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DOSSIER ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION DOSSIER

Index UNIT 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 3 Phonetics................................................................................................................................ 3 Articulatory phonetics .................................................................................................... 4 Phonology .............................................................................................................................. 5 The organs of speech...................................................................................................... 5 English accents ................................................................................................................ 5 UNIT 2: VOCALIC SOUNDS.................................................................................................... 7 The English Diphthongs ..................................................................................................... 7 UNIT 3: CONSONANT SOUNDS ............................................................................................ 8 UNIT 4: INTRODUCTION TO SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY ............................... 9 Word-stress ........................................................................................................................... 9 Weak and strong forms ................................................................................................ 10 Sentence Stress.................................................................................................................. 11 Rhythm in English .............................................................................................................. 11 The tone unit ........................................................................................................................ 12 UNIT 5: CONNECTED SPEECH AND SANDHI FORMS ................................................. 14 Styles of pronunciation .................................................................................................... 15 GLOSSARY .............................................................................................................................. 16 Unit 1...................................................................................................................................... 16 Unit 2...................................................................................................................................... 16 Unit 3...................................................................................................................................... 17 Unit 4...................................................................................................................................... 17 Unit 5...................................................................................................................................... 18

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UNIT 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION Phonetics Phonetics is a science that studies the speech sounds, phones, or the phonic substance. It involves allophones, variants of the abstract units called phonemes. Phonetics is studied by phoneticians, who are concerned with sounds and their variety. They examine how sounds are produced and used, how we can capture these sounds into a paper, and how we can recognize them. Thanks to gestures, we can try to know what is going on inside someone’s vocal tract. Also, we can admit phonetics and phonology complement each another as we need to know how they work and the way they are organized. Every speech sound is represented by phonetic symbols (a separate system to represent the actual sounds of the human language). These symbols are included distinctively in an alphabet, where they are classified in vowels (“i:”,” ᴐ:”, “e”, etc) and consonants (“p”, “b”, “t”, etc). The system of transcriptions varies whether details are taken account (narrow) or not (broad). The human speech follows a speech-chain, which starts in the speaker’s brain and ends in the listener’s brain. There are three stages in the transmission of sound: •

Articulatory stage: activation of muscles to produce the sound.

•

Acoustic stage: sound waves are produced with the movement of the muscles and reach the listener’s ear.

•

Auditory stage: interpretation of the vibration of the sounds by the listener’s brain.

These stages constitute the domain of the three main branches of phonetics: •

Articulatory phonetics: studies speech production.

•

Acoustic phonetics: studies speech sound.

•

Auditory phonetics: studies the way we perceive speech sounds.

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Articulatory phonetics Articulatory phonetics are differentiated in consonants and vowels. The production of the first ones involves some sort of obstruction to the airstream in the vocal tract. Consonants are classified according to the place of articulation, the manner, and the state of the glottis. •

According to the place of articulation, consonants are sorted into: labial, bilabial, labiodental, coronal, dental, interdental, alveolar, retroflex, palatoalveolar, palatal, dorsal, velar, glottal.

•

•

According to the manner of articulation, consonants can be classified as: ▪

Plosives: closure, hold, release, and post-release phases.

▪

Fricatives: the air stream is pushed out and a friction may be heard.

▪

Affricates: a sequence of a stop followed by a homorganic fricative.

▪

Nasals: complete closure in the oral cavity.

▪

Approximants: approximation of the articulating organs with no friction.

▪

Laterals: air escapes through one or both sides of the tongue.

▪

Tops: An active articulator taps against a passive one.

▪

Rolls: Rapid succession of taps where intermittent closures happen.

According to the state of the glottis/voicing, consonants are regarded as voiced and voiceless.

The production of vowels involves less obstruction than consonants because of the air, which passes from the larynx to the lips. Consonants and vowels are the basic segments of speech. Then, larger units are word and finally sentences. Application of phonetics include: •

Forensic phonetics: phonetics referring to research for the legal system.

•

Speech recognition: translation of spoken words into text.

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Phonology Phonology is a science that studies the selection, function, and organization of speech sounds into a given system. This involves phonemes (the smallest phonological unit that can produce differences in meaning). The first stage of phonological analysis is an exhaustive phonetic analysis. The second one determines which sounds are redundant and which phonetic. The allophones of a phoneme can be in complementary distribution (when they are mutually exclusive) or in a free variation (when they are not conditioned by the context). We can study phonemes in detail, in fact, phonotactics study how sounds can combine in a language and analyze the syllable structure. In suprasegmental phonology, the study of stress, rhythm, and intonation has led to new approaches to phonology.

The organs of speech All the sounds we make when we speak are the result of muscles contracting.

Chest

Lungs

produces flow of air

Larynx modifies flow of air

Vocal tract

Mouth gives shape to sound

All speech sounds are initiated by a pulmonic regressive airstream which is pushed through the larynx and then goes from glottis to vocal track. Larynx produces audible vibrations as the result of air being forced through a narrow opening between the vocal cords. The human speech mechanism has three resonators: the pharynx, the nasal cavity, and the oral cavity (the most important one).

English accents There are two main accents used to teach English pronunciation: “RP (Received Pronunciation)” and “General American (GenAm)”. RP belongs to British pronunciation, while GenAm belongs to the USA.

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In the British Isles, there is a big variety of accents, and speakers speak some type of a local accent. Speakers of RP are a minority. Any two English accents can differ from each other in four ways: •

Systemic: differences in the number of specific sounds.

•

Distributional: which sounds are used in which words.

•

Lexical: some words have, incidentally, different pronunciations.

•

Phonetic: essentially the same phonemes are realized in different ways.

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UNIT 2: VOCALIC SOUNDS Vowels are produced with an open approximation of the articulators and syllabic function. The different characteristics of the vowels depend on the shape of the passage above the larynx. The differences produced by changing the shape of the mouth resonator are called differences in vowel quality: •

Sustained: if the tongue stays in a more or less constant position (pure vowels).

•

Glide: if the tongue moves from a vowel sound to another within the same syllable (diphthongs).

The English pure vowels: •

/i:/

•

/ɔː/

•

/ɪ/

•

/ʊ/

•

/e/

•

/uː/

•

/æ/

•

/ʌ/

•

/ɑː/

•

/ɜː/

•

/ɒ/

•

/ə/

The English Diphthongs Diphthongs are sounds that consist of a movement from one vowel to another. The first part of the diphthong is so much larger and stronger than the second part. Its total number is eight and they can be classified as: •

Centring: those that glide towards ə vowel: ɪə, eə, ʊə.

•

Closing those that end with a glide towards a closer vowel: o Ending in ɪ: eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ. o Ending in ʊ: əʊ, aʊ.

We also have triphthongs, a glide from one vowel to another, and then to a third with no interruption. They can be looked on as being composed of the five closing diphthongs described above /eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ, əʊ, aʊ/ with ə added on the end: •

/ eɪə /

•

/ aɪə /

•

/ ɔɪə /

•

/ əʊə /

•

/ aʊə /

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UNIT 3: CONSONANT SOUNDS We can sort the 24 consonant phonemes according to their place of articulation into: •

4 bilabials

•

4 palatoalveolars

•

2 labiodentals

•

1 palatal

•

2 (inter-/linguo) dentals

•

3 velars

•

6 alveolars

•

1 glottal

•

1 retroflex

According to their manner of articulation: •

6 plosives

•

1 lateral

•

9 fricatives

•

3 nasals

•

2 affricates

•

3 approximants

•

15 voiced sounds

According to their (lack of) sonority: •

9 voiceless sounds

Plosives: •

/p/

•

/t/

•

/k/

•

/b/

•

/d/

•

/g/

Fricatives: •

/f/

•

/ð/

•

/ʃ/

•

/v/

•

/s/

•

/ʒ/

•

/θ/

•

/z/

•

/h/

Africates •

/ʧ/

•

/ʤ/

Lateral •

/l/

Nasals •

/m/

•

/n/

•

/ŋ/

•

/w/

•

/j/

Approximants •

/r/

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UNIT

4:

INTRODUCTION

TO

SUPRASEGMENTAL

PHONOLOGY More phonetic features affect stretches of utterances: syllables, words, and sentences. These features are known as “suprasegmental features”, and include accentuation, rhythm, and intonation. Stress and accent are two words that are usually confused, so here we have the two definitions of both of them: •

Stress: tends to be a more general term, which is more often used to refer to all sorts of prominence or to refer to the effort made by the speaker in producing a stressed syllable (word-stress).

•

Accent: refers to the importance given to a syllable, usually by the use of the pitch. For instance, in the word ‘tomato’, the middle syllable is the most prominently accented. Also, it can refer to the placement of the tonic syllable within the tone unit (sentence stress).

Word-stress Every word is made from syllables. In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word, we accentuate one syllable, saying it louder and all the others more quietly. The syllables that are not stressed are weak, small, or quiet. Native speakers of English listen for the stressed syllables, not the weak syllables. Word-stress is part of the language. English speakers use word stress to communicate quickly and precisely. Rules: •

Stress on the first syllable: Most 2-syllable nouns: PRESent, EXport, CHIna, TAble. Most 2-syllable adjectives: PRESent, SLENder, CLEVer, HAPpy

•

Stress on the last syllable: Most 2-syllable verbs: to preSENT, to exPORT, to deCIDE

•

Stress on the penultimate syllable: Words ending in –ic: GRAPHic, geographic Words ending in -sion and -tion: teleVIsion, reveLAtion

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION DOSSIER

•

Stress on ante-penultimate syllable: Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy and -gy: deMOcracy, geOLogy, phoTOgraphy Words ending in –al: CRItical, geoLOgical

•

Compound words: Compound Ns, the stress is on the 1st part: BLACKbird, GREENhouse Compound Adjs., the stress is on the 2nd part: bad-TEMpered, old-FASHioned Compound Vs, the stress is on the 2nd part: underSTAND, overflow

The stressed or accented syllables considered up to now are referring to what we can call primary stress, the strongest type of stress, in which the prominence results from a pitch movement or tone. Though, in some words, we can see a type of stress that is weaker than primary stress but stronger than that of an unstressed syllable (i.e., in the first syllables of PHOTOGRAPHIC /ˌfəʊtəˈgræfɪk/). Usually called secondary stress, it is represented in transcription with a low mark [͵].

Weak and strong forms One of the features of word stress is its duality concerning what we call weak forms. When we talk about weak forms, this alludes to a series of words which have one pronunciation (strong) when isolated, and another (weak) when not stressed within a phrase. The vowel in a weak form is usually the schwa (ə). Weak forms are pronounced more quickly and at a lower volume in comparison to the stressed syllables. Learners of English need to be aware of the use of weak forms or else they are likely to have difficulty comprehending (native) speakers who do use them. There are roughly 40 words in English that have these two basic forms: the usual, unstressed pronunciation, and the stressed pronunciation, which is only used in certain specific situations. Most of them belong to the closed class of function words, although certain very frequent major category words show this kind of dual behavior too. There is a logical explanation behind the occurrence of weak forms: they are present in words that are necessary to construct a phrase yet, at the same time, do not communicate a large quantity of information since they are not content words.

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Sentence Stress Though word stress is generally decided by language rules, sentence stress is decided by speaker choice, interrupting it from its neutral position when he or she needs to highlight or contrast some part of the sentence. Like word stress, sentence stress can help you to understand spoken English, especially when spoken fast. To be able to cope with the assignment of sentence stress we have to make a distinction between: •

Content/lexical words: The keywords of a sentence.

•

Structure/function/grammatical words: They are not important words that make the sentence correct grammatically.

According to a suprasegmental lookout, this distinction lies based on that word being stressable or not, in unmarked utterances. Sometimes we can stress a word that would normally be only a structure word, for example, to correct information. We can identify four major types of stress or tonic placement: •

Unmarked tonic stress (neutral tonicity).

•

Emphatic stress (dislocated tonic).

•

Contrastive stress.

•

New information stress.

Rhythm in English Sentence stress and weak forms give English its rhythm or “beat”. They add “music” to the language changing the speed at which we speak. •

Speech: a sequence of events in time.

•

Rhythm: the way events are distributed in time.

An extreme but common view is that English speech has a rhythm that allows us to divide it up into more or less equal intervals of time called feet, each of which begins with a stressed syllable. This stress-timed rhythm is created by squashing unstressed syllables (and therefore weak forms) in between stressed ones.

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The tone unit Intonation is a combination of regular patterns of stressed words with corresponding sequences of higher or lower notes. According to Celick, the study of intonation involves the following four steps: 1. Division of a stream of speech into intonation or tone units. 2. Selection of a syllable (of a word), which is assigned the ‘tonic’ status. 3. Selection of a tone for the intonation unit. 4. Pitch range. In the study of intonation, it is usual to divide speech into larger units than syllables, especially if one studies long utterances in which there must be some points at which the analyst must mark a break between the end of one pattern and the beginning of the next. The intonation unit: An intonation unit/phrase is the unit of a spoken language like English. Tone-unit boundaries and are usually marked off with slash brackets “/ /” or vertical lines “||”. A tone group is made up of an obligatory nucleus or tonic syllable and some other optional elements:

Nucleus (N) Head (H) Pre-Head (PH) Tail (T)

Usually the last stressed syllable, and therefore the most prominent, of the tone unit. The first stressed syllable in the tone group Any unstressed syllable before the head Any unstressed syllable after the nucleus where the melody of the tone is always continued.

Structure → / (Prehead) (Head) Nucleus (Tail) / Intonational patterns: In the analysis of English intonation, we can ...