how to speak a ******** Phonetics Course

[MEDOUL]

----------------Introduction--------------
To speak a ******** one needs to know about the way it is pronounced ( the contexts, rules, exceptions, etc.). In this context, the first Phonetic Course (1st year) had as basic objectives enabling the student to:
• Answer the questions ‘What is phonetics?’ ans ‘What is phonology?’,
• Be familiar with the IPA (International Phnetic Alphabet) symbols, focusing mainly on the production and description of each sound in English
• Be able to transcribe English into IPA and IPA into English.
The present course, however, aims at promoting good pronunciation. To have good pronunciation means mainly:
1) To pronounce correctly all the individual speech sounds in English;
2) To pronounce correctly the speech sounds in their combinations in isolated words as well as in sentences;
3) To speak fluently with correct rhythm, including the correct placement of stresses and pauses and the transition of sounds according to the context; and
4) To speak with appropriate intonation according to the context.

As a matter of fact, speech would be much easier to understand if it was spoken with a gap between every word. Babies and profoundly deaf people are often spoken to in this way. But in natural speech there are few gaps, and we can observe many processes that result in differences between isolated words and the same words occurring in connected speech. Consequently, while Phonetic Course One ( 1st year) focuses much more on pronunciation of words (and sentences) in isolation, Phonetic Course Two ( 2nd year) focuses more on the study of connected speech. The latter involves looking at the way a word’ pronunciation changes because of its occurrence within a specific context in connected speech. These changes are usually the result of such processes as assimilation, elision, reduction in weak syllables, rhythm and phenomena such as intonation and stress. For pedagogical aims, it seemed more convenient to divide the present course into three chapters:
• Chapter One involves a revision of some phonetic notions dealt with in the previous course which are considered as pre-requisites for the present course. Indeed, knowledge of the place and manner of articulation of the main English speech sounds ( consonants, vowels, diphthongs, triphthongs) as wells as their classification in terms of phonemes and allophones and the way they may be used to forms English syllables is very necessary to carry on the present course.
• Chapter Two deals with some prosodic phenomena such as stress, accent, rhythm and intonation. Though these were also tackled in the previous course, more detailed discussions of these phenomena will take place in the present course, especially focusing on the characteristics of these notions in connected speech.
• Chapter three deals with some processes that take place during casual (informal), rapid speech in English and that alter significantly many speech sounds making it difficult for a foreign student ( usually used to formal, careful speech) to recognize many sounds, and possibly to understand some ( if not most of or all) the message of the speaker. Examples of these aspects of connected speech are assimilation, elision and reduction.






------------Chapter one: Revision----------
I. Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics
Phonetics is the scientific study of speech. The central concerns in phonetics are the discovery of how speech sounds are produced, how they are used in spoken ********, how we can record speech sounds with written symbols and how we hear and recognise different sounds. What are the sounds? How are they made? It is usually divided into:
1. Articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds
2. Acoustic phonetics: the study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech sounds (e.g., intensity, frequency, duration, etc.)
3. Auditory phonetics: the study of the perception of speech sounds
Phonology
phonology as a science aims at answering some basic questions such as How do sounds combine? How are they memorized? The most basic activity in phonology is phonemic analysis, in which the objective is to establish what the phonemes are and arrive at the phonemic inventory of the ********. It goes beyond the phoneme by looking into the detailed characteristics of each and the relationships between the different phonemes - how they form groups, the nature of the oppositions between them, their mutual influence, etc.- and analyzing the syllable structure.

Importance of studying phonetics and/or phonology
• To understand phonetics and why it is important for a foreign learner to study it, you may begin by comparing the way we write words with the sounds they represent. What is quickly apparent are a host of orthographic inconsistencies. Fortunately, a student of phonetics, can capture each individual sound in an individual and unambiguous kind of way using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
Examples of Orthographic inconsistencies
1. sometimes the same sound is spelled using different letters
see, sea, scene, receive, thief, amoeba, machine
2. sometimes the same letters can stand for different sounds

sign, pleasure, resign
charter, character
father, all, about, apple,
any, age
3. sometimes a single sound is spelled by a combination of letters
lock, that, book, boast,
shop, apple, special
4. sometimes a single letter represents more than one sound
exit, use
5. sometimes letters stand for no sound at all
know, doubt, though, island, rhubarb, moose
Kinds of transcription
Using phonetic symbols, one can, transcribe any word in any ********. Transcription is the writing down of a spoken utterance using a suitable set of symbols (IPA). In its original meaning the word implied converting from one representation (e.g. written text) into another (e.g. phonetic symbols). There two most commonly used kinds of transcription:
• Narrow ( phonetic/ allophonic) transcription captures as many aspects of a specific pronunciation as possible and ignores as few details as possible. Using the diacritics provided in the IPA, it is possible to make very subtle distinctions between sounds. The only symbols that may be used are those which represent one of the phonemes of the ********, and extra symbols are excluded. a narrow phonetic transcription is one which carries a lot of fine detail about the precise phonetic quality of sounds., usually put between square brackets [phʊt].
• Broad transcription (or phonemic transcription) ignores as many details as possible, capturing only enough aspects of a pronunciation to show how that word differs from other words in the ********, usually using slashes /pʊt/.
II. The Speech Organs
Anatomy of the vocal tract
To understand the classification and description of each speech sound, we need to figure out how each sound is made or articulated in the mouth. All speech sounds can be classified by how the mouth produces the sound and which parts or organ is /are actively (and even passively) involved in the production of the sound. The main organs and places of articulation of sounds are represented in the figure below.

Figure 01: Anatomy of the vocal tract
Notice that in addition to their normal names, many of the parts of the vocal tract have fancy names derived from Latin and Greek. The adjectives we use to describe sounds made with each part are usually based on the Latin/ Greek name. Sometimes, the fancy names are used as often or more often than the simpler names ( this is the case with the velum, pharynx, larynx, and dorsum).
Normal name Fancy name Adjective
lips labia labial
teeth dental
alveolar ridge alveolar
(hard) palate palatal
soft palate velum velar
uvula uvular
upper throat pharynx pharyngeal
voice box larynx laryngeal
tongue tip apex apical
tongue blade lamina laminal
tongue body dorsum (back) dorsal
tongue root radical
Table 01: Names of parts of the vocal tract
Alveolar ridge
A short distance behind the upper teeth is a change in the angle of the roof of the mouth. (In some people, it's quite abrupt, in others very slight.) This is the alveolar ridge. Sounds which involve the area between the upper teeth and this ridge are called alveolars.
(Hard) palate
the hard portion of the roof of the mouth. The term "palate" by itself usually refers to the hard palate.
Soft palate/velum
the soft portion of the roof of the mouth, lying behind the hard palate. The tongue hits the velum in the sounds [k], [g], and [ ]. The velum can also move: if it lowers, it creates an opening that allows air to flow out through the nose; if it stays raised, the opening is blocked, and no air can flow through the nose.
Uvula
the small, dangly thing at the back of the soft palate. The uvula vibrates during the /r/ sound in many French dialects.
Pharynx
the cavity between the root of the tongue and the walls of the upper throat.
Tongue blade
the flat surface of the tongue just behind the tip.
Tongue body/dorsum
the main part of the tongue, lying below the hard and soft palate. The body, specifically the back part of the body (hence "dorsum", Latin for "back"), moves to make vowels and many consonants.
Tongue root
the lowest part of the tongue in the throat
Epiglottis
the fold of tissue below the root of the tongue. The epiglottis helps cover the larynx during swallowing, making sure (usually!) that food goes into the stomach and not the lungs. A few ********s use the epiglottis in making sounds. English is fortunately not one of them.
Vocal folds/vocal cords
folds of tissue stretched across the airway to the lungs. They can vibrate against each other, providing much of the sound during speech.
Glottis
the opening between the vocal cords. During a glottal stop [?], the vocal cords are held together and there is no opening between them.
Larynx
the structure that holds and manipulates the vocal cords. The "Adam's apple" in males is the bump formed by the front part of the larynx.
In phonetics, the terms velum, pharynx, larynx, and dorsum are used as often or more often than the simpler names.

II. The English Consonants
There are 24 consonants in English. These consonants may be classified according to the following:
4. Voicing: whether or not the vocal folds are vibrating
1. voiced
2. voiceless
5. Nasality : whether or not air and sound is coming out the nose.
1. nasal
2. oral
6. Place of articulation: According to the place of articulation and the main organs involved in the articulation, we may distinguish the following types of consonants:
1. Bilabial (two lips): /p b m w /
2. Labio-dental (top teeth/ bottom lip): / f v /
3. Dental (tongue tip / top teeth) θ ًð
4. Alveolar (tongue tip/ tooth ridge) : / t d n s z r l /
5. Palato-alveolar ( tongue / tooth ridge/ hard palate) /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/
6. Palatal (tongue mid/ hard palate) / j /
7. Velar (tongue back / soft palate) / k g ŋ/
8. Glottal (not localized) / h /
7. Manner of articulation: how the air stream is modified by the vocal tract.
1. Plosives (or stops): p b t d k g
pin bin tin din kin gum

2. Affricates: tʃ dʒ
chain Jane

3. Fricatives:
f v θ ًð s z ʃ ʒ h
fine vine think this seal zeal sheep measure how

4. Nasals:
m n ŋ
sum sun sung

5. laterals: l
light

6. Approximants: l r w j
light right wet yet

Note:
 Very often, / l r w j /are grouped together under the category of approximants while / w j / are also called semi-vowels or glides. The approximant / r / is also sometimes represented with a ‘r’ upside down.
 Another consonant, less common in standard British English (RP) but a very common in General American English (GA), is the glottal stop [?] hear in words like bottle, bottom,
In addition to the above classifications, consonants can be analyzed through distinguishing between obstruent and sonorant consonants. Accordingly, obstruent consonants are consonants which create a substantial obstruction to the flow of air through the vocal tract. Plosives, fricatives and affricates are obstruents. On the other hand, a sonorant consonant is a sound which is voiced and does not cause enough obstruction to the airflow to prevent normal voicing from continuing. Thus nasals, laterals and other approximants such as English / j w r / are sonorant. In addition, vowels are also considered as sonorant.









Table 02: The English consonants on the IPA chart

III. English vowels and glides
Vowels
There are 20 vowels in English among which 12 are pure vowels (monophthong, ie, a single sound) in addition to the schwa and 8 are diphthongs and 5 triphthongs. Vowels are the class of sound which makes the least obstruction to the flow of air. They are almost always found at the centre of a syllable, and it is rare to find any sound other than a vowel which is able to stand alone as a whole syllable. So, The English vowels are normally oral, voiced sounds. Yet, they may sometimes be influenced by the environment and therefore become nasalized ( produced with the soft palate lowered as with the consonants /m/ and /n/ ) or voiceless. The English pure vowels can be classified according to:
1. tongue position
a) height: raising or lowering the body of the tongue
 high
 mid
 low
b) backness: advancing or retracting the body of the tongue
 front
 central
 back
2. lip rounding
a) rounded
b) unrounded
In the chart below, the front vowels are to the left, and the back vowels to the right; the close vowels are upmost; and the open ones at the bottom.

Figure 02: Chart of the English vowels

Vowels can also be classified according to their length. Accordingly, there are short vowels and long ones.

 Short vowels: pit pet pat putt pot put another
ɪ e æ ʌ ʊ ə ə

 Long vowels: bean barn born boon burn
i: ɑ: ɔ: u: ɜ:
Following those criteria of description and classification, it seems very easy to draw a vowel address in the same way it is done with consonants. For example, /i:/ is a close, front unrounded, long vowel, /ʊ / a close, back, rounded, short vowel, and / ʌ / an open, central, unrounded, short vowel.
Diphthongs
The most important feature of a diphthong is that it contains a glide from one vowel quality to another one. Standard British English (RP) contains 8 diphthongs ending in [ɪ ], [ʊ] and [ə]. Opinions differ as to whether these should be treated as phonemes in their own right, or as combinations of two phonemes.

 Diphthongs: bay buy boy no now peer pair poor
eɪ. aɪ ɔɪ əʊ aʊ ɪə ə ʊə
Triphthong
A triphthong is a vowel glide with three distinguishable vowel qualities - in other words, it is similar to a diphthong but comprising three rather than two vowel qualities. In English there are said to be five triphthongs, formed by adding / ə / to the diphthongs / eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ aʊ /

 Triphtongs layer liar loyal power mower
eɪə aɪə ɔɪə aʊə əʊə




Figure 03: Long/Short/Weak Vowels
IV. Phonemes and allophones
Phonology deals with some fundamental questions such as: Of all the sounds in a ********, which are predictable?, What is the phonetic context that allows us to predict the occurrence of these sounds?, What sounds does the ******** make use of? , Which sound combinations are allowed? Which sounds affect the meaning of words?, etc. Consequently, the main concern of phonology is not only sounds inventory but also sound patterns. Thus, to be able to answer the above questions, it is necessary to deal with such concepts as phonemes and allophones.
Phoneme
Spoken ******** can be broken down into a string of sound units (phonemes), and that each ******** has a small, relatively fixed set of these phonemes. To establish what the phonemes of a ******** are, the basic way to follow is to see whether they are contrastive and one must find cases where the difference between two words is dependent on the difference between two phonemes: for example, we can prove that the difference between 'pin' and 'pan' depends on the vowel, and that /ɪ/ and / æ/ are different phonemes.
Allophones
Central to the concept of the phoneme is the idea that it may be pronounced in many different ways. So, the different phonetic realizations of a phoneme are called allophones. In Standard British English (RP) for example, we take it for granted that the /p/ sound in 'pill' and 'spill' are "the same sound" (i.e. the same phoneme), but in reality the two sounds are very different - the /p/ in 'pill' is aspirated ( i.e., there is a burst or puff of air after the /p/ in pill, that is absent in spill) while the /p/ sound in 'spill' is unaspirated. In phonemic ( broad) transcription, we use the same symbol /p/ for both, but we know that the allophones of /p/ include the aspirated sound [ph] and the unaspirated one [p]. Using the square brackets that indicate phonetic (narrow), it is the allophones that are indicated rather than the phonemes.
Minimal pairs
In establishing the set of phonemes of a ********, it is usual to demonstrate the independent, contrastive nature of a phoneme by citing pairs of words which differ in one sound only and have different meanings. The latter are known as minimal pairs. So, a minimal pair is a pair of words with different meanings with exactly the same pronunciation except for one sound that differs.
Examples:
• [teɪk] vs. [teɪp] "take" vs "tape"
• [ti:m] vs [di:m] "team" vs "deam"

Complementary distribution
Two sounds are in complementary distribution if they never occur in the same context. A good example is provided by the allophones of the / l / phoneme in BBC English: there is a voiceless allophone [ l ̥] ( or devoiced /l/) when / l / occurs after / p /, / t / or / k / at the beginning of a syllable, "clear l" [ l ]which occurs before vowels and "dark l" [ ł ] ( or velarization of /l/) which occurs elsewhere (i.e. before consonants or a pause). Since each of these three allophones has its own specific context in which it occurs, and does not occur in the contexts in which the others occur, we can say that each is in complementary distribution with the others.
Free variation
If two sounds that are different from each other can occur in the same phonological context and one of those sounds may be substituted for the other, they are said to be in free variation. A good example in English is that of the various possible realisations of the / r / phoneme: in different accents and styles of speaking we find the post-alveolar approximant [ ɹ ] which is the most common pronunciation in contemporary RP pronunciation and General American, the tap [ɾ ] which was typical of carefully-spoken RP pronunciation of fifty years ago, the labiodental approximant [ υ ] used by speakers who have difficulty in articulating tongue-tip versions of / r / and by some older upper-class English speakers, the trilled [ r ] found in carefully-pronounced Scots accents and the uvular [ ʁ] of the old traditional form of some accents in some British Islands. Although each of these allophones is instantly recognisable as different from the others, the substitution of one of these for another would be most unlikely to cause an English listener to hear a sound other than the / r / phoneme. These different allophones of / r / are, then, in free variation.
V. Syllable
Definition
Phonetically we can observe that the flow of speech typically consists of an alternation between vowel-like states (where the vocal tract is comparatively open and unobstructed) and consonant-like states where some obstruction to the airflow is made. Silence and pause are to be regarded as being of consonantal type in this case. So from the speech production point of view a syllable consists of a movement from a constricted or silent state to a vowel-like state and then back to constricted or silent. corresponding to vowel-like states separated by troughs of lower energy (see sonority). Phonologists are interested in the structure of the syllable, since there appear to be interesting observations to be made about which phonemes may occur at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of syllables.
Syllables are considered to be the most basic unit in speech: every ******** has syllables, and babies learn to produce syllables before they can manage to say a word of their native ********. When a person has a speech disorder, their speech will still display syllabic organisation, and slips of the tongue also show that syllabic regularity tends to be preserved even in "faulty" speech.
Syllable Structure
Phonological treatments of syllable structure usually call the first part of a syllable the onset, the middle part the peak or nucleus and the end part the coda; the combination of peak and coda is called the rhyme. The peak or nucleus is the compulsory unit of a syllable and is always of a vowel state (vowel, diphthong, or syllabic consonant). The onset and the coda are optional in a syllable and usually of consonantal nature.




Syllable

Onset Rime



Nucleus Coda

C V C

Figure 03 : structure of the English syllable

Possible English Syllables:
List 1:
V ‘I’ [aɪ]
CV ‘ray’ [reɪ]
CCV ‘tree’ [tri:]
CCCV ‘stray’ [streɪ]
CVC ‘ten’ [ten]
CVCC ‘bank’ [bæŋk]
CVCCC ‘thanks’ [θæŋks]
CCCVCCCC ‘strangles’[stræŋglz]





List 2:

Example Onset Rime
Nucleus Coda
I - aɪ -
Me m i: -
Free fr i: -
Spray spr eɪ -
Pen p e n
From b
m
Bombs b
mbz
Sprinkles spr ɪ ŋklz
Table 03: Examples of syllable patterns


…………………………..Exercises ………………………….

Exercise 01: Multiple Choice Questions

Answer all of the following twenty m.c. questions

1. The main advantage of the International Phonetic Alphabet over normal spelling is that it:
a. offers many more symbols, allowing each speech sound to be transcribed in various ways.
b. preserves the historically correct spelling of words, e.g. that /ًوt/.
c. relates symbols and speech sounds in a one-to-one fashion.
d. has special symbols for 'silent letters'.

2. The principal difference in articulation between and / ð / is that:
a. is voiced while / ð / is voiceless.
b.  is voiceless while /ð/ is voiced.
c.  is a fricative while/ ð/ is a plosive.
d.  is a plosive while /ð/ is a fricative.

3. An aspirated plosive can be characterized in one of the following ways:
a. The vocal folds start vibrating before the release (explosion).
b. The vocal folds start vibrating after the release (explosion).
c. The vocal folds stop vibrating before the release (explosion).
d. The vocal folds stop vibrating after the release (explosion).

4. Which of the following is the place of articulation of /j/?
a. alveoral
b. post-alveolar (palato-alveolar)
c. palatal
d. velar

5. Which of the following descriptions characterizes /ʊ/?
a. front, open, unrounded vowel
b. back, open, unrounded vowel
c. front, closed, unrounded vowel
d. back, closed, unrounded vowel

6. A labiodental consonant is characterized by a closure between:
a. the upper front teeth and the lower lip.
b. the lower front teeth and the upper lip.
c. the upper lip and the lower lip.
d. the upper and lower lips and the front teeth

7. A vowel diagram has two dimensions (horizontal and vertical), which represent:
a. raising of the tongue (vertical) and fronting of the tongue (horizontal).
b. raising of the tongue (horizontal) and fronting of the tongue (vertical).
c. raising of the tongue (horizontal) and rounding of the lips (vertical).
d. raising of the tongue (vertical) and rounding of the lips (horizontal).

8. The principal difference in articulation between /m/ and /b/ is that:
a. /m/ has a raised velum while /b/ has a lowered velum.
b. /m/ has a lowered velum while /b/ has a raised velum.
c. /m/ has a labial closure while /b/ has a labiodental closure.
d. /m/ has a labiodental closure while /b/ has a labial closure.


9. During the articulation of the diphthong /ɔɪ/ (as in boy):
a. The tongue is raised, while the lips become unrounded.
b. The tongue is raised, while the lips become rounded.
c. The tongue is lowered, while the lips become unrounded.
d. The tongue is lowered, while the lips become rounded.

10. Which of the following types of closure produces a complete blocking of air flow?
a. A velic closure (i.e. a raised uvula).
b. A glottal closure (i.e. a closed glottis).
c. A alveolar closure.
d. A labial closure.


11. Which are the major manners of articulation?
a. plosive-fricative-affricate-nasal-lateral-approximant.
b. plosive-fricative-retroflex-nasal- lateral-approximant.
c. plosive-fricative-affricate-nasal-lateral-dental.
d. plosive-fricative-retroflex-nasal- lateral-dental.

12. Three examples of velars are:




Exercise 02: Transcription

1. Give broad (phonemic) transcriptions of the following words:
a. envelope
b. George
c. matched
d. mystery
e. chancellor
f. dashboard
g. month
h. stomach
i. wrapper
j. flight

2. Give narrow (allophonic) transcriptions of the following sentences, marking aspiration, devoicing, velarization (dark l), syllabic consonants.

a. I've eaten a couple of apples and a bunch of grapes.

b. Put my slide projector back in the top part of the sideboard cupboard.

c. Worn cartridges damage records and need to be replaced quickly.

d. don’t forget to switch off the light before you leave.


Exercise 03:

1. Give broad transcriptions of the following words:

a. strength
b. pleasure
c. (she) lives
d. fourth
e. sixty
f. chipping
g. ********
h. knowledge
i. dogs
j. through
k. laughed
l. judged
m. quick
n. breathes

2. Describe the mechanism of articulation of the sounds represented by the bold-faced letters in the list above.

3. Give narrow transcriptions of the following words, indicating aspiration, voiceless consonants, and velarization.
a. speech
b. preclude
c. attend
d. discover
e. adapt
f. collect
g. twist
h. street
i. control
j. cottage


Exercise 04:
1. Describe in detail, with appropriate diagrams, the movements made by the organs of speech in pronouncing the word sprinkler.
2. English /t/ is usually classified as a voiceless alveolar plosive. How adequate is this classification?
3. What is a diphthong? How can English diphthongs be classified?
4. How many syllables are there I each of the following words? What are the patterns of those syllables?
• Quality
• Wrecker
• Archbishop
• Aero
• sixtieth
• delegate
• macrobiotic
• impose
• eulogy
• fallacy
• Asia
• nocturne
• octopus
• defamatory
• exempts
• viaduct
• reoccupy
• scowling
• antidisestablishmentarianism









-----Chapter Two: Stress and Intonatio----

I. Rhythm

The notion of rhythm involves some noticeable event happening at regular intervals of time. One can detect the rhythm of a heart-beat, of a flashing light or of a piece of music. It has often been claimed that English speech is rhythmical, and that the rhythm is detectable in the regular occurrence of stressed syllables. However, this regularity of occurrence is only relative. The theory that English has stress-timed rhythm implies that stressed syllables will tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not. An example is given below. In this sentence, the stressed syllables are given numbers: syllable 1 and 2 are not separated by any unstressed syllables, 2 and 3 are separated by one unstressed syllable, 3 and 4 by two and 4 and 5 by three.
1 2 3 4 5
ˈWalk ˈdown the ˈpath to the ˈend of the caˈnal

The stress-timed rhythm theory states that the time from each stressed syllable to the next will tend to be the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. The theory also claims that while some ********s (e.g. Russian and Arabic) have stress-timed rhythm similar to that of English, others (such as French, Telugu and Yuruba) have a different rhythmical structure called syllable-timed rhythm. In these ********s, all syllables, whether stressed or unstressed, tend to occur at regular time-intervals and the time between stressed syllables will be shorter or longer in proportion to the number of unstressed syllables.

The foot
Some writers have developed theories of English rhythm in which a unit of rhythm, called the foot , is used. The foot begins with a stressed syllable and includes all following unstressed syllables up to (but not including) the following stressed syllable. The example sentence given above would be divided into feet as follows:

1 │ 2 │ 3│ 4 │ 5
ˈWalk │ ˈdown the│ ˈpath to the│ ˈend of the ca │ ˈnal

Rhythmic strong and weak patterns
Some theories of rhythm go further than this, and point to the fact that some feet are stronger than others, producing strong-weak patterns in larger pieces of speech above the level of the foot. To understand how this works, let’s start with a simple example: the word ‘twenty’ has one weak and one strong syllable, forming one foot. A diagram of its rhythmical structure can be made, where s stands for ‘strong’ and w stands for ‘weak’:

s w
twen ty

The word ‘places’ has the same form

s w
pla ces
Now let’s consider the phrase ‘twenty places’, where ‘places’ will normally carry stronger stress than ‘twenty’, i.e. will be rhythmically stronger. We can represent this in the following diagram:

w s

s w s w
twen ty pla ces


If we consider this phrase in the context of a longer phrase ‘twenty places further back’, and treat the ‘further back’ part in the same way, we would get an more elaborate structure:


w s


w s w s

s w s w s w s
twen ty pla ces fur ther back



By analysing speech in this way it is possible to show the relationship between strong and weak elements, and the different levels of stress that exist in a particular utterance. The strength of any particular syllable can be measured by counting the number of times an s symbol occurs above it.

Rhythm in normal speech
The above pattern may be correct for very slow speech, but we must now look at what happens to the rhythm in normal speech. Many English speakers would feel that , although in ‘twenty places’ the right hand foot (places) is the stronger, the word ‘twenty’ is stronger than ‘places’ in ‘twenty places further back’ when spoken in conversational style. English speech tends towards a regular alternation between stronger and weaker, and in order to make this possible stress levels are adjusted. The effect is particularly noticeable in cases such as the following:
- Compact (adjective) kəmˈpækt but compact disc ˈkɔmpækt ˈdɪsk
- Thirteen θɜːˈtɪːn but thirteenth place ˈθɜːtɪːnθ ˈpleɪs
- Westminster westˈmɪnstə but Westminster Abbey ˈwestmɪnstə ˈæbɪ
In brief, it seems that stresses are altered according to context. An additional factor is that English speakers vary in how rhythmically the speak: sometimes they speak very rhythmically while at other times they speak arhythmically (that is, without rhythm)- for example when they are hesitant or nervous.
Importance of rhythm practice
Some ********s do not have such a noticeable difference between weak and strong syllables as the one that exists in English. Therefore, native speakers of such ********s learning English may find it helpful to practice repeating strongly rhythmical utterances since this forces the speaker to concentrate on making unstressed syllables weak. Speakers of ********s such as Japanese, Hungarian and Spanish, which do not have weak syllables, may well find such exercises of some value.




…………………………Exercises……………………………
Exercise 1:
Divide the following sentences up into feet, using this separating mark │ as a boundary symbol. If a sentence starts with an unstressed syllable, leave it out of consideration – it does not belong n a foot.
1. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
2. Over a quarter of a century has elapsed since his death.
3. Computers consume a considerable amount of money and time.
4. Most of hem have arrived on the bus.
5. Newspaper editors are invariably overworked.

Exercise 02:
Try to draw tree diagrams of the rhythmical structure of the following phrases:
1. Christmas present
2. Rolls Royce
3. Pet food dealer
4. Rolls-Royce rally event



II. Stress
It is almost certainly true that in all ********s some syllables are in some sense stronger than other syllables; these are syllables that have the potential to be described as stressed. It is also probably true that the difference between strong and weak syllables is of some linguistic importance in every ******** – strong and weak syllables do not occur at random. However, ********s differ in the linguistic function of such differences: in English, for example, the position of stress can change the meaning of a word, as in the case of ‘import’ (noun) and ‘import’ (verb), and so forms part of the phonological composition of the word. However, it is usually claimed that in the case of French there is no possibility of moving the stress to different syllables except in cases of special emphasis or contrast, since stress (if there is any that can be detected) always falls on the last syllable of a word.
It is necessary to consider what factors make a syllable count as stressed. It seems likely that stressed syllables are produced with greater effort than unstressed, and that this effort is manifested in the air pressure generated in the lungs for producing the syllable and also in the articulatory movements in the vocal tract. These effects of stress produce in turn various audible results:
• The first one is pitch prominence, in which the stressed syllable stands out from its context (for example, being higher if its unstressed neighbours are low in pitch, or lower if those neighbours are high; often a pitch glide such as a fall or rise is used to give greater pitch prominence).
• Another effect of stress is that stressed syllables tend to be longer – this is very noticeable in English, less so in some other ********s.
• Also, stressed syllables tend to be louder than unstressed ones , though experiments have shown that differences in loudness alone are not very noticeable to most listeners.
It has been suggested by many writers that the term accent should be used to refer to some of the manifestations of stress (particularly pitch prominence), but the word, though widely used, never seems to have acquired a distinct meaning of its own.
Levels of stress
This is one of the areas in which there is little agreement: some descriptions of ********s manage with just two levels (stressed and unstressed), while others use more. In English, one can argue that if one takes the word ‘indicator’ as an example, the first syllable is the most strongly stressed, the third syllable is the next most strongly stressed and the second and fourth syllables are weakly stressed, or unstressed. This gives us three levels: it is possible to argue for more.

Lets consider the following words:
(a) democrat /ˈdeməkræt/ democracy /dɪˈmɒkrəsi/
(b) democratic /ˌdeməˈkrætɪk/
(c) climax / ˈklaɪmæks/ democrat /ˈdeməkræt/
(d) democratization /dɪˌmɒkrətaɪˈzeɪʃən/
These words are said to have different ‘stress patterns’. Stress has been defined as the ‘landing site for accent’, and it is not always easy (especially if you are not a native speaker of English) to choose the exact ‘landing place’ for stress, in other words, to determine the correct stress.
If we take the word democrat, for example, its stress is placed on the first syllable. That word is therefore commonly said to be 'stressed on the first syllable' (i.e. its first syllable is the most prominent), whereas the word democracy is stressed on the second syllable and democratic on the third...
A word may bear two ‘stresses’, i.e. two prominent syllables. In that case, the degree of prominence of the two syllables is always different. The syllable with the higher prominence is said to bear the ‘primary stress’, the other is said to bear the ‘secondary stress’. Syllables containing ɪ, ʊ and ə or a syllabic consonant are referred to as unstressed syllables.
On the other hand, if one looks at words like democrat, democracy, democratize, democratic and democratization, one notices some changes in the stress pattern. The changes can be linked to the length of the words: democrat —a three-syllable word, is stressed on the first syllable, whereas democracy —a four-syllable word, is stressed on the second. One may therefore conclude that increasing the length of a word by one syllable entails shifting the stress to the right by one syllable too. That does not work in the case of democratic, however, since it is also a four-syllable word but with a different stress pattern.
One needs to go into the etymology of these words and see how they are formed. In this particular case, ize, ic and –ation are suffixes used to derive new words from existing ones. This will be discussed in the following section.
Stress in complex words
Students are reminded that the concept of word tress had been dealt with in details in last year’s programme. Therefore, our main concern here is to discuss stress in complex words.
The general definition of a complex word is a word composed of more than one grammatical unit or semantic one (i.e. morpheme). Hence, a word like careful or blackbird (being composed of two grammatical units each) are complex words care + ful, black + bird. Carefully and carelessness are also complex and are composed of three grammatical units each: care + ful + ly, care + less + ness.
Complex words are of two major types: words made of a basic stem word with the addition of an affix, and compound words, which are made of two (or occasionally more) independent English words (e.g. ‘ice-cream’, ‘armchair’). We will look first at the words made with affixes; these will be called affix words. Affixes are of two sorts in English: prefixes, which come before the stem (e.g. prefix ‘un-’ stem ‘pleasant’ = ‘unpleasant’) and suffixes, which come after the stem (e.g. stem ‘good’ + suffix ‘-ness’ = ‘goodness’).
I. Affix words: Affixes have one of three possible effects on word stress:
a- The affix itself receives the primary stress (e.g. ‘semi-‘ + ‘circle’ ˈsɜːkl ‘semicircle’ ˈsemisɜːkl , ‘-ality’+’person’ ˈpɜːsn ‘ personality’ pɜːsnˈæliti
b- The word is stressed just as if the affix was not there (e.g. ‘pleasant’ ˈpleznt, ‘unpleasant’ Λnˈpleznt, ‘market’ ˈmaːkit marketing ˈmaːkitiŋ
c- the stress remains on the stem, not the affix, but is shifted to a different syllable (e.g ‘magnet’ ˈmægnət ‘magnetic’ mægˈnetik
1- Suffixes : There are so many suffixes that it will only be possible to examine a limited number of them. We will examine only those which are common and productive i.e. are applied to a large number of stems and could be applied to more to make new English words.
• Suffixes carrying primary stress themselves
The primary stress is on the first syllable of the suffix. If the stem consists of more than one syllable, there will be a secondary stress on one of the syllables of the stem. This cannot fall on the last syllable of the stem, and is, if necessary, move on to an earlier syllable. Foe example, in ‘Japan’ dʒəˈpæn the primary stress is on the last syllable, but when we add the stress-carrying suffix ‘-ese’ the primary stress is on the suffix a,d the secondary stress is placed not on the second syllable but on the first: ‘Japanese’ ˌdʒæpəˈniːz
‘-ain’ ‘entertain’ ˌentəˈteɪn ’ascertain’ ˌæsəˈ teɪn
‘-ee’ ‘refugee’ ˌrefjʊˈdʒ iː ‘evacuee’ ɪˌvækjuˈiː
‘-eer’ ‘mountaineer’ ˌmaʊntɪˈnɪə ‘volunteer’ ˌvɔlənˈtɪə
‘-ese’ ‘Portuguese’ ˌpoːtʃəˈgiːz ‘journalese’ ˌdʒɜːnlˈiːz
‘-ette’ ‘sigarette’ sɪgret ’laundrette’ ˌloːndret
‘-esque’, ‘-ique’ ‘picturesque’ ˌpɪktʃəˈresk ‘unique’ ˌjuːˈniːk

• Suffixes neither receiving stress nor affecting it
‘-able’ ‘comfort’ ˈkΛmfət ‘comfortable’ ˈkΛmftəbl
‘-age’ ‘anchor’ ˈæŋkə ‘anchorage’ ˈæŋkridʒ
‘-al’ ‘refuse’ rɪˈfjuːz ‘refusal’ rɪˈfjuːzl
‘-en’ ‘wide’ ˈwaɪd ‘widen’ ˈwaɪdn
‘-ful’ ‘wonder’ ˈwΛndə ‘wonderful’ ˈwΛndəfl
‘-ing’ ‘amaze’ əˈmeɪz ‘amazing’ əˈmeɪzɪŋ
‘-ish’ ‘devil’ ˈdevl ‘devilish’ ˈdevlɪʃ
‘-like’ ‘bird’ ˈbɜːd ‘birdlike’ ˈbɜːdlaɪk
‘-less’ ‘power’ ˈpaʊə ‘powerless’ ˈpaʊələs
‘-ly’ ‘hurried’ ˈhΛrɪd ‘hurriedly’ ˈhΛrɪldɪ
‘-ment’ ‘punish’ ˈpΛnɪʃ ‘punishment’ ˈpΛnɪʃmənt
‘-ness’ ‘yellow’ ˈjeləʊ ‘yellowness’ ˈjeləʊnəs
‘-ous’ ‘poison’ ˈpɔɪzn ‘poisonous’ ˈpɔɪznəs
‘-fy’ ‘glory’ ˈgloːrɪ ‘glorify’ ˈgloːrɪfaɪ
‘-wise’ ‘other’ ˈΛðə ‘otherwise’ ˈΛðəwaɪz
‘-y’ ‘fun’ ˈfΛn ‘funny’ ˈfΛni
• Suffixes not receiving stress but affecting it
‘-eous’ ‘advantage’ ədˈvaːntɪdʒ ‘advantageous’ ˌædvənˈteɪdʒəs
‘-graphy’ ‘photo’ ˈfəʊtəʊ ‘photography’ fəˈtɔgrəfɪ
‘-ial’ ‘proverb’ ˈprɔvɜːb ‘proverbial’ prəˈvɜːbɪəl
‘-ic’ ‘climate’ ˈklaɪmɪt ‘climatic’ klaɪˈmætɪk
‘-ion’ ‘perfect’ ˈpɜːfɪkt ‘perfection’ pəˈfektʃn
‘-ious’ ‘injure’ ˈɪndʒə ‘injurious’ ɪnˈdʒʊəiəs
‘-ty’ ‘tranquil’ ˈtræŋkwɪl ‘tranquility’ træŋˈkwɪlɪtɪ
‘-ive’ ‘reflex’ ˈriːfleks ‘reflexive’ riˈfleksiv

2- Prefixes : Their effect on stress does not have the comparative regularity, independence and predictability of suffixes, and there is no prefix that always carries primary stress. Consequently, the best statement seems to be to say that stress in words with prefixes is governed by the same rules as those for words without prefixes.

II. Compound words: They may receive stress either on the first word or the second. Words which do not receive primary stress normally have secondary stress. Perhaps the most familiar type of compound word is the one which combines two nouns, and normally has stress on the first element, as in
‘typewriter’ ˈtaɪpraɪtə
‘car-ferry’ ˈkaːferɪ
‘sunrise’ ˈsΛnraɪz
‘suitcase’ ˈsjuːtkeɪs
‘tea-cup’ ˈtiːkΛp

However, a variety of compounds receive stress on the second element. For example, adjectives with an adjectival first element and the –ed morpheme at the end have this pattern:
bad-ˈtempered
half-ˈtimbered
heavy-ˈhanded

Compounds in which the first element is a number also to have final stress:
Three-ˈwheeler
second -ˈclass
five-ˈfinger


Compounds functioning as adverbs are usually final-stressed:
head-ˈfirst
North-ˈEast
downˈstream

Finally, compounds which function as verbs and have an adverbial first element take final stress:
Down-ˈgrade
Back-ˈpedal
ill-ˈtreat

Variable stress
It would be wrong to imagine that the stress pattern is always fixed and unchanging in English words. Stress position may vary for one or two reasons: either as a result of the stress on the other words occurring next to the word in question, or because not all speakers of RP (Received Pronunciation) a gree on the placement of stress in some words. The former case is an aspect of connected speech : the main effect is that the stress on a final-stressed compound tends to move to the preceding syllable if the following word begins with a strongly stressed syllable. Thus:
bad-ˈtempered but a ˈ bad-tempered ˈ teacher
half-ˈtimbered but a ˈhalf- timbered ˈhouse
heavy-ˈhanded but a ˈheavy-handed ˈ sentence

The second is not a serious problem but one foreign ******** learners should be aware of. A well know example is ‘controversy’ which is pronounced by some speakers as ˈkɔntrəvɜːsi and by others as kən ˈtrɔvəsi . It would be quite wrong to say that one version was correct and one incorrect. Other examples of different possibilities are ‘kilometer’ (either ˈkiləmiːtə or kiˈlɔmitə) and ‘formidable’ (either ˈfoːmɪdəbl or fəˈmɪdəbl)
Word –class pairs
There are several dozen pairs of two-syllable words with identical spelling which differ from each other in stress placement, apparently according to word class (noun, verb or adjective). All appear to consist of prefix + stem. They follow this rule: when a pair of prefix –plus-stem words exists, both members of which are spelt identically, one of which is a verb and the other is either a noun or an adjective, the stress will be placed on the second syllable of the verb but on the first syllable of the noun or adjective. Some common examples are gives below (V= verb, A= adjective, N = noun):
abstract ˈæbstrækt (A) æbˈstrækt (V)
conduct ˈkɔndΛkt (N) kənˈdΛkt (V)
contract ˈkɔntrækt (N) ˈkənˈtrækt (V)
contrast ˈkɔntraːst (N) kənˈtraːst (V)
desert ˈdezət (N) dɪˈzɜːt (V)
escort ˈeskoːt (N) ɪˈskoːt (V)
export ˈekspoːt (N) ɪkˈspoːt (V)
import ˈimpoːt (N) imˈpoːt (V)
insult ˈinsΛlt (N) inˈsΛlt (V)
object ˈɔbdʒɪkt (N) əbˈdʒekt (V)
perfect ˈpɜːfɪkt (A) pəˈfekt (V)
permit ˈpɜːmɪt (N) pəˈmɪt (V)
present ˈpreznt( N, A) prɪˈzent (V)
produce ˈprɔdjuːs (N) prəˈdjuːs (V)
protest ˈprəʊtest (N) prəˈtest (V)
rebel ˈrebl (N) rɪˈbel (V)
record ˈrekoːd (N) rɪˈkoːd (V)
subject ˈsΛbdʒɪkt (N) səbˈdʒekt (V)

……………………..Exercises………………………
Exercise 1:
Put stress marks on the following words (try to put secondary stress marks on as well):
1. shop-fitter 9. birth-mark
2. eight-sided 10. roof-timber
3. open-ended 11.anti-clockwise
4. fruit-cake 12.overweight
5. confirmation 13. shoelace
6. diplomat 14. diplomacy
7. diplomatic 15. photograph
8. photography 16. photographic
Exercise 2:
In this exercise, put the stress on the appropriate syllable according to the type of prefix which is added to the word:
1. Portuguese 2. employee
3. amazing 4. reflexive
5. yellowness 6. statuette
7. otherwise 8. injurious
9. Sudanese 10. usherette

Exercise 3:
In this exercise, you are given a list of items and their word-classes. Put the stress on the appropriate syllable:
1. abstract (adjective) 6. contract (noun)
2. conduct (verb) 7. contrast (verb)
3. desert (noun) 8. escort (noun)
4. protest (noun) 9. export (verb)
5. import (noun) 10. insult (verb)

Exercise 04:
Identify the stressed syllables in the following sentences:
• John and Mary should go.
• I think John and Mary should go.
• He considered her absence as an insult but wondered why does she want to insult him
• They went together for a walkout.

Exercise 05:
Transcribe the following sentences. Mark the stressed syllables.
• What are you doing?
• I can inquire.
• Did you it yet?
• I don’t believe him.
• We ought to have come.
III. Prominence and Accent
I. Prominence
Stress or accentuation depends crucially on the speaker’s ability to make certain syllables more noticeable than others. A syllable which ‘stands out’ in this way is a prominent syllable. Prominence is what we hear when a word ‘stands out’ from those around it, as in for example the prominent word ‘I’ in ‘I am’, a possible answer to ‘Who's coming?’, compared with the prominent word ‘am’ in ‘I am’ answering perhaps ‘You're not coming, are you?’. An important thing about prominence, at least in English, is the fact that there are many ways in which a syllable can be made prominent: experiments have shown that prominence is associated with greater length, greater loudness, pitch prominence (i.e. having a pitch level or movement that makes a syllable stand out from its context) and with quality of the syllables containing ‘full’ vowels and diphthongs ( the vowel /ə/ – ‘schwa’ – and syllabic consonants are only found in unstressed syllables and /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ are found in both stressed and unstressed). Despite the complexity of this set of interrelated factors it seems that the listener simply hears syllables as more prominent or less prominent.


Pitch, loudness, length and quality
A t this level, it is necessary to explain in which ways the terms pitch, loudness and length are related to prominence.
• Pitch
Pitch is defined as the relative height of speech sounds as perceived by a listener and is what we are hearing when we refer to a voice being ‘high’ or ‘low’. Pitch in speech is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds and to the musical notion of low – and high-pitched notes. The varying pitch levels throughout an utterance form what we hear as intonation: the ‘falling’ or ‘rising’ of the voice. When a message is sent by a speaker to a hearer, there is obviously some degree of correspondence between what the speaker does (physically) to produce his / her message and what the hearer receives / perceives. If a male voice is generally perceived as less high-pitched than a female voice, it is mainly because of the different physical configuration of the speech organs in males and females. Sounds produced by female speech organs generally have a higher 'fundamental frequency'.
• Loudness
A speaker may speak in a loud voice (to make himself / herself understood in a noisy environment, for example, or to show that he / she is angry) or, on the contrary, he / she may speak in a low voice. The 'loudness' of the message, as perceived at the hearer's end, is the consequence of a greater expenditure of energy by the speaker to produce the message. This expenditure of energy is generally referred to as 'intensity'. It is shown in waveform graphs as 'amplitude' ('magnitude' in Speech Analyzer terminology).
• Length
In the same way, a particular speaker may speak more slowly than another, i.e. he / she may take more time to articulate a particular sound. The time spent articulating a given sound is generally referred to in terms of 'duration'. His / her message will then seem longer to the hearer than the same message spoken by a different speaker.
• Quality
The most frequently encountered vowels in weak syllables are ɪ, ʊ and ə. We can look on stressed syllables as occurring against a background of these weak syllables, so that their prominence is increased by contrast with these background qualities.
Prominence, then, is produced by four main factors: loudness, length, pitch and quality. They generally work together in combination, though syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only one or two of them.
II. Accent
It has been suggested by many writers that the term accent should be used to refer to some of the manifestations of stress (particularly pitch prominence), but the word, though widely used, never seems to have acquired a distinct meaning of its own. This word is used (rather confusingly) in two different senses:

1. Accent may refer to prominence given to a syllable, usually by the use of pitch. For example, in the word potato the middle syllable is the most prominent; if you say the word on its own you will probably produce a fall in pitch on the middle syllable, making that syllable accented. In this sense, accent is distinguished from the more general term stress, which is more often used to refer to all sorts of prominence (including prominence resulting from increased loudness, length or sound quality). or to refer to the effort made by the speaker in producing a stressed syllable.

2. Accent also refers to a particular way of pronouncing - for example, you might find a number of English speakers who all share the same grammar and vocabulary, but pronounce what they say with different accents, such as Scots, Cockney or Received Pronunciation (BBC accent). The word accent in this sense is distinguished from dialect, which usually refers to a variety of a ******** that differs from other varieties in grammar and/or vocabulary. The aim of the present lesson is to extend on this sense of accent.
3.
For a long time, the study of accent was part of the subject of dialectology, which aimed to identify all the ways in which a ******** differed from place to place. Differences between accents are of two sorts, phonetic and phonological.


Phonetic differences
When two accents differ from each other only phonetically, we find the same number of phonemes in both accents, but some or all the phonemes are realized differently. There may also be differences in stress and intonation, but not such as would cause a change in meaning. As an example of phonetic differences at the segmental level, it is said that Australian English has the same set of phonemes and phonemic contrasts as RP; Australian pronunciation is so different from RP that it is easily recognized as such.

Many accents also differ noticeably in intonation without the difference being such as would cause a difference in meaning. Some Welsh (from Wales) for example, have a tendency for unstressed syllables to be higher in pitch than stressed syllables. Such a difference is also a phonetic one. An example of a phonetic (not phonological) difference in stress would be the stressing of verbs ending in ‘-ise’ in some Scots and Northern Irish accents (e.g. ‘realise’ rɪəˈlaɪz).

Phonological differences
They are of different types which can be divided into segmental ad suprasegmental. Within the area of segmental phonology the most obvious type of difference is where one accent has a different number of phonemes from another. Many speakers with Northern English accents, for example, do not have a contrast between Λ and ʊ, so that ‘luck’ and ‘look’ are pronounced identically (both as lʊk). In the case of consonants, many accents do not have the phoneme h. The phonemic system of such accents is different from that of RP.

A more complicated kind of difference is where a phoneme has a distribution in one accent that is different from the same phoneme’s distribution in another accent. The obvious example /r/, which is restricted to occurring in pre-vocalic (before a vowel) position in RP but in many other accents, is not restricted in this way. Another example is the occurrence of /j/ between a consonant and /uː, ʊ or ʊə/. In RP we can find the following: ‘pew’ /pjuː/, ‘tune’ /tjuːn/, ‘queue’ /kuː/ However, in many American accents and in many English accents of the South and East we find that, while ‘pew’ is pronounced pjuː, and ‘queue’ as /kuː/, ‘tune’ is pronounced /tuːn/. This absence of j is found after the other alveolar consonants, hence: ‘due’ /duː/, ‘new’ /nuː/.

We also find another kind of variation. In the example just given above, the occurrence of the phoneme being discussed was determined by their phonological context, but sometimes the determining factor is lexical rather than phonological. For example, in many accents of the Midlands and North-Western England, a particular set of words contains a vowel (represented by ‘o’ in the spelling) which is pronounced as Λ in RP but as /ɔ/ in these other accents. The list of words includes ‘one’; ‘none’, ‘nothing’, ‘tongue’, ‘mongrel’ and ‘constable’. One of the results of this difference is that such accents have different pronunciations for the two members of pairs of words that are pronounced identically (i.e. are homophones) in RP, e.g. ‘won’ and ‘one’; ‘nun’ and ‘none’.

IV. Intonation
The phenomenon of intonation had been introduced in last year’s programme but only briefly. This is an extremely important issue in English phonetics and therefore it needs to be gone through in more details. Focus will be on the different functions of intonation as well as the four tone types which make up the English intonation. Once again, you are reminded, dear student , that last year you dealt with only two tone types and in the present lesson you will be acquainted with the other types.
What is intonation?
Intonation is defined by Jones (1960) as the variations which take place in the pitch of the voice in connected speech, i.e. the variations in the pitch of the musical note produced by vibration of the vocal cords. It refers to the ‘melody’ of speech.

According to roach (1991) the pitch of the voice plays the most important part in intonation. Only in very unusual situations do we speak with fixed, unvarying pitch, and when we speak normally the pitch of our voice is constantly changing. One of the most important tasks in analising intonation is to listen to the speaker’s pitch and recognize what it is doing.

Let’s take two one-syllable common utterances ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as examples. We notice that we have a choice of saying these with the pitch remaining at a constant level, or with the pitch changing from one level to another. The word we use for the overall bahaviour of the pitch in these examples is tone; a one-syllable word can be said with either a level tone or a moving tone. In fact, saying things with a level tone does not sound natural and is not common. Moving tones are more common. If English speakers want to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a definite, final manner they will probably use a falling tone – one which descends from a higher to lower pitch. If they want to say ‘yes?’ or ‘no?’ in a questioning manner they may say it with a rising tone – a movement from a lower pitch to a higher one.

Tone-units
In the study of intonation it is usual to divide speech into larger units than syllables. In longer utterances there must be some points which mark a break between the end of one pattern and the beginning of the next. These breaks divide speech into tone-units, and are called tone-unit boundaries. If the study of intonation is part of phonology, these boundaries should be identifiable with reference to their effect on pronunciation rather than to grammatical information about word and clause boundaries. However, in most cases tone-unit boundaries do fall at obvious syntactic boundaries, and it would be rather odd to divide two tone-units in the middle of a phrase. The most obvious factor to look for in trying to establish boundaries is the presence of a pause, and in slow careful speech (e.g. in lectures, sermons and political speeches) this may be done quite regularly. However, it seems that we detect tone-unit boundaries even when the speaker does not make a pause, if there is an identifiable break or discontinuity in the rhythm or in the intonation pattern.

Closely related with the notion of pausing is that a change of meaning may be brought about. Certain pauses in a stream of speech can have significant meaning variations in the message to be conveyed. Consider the example below, in which slashes correspond to pauses, the meaning (given in brackets) differs according to the place of the pause in the utterance:

• When danger threatens your children │ call the police.
( you have to call the police when danger threatens your children.)
• When danger threatens │ your children call the police.
(Your children call the police whenever danger threatens)

Tone
According to Roach (1991) a unit of speech bounded by pauses has movement, of music and rhythm, associated with the pitch of voice. This certain pattern of voice movement is tone. A tone is a certain pattern, not an arbitrary one, because it is meaningful in discourse. By means of tones, speakers signal whether to refer, proclaim, agree, disagree, question or hesitate, or indicate completion and continuation of turn-taking, in speech. Each tone-unit contains a syllable that carries the tone. This syllable is called the tonic syllable. It has a high degree of prominence. A tonic syllable does not only carry a tone but also a type of stress that is called tonic stress.

Many types of tones had been proposed by many writers. As it has been mentioned in the introduction of this lesson, you had been introduced to only two types in last year’s programme. In the present lesson you will be introduced to four other types of tone proposed by Roach (1991). Focus will be put on the functions of each tone.
Some functions of English tones
In what follows, we will examine in what circumstances the different tones are used within the very limited context of the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ said in isolation.


Fall
It is the most common used tone of all. It is represented by a small inclined line on the specific tonic syllable( ). It is regarded as more or less neutral. If someone is asked a question and replies ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with a falling tone, it will be understood that the question is now answered and that there is nothing more to be said. The fall could be said to give an impression of ‘finality’.

Rise
It is represented by a small inclined line on the specific tonic syllable ( ). This tone conveys an impression that something more is to follow. A typical occurrence in a dialogue between two speakers might be the following:
A (wishing to attract B’s attention): Excuse me.
B: yes (rise)
(B’s reply is , perhaps, *****alent to ‘what do you want’)
Another quite common occurrence would be:
A: Do you know John Smith?
One possible reply from B would be (‘yes’ with a rising tone) inviting A to continue with what she intends to say about John Smith after establishing that B knows him. To reply instead ‘yes’ (with a falling tone) would give a feeling of ‘finality’, of ‘end of conversation’. If A did have something to say about John Smith, the response with a fall would make it difficult for A to continue.
With ‘no’ (with a rising tone), a similar function can be seen. For example:
A: have you seen Ann?
If B replies ‘no’ (with a falling tone) he implies that he has no interest in continuing with that topic of conversation. But a reply of ‘no’ (with a rising tone) would be an invitation to A to explain why she is looking for Ann, or why she does not know where she is.
Similarly, one may ask a question that implies to present some new information. For example:
A: Do you know what the longest balloon flight was?
If B replies ‘no’ (with a rising tone) he is inviting A to tell him, while a response of ‘no’ (with a falling tone) could be taken to mean that he does not know and is not expecting to be told. This is in fact, a common cause of misunderstanding in English, when a question such as A’s above might be a request for information or an offer to provide some.
Fall-rise (followed by Fall)
This tone is usually represented by this shape at the base of the tonic syllable ( ).
The fall–rise is used a lot in English and has rather special functions. Let’s consider one fairly simple one which could perhaps be described as (limited agreement’ or ‘response with reservation’. Examples may make this clearer:

A: I’ve heard that it’s a good school.
B: yes (fall-rise )
B’s reply would be taken to mean that he should not completely agree with what A said, and A would probably expect B to go on to explain why he was reluctant to agree.
A: It’s not really an expensive record, is it?
B: no (fall rise)

The fall-rise in B’s reply again indicates that he would not completely agree with A. Fall-rise in such contexts almost always indicates both something ‘given’ or ‘conceded’ and at the same time some ‘reservation’ or ‘hesitation’.
Rise-fall
This tone is usually represented by this shape at the base of the tonic syllable ( ). This is used rather to convey strong feelings of approval, disapproval or surprise. Here some examples:
A: You wouldn’t do an awful thing like that , would you?
B: no (rise-fall)

A: Isn’t the view lovely
B: yes (rise-fall)

A: I think you said it was the best so far.
B: yes (rise-fall)


………………………Exercises……………………
Exercise 01:
In the following sentences and bits of dialogue, each underlined syllable must be given an appropriate tone mark. Write a tone mark just I front of each of the syllables:
1. Can you give me a lift?
Possibly. Where to?
2. No! Certainly not! Go away!
3. Did you know he’d been convicted of drunken driving?
No!
4. If I give him money he goes and spends it
If I lend him the bike he loses it
He’s completely unreliable.

Exercise 02:
Supply an appropriate intonation pattern for the dialogue below. Explain what determines the choice of pattern you have described.
- How've you been keeping recently?
- Oh, mustn't grumble. What about you?
- Not too bad, really. I wish the weather would clear up, though. It seems to have been raining non-stop for days.
- Well if it wasn't raining we'd probably all be complaining about the drought. I can't think why the English are such keen gardeners - it's always either too wet to mow the lawn, or so dry that there's a hosepipe ban and you're not allowed to water the flowers.
- I do find the garden a burden these days.
- You ought to pay someone to do it, then. If you let it get too untidy, the neighbours'll start complaining.

V. Functions of intonation
Before we start the discussion of the function of intonation, let’s ask ourselves what would be lost if we were to speak without intonation. Let’s imagine a speech in which every syllable was said on the same level pitch, with no pause and with no changes in speed and loudness. In fact, intonation makes it easier for a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey. There are many ways in which intonation does this:
1. Attitudinal function
Intonation enables us to express emotions and attitudes as we speak, and this adds a special meaning to ********. For example, the same sentence can be said in different ways, which might be labeled ‘angry’, ‘happy’, ‘grateful’ ‘bored’ an dos on. A few generalizations can be made about the attitudinal functions of some components of intonation. Within tone for example, here are some examples of basic meanings:
• Fall: The attitudinal function that can be expressed by a falling tone is:
finality, definiteness: That is the end of the news
I’m absolutely certain
Stop talking
• Rise: Most of the functions attributed to rises are nearer to grammatical than attitudinal, as in the three examples listed below. They are included here mainly to give a fuller picture of intonational function:
General question: Can you help me
Is it over
Listing : red, brown, yellow or blue (blue is pronounced with falling tone)
‘More to follow’: I phoned them right away
(and they agreed to come)
You must write it again
(and this time get it right)
Encouraging: It wont hurt

• Fall-rise:
Uncertainty, doubt: you may be right
It’s possible
Requesting: Can I buy it
Will you lend it to me

• Rise-fall
Surprise, being impressed: You were first
all of them

In addition to functions within tone, pitch variations may convey different functions. For example, wider pitch range tends to be used in excited to enthusiastic speaking, slower speed is typical of the speech of someone who is tired or bored, an do on.

2. Accentual function
Intonation helps to produce the effect of prominence on syllables that need to be perceived as stressed, and in particular the placing of tonic stress on a particular syllable marks out the word to which it belongs as the most important in the tone-unit. The ******** of the tonic stress is of considerable linguistic importance. The most common position for this is on the last lexical word (e.g. noun, adjective, verb, adverb) of the tone unit. However, there are situations where the tonic stress is placed on any other syllable; such as contrast or emphasis. In the following examples, (a) represents normal placement and (b) contrastive or emphatic:
Contrast:
a) │ I want to know where he is traveling to│ (the word ‘to’ , which is a preposition, is not stressed because it is not a lexical word)
b) │I don’t want to know where he is traveling from│
│I want to know where he is traveling to │

a) │ she was wearing a red dress│
b) │she was not wearing a green dress │She was wearing a red dress│

Emphasis: ( In these examples (a) is non-emphatic and (b) is emphatic)
a) │It was very boring│
b) │It was very boring│

a) │You mustn’t talk so loudly│
b) │You mustn’t talk so loudly│

In addition to contrast and emphasis, there are other exceptions to the placement of the tonic stress on the last lexical word of the tone-unit. So the tonic stress may be placed earlier in the tone-unit if there is a word there with greater importance to what is being said. This can happen as a result of the last part of the tone-unit being already ‘given’ (i.e. something which has already been mentioned or is completely predictable), for example:

│Here is that book you asked me to bring│ (the fact you asked me to bring it is not new)

3. Grammatical function
The listener is better able to recognize the grammar and syntactic structure of what is being said by using the information contained in the intonation. For example, intonation indicates the placement of boundaries between phrases, clauses or sentences, the difference between questions and statements and the use of grammatical subordination.

It is usual to illustrate the grammatical function of intonation by inventing sentences which when written are ambiguous, and whose ambiguity is removed by using differences in intonation. A typical example is the sentence ‘Those who sold quickly made a profit’. This can be said in at least two different ways:

a) │Those who sold quickly│ made a profit │
b) │Those who sold │quickly made a profit │

The difference caused by the placement of the tone-unit boundary is seen to be *****alent to giving two different paraphrases of the sentence, as in:

a) A profit was made by those who sold quickly.
b) A profit was quickly made by those who sold.

In addition to that a rising tone is always used for questions in English. However, it is quite usual to a use a falling tone with questions beginning with one of the ‘wh-question-words’. Here are two examples with typical intonations, where (a) does not start with a’wh-word’ and has a rising tone and (b) begins with ‘where’ and has falling tone:

a) │Did you park the car│(rising tone)
b) │Where did you park the car │(falling tone)

4. Discourse function
Intonation can signal to the listener what is to be taken as ‘new’ information and what is already ‘given’, can suggest when the speaker is indicating some sort of contrast or link with material in another tone-unit and, in conversation, can convey to the listener what kind of response is expected.
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 and hearer. For example, in the following sentence:
│Since the last time we met│ when we had that huge dinner│ I’ve been on diet│
The first two tone-units present information which is relevant to what the speaker is saying, but which is not something new and unknown to the listener. The final tone-unit, however, does present new information. Writers on discourse intonation have proposed that the falling tone indicates new information while rising (including falling-rising) tones indicate ‘shared’ or ‘given’ information.
Intonation can also suggest when the speaker is indicating some sort of contrast or link with material in another tone-unit. In conversation, it can convey to the listener what kind of response is expected.
………………………Exercises……………………………
Exercise1:
In the following bits of conversation, you are supplied with an ‘opening line’ and a response that you must imagine saying. You are given an indication in brackets of the feeling or attitude expressed, and you must mark the intonation you think is appropriate on the tonic syllable. (punctuation is left out since it may cause confusion)
1. It looks nice for a swim ( fall) Its rather cold (doubtful)
2. Why not get a car (rise) Because I can’t afford it (impatient)
3. I’ve lost my ticket (fall) You’re silly the (stating the obvious)
4. You cant have an ice cream (fall) Oh please (pleading)
5. What time are the buses ( rise) Seven o’clock seven thirty and eight (listing)
6. She got eight ‘A’ levels (fall) eight (impressed)
7. How much work have you got to do (fall) I’ve got to do the shopping ( and more things after that)
8. Will the children go (fall-rise) some of them might (uncertain)
Exercise2:
In the following exercise, read the ‘opening line’ and then decide the most suitable place for tonic stress placement (underline the syllable in the response)
1. I like you to help me ( fall)…….. (right) can I do the shopping for you
2. I hear you’re offering to do the shopping for someone ( fall)…….. (right) can I do the shopping for you
3. What was the first thing that happened ( fall)…….first the professor explained he theory.
4. Was the theory explained by students (rise)…….no first the professor explained her theory
5. Tell me how the theory was presented ( fall)……. First she explained her theory
6. I think it starts at ten to three( fall)……. no ten past three
7. I think it starts at quarter past three ( fall)……. no ten past three
8. I think it starts at ten past four ( fall)……. no ten past three
Exercise3:
The following sentences are given without punctuation. Underline the appropriate tonic syllable places and mark tone-unit boundaries where you think they are appropriate:
1. he wrote the letter sadly (he wrote the letter in a sad way)
2. he wrote the letter sadly (it’s regrettable that he wrote the letter)
3. four plus six divided by two equals five
4. four plus six divided by two equals seven
5. we broke one thing after another fell down
6. we broke one thing after another that night

--Chapter Three: Aspects of Connected Speech---
I. Assimilation
Definition
Assimilation is a regular and frequent sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. Indeed, if speech is thought of as a string of sounds linked together, assimilation is what happens to a sound when it is influenced by one of its neighbours. So, assimilation in English refers to the influence of the sounds of one word upon the articulation of the neighbouring words. It varies in extent according to speaking rate and style and is found more in rapid casual speech and less so in slow, careful one. For example, the word 'this' has the sound /s/ at the end if it is pronounced on its own, but when followed by / ʃ./ in a word such as 'shop' (this shop), it often changes in rapid speech (through assimilation) to / ʃ./, giving the pronunciation / ðIʃʃ p /. Another common example of assimilation is vowels being 'nasalized' before nasal consonants as it is difficult to change the shape of the mouth sufficiently quickly.
Assimilation can be:
 progressive (also known as left-to-right, or preservative assimilation) when a sound influences a following sound. Progressive assimilation is exemplified by the behaviour of the 's' plural ending in English which is pronounced with a voiced / z / after a voiced consonant (e.g. 'dogs' /d gz / ) but with a voiceless / s / after a voiceless consonant (e.g. 'cats' / k æts /).
 regressive (also right-to-left or anticipatory assimilation) when a sound influences one which precedes it. The most familiar case of regressive assimilation in English is that of alveolar consonants (e.g. / t d s z n /) which are followed by non-alveolar consonants: assimilation results in a change of place of articulation from alveolar to a different place. The example of 'this shop' is of this type; others are 'football' (where 'foot' / f ʊt/ and / bɔ:l / combine to produce /fʊpbɔ:l / )and 'fruit-cake' (where / fr u:t / and / k eɪk / combine to produce / fr u:kk eɪk).
 Assimilation may result in the neighbouring segments becoming identical. this is complete assimilation such as in illegible (in + legible) and suppose (sub + pose).
 In other cases, only some features of phonemes assimilate, e.g. voicing or place of articulation is partial assimilation. Examples:
• voicing: the pronunciation of absurd as apsurd or abzurd
• devoicing: bats (bat + the plural morpheme s, which is underlyingly /z/)
• place of articulation: impossible (in + possible), incomplete (in which n represents thevelar nasal)
Common types of assimilations in English
a) Place of articulation
Assimilation of place is the commonest and most frequent type of assimilation. It happens in some cases when a final consonant with an alveolar place of articulation is followed by an initial consonant with a place of articulation that is not alveolar. For example: ‘that person’ ðæt pɜ:sn becomes that person ðæp pɜ:sn./t/ alveolar, voiceless, stop (plosive) becomes /p/ bilabial, voiceless, stop.

Examples of Common assimilations of place :
1) / t / changes to / p / before / m / / b / or / p /
basket maker mixed bag
cat burglar mixed marriage
Great Britain sit back
2) / d / changes to / b / before / m / / b / or / p /
bad pain red bag
blood bath grand master
food poisoning ground plan
3) / n / changes to / m / before / m / / b / or / p /
action planning iron man
brown bear open book
chicken breast open market
4) / t / changes to / k / before / k / or /g/
cigarette card Cut glass
Fat girl short cut
first class that cake
5) / d / changes to / g / before / k / or / g /
bad girl hard cash
closed game second coming
6)
action group open court
garden cress roman catholic
7)
bus ****ter nice yacht
nice shoes this year
8)
cheese shop is young
these sheep wise youngster
9)
bath salts earth science
birth certificate fourth season
b) Manner of articulation:
Assimilation of manner of articulation is less noticeable. Generally speaking the change is most likely toward an “easier” consonant ( one which makes less obstruction to the airflow) . For example, ‘that side’ ðæt saɪd becomes 'that side’ ðæs saɪd where /t/ voiceless, alveolar stop (plosive) becomes /s/ voiceless, alveolar fricative and ‘good night’ gʊd naɪt becomes ‘good night’ gʊn naɪt where /d/ voiced, alveolar oral stop becomes /n/ voiced, alveolar nasal .
c) Assimilation of voicing
Assimilation of voice is also found but only in a limited way. The vibration of the vocal cords is not something that can be switched on and off very swiftly. As a result, groups of consonants tend to be either all voiced or all voiceless. Consider the different endings of ‘dogs’ /d gz/ and ‘cats’ /kæts/ and of the past forms of the regular verbs such as ‘kissed’ / kɪst/ and ‘sneezed’ /sni:zd/. In these cases, the fact of the final consonant of a word being voiced or not determines the choice of whether the suffix will be voiced or voiceless. In the case of the suffixes for plural nouns, for the third person singular in the present simple, for regular verbs in the past simple and for the genitive the application of this rule is predictable, with only a few exceptions (e.g. leaf ® leaves). In other words, the rule concerning the suffixes ‘s’ and ‘z’ implies that when a verb carries a third person singular ‘-s’ suffix, or a noun carries an ‘-s’ plural suffix or an ‘-s’ possessive suffix, that suffix will pronounced as /s/ if the preceding consonant is voiceless (“fortis”) and as /z/ if the preceding consonant is voiced (“lenis”). However, assimilation of voicing can radically change the sound of several other common constructions:
Examples of common assimilations of voicing:
1. Have to
have to /hævtu:/ (labiaodental, fricative, voiced /v/ become /hæftə / (labiaodental, fricative, voiceless /f/ when followed by a voiceless consonant /t/ )
has to /hæz tu:/ /hæstə /
I have to go! /aɪ hæftə gəʊ /
2. Used to
used to /ju:zd tu:/ becomes /ju:stə/
I used to live near you. /aɪ ju:stə lɪ v nɪə ju:/
Here assimilation has taken place twice, first on the /d/ and then on the /z/.
3. Supposed to
Supposed to /səpəʊ zd tu:/ becomes /səpəʊ stə/
You were supposed to leave! /ju: wə səpʊ stəli:v/
4. Suffixes
/s/ /z/
plural cats /kæts/ Dogs / d gz /

Verb (3rd p sing) jumps / dʒ ʌ mps/ Runs /rʌ nz /
Possessive ‘s’ Pat’s /pæts/ Pam’s /pæmz/
……………………………..Exercises:…………………….
Exercise :
Identify the different assimilations in the following.
coconut butter old man
court martial Good boy
command module old boy
command post first class
in camera town crier
Common Market pot plant
con man pen pal
cold call hard court
open prison highland cattle
field glasses red carpet
rose show Where's yours?
both sexes post mortem
dress shop space shuttle
command module old boy
ground cover second cousin
fast motion cold cream
custard pie fourth summer
cotton belt pin money
down payment queen mother
private parts white paper
had come put by
human capital old maid
Fifth sense question mark
town clerk slide guitar
II. Elision
Definition
Some of the sounds that are heard if words are pronounced slowly and clearly tend not to be pronounced when the same words are produced in a rapid, colloquial style, or when the words occur in a different context; these "missing sounds" are said to have been elided. So, Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. In other sords, elision takes place when some sounds in connected speech, under certain conditions, disappear or technically speaking they arte realised as zero phoneme.
Elision is normally unintentional, but it may be deliberate. It is easy to find examples of elision, but very difficult to state rules that govern which sounds may be elided and which may not. The elided form of a word or phrase may become a standard alternative for the full form, if used often enough. In English, this is called a contaction such as can't from cannot. (forthcoming)
Examples of elision in English (in IPA):
Comfortable [kʌɱ.fɜ(r).tə.bəl] → [kʌɱf.tr.bəl]
Fifth [fɪfθ] → [fɪθ]
Him [hɪm] → [ɪm]
laboratory [læ.bɔ.rə.tɔ.rɪ] →[læb.rə.tɔ.rɪ](American English),[lə.bɔ.rə.trɪ]
(British English)
Temperature [ˈtɛm.pə.rə.tʃə] → [ˈtɛm.pɚ.tʃə], [ˈtɛm.prə.tʃə]
Vegetable [vɛ.dʒə.tə.bəl] → [vɛdʒ.tə.bəl]
Common cases of elision in English
• Loss of weak vowel after p, t, k

In English a short, unstressed vowel occurring between voiceless consonants or in general after p, t, k may disappear. This is the case , for example, with the first syllable of 'perhaps' / pəhæps/ which becomes / phæps/, 'potato' / pəteɪtəʊ/, which becomes / pteɪtəʊ/, the second syllable of 'bicycle' /baɪsɪkl/ which becomes /baɪskl/, or the third syllable of 'philosophy' /fɪl səfɪ/ which becomes /fɪl sfɪ/.
• / n /, /l /, /r / after weak vowel become syllabic
Elision also occurs when a vowel occurs between an obstruent consonant and a sonorant one. This process leads to syllabic consonants, as in 'tonight' [ tņaɪt] (instead of /tən aɪt) 'sudden' [ sʌ dņ] ( instead of / sʌ dən/ ) , 'awful' [ɔ:f ļ ] ( instead of / ɔ:f əl/). And correct [kəŗekt] (instead of / krekt/ ). In these examples, a vowel is only heard in the second syllable in slow, careful speech. ([ŗ] read syllabic r, [ņ] read syllabic n and [ ļ ] syllabic l )
• Avoidance of a complex consonant cluster
Elision of consonants in English happens most commonly when a speaker "simplifies" a complex consonant cluster: 'acts' becomes / æks / rather than / ækts /, 'twelfth night' becomes / twelθ naIt / or /twelf naIt / rather than / twelfθ naIt /. It seems much less likely that any of the other consonants could be left out: the /l/ and the /n/ seem to be unelidable.
Consonant elision can also be defined as the deletion of the second consonant in a final consonant cluster as a result of assimilation with the initial consonant in the following words (e.g., /d/ is deleted in and_ mouth, and_ hides, friendly, used_ to, tried_ to), or /δ/ in in_the, on_the).
• Loss of final v in ‘of’ before consonants
this is very common in English, and examples of these include ‘lots of them’ / l ts ə δəm/ and ‘waste of money’ / weɪst ə mʌnɪ/.

…………………………Exercises ……………………….
Exercise 1 :
Here is an incomplete list of words, showing for each at least two pronunciations, ranging from the stressed, careful pronunciation (on the left) to the most unstressed and casual ( on the right). Complete the list providing either the careful pronunciation or the casual one. Sometimes more than one realization in casual speech is possible. The first two words are done as examples.
1. you: [ju, ə ]
2. did: [dɪd, dəd, d]
3. he: [hi, …]
4. him: [hɪm, …]
5. them: […., ə m]
6. our: [aʊr, ….]
7. of: [ v, …, … ]
8. to: […., tə]
9. for: […., fər]
10. out: [aʊt, ….]
11. am: [æm, …, m]
12. is: [ɪz, …, …, s]
13. are: […., ər, ….]
14. have: [hæv, əv, …]
15. will: [….., ….., əl, …]
16. would: [wud, əd, d]
17. while: […., wəl]
18. because: [bɪk z,, k z, ….]
19. how: […..., hə]







III. Liaison
Definition
Liaison is a French word which refers to "Linking" or "joining together" sounds. In general this is not something that speakers need to do anything active about - we produce the phonemes that belong to the words we are using in a more or less continuous stream, and the listener recognizes them (or most of them) and receives the message. However, phoneticians have felt it necessary in some cases to draw attention to the way the end of one word is joined on to the beginning of the following word.
In French, for example, words that start with a vowel sound get special treatment. French likes to have a consonant 'cover' that vowel. For example, when a word which ends with a normally silent consonant, like 's', 't', 'd', and 'p', is followed by a word with a vowel sound, this normally silent consonant sounds. The normally silent sound of 's' is pronounced as a /z/ and the normally silent 't' is pronounced as a /t/.




Examples from French:
Liaison occurs:
next word begins with a vowel No liaison:
next word begins with a consonant
Liaison with 's' les étudiants
les petits amis
dans un instant
Nous aimons le chocolat. les professeurs
des petits frères
dans un peu de temps
Nous mangeons du chocolat.
Liaison with ‘t’ C'est à dix kilomètres.
Ils sont étudiants.
Un petit ami C’est plus fort
Ils sont petits
Un petit garçon
Table 04 : Liaison /Linking i, French
Linking R
In English the best-known case of liaison is the "linking r". The linking R is a phonological phenomenon of most (but not all) dialects of English. But to understand appropiately the role of the linking R, you probably need first to understand what a rhotic ******** is.
Rhotic is a term used to describe varieties of English pronunciation in which the / r / phoneme is found in all phonological contexts. In RP Pronunciation, / r / is only found before vowels (as in 'red' / red /, 'around' / əraʊnd /), but never before consonants or before a pause. In rhotic accents, on the other hand, / r / may occur before consonants (as in 'cart' /kɑ:rt /) and before a pause (as in 'car' / k ɑ:r/ ). Eventually, you may easily deduce that almost all dialects of Arabic can be considered as rhotic. While RP is non-rhotic, many accents of the British Isles are rhotic, including most of the south and west of England, much of Wales and all of Scotland and Ireland. Most speakers of American English speak with a rhotic accent. Foreign learners encounter a lot of difficulty in learning not to pronounce /r/ in the wrong places.
In all non-rhotic dialects, the phoneme /r/ is ordinarily deleted at the end of a word (so spar is pronounced the same as spa). But in a dialect that possesses linking R (like RP), if the next word begins with a vowel, the [r] will reemerge. Thus, the ‘r’ in here would not be pronounced in here they are, but it would be pronounced in here I am. In other words, in a dialect with linking R, [r] is retained only if it is followed by a vowel, including across word boundaries (i.e., when the vowel is the first sound of the next word).
So, There are many words in English (e.g. 'car', 'here', 'tyre') which in a rhotic accent such as General American (standard American usually referred to as GA) or Scots would be pronounced with a final / kɑ:r / but which in RP pronunciation end in a vowel when they are pronounced before a pause or before a consonant /kɑ: /. When they are followed by a vowel, RP speakers pronounce /r/ at the end (e.g. 'the car is' / ðə kɑ:r ɪz /)

Intrusive R
Some (but not all) dialects that possess linking R also possess intrusive R. In a dialect with intrusive R, an [r] is added after a word that ends in a vowel or glide if the next word begins with a vowel, regardless of whether the first word historically ended with [r] or not. That is to say, an ‘r’ that is absent in spelling would be produced in speaking. For example, intrusive R would appear in Asia[r] and Africa or the idea[r] of it: Asia and idea do not historically end in [r], but the [r] is inserted "intrusively" to prevent ahiatus ( a pause where something is missing). The intrusive R also occurs within words before certain suffixes, such as draw[r]ing.

[MEDOUL]

لا تبخلوا علينا بردودكم و آرائكم و حتى نقدكم

[lila s]

thank you very much

it's really helpfull , here we'll find evry thing

ربي يحفظك و يوفقك انشاء الله في حياتك .

[mouradbensafi]

that's really great. may god bless you