the contexts in which it can occur, and the set of such contexts is its distribution. Thus the English phoneme /p/ can occur in initial consonants clusters such as /pl/ (e.g. please), /pr/ (e.g. praise) and /pj/ (e.g. pew), but not is in /pf/ or /pw/.

duration

The ‘linguistic’ length of a speech sound, as perceived by the listener.

elision

The omission of a speech sound or syllable. Two broad types of elision may be distinguished: (a) elided word forms that are long-established, where the spelling frequently reflects the earlier, fuller pronunciation; (b) forms heard today in colloquial or rapid speech but where unelided forms are also current. Long-established elisions include the reduction of some consonants clusters initially: gnome, knight, wrong; medially: listen, whistle, sandwich; and finally: hymn, lamb along with the loss of vowels and syllables, as in Gloucester, Salisbury, Wednesday. In present-day speech, consonants within clusters often undergo elision (e.g. facts, handbag, twelfth), but elision of weak vowels is particularly frequent, with the result that whole syllables may be lost: fact(o)ry, cam(e)ra, nat(u)ral, batch(e)lor, fam(i)ly, med(i)cine, p(o)lice, Febr(uar)ry.

emphatic stress

Stress used to draw attention to a word or utterance. For example, in the utterance Mary has two cars, by placing extra stress on two, a speaker can express surprise or definiteness.

fall (n) In the intonation of a syllable or longer utterance, a nuclear pitch change from (relatively) high to (relatively low); contrasted with a RISE. Phoneticians distinguished various kinds of falls, such as the high fall [̉̉̉ ’ ], starting near the normal high limit of the voice and the low fall[‚], with a lower start

falling

Of a diphthong: having most of the length and stress in the first part of the glide. In English diphthongs, the stress-pulse is a decrescendo one, starting rather strong and then fading away. A decrescendo diphthong like this is often called a ‘falling’ diphthong because of the fact that the stress falls away from a peak near the beginning of the diphthong. Most English diphthongs are normally articulated in this way, and falling diphthongs is the normal label.

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fall-rise A tone in which the pitch falls and then rises again [ ˇ ] This tone is frequently heard in RP English. It has various conversational functions, but often suggests reservation or only partial agreement (‘yes, but…’) A: Did you enjoy the film? B: Yes

fixed stress

The regular occurrence of stress on the same syllable in each word of a language contrasted with FREE stress. English is not a fixed-stress language and in this, it contrasts with some languages where the stress is fairly predictable. For example, in Polish, polysyllabic words are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable. However, the stress in individual words in English is largely fixed so that deviant stressing can lead to misunderstanding or incomprehension (e.g. Contrast im ́portant and ΄impotent).

flap

A consonant sound in which flexible speech organ makes a momentary contact with a firmer surface. This is a ‘manner of articulation’. In British English the voiced frictionless continuant /r/ is sometimes replaced by an alveolar flap [∫], with the tip of the tongue articulating against the alveolar ridge. This sound is commonly used in American English where t or d occur between vowels so that the t and d may sound identical, as in latter and ladder.

flapping

A process in which a dental or alveolar consonant is changed into a flap, that is a sound articulated with the tip of the tongue placed against the alveolar ridge.

fortis

A consonant sound made with relatively strong breath force. In English the voiceless plosives and fricatives (/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /s/, etc.) tend to be made with stronger muscular effort and breath, force than their voiced counterparts. Such consonants are therefore said to be fortis consonants and to be pronounced with a fortis articulation.

free variation

The possibility of substituting one phoneme for another without causing any change of meaning. Sounds which contrast with each other in such a way that meaning is affected (i.e., distinct phonemes) cannot normally be interchanged. But in some words two normally contrasting phonemes are both acceptable and are therefore said to be in free variation. Among British speakers, a majority are said to prefer the word ate to be pronounced /et/ to rhyme with met, but a large minority favour the pronunciation/eit/ like eight. The two pronunciations are there in free variation.

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fricative A consonant sound articulated by two speech organs coming so close together that it is pronounced with audible friction. A fricative (sometimes called friction consonant) may be voiceless or voiced. There are four pairs of voiceless and voiced fricatives in RP, plus the voiceless /h/.The pairs are: /f/-/v/, /θ/-/Ỗ/, /s/-/z/, /∫/- /з/.

frictionless continuant

A continuant speech sound lacking friction. A frictionless continuant is neither a fricative nor a stop. In a very broad use, the term could be applied to vowels. Among consonants, several phonemes in RP can be so labelled: The nasals/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ The lateral /l/ The semi-vowels /w/ and /j/

front (n.) The forward part of the tongue (but not the tip). (adj.) Related to the front part of the mouth Standard RP English distinguishes 4 front vowels, so called because they are articulated with the front part of the tongue higher than any other part: /I, æ/.

function word

A word generally unstressed that expresses a primarily grammatical relation; for example prepositions, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, articles, pronouns.

General American (GA)

An accent of English used in the United States that lacks the marked regional characteristics of the north-east (New England, New York State) and the south-east (the ‘Southern States’). It corresponds to the layman’s perception of an American accent without marked regional characteristics. It is sometimes referred to as ‘Network English’, being the variety most acceptable on the television networks covering the whole United States.

generative phonology

A theory about the sound system of language, developed as a major part of generative grammar. Instead of treating phonetics as a separate, almost independent, layer of language, generative phonology seeks to show, for example, that stress patterns depend on knowledge of syntax, and at word level to explain relationships difficult to account for in a strictly phoneme-based analysis.

glide A gradually changing speech sound made in passing from one position of speech organs to another.

glottal

Produced with the constriction of the glottis, i.e. the space between the vocal cords. For example, /h/ in hay. The /h/ sound of English is

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made in the glottis and is commonly classified as a voiceless glottal fricative. Some speakers use a voiced variant of this sound when it occurs between voiced sounds, e.g. in words such as perhaps, ahoy, ahead. Whispered speech is also produced with considerably narrowed glottis.

glottis

The opening between the vocal cords at the upper end of the windpipe.

grapheme

A written symbol made up of one or more letters that represents a phoneme, as f, ph and gh for the phoneme /f/. In a phonological orthography a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme. In spelling systems that are non-phonemic, such as the spellings used most widely for written English, multiple graphemes may represent a single phoneme.

Great Vowel Shift A series of changes in late Middle English, by which close long vowels became diphthongs and other long vowels shifted one step closer. Thus, in the front series, [A:] >[ə:] ], [ə:] > [æ], [æ] > [i:], [i:] > [a]; Often interpreted as a unitary phenomenon; hence as a classic example of a chain shift. It is in consequence of these and other changes that [e] in name (formerly [A:]) is spelled a, or [a] in shine (formerly [i:]) spelled i. They are also the main factor in the development of vowel alternation between long [e] and short [a] (in sane/sanity), long [a] and short [] (divine/divinity), and so on.

half-close

Of a vowel; articulated in the second highest of the 4 levels of tongue position, i.e. CLOSE, HALF-CLOSE, HALF OPEN AND OPEN. In RP, the front vowel /i/ as in sit, symbol, pretty, build, women, is slightly higher than half close as is the vowel /υ/ heard in put, woman, good and could. The front vowel /e/, the vowel of bed, head, many, friend, and bury, lies somewhere in between half-close and half-open, as also(in RP) does the back vowel /*:/ of horse, saw, ought, all, door.

half-open

Of a vowel: articulated with the tongue above open(low) position, but lower, than half-close according to the cardinal vowel system. The English central vowel /Λ/ of sun, son, country, blood, and does is articulated somewhere near a half-open position. The front vowel /æ/, as in cat, plait, lies somewhere between half-open and full-open in RP.

haplology

The omission of a sound sequence (especially a syllable) when followed by another similar sound or sequence, as when fifth is pronounced /fiθ/ rather than /fifθ/, library as /’laibəri/ or /’laibrəri/ or deteriorate as /di’trərieit/ rather than /di’tiəriə,reit/.

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The phenomenon is more often dealt with today under the more general concept of ELISION.

head The pre-nuclear part of an intonation pattern starting from and including the first accented syllable and extending to the nucleus e.g. I thought it was awful.

hard palate The part of the roof of the mouth lying behind the ALVEOLAR ridge but in front of the soft palate (or VELUM.) The term is used in articulatory phonetics to classify consonant sounds.

height The degree of elevation of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth, as one of the several features determining the articulation of vowels. In the cardinal vowel system, the height of the tongue is described in terms of four equidistant levels. When part of the tongue is raised as near to the roof of the mouth as possible without friction(which would make sound a consonant) it is a High (or Close) position, with resulting height or close vowels; when the whole tongue is lowered, LOW (or OPEN)vowels are produced. Between these two extremes are tongue heights called HALF-CLOSE and HALF-OPEN.

heterophone

(syn. homograph) A word having a different sound from another which is spelt the same. Since a certain similarity is the reason for considering two words together as some sort of pair e.g. lead (cause to go) and lead (metal) or row (a quarrel), and row (a line of things next to each other) an alternative term would be HOMOGRAPH, or - more loosely - HOMONYM.

hiatus

(Chiefly in historical linguistics). A break between two vowels coming together in different syllables, as in: cooperate, Goyaesque, guffawing, realing.

high 1. Of a vowel: produced with (part of) the tongue raised relatively close to the roof of the mouth. The term is used in the articulatory description of the vowels. Thus /I:/ as in heat is a HIGH(or CLOSE) front vowel, in contrast to LOW (or OPEN) /æ/ as in hat. 2. (In intonation) Of pitch: produced by relatively rapid vibrations of the vocal cords, as in a “high level pitch”

high-fall A tone which starts near the highest pitch of the individual speaker’s voice and glides to the lowest. [’] [`]

high-rise A tone in which the voice raises from a medium to a high pitch [‘] [´].

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historical elision Elision that took place at an earlier stage in the history of the language

homograph

A word that is spelt the same (Greek homos “same”) as another but has a different meaning and origin. Another term, emphasizing the different pronunciation is heterophone: sow ‘bury seed’, sow ‘female pig’.

homophone

(syn. heterograph) A word that is pronounced the same as another. The term is usually used of partial HOMONYMS which are distinguished by both meaning and spelling. Another term, emphasizing the difference of spelling is heterograph. Examples are: feat – feet; no – know; none – nun; stare – stair. Some English pairs are homophones in some accents but not in others, e.g.: saw – sore; pore - pour , wine - whine. If in fact the two words in a pair are both pronounced and spelt the same, the usual term is HOMONYM.

homophone

A word that has the same pronunciation as another, but is different in meaning and origin. If the spelling is also different, then it is referred to as heterograph: buy, by, Bye.

initial

In phonology, word-or syllable- initial contrasts with MEDIAL and FINAL position, since the position of a phoneme conditions its pronunciation. See ALLOPHONE. Among English phonemes, /h/ can only be syllable-(or word)- initial. The Scottish, Irish and General American pronunciation of wh- in many words is actually the sequence /hw/, as in when /hwen/, /hwen/.

intensity

The amount of energy used in the production of a speech sound. Intensity is a measurable physical phenomenon. The vibrating vocal cords set of patterns of air vibrations that can be objectively measured. Intensity is related to LOUDNESS, but is not the same.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

The official phonetic transcription system of The International Phonetic Association. This system of written symbols is designed to enable the speech sounds of any language to be consistently represented. Both the alphabet and the association are abbreviated IPA.

intervocalic Between two vowels. The pronunciation of a consonant, when it occurs between two vowels, may differ from its pronunciation in other contexts. For example the voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) will probably be fully voiced in this position but are not always so in other contexts.

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intonation The pitch variations and patterns in spoken language. Intonation plays a part in speech not unlike punctuation in the written language.

intonation language

Language where pitch conveys meaning at the phrasal or clausal level (e.g. English, Japanese).

intrusive /r/ The pronunciation of an /r/ sound between two words or syllables in sequence, where the first ends in a vowel sound, and the second begins with one and where there is no /r/ in the spelling. Intrusive /r/ is much criticized but is quite commonly heard in standard R P and other NON-RHOTIC accents. It occurs after the vowels /e/ (e.g. umbrella-r-organization), /ə:/ (e.g. a milieu-r-in which…), /A:/ (E.g. grandpa-r-is ill),/ :/ e.g. law.

juncture The transition between two words or syllables and the phonetic features that mark it.

labial

A speech sound involving the active use of one or both lips. The term is a rather general one. The lips are of course passively involved in all speech sounds, but the term labial is confined to those in which one or both lips actually contribute to the articulation. English labial consonants are usually more specifically described as bilabial or labio-dental. With respect to vowels, the position of the lips is usually described in terms of lip-rounding or lip-spreading.

labialize

Accompany (a speech sound) with lip-rounding, particularly where this is an unusual (and optional) feature. The term is applied particularly where an articulation involves an unusual degree of lip-rounding which is not a requirement of the phonology. For example, speakers of standard RP English commonly labialize /r/ if the following vowel has some lip-rounding, e.g. in rude or roar; it is far less usual to labialize /r/ before unrounded vowels (e.g. in rat, right). The pronunciation of /r/ with no lip-rounding, and with no articulation of the forward part of the tongue, leads to the noticeable substitution of a /w/ sound.

labio-dental Pronounced with the constriction of the lower lip against the upper front teeth. English has two labio-dental phonemes, the voiceless and voiced pair of fricatives: /f/ as in fine, photograph, enough; /v/ as in vine, nephew, of. Other phonemes sometimes have a labio-dental realization as a result of assimilation. For example, the bilabial stops /p/ and /b/ can become labio-dental under the influence of a following labio-dental sound (e.g. in hopeful, observe).

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labio-velar A speech sound articulated at the velum and accompanied by some lip-rounding. The English sounds /w/, as in won, one, why, quick, suite, is classified as a labio-velar semivowel.

larynx The hollow muscular organ situated in the upper part of the trachea (the windpipe).

lateral Produced by a deformation of the tongue so that the air stream flows over its size, as in [l] in low. In RP there is a single lateral phoneme, /l/ which is usually voiced and non-fricative. The tip of the tongue articulates with the centre of the alveolar ridge, and air escapes at the side. Being a continuant, /l/ has some vowel-like qualities and is often syllabic (e.g. in apple, final, camel). It is, however, normally classified as a consonant.

lateral plosion

Release of a stop consonant at the side of the tongue. (Also called lateral release). When English /t/ or /d/ is followed by /l/, as in cattle, muddle, the alveolar stop can be released laterally instead of the usual way. This is known as a lateral plosion.

lax Articulated with less effort than is normal: contrasted with tense. Lax voice and tense voice are used by some phoneticians as middle terms among several others to describe different degrees of glottal stricture. Lax and tense are among the BINARY contrasts held in one theory of phonology to be among features of vowels.

lexical stress

Type of stress which refers to the accentual patterns of words. It is also called “word stress” or “word accent”.

lenis

A consonant sound made with relatively weak breath force. In English, voiced plosives and fricatives (e.g. /b/, /d/, /ð/) tend to be made with less muscular effort and less breath force than their voiceless counterparts. They are therefore called lenis consonants.

linking /r/ The pronunciation of a written word-final r as /r/ when the next word begins with a vowel. In standard RP a written word-final r is not pronounced before a pause or a fallowing consonant sound. However it is usually pronounced when the following word begins with a vowel (as in Here it is or far away).

lip position

The configuration of the lips during the articulation of a speech sound. Each English vowel has its own characteristic lip position, and these are variously described. One binary distinction is between rounded and unrounded. Other terms used are spread, neutral,

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close-rounded and open-rounded. English /i:/ (as in bead) is usually said with lip-spreading; /a:/ (as in hard) is pronounced with the lips neutrally open; while /u:/ (as in boot) is a rounded vowel, said with lip-rounding.

liquid

A cover term for /l/ and /r/ in English.

loudness A perceptual category, along with pitch, sound quality, and length, in terms of which speech sounds are heard. Loudness is primarily related to intensity, but the two are to be distinguished. Intensity is the speaker’s physical effort used in producing a speech sound and is objectively measurable. Loudness is a matter of the listener’s perception which is affected by factors such as pitch of voice and length.

low

Low fall [¸] or [ֻ ] low rise [،] or [ ِ]. 1. Of a vowel: produced with the tongue raised only a small degree towards the roof of the mouth. Also called OPEN. Contrasted with HIGH (or CLOSE). The sound /ǽ/ as in RP hat is a low front vowel, and /A:/ as in hard and heat is a low back vowel. 2. (In intonation) Of pitch: produced by relatively slow vibrations of the vocal cords. A low fall glides from a mid pitch to the lowest pitch of the speaker’s voice, while a low rise extends from a low pitch to somewhere about the middle range.

manner of articulation The method by which a speech sound is made, described in terms of the degree or type of closure of the speech organs. Manner of articulation, along with PLACE OF ARTICULATION, forms a major part of the framework used in describing the production of speech sounds, particularly consonants. According to the manner of articulation or the type of closure made by the vocal organs, consonants may be classified as: PLOSIVES, AFFRICATES, FRICATIVES, NASALS, LATERALS, FLAPS and SEMIVOWELS.

minimal pair

Two words that sound alike in all but one feature, e.g. bin versus fin.

monophthong A vowel in which there is no change in the position of the vocal organs during articulation. English monophthongs are usually referred to as PURE VOWELS.

monophthongize Change in vowel quality from a diphthong to a monophthong.

morphophonology

The study of the permitted combinations of phonemes within morphemes and of the phonemic variation which phonemes undergo in combination with one another.

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mutation (Especially in historical linguistics) A change in a phoneme in a particular word context under the influence of adjacent sounds. In the history of English, the most important form of mutation was i-mutation (or i/j- mutation umlaut). In English, the results of this mutation can be seen in: (a) the plurals of seven nouns (foot, goose, louse, man, mouse, tooth, woman) which are sometimes called mutation plurals. (b) The comparative and superlative elder, eldest (c) Derivate verbs such as bleed (beside blood), fill (beside full), heal (beside whole) etc. (d) Derivate nouns such as breadth (beside broad), length (beside long), filth (beside foul), etc. This cannot be considered to have a live functional role in modern English, however.

narrow transcription

A method of representing the sounds of spoken language in fine detail. Contrasted with Broad Transcription. A narrow transcription gives a much more accurate indication of actual speech sounds but more symbols and diacritics. The word tall in a broad transcription could appear as /t:l/. A narrow transcription would show, for example, that the t is aspirated and that the /l/ is dark.

nasal

A speech sound made with an audible escape of air through the nose while the soft palate is lowered. English has three nasals, all of which are consonant phonemes: bilabial /m/ as in more, whim, alveolar /n/ as in no, win, velar /ŋ/ represented by ng in wing and n in wink (and never world-initial in English).

nasalize Articulate with the air escaping through the nose rather than, as would be usual, through the mouth.

nasalization English vowels can become nasalized under the influence of adjoining nasal consonants, e.g. in manning or meaning.

nasal plosion

Or nasal release refers to the release of a normally oral plosive through the nose, usually under the influence of a following nasal. Thus nasal plosion may sometimes be heard in such words as: one-upmanship, submerge, cotton, not now, wooden.

nasal twang

A colloquial term used for the accent of an individual speaker in which sounds are more nasal than in the average speaker’s voice.

neutral Of the position of the lips: neither SPREAD nor ROUNDED. The term is often used in describing the articulation of vowels. Although vowel quality is largely dependent on the height of the tongue, vowel

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sounds are affected by lip position. Spread and neutral are sometimes lumped together as unrounded, but the two may be distinguished. Compare the typically spread lips required for English /i:/ in meet, seed with the more neutral læi position in mat or sad.

nucleus

The obligatory element of an intonation pattern consisting of the accented syllable of the most important word in an utterance. Nucleuses are analyzed into various types such as fall, rise , fall-rise, rise-fall , and these are further distinguished as high fall, low fall, etc. In a clause or sentence said unemphatically, the nucleus (nuclear pitch) occurs on the last accented syllable.(e.g. what are you doing?)

onomatopaeia

The formation of the word with sounds imitative of the thing which they refer to: the use of such a word e.g. cuckoo, cock-a-doodle-do, neigh, miaow. The term is sometimes extended to cover words in which a sound is felt to be appropriate to some aspect of meaning, although the words do not necessarily denote sounds or sources of sound. The combination sl- often occurring in words with unpleasant connotations, is sometimes cited as an example of such secondary onomatopoeia (e.g. slag, slattern, slaver, sleazy, slime, slop, sluggard, slurp, slut). Other terms for onomatopoeia are PHONAESTHESIA and SOUND SYMBOLISM.

open

Of a vowel: made with the tongue low in the mouth, and the mouth somewhat open. (Also called LOW). Contrasted with CLOSE. English RP /æ/ as in hat is the most open front vowel; /A:/ as in father, car, heart, clerk, half, is the most open back vowel. Compare HALF-OPEN.

oral

Of a speech sound: articulated with the velum raised. All normal English sounds, except for the three nasal consonants, have oral ‘escape’ or ‘release’ that is, the air is expelled through the mouth, and there is no nasal resonance.

organ of speech A part of the mouth and adjoining organs involved in the production of speech sounds: e.g. the lips, alveolar ridge, soft palate, larynx, etc.

palatal Produced with constriction of the front of the tongue against the hard palate, as for /j/ in ewe. The term tends to be restricted to consonants. British (RP)English has one distinctly palatal phoneme, the sound /j/ which is heard at the beginning of yes/jes/ or useful /ju:sf(ə)l/ and before the vowel in cure /kjυə/ .This sound is commonly classified as a SEMI-VOWEL, approximant or frictionless continuant rather than as a full consonant.

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palatalization

A rather common process in which the phoneme /j/ causes a preceding phoneme to be articulated in the palatal region. Palatalization may occur across word boundaries or within a word: /d/+/j/ -> /dZ/ (e.g. did you); /t/+ /j/ -> /tS/ (e.g. hit you); /z/+ /j/ -> /Z/ (e.g. please you); /s/ /+ /j/ -> /∫/ (e.g. issue).

palatalize Make (a sound) palatal by articulating it with the FRONT of the tongue raised towards the hard palate. Use of this term is mainly confined to secondary articulations, that is, to speech sounds where this articulatory feature is secondary to the position of the speech organs. This is in fact an essential part of four English phonemes which also have an alveolar articulation. (i.e. /d, t, z, s/)

palate

The roof of the mouth. In the articulatory description of speech sounds the upper surface of the mouth behind the alveolar ridge is divided into the bony HARD PALATE and the soft palate or VELUM.

palato-alveolar. Designating a speech-sound in which the TIP (or TIP and BLADE) of the tongue articulates with the alveolar ridge, while at the same time the FRONT of the tongue (the part behind the tip and the blade) is raised towards the hard palate. English has two pairs of palato-alveolar consonants consisting of one voiced and one voiceless consonant each. - the palato-alveolar affricates: /t∫/ as in church, nature

/dZ/ as in judge, general - the palato-alveolar fricatives: /∫/ as in shop, machine, sugar

/Z/ as in prestige. pause

A break in speaking. Connected speech is more of a continuum than written language suggests by its spaces between words. Pauses do however occur in speech; obviously for breathing and also for communicative reasons at grammatical boundaries. Various efforts have been made to incorporate an analysis of pauses into a theory of speech.

pharyngeal Of speech sounds: articulated with the roof of the tongue pulled back in the pharynx, the cavity behind the nose and the mouth connecting them to the oesophagus. There are no pharyngeal consonant phonemes in standard English. The English vowel /A:/ can be described as pharyngeal; but place of articulation is not usually part of the description of the vowels, and so this vowel is normally described simply as an open back vowel.

pharyngealize

Articulate (a speech sound) with the roof of the tongue retracted so as to obstruct the air-stream at the pharynx.

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phonemic principle Principle that points to a direct letter-to-phoneme correspondence as in fog, got, did, pen, fit, lest, etc.

phonotactics That part of phonology which comprises or deals with the rules governing the possible phoneme sequence of a particular language.

pitch The relative height of the tone with which a sound or syllable is pronounced. Acoustically, the height of the human voice depends on the rapidity of the vibrations of the vocal cords. Various typical pitch changes/pitch patterns or tones have been identified, e.g. fall, rise and level. In tone languages, identical syllables with different patterns or tones form words with totally different meanings. In non-tone languages (e.g. English and most other European languages), basic word meaning is not affected by pitch variations (though emotional attitudes may be distinguished) and intonation patterns are studied over sequences of words.

place of articulation. (A part of) one of the vocal organs primarily involved in the production of a particular speech sound. Place of articulation, along with MANNER of articulation, is a major part of the framework for describing the production of speech sounds, especially. For this purpose, the vocal organs are diagrammatically divided up and the places labeled, as BILABIAL, LABIO-DENTAL, ALVEOLAR, PALATAL VELAR, UVULAR, PHARYNGEAL, and GLOTTAL. Place of articulation is less satisfactory as a parameter for vowels, which are more dependent on tongue-height, lip-rounding, etc.

plosion

Sudden expulsion of air as the final stage of a PLOSIVE; the release stage.

plosive (A consonant sound) that has total closure at some place in the vocal organs, followed by a `hold` or compression stage and a third and final release stage. (Also called stop or stop consonant) The English plosives consist of three pairs of sounds (each pair a corresponding voiceless and voiced sound): /p/ and /b/ as in poor ,bore, tap, tab (bilabial plosives) /t/ and /d/ as in true, drew; cat, cad (alveolar plosives) /k/ and /g/ as in cold, gold; whack, wag (velar plosives).

postvocalic

Of a consonant: occurring after a vowel. The articulation of a phoneme is affected by its phonetic context, which may condition the use of different allophones. Thus in RP, a postvocalic /l/ followed by silence or another consonant is always dark.

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prehead That part of a tone (tone unit) consisting of the unaccented syllables before the head e.g. I thought it was awful.

primary stress The principal stress in a word. Primary stress (or primary accent) (marked with a superior vertical bar preceding the relevant syllable ['] contrasts with secondary stress (marked with an inferior vertical bar [,] and even tertiary stress. The difference can be heard in long words, (e.g. polytechnic, appetizing) which have their own basic patterns, even though the pattern may be modified by the overall intonation of the utterance in which it occurs. Primary stress is always on a syllable where pitch change can potentially occur.

progressive assimilation

Assimilation in which elements are changed to match features of elements that precede them: e.g. the ending –s is voiced /z/ in words like sees /si:z/, but in writes or weeps it is assimilated to the preceding voiceless consonant: /rats/, /wi:ps/.

prominence The perceived importance or conspicuousness of speech sounds. What the listener perceives as `loudness` may be due to other factors, such as stress, pitch, phoneme quality and duration rather than simply greater volume sound.

prosodic

Of phonetic features: extending beyond individual phonemes. (Also called suprasegmental).

prosody

A phonological feature having as its domain more than one segment. Prosodies, in some models, seem to be synonymous with the class of supra-segmental features such as intonation, stress, and juncture.

pure vowel A vowel made without a glide: contrasted with DIPHTONG. It is not in fact possible for a vowel to be held without any movement for the speech organs involved, but some vowels change relatively little during articulation. English (RP) has twelve pure vowels: /i:/ see, me, wheat, piece, machine, /I/ fit, pretty, private, build, /e/ bed, head, many, /æ/ pan, plain, /A:/ far, bath, heart, clerk, calm, aunt, // dog, what, cough, sausage, /:/ force, saw, bought, daughter, /u:/ food, who, soup, rude, blue, chew, /υ/ put, woman, good, could, /Λ/ hut, son, enough, blood, does,

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/ə:/ bird, earn, turn, word, journal, /ə/ [always unstressed] ago, mother,

quality

The distinguished characteristic(s) of a sound. The distinctive features of a sound, which make it recognizable as a particular phoneme, constitute its sound quality, which is distinct from such features as length, pitch or loudness. Hence the difference between two phonemes (e.g. between the vowels of pat and part) can be said to be a QUALITATIVE difference.

quantity

The relative time taken in the articulation of speech sounds. This is length as perceived by the listener.

Received Pronunciation

The pronunciation of that variety of British English widely considered to be least regional, being originally used by ‘educated’ speakers in southern England. (Also called Received Standard English. Abbreviated RP). The use of Received in the context of pronunciation variety was initiated by the phonetician A. J. Ellis (1869); the term Received Pronunciation was given pedagogical and quasi-academic status in the studies and dictionaries of the phonetician Daniel Jones (1881-1967).

resonance Transmission of air vibration in the vocal tract. The significance of this term is that resonance at different frequencies in the vocal tract help give speech sounds, and particularly vowels, their distinct and characteristic patterns.

retroflex Articulated with the tip of the tongue turned back behind the alveolar ridge. A retroflex articulation is characteristic of the pronunciation of the phoneme /r/ in many accents of English (e.g. in Ireland), though not generally in RP. In some rhotic accents (that is where a postvocalic /r/ is pronounced in such words as birth, heard, term) anticipatory retroflexion may affect the vowel, making it an r-coloured vowel. Alternatively, such words may be articulated with a single vowel sound. Retroflexed /t/ and /d/ are characteristic of the pronunciation of some Indian speakers.

reversal A slip of the tongue in which two words or two phonetic segments are interchanged.

rhotic Designating a pronunciation in which the consonant sound /r/ has not been lost before another consonant or a pause. (Also called r-pronouncing, r-full). In Scottish, Irish, General American and a number of regional English accents /r/ is pronounced before a consonant (as in bird, are fine) and in final position before a pause (e.g. That’s not fair!).

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rhythm The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.

rim The edge of the tongue, in particular the sides (excluding the tip). The term is used in describing the pronunciation of the lateral /l/.

rise

In the intonation of a syllable or longer utterance, a nuclear pitch change from relatively low to relatively high. Various kinds of rise are distinguished, such as the low rise [,], starting near the bottom of an individual speaker’s pitch range and the high rise [`], starting higher and, of course, going higher still.

rise-fall A tone in which the pitch rises and then falls [^]. This tone often conveys feelings of surprise, approval or disapproval.

rising

Of a diphthong having most of the length and stress, the greater prominence on the second element. This type of diphthong is unusual in English.

roll

An articulation characterized by a series of rapid closure or taps of the tongue (or the uvula) (also called trill). Articulate (the sound /r/) with a roll. The /r/ phoneme, normally, a frictionless continuant in RP, is sometimes pronounced with a lingual roll (rapid taps of the tongue against the back of the tongue).

schwa The name of the most frequent vowel phoneme in English, the weak unstressed vowel /ə/ that frequently occurs in small function words like the, and and for, especially in running speech.

secondary

Designating the next most important stress after the primary stress.

secondary stress Type of stress that involves less energy and is heard as less loud. than primary stress: microcomputer /’maIkrəυkəm,pju:tə/ (primary, secondary), anti-aircraft /;ænti’eəkrA:ft/ (secondary, primary)

segment The term is particularly used in descriptions of speech and the analysis of a language into phonemes.

segmental

Referring to phonemes, i.e. consonants and vowels

semi-vowel A speech sound produced in the same way as a vowel but unable to form a syllable on its own, as /w/ in way. A sound which is

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phonetically vowel-like because it is a glide but phonologically consonant-like in being marginal to a syllable. In English, the phonemes /j/ as in you, use, view, and /w/ as in way, suave, choir, are semi-vowels.

sentence stress

Type of stress which refers to the way in which some words in an utterance are stressed and others not. In general, lexical words (nouns, verbs, etc) are stressed, and form words (articles, prepositions, etc.) are not. Strictly speaking, this kind of stress is not a characteristic of the sentence but of the tone unit.

sibilant

(A speech sound) made with a hissing effect. Sibilant describes an auditory quality, a hissing perceived by the listener. In English, four fricatives phonemes are sibilants: /z/ as in zoo, rise, dessert /∫/ as in ship, chute, issue, ocean; /з/ as in genre, mirage, vision, leisure plus the AFFRICATES /t∫/ and /dз/. They contrast with non-sibilant fricatives.

silent

Designating a letter in the written form of a word which is not sounded in speech. Given the vagaries of English spelling, many letters could be said to be silent in certain conditions. The term however tends to be applied particularly to silent e, as in done, infinite, corpse, have (although in many cases, such as hope, rate as compared with hop, rat. Final e in fact indicates the pronunciation of the preceding vowel - it is children’s ‘magic e’.

sonorant (A sound) produced with the vocal organs so positioned that spontaneous voicing is possible; a vowel, a glide, or a liquid or nasal consonant.

sound symbolism

A (fancied) representative relationship between the sound making up a word and its meaning. Various kinds of sound and meaning correlations are said to exist; specialized terms include ONOMATOPOEIA (e.g. chiffchaff- warbler whose song alternates a higher and a lower note) ICONICITY, PHONASTHESIA, etc.

sound system

The phonemic system of a language.

speech chain The series of links between speaker and listener. The speech chain, beginning with the speaker’s brain and ending with the listener’s brain, is of considerable interest to phoneticians. What happens in the brains of listener and speaker are the most difficult parts to understand, but considerable progress has been made with the intermediate stages.

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speech organ Any part of the mouth, nose, throat, etc. involved in the pronunciation of speech sounds. Hence the lips, alveolar ridge, soft palate, larynx, and so on, are all referred to as speech organs and are sometimes distinguished as ARTICULATORS.

speech sound

An elementary sound occurring in a language, considered phonetically without regard to the oppositions and combinations in which it may occur (which are the concern of phonology)

spelling pronunciation The pronunciation of a word according to its written form.

stress

The accent or emphasis on a syllable generally produced by higher pitch and greater intensity or voice; stress is classified as primary, secondary, tertiary or weak or depending in its relative intensity. The terms stress and accent are often used interchangeable, but some phoneticians use these terms more precisely, relating stress to the energy involved in the production of speech. Acoustically, stress is perceived as involving greater loudness and greater force than the ordinary syllable pulse (or chest pulse) Lexical stress (also called word stress or word accent) refers to the stress (or accent) patterns of words. In English, these are for the most part fixed for each word, though the stress occurs on different syllables in different words, e.g. ‘yesterday, to’morrow, under’stand. Tertiary stress is recognized by some phoneticians. Sentence stress refers to the way in which some words in an utterance are stressed, and others are not. In general, lexical words (nouns, verbs, etc) are stressed, and form words (articles, etc) are not. Tonic stress is stress on the NUCLEUS (also called nucleus stress)

stressed syllable A syllable that sounds louder, has clearer vowels, begins with stronger consonants, and may be longer than other syllables in a word or phrase; changes in pitch often occur on stressed syllables.

stress shift A phenomenon of connected speech. Words containing secondary stress may change their stress patterns, as in The prin’cess but the ,Princess ‘Royal ,number thir’teen but ,thirteen ‘people.

stress-timed Of a language: having the stressed syllables occurring at regular intervals, irrespective of how many unstressed syllables there may be. English is predominantly stressed-timed, in contrast to syllable-timed languages (such as French) in which the syllable occurs at more or less regular intervals. Thus, in the sentence, ‘Both of them are mine’, the unstressed syllables (of them are) are compressed with vowel weakening (/əv ∂əm ə/), while the monosyllable mine takes roughly as much time as the preceding Both of them are. This

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does not mean that all sequences containing one stress are of absolutely equal length, but the rhythms of stress-timed and syllable-timed languages are noticeably different.

strong Having some prominence of phonetic quality. Contrasted with WEAK. strong form: the form of a FORM WORD that contains a strong vowel. Many FORM WORDS (or GRAMMATICAL words) have two pronunciations: a strong form and a weak form. The strong form, containing a strong vowel, is used when the word is spoken in isolation or occurs in a prominent position (e.g. at the end of a sentence) or is stressed for emphasis.

strong vowel A stressed vowel or any instance of a vowel that retains the same quality in unstressed position as it has when stressed (contrasted with WEAK vowel) All vowels in stressed syllables are clearly identifiable and therefore strong.

suprasegmental

Designating a feature of intonation extending beyond the phoneme. Contrasted with SEGMENTAL. Features of intonation such as pitch, stress and juncture are suprasegmental.

syllabic

Relating to or constituting a syllable. In some phonetic analyses, syllabic and non-syllabic are contrasted features, particular in relation to those consonants which can be pronounced as separate syllables.

syllabic consonant

Consonant which has a syllabic function, such as /m/ in the pronunciation of mm, /n/ as in button and /l/ as in apple. Some phoneticians describe these sounds as actually having an extremely weak /ə/ in front of them. In rhotic accents such as American English, /r/ also sometimes has a syllabic function, for example in words such as metre, where the final syllable in a non-rhotic accent would be /ə/.

syllabification

The division of a word into syllables. Phonetic syllabification and orthographic syllabification do not necessarily correspond. For example, the word syllable itself is phonetically a three-syllable word, but when written across two lines it could only reasonably be split at one place, i.e. as syll-able.

syllable A unit of pronunciation forming the whole or part of a word and having one vowel phoneme (a pure vowel, a diphthong, or a syllabic consonant), often with one or more consonants before and after it (up to three consonants before and up to four after it).

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syllable-timed Of a language: having each syllable pronounced with roughly the same duration. Romanian is considered to be syllable-timed, whereas English is STRESSED-TIMED, but these are tendencies rather than absolute distinctions.

synchronic elision A term used to refer to instances of elision taking place in present-day English.

suprasegmental

Referring to features of speech that extend over more than one phoneme: length, stress, pitch, intonation.

tail

That part of tune unit that comes after the nucleus and consists of stressed or unstressed syllables. E.g. Isn't she pretty? A tail can contain stressed words (but without pitch change). e.g. Well, 'say something, then.

tone

The way in which pitch is used in language, a distinctive pitch or pitch contour. In languages such as English, objective word meanings are not affected by intonation, although different tones can convey different attitudes. Thus, All right with differing intonation can convey grudging acquiescence, enthusiastic agreement, a question, sarcastic disagreement and so on.

tone unit The basic unit of intonation. It is also called intonation pattern. A tone unit/group must contain a nuclear tone (a nucleus), that is marked by pitch change. Optionally, it may contain a pre-head and/or a head before the nucleus and a final tail, e.g. I’ve ,just ,told you.

tonic stress

Stress on the nucleus. It is also called nucleus stress.

tonic syllable A particularly prominent syllable in an utterance which is prominent not only because it is stressed, but because it carries a change of pitch, usually a fall or rise (or more complicated variant) but occasionally a level pitch. A tonic syllable forms the nucleus of a tone unit.

tongue The principal organ of speech. The tongue is involved in some way in the production of most speech sounds and therefore figures in articulatory descriptions. Vowel articulations are described in terms of tongue HEIGHT and whether the FRONT or BACK or CENTRE of tongue is highest.

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transcription The representation of spoken language in phonetic symbols. The aim of transcription is to indicate speech sounds consistently. But transcription also makes it possible to represent the assimilation and elision of actual speech and (if required) the idiosyncrasies of an individual's speech on a particular occasion. The most widely used script (or NOTATION) is the International Phonetic Alphabet, usually with adaptation according to the level of accuracy required and according to the particular purpose of the transcription. Transcriptions are primarily PHONETIC or PHONEMIC. A phonetic transcription aims to represent actual speech sounds objectively and accurately, according to articulatory and auditory criteria. A high degree of accuracy can be achieved with special additional symbols if necessary and diacritics indicating such things as aspiration or the nasalization of vowels. A very detailed transcription is a NARROW transcription; one with few details is BROAD.

transition

A glide from one sound to another. A technical term used to describe, for example, a plosive (or stop) consonant in terms of three stages: the closing stage, the hold stage and the release (or explosion) stage. In the first stage, a transition (or non-glide) may link the preceding sound to the beginning of the plosive, and in the final stage another transition (this time an off-glide) may link the plosive to the following sound.

triphthong

A vowel sound in which the vocal organs move from one position through a second to a third. There are no triphthongs among the English phonemes, but such sounds occur when a closing diphthong is followed by /ə/. At least, they theoretically occur in a careful pronunciation of such words as: player /pleIə/, shire /∫aIə/, royal /roIəl/, slower /sləυə/, hour /aυə/ However, the glides between the elements of such triphthongs may be very slight, and the sounds actually articulated and heard are often more like diphthongs or even single long vowels.

trisyllabic

Having three syllables. As with the related terms, MONOSYLLABIC and DISYLLABIC, the term is particularly used with reference to adjectives and adverbs. Trisyllabic or longer adjectives and adverbs have to take periphrastic comparison. (e.g. more delicious, most extraordinary, more hastily).

tune The pitch pattern heard over a whole tune unit. With an utterance consisting of a single syllable (e.g. Yes!), tune and tone unit are the same, so the terms may be confused. A tune, however, depends on the overall pitch pattern and the height of any prehead or head (i.e. whether this is high or low).

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unaspirated Articulated without an audible release of air. For example, the English plosives /p/, /t/, /k/ have little or no aspiration when occurring initially in unstressed syllables (e.g. per’mission), when preceded by s- (e.g. story) or in final position, i.e. followed by silence (e.g. Bad luck!).

unmarked Not marked. E.g. voiceless [t] in German is unmarked ([- voice]) in opposition to voiced [d] ([+ voice]); singular book is unmarked ([- plural]) in opposition to plural books ([+ plural]).

unrounded (Vowel, consonant) produced either without rounding of the lips or specifically with the lips spread: e.g. the [b] and [] of bin, as opposed to both the [b] and the [u] of book.

unstressed syllable A syllable that tends to be weaker, shorter and more reduced than a

stressed syllable in a word or phrase; major pitch changes do not begin on unstressed syllables.

unvoiced

Voiceless, especially as the result of devoicing.

unilateral Of articulation with the air released (rather unusually) around only one side of tongue. Contrasted with BILATERAL.

utterance

A stretch of spoken language which is often preceded by silence and followed by silence or a change of speaker. It is often used as an alternative to sentence in conversation analysis since it is difficult to apply the traditional characteristics of a written sentence to spoken language.

utterance and utterance meaning

Anything spoken on a specific occasion. Often opposed to ‘sentence’: e.g. the words ‘Come here!’, spoken by a specific speaker at a specific time, from an utterance which is one instance of a sentence Come here! Hence utterance meaning, as the meaning of something as spoken on a specific occasion, vs. sentence meaning, as the meaning that a sentence is said to have independently of any such occasion.

velar

Sound formed using the soft palate (or velum) and the back of the tongue like /k/ in kick, /η/ (velar) in tongue and /g/ in get.

velarization The addition of a secondary, velar articulation to a speech sound. Secondary articulation in which the back of the tongue is raised towards the soft palate (velum). E.g. an ‘l’ at the end of a word is velarized ([l]) in many forms of English.

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velarize To add a secondary, velar articulation to a speech sound. The so-called dark l allophone of the English /l/ is a velarized sound, articulated with the back of the tongue raised towards the velum.

velum The soft palate. The velum is the back part of the roof of the mouth, lying behind the bony hard palate, with the UVULA at its own back extremity. The velum is raised for ORAL sounds, and, lower for NASAL sounds.

vibration

See VOCAL CORDS. vocal cords

Two folds of muscle and connective tissue situated in the larynx, which are opened and closed during the production of speech. (Also vocal folds). The main function of the vocal cords in the production of speech is to vibrate and produce VOICED sounds. This happens when they are held closely enough together for them to vibrate when subjected to air pressure from the lungs. When the cords are held rather wider apart they do not vibrate, and VOICELESS sounds are produced or a GLOTTAL STOP.

vocalic

Vowel-like, designating a sound produced with a comparatively free passage of air (i.e. with no major obstruction).

vocal tract 1. The whole of the air passage above the LARYNX, including the ORAL tract (the mouth pharyngeal area and the NASAL tract (the air passage through the nose when the soft palate lowered). 2. The entire area involved in the production of speech sounds, including the larynx, trachea, lungs.

vocoid A vowel phonetically defined by the way it is produced, as distinguished from a vowel in a phonological sense, defined by its role in the structure of words and syllables. Thus, in English, the semivowels [j] (as in yes) and [w] (as in wed) are vocoids, though phonologically consonants.

voiced A speech sound made with the vocal cords vibrating. In standard English, all the vowels are voiced, as are thirteen of the consonants and the semi-vowels.

voiceless

A speech sound made without vibration of the vocal cords. There are nine voiceless phonemes in standard English, all of them consonants.

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voicing A feature of vowels by some consonants produced by vibration of the vocal cords as in zip versus sip. Although voicing is part of the description of all vowel phonemes in English and of a majority of consonants, the amount of voicing in the production of a particular phoneme, in a particular utterance, may be affected by phonological context.

vowel

A speech sound produced with the vocal tract quite open. Vowels typically function as the nucleus of a syllable.

vowel height One of the main parameters in the classification of vowels. In the system of cardinal vowels, a close vowel is described as one produced with the highest point of the tongue as close as possible to the roof of the mouth. An open vowel is one produced with the highest point of the tongue as far away as possible from the roof of the mouth; close-mid (or half-close) and open-mid (or half-open) represent intermediate points, perceived as auditorily equidistant, between these. Alternatively, close vowels are ‘high’, open vowels are ‘low’, and a vowel at an intermediate point is ‘mid’.

vowel quality

The characteristics that distinguishes one vowel from another. The auditory character of a vowel as determined by the posture of the vocal organs above the larynx. Thus the quality of [a] remains the same, whether it is produced loudly or softly, or with a high pitch or a low pitch. But its quality is different from that of [i], which is produced with the lower jaw and tongue much closer to the roof of the mouth or that of nasal [ã], in which the passage through the nose are open.

vowel quantity

Length as a feature of a vowel articulation.

weak Of the phonetic quality: obscures, lacking prominence. Contrasted with STRONG

weak form

The pronunciation of a form word (grammatical word) when unaccented and in a non-prominent position. As grammatical words usually receive little stress or prominence. Their weak forms (containing weak vowels) are their usual pronunciation. Common words having weak forms are: (determiners) a, an, the, some (auxiliaries) am, are, be, been, is, was, were, can, could, do, does, had, has, have, must, shall, should, will, would; (nouns) saint, Sir; (prepositions) at, for, from, of, to; (pronouns) he, her, him, his, me, she, them, us, we, who, you, your; (conjunctions and adverbs) and, but, as, not, than, that, there.

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word stress Stress that is intrinsic to a word, as opposed to sentence stress. The term ‘lexical stress’ may be used of stress associated with a unit of a lexicon, as opposed to ‘morphological stress’ determined e.g. by a specific affix.

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Practice sets

This section is designed to reinforce theory and includes further exercises that can be done in class, in the language lab or at home. The tasks (based on exercises taken from Malcolm Mann and Steve Taylore-Knowles. 2003. Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking. Oxford: Macmillan) have been grouped in four practice sets, each set being approximately four hours long and containing:

• listening-comprehension activities; • vocabulary exercises; • spelling exercises. The first type of exercise (listening-comprehension activities)

asks you to listen to samples of spoken English recorded on the tape so that you become accustomed to the speed at which people on the recording speak. The focus is on English as it is actually spoken, including reductions, simplifications, variations. It is important to listen very carefully to the directions and to each recorded person. When you repeat words and sentences aloud you should always try to imitate the overall rhythm, pausing, linking, relative syllable length and intonation. Both fluency (saying everything smoothly without stopping) and accuracy (saying all vowels and consonants correctly without dropping any) need to be worked on. In order to better connect practice with theory we have mentioned (within brackets) the unit the activities relate to.

The second type of exercises (vocabulary exercises) provides vocabulary development and are labeled as Word perfect in Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book.

The third type of exercises (spelling exercises) has been included to help you improve your spelling and writing skill.

SET I • listening-comprehension activities

Activity 1 (related to Unit 1, section 1.4) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise B, p. 5. Listen to the five people talking about films and make a list of words containing long vowels.

Activity 2 (related to Unit 1) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise A, Part 1, p. 32. Listen to the people speaking in eight different situations and pay attention to the pronunciation of diphthongs.

Activity 3 (related to Unit 2) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, Grammar Focus, p. 81. Listen to the five statements and pay attention to the pronunciation of the -ing ending. Record yourself saying the same sentences.

Activity 4 (related to Unit 2)

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For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, exercise E, p. 84. Listen to each series of four words and group the words which have the same vowel sound.

Activity 5 (related to Unit 2) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, Grammar Focus, p. 27. Listen to the recording, identify and note down the clues to British English (e.g. the pronunciation of /r/ and /A:/, or the stress in the word museum).

• vocabulary exercises

For these activities see the Word perfect section in Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, pp. 7, 13, 19 and 25

• spelling exercises

For these activities see Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking. p. 15 (Grammar Focus) and p. 54 (exercise E).

SET II • listening-comprehension activities

Activity 6 (related to Unit 3, section 3.2) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise I, p. 7. Listen to the descriptions and spell the words that contain /ð/ (voiced th) and /Θ/ (voiceless th). What is the usual spelling for voiced <th> at the end of words? Do function words begin with voiced <th> or voiceless <th>?

Activity 7(related to Unit 3, section 3.3) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise D, p. 5. Listen to the five speakers and identify the pronunciation of the -s ending in different phonetic environments. Make a list of the pronunciations you identify.

Activity 8 (related to Unit 3, section 3.4) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise G, p. 84. Listen to the six statements, write them down and then underline the letters that are not pronounced.

Activity 9 (related Unit 3) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, Grammar Focus, p. 9. Write the sentences said by the five people.

Activity 10 (related to Unit 4, sections 4.2 and 4.3) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, Grammar Focus, p. 57. Listen to the people talking and note down cases of elision and assimilation.

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• vocabulary exercises For these activities see the Word perfect section in Mann and

Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, pp. 31, 37, 43 and 49.

• spelling exercises

For these activities see Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, p. 54 (exercise F) and p. 57 (Grammar Focus).

SET III • listening-comprehension activities

Activity 11 (related to Unit 4, section 4.4.1) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise B, Part 4, p. 93. Listen to the radio interview and pay attention to the weak form of for.

Activity 12 (related to Unit 5, section 5.4) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, Grammar Focus, p. 93. Notice the accentual pattern of the word when it functions as a verb or as a noun.

Activity 13 (related to Unit 5) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise H, p. 85. Look at the sentences and put a stress mark before each syllable you expect to hear stressed. Check your stress marking by listening to the recording.

Activity 14 (related to Unit 5) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise C, p. 89. Listen to the four statements and try to guess their meanings. The words the speakers stress will help you decide which of the two options given in the book is true for each speaker.

Activity 15 (related to Unit 5) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise A, Part 2, p. 9. Listen to the radio interview with the stunt man and identify the stressed syllables in the stunt man’s replies. Mark these syllables in your notes.

• vocabulary exercises

For these activities see the Word perfect section in Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, pp. 55, 61, 67 and 73.

• spelling exercises

For these activities see Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, p. 59 (exercise C) and p. 63 (Grammar Focus).

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SET IV

• listening-comprehension activities Activity 16 (related to Unit 5, section 5.7.1) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise A, Part 1, p. 80. Listen to the people talking in eight different situations and write down the derived words containing stress-moving (strong) suffixes.

Activity 17 (related to Unit 6, section 6.4) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise B, p. 89. Listen to the recordings of the four speakers and write down the words they stress most.

Activity 18 (related to Unit 6, sections 6.4 and 6.5) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise E, p. 90. Listen to the same utterance said by the four different people who change its intonation pattern. What word is stressed in each case and what is the meaning conveyed by each of the four speakers?

Activity 19 (related to Unit 6, section 6.5.3) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, Grammar Focus, p. 21. Listen to the five people, pay attention to the intonation contour of the question tags you hear, and mark it in your notes. Try asking each tag question using the same intonation pattern.

Activity 20 (related to Unit 6) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise G, p. 90. Notice that English tag questions have rising intonation when the speaker is not sure about the information given and falling intonation when the speaker is sure that the statement is true.

Activity 21 (related to Unit 6) For this activity see Skills for First Certificate. Listening and

Speaking, exercise A, Part 1, p. 8. Listen to the people speaking in eight different situations and pay attention to the way OK, well, all right, yeah, right are pronounced. Write down these pronunciations.

• vocabulary exercises

For these activities see the Word perfect section in Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, pp. 79, 85, 91, 97.

• spelling exercises

For these activities see Mann and Taylore-Knowles’ book, Skills for First Certificate. Listening and Speaking, p. 87 (Grammar Focus) and p. 99 (Grammar Focus).