General American Soundss PDF

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English Phonetics and Phonology I General American Sounds General American (abbreviated as GA or GenAm) is an umbrella variety of American English—a continuum of accents—commonly attributed to a majority of Americans and popularly perceived, among Americans, as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics. Due to General American accents being widespread throughout the United States, they are sometimes, though controversially, classified as Standard American English. Phonology

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Wine HYPERLINK "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine %E2%80%93whine_merger"– HYPERLINK "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine %E2%80%93whine_merger"whine HYPERLINK The "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine%E2%80%93whine_merger" merger: consonants spelled w and wh are usually pronounced the same; a separate phoneme /ʍ/ (wh) is present only in certain dialects. /ʍ/ is often analyzed as a consonant cluster of /hw/; however, it is quite overspread.

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Rhoticity (or r-fulness): General American accents are firmly rhotic, pronouncing the r sound in all environments, including after vowels, such as in pearl, car, and court. Americans often realize the phoneme [ɹ] (often transcribed as /r/, but in phonetic transcriptions, this is not preferred) as postalveolar, as in most varieties of English.

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T-glottalization: /t/ is pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ ] before a consonant (such as a syllabic nasal), as in button [ˈ bʌʔ n] and sometimes at the end of a word, as in what [wʌʔ].

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Flapping: /t/ and /d/ become an alveolar flap, written [ɾ ], between vowels or liquids (l and r), as in water [ˈ wɑɾɚ ], party [ˈ pʰɑɹɾ i], model [ˈ mɑɾɫ ], and what is it? [wʌɾˈɪ zɪ t].

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Yod-dropping: After consonants formed with the tongue touching the ridge on the roof of the mouth (alveolar consonants), the historical sound /j/ is most commonly "dropped" or "deleted," so that, for example, new /njuː / becomes [nu ː], duke /djuː k/ becomes [du ː k], and tube /tjuː b/ becomes [tʰu ːb].

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L-velarization: The distinction between a clear l (i.e. [l] and a dark l (i.e. [ɫ] in the standard English of England (Received Pronunciation) is mostly absent in General American. Instead, all l sounds are pronounced more or less "dark", which means that they all have some degree of velarization. Vowels The 2006 Atlas of North American English surmises that "if one were to recognize a type of North American English to be called 'General American'" according to data measurements of vowel pronunciations, "it would be the configuration formed by these three" dialect regions: Canada, the American West, and the American Midland. The following charts present the vowels that these three dialects encompass as a

perceived General American sound system. •

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Raising of ¨short a¨ [æ] before nasal sounds /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/ : For most speakers, the short a sound, transcribed as [æ] , is pronounced with the tongue raised in the mouth, followed by a backward glide, whenever occurring before a nasal consonant (that is, before /m/, /n/ and, for some speakers, /ŋ/). This sound may be narrowly transcribed, or perceived, as ɛ [ ə] , or, based on a specific dialect, variously as [eə] or [ɪə]. This phenomenon is called /æ/-tensing in phonological discourse. We transcribe it with length notation, for example: can [kæ:n], ham [hæ:m], thank [θæ.ŋk]. When [æ] is followed by a nasal and voiceless consonant, it retains half length. Father–bother merger (/ɒ/ → [ ɑ]): Nearly all American accents merge the ¨broad a¨ in words like spa and ah with the short o of words like spot and odd; therefore, con and khan are homophones in General American.

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Cot–caught merger in transition: There is no single General American way to pronounce the vowels in words like cot /ɑ / (the ah or ¨broad a¨ vowel) versus caught /ɔ / (the aw vowel), largely due to a merger occurring between the two sounds in some parts of North America, but not others. American speakers with a completed merger pronounce the two historically separate vowels with the exact same sound but other speakers have no trace of a merger at all, and so pronounce each vowel with distinct sounds. Among speakers who distinguish between the two, the vowel of cot will be pronounced as [ɑ ]; while /ɔ / is phonetically higher in the mouth or pronounced with more rounded lips, close to [ɒ], but with only slight rounding. Among speakers who do not distinguish between the two and are thus said to have undergone the cot–caught merger, /ɑ/ usually remains a back vowel, [ɑ ], sometimes showing lip rounding as [ɒ] (also transcribed [ɑʷ ] in non-standard IPA). Therefore, General American speakers vary greatly with this speech feature, with possibilities ranging from a full merger to no merger at all. Examples: cot [kɑ.t] (alternatively [kɑ.ʔ], awe [ɒ:] , and dog [dɔ:g], alternatively [dɒ:g].

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Weak-vowel merger: [ə] and [i] are indeterminate vowel sounds that occur only in unstressed syllables of certain types. [ə] is heard, for example, as the ¨a¨ at the beginning of about, and at the end of China, as the ¨o¨ in omit, and as the ¨u¨ in syrup. [i] is heard as the ¨a¨ in private or cottage, the ¨e¨ in evading or sorted, the ¨i¨ in sordid, the ¨u¨ in minute, or the ¨y¨ in mythologist. However, [ə] and [i] frequently overlap and often merge in American accents, especially towards the schwa [ə]. This is perceived in –ed endings in past tenses, which can be pronounced [-id] or [-əd]. Ex: needed.

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/iː ~ɪ / (as in HAPPY; usually transcribed /i/ even though it is not a phoneme) ranges from close front [i].

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/uː ~ʊ / (as in INFLUENCE; usually transcribed /u/ even though it is not a phoneme).

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The vowel /ʌ/ (of strut, luck, rough, what, etc.), is generally nearopen and fronted; however, it always remains a back vowel before /l/, so that /ʌl/, as in null or skull, becomes [ʌɫ ], under the influence of the ¨dark l¨.

Gliding vowels General American lacks some of the glides that RP possess. R-colored vowels

The r-colored vowels of General American can be written with "vowel-r" digraphs: Stressed [ɝ ] (more formal) or [ɚ ] (more common): hearse, assert, mirth, work, turkey, myrtle Unstressed [ɚ ]: standard, dinner, Lincolnshire, editor, measure, martyr Stressed [ɑ˞ ]: start, car Stressed [ɔ˞ ]: north, war In words such we can represent the ¨r-coloring¨, for example, [ɑɹ], rather than the unitary symbol [ɑ˞]....