Universit

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Université de Savoie UFR-LLSH LCE1 UE
103Lecture Phonetics Phonology

• Alice Henderson
• ahend_at_univ-savoie.fr
• Office 812

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Content of the 5 lectures

• 1) Introduction, Phonemes
• 2) Sounds in context, connected speech
• 3) Stress, accent rhythm
• 4) Intonation
• 5) Conclusion

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Outline, Lecture 5

• Go over homework
• Review for Exam
• Varieties of English
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

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Vowel vs consonant

• Consonant involves some form of closure or
  narrowing that affects the air flow
• Labels
• Voicing voiced or voiceless
• Place of articulation horizontal axis
• Bilabial, labio-dental, dental,
• Manner/Type of articulation vertical axis
• Nasal, plosive,

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Try to label these

• /b/
• /s/
• /d½/
• /w/
• //
• /h/

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Answers

• /b/ voiced bilabial plosive
• /s/ voiceless alveolar fricative
• /d½/ voiced palato-alveolar affricate
• /w/ voiced labio-velar approximant
• // voiced velar nasal
• /h/ voiceless glottal fricative

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Word stress word class

• REbel / reBEL
• REfuse / reFUSE
• REject / reJECT
• PROmise / PROmise
• PERmit / perMIT
• INsert / inSERT
• OBject / obJECT
• conTROL / conTROL
• INsult / inSULT
• CONduct / conDUCT

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Review for exam

• Phonetics? Phonology?
• What organs are involved in speech?
• Vowel? Consonant? (HW from Lecture 4)

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Que sont les branches de ce domaine?(from
Lecture 1)

• Phonétique générale (acoustique
  articulatoire/physiologique) étudie le
  fonctionnement de lappareil phonateur de lhomme
  et analyse ses capacités articulatoires et les
  particularités des son émis, au moyen dappareils
  acoustiques
• Phonétique descriptive étude des particularités
  phonétiques dune langue donnée
• Phonétique évolutive/historique étude des
  changements phonétiques dune langue donnée
• Phonétique normative prescrit des règles de la
  bonne prononciation dune langue donnée
• Phonétique  criminologique  étude des
  particularités dans un but médico-légal et/ou
  policier (forensic phonetics)

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Speech organs

• Palate? (hard palate)
• Velum? (soft palate)
• Tongue tip?
• Alveolar ridge?
• Glottis?

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Whats hard for French speakers?

• Phoneme level V, C
• Word level
• Groups of sounds
• Word stress
• Reduced vowels in unstressed syllables
• Sentence level
• Rhythm
• Weak forms
• Effect of phonemes on each other in context
• Intonation

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Phoneme level V, C

• Common trouble spots sounds that exist in
  English but not in French  h , the two  th ,
  final NG, di- triphthongs,  r 
• Vowels that may seem similar to French sounds
  but are just not the same leave/live, cat/cut,
  bull/  boule 

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A quick puzzle

• What if your student says __ instead of__?
• Cat / catch
• Breeze / breathe

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A quick puzzle

• Cat / catch
• Voiceless alveolar plosive
• Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate
• Breeze / breathe
• Voiced alveolar fricative
• Voiced dental fricative

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 h 

• How can you avoid adding it when it is
  unnecessary?
• When is it silent? When can it be elided?

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Which  h  can be dropped?

• A When did he go there?
• B I dont know.
• A Who did he talk to?
• B I dont know.
• A Have you talked to him yet?
• B Yes, I have.
• A Did you ask him?
• B What?
• A Did you ask him who he was with?
• B No, its not of my business.

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Which  h  can be dropped?

• A When did he go there?
• B I dont know.
• A Who did he talk to?
• B I dont know.
• A Have you talked to him yet?
• B Yes, I have.
• A Did you ask him?
• B What?
• A Did you ask him who he was with?
• B No, its not of my business.

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Eliding  h 

• Pronoun or auxiliary verb NOT at the start of a
  tone unit
• NOT  have  as a main verb
• NOT at the start of a tone unit
• Essential for smooth connected speech

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Whats hard for French speakers?

• Phoneme level V, C
• Word level
• Groups of sounds
• Word stress
• Reduced vowels in unstressed syllables
• Sentence level
• Rhythm
• Weak forms
• Effect of phonemes on each other in context
• Intonation

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Word level Groups of sounds, clusters

• Words ending in two consonants S
• Scientists, linguists, asks, students, acts,
  risks, pastes
• Consonant  th 
• At the seaside, a good thing, is that it?, his
  things
• Consonant  th  consonant
• Twelfths, months, clothes, Smiths crisps

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Red letters are often changed

• Words ending in two consonants S
• Scientists, linguists, asks, students, acts,
  risks, pastes
• Consonant  th 
• At the seaside, a good thing, is that it?, his
  things
• Consonant  th  consonant
• Twelfths, months, clothes, Smiths crisps

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Word level Word stress

• Stress
• Louder, longer, higher pitch
• Basic rules of placement
• Where would you stress these?
• lorax (n.), kuringe (v.), elbonics, laundrette,
  humongous, carperpetuate

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Where would you stress these?

• elBOnics stress 1 syllable before -ic
• launDRETTE stress the ending -ette
• huMONgous stress 1 syllable before -ous
• carperPEtuate stress 2 syllables before -ate
• LOrax (n.) 2 syllable noun, stress 1st syll.
• kuRINGE (v.) 2 syllable verb, stress 2nd syll.

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Word level

• Reduced vowels in unstressed syllables
• cupboard /ÇkÃbWd/
• breakfast /ÇbrekfWst/
• handkerchief /Çh¾kWtöf/

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Whats hard for French speakers?

• Phoneme level V, C
• Word level
• Groups of sounds
• Word stress
• Reduced vowels in unstressed syllables
• Sentence level
• Rhythm
• Weak forms
• Effect of phonemes on each other in context
• Intonation

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Sentence level Rhythm Weak forms

• Try the Lorax again
• Try tapping the rhythm out with a pencil on your
  desk
• Stress lexical or  content  words
• Essential to use weak forms prepositions,
  pronouns, articles, conjunctions, auxiliary
  verbs, etc. (so-called  grammatical  or
   function  words)

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Sentence level

• Effect of phonemes on each other in context
• Elision
• Assimilation
• Coalescence
• Linking

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Match the example to the term
Tom am Bob a) Elision
Whatcha gonna do? b) Assimilation
Its her only hope. c) Coalescence
Its her only hope. d) Linking
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Answers

• Tom am Bob B a) Elision
• Whatcha gonna do? C b) Assimilation
• Its her only hope. D c) Coalescence
• Its her only hope. A d) Linking

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Sentence level Linking

• Improves flow from one sound to another
• Essential to recognise
• Not essential to do yourself
• Helps to avoid  parasitic h 
• our own, four apples, Shes alone, Get it out,
  Eat some of this

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Whats hard for French speakers?

• Phoneme level V, C
• Word level
• Groups of sounds
• Word stress
• Reduced vowels in unstressed syllables
• Sentence level
• Rhythm
• Weak forms
• Effect of phonemes on each other in context
• Intonation

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Sentence level Intonation

• Stress, accent, pitch, nucleus, tune, focus

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Focus or emphasis

• Basic Sentence Stress lexical words,
  nucleus/accent on last content word
• Focus chosen by speaker,  flexible 
• New Focus Can focus on any word/s that give/s
  new information.
• Contrastive Focus

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New Focus

• A What are you doing?
• B Im just relaxing.
• A Didnt you have lots of work?
• B Yes, // but its for Friday.
• A But shouldnt you start on it now?
• B Probably, // but its not going to disappear.

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Focus or emphasis

• Basic Sentence Stress
• Focus
• New Focus
• Contrastive Focus can emphasize focus words to
  contrast an idea, e.g. when correcting or
  checking information

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Contrastive Focus

• A So thatll be 14.98.
• B But the price tag says 4.98.
• Just to check your number is 35487?
• No, its 35489.

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Outline, Lecture 5

• Go over homework
• Review for Exam
• Varieties of English
• See www.llsh.univ-savoie.fr  Cours en Ligne ,
   Academic English for Specialists 
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

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Rhotic

• /r/ is pronounced where there is  r  in the
  spelling (before consonants at the end of
  words)
• Typical of North America, Scotland, Ireland, SW
  England (Bristol)
• Non-rhotic no r-sound in car, farm, art
• Typical of most of England, Wales, Australia,
  New Zealand, South Africa
• Try near, nearer, father, strawberry, further,
  farmer, postcard, hard, colour, colouring

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Southern Northern British English

• Non-rhotic in South
• Six short vowels (only 5 in North book/buck)
• Long mid diphthongs face, goat (resisted)
• Clear  l  in all positions in much of North
• NG  g  pronounced Birmingham to Manchester to
  Liverpool singing, singer

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 Cockney 

•  h  dropping
•  th  replaced by /f/ and /v/ thing, then,
  another
• Same vowels as RP BUT front vowels are closer, so
  that sat - set, set - sit
• Distinctive pronunciation of diphthongs My
  Fair Lady
• Get off /t/ becomes a tap/flap OR glottal stop

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Welsh

• More aspiration /p t k/ (like Irish English)
• Clear  l  castle, chapel, little
• Dylan Thomas reading his poem  Do not go gentle
  into that good night 

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Yorkshire

• Wallace Gromit
• Book/buck same vowel
• Shortened mid diphthongs name, say, take
• Get off sounds like  geroff  /t/ becomes /r/
  here
• Clear  l  in all positions in much of the North

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Standard Scottish English

• Ant/aunt, soot/suit caught/cot same vowel
• /e/ is different to RP heaven, eleven, next
• No centring diphthongs (like GA) beard, fare,
  dour vowel /r/ rhotic
• Tapped  r  red, trip
• /t/ realised as a glottal stop butter
• /p t k/ little aspiration (except in Western
  Highlands)
•  The Magic o Uncle Peter 

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American English

• Eastern (New England, parts of New York City)
  Non-rhotic, 16th c. near London /r/ was already
  disappearing
• Southern (Virginia to Texas and southwards)
• General (all the rest)
• General American (GA)  that form of English
  without marked regional characteristics , also
  called Network English, (Gimson, p85),

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American

• Rhotic
•  T tapping  Intervocalic /t/ becomes a tap
  that often sounds like/is /d/ butter, put it
• Glass/cat NOT /a/, Am. resistance to so-called
   BATH broadening 
• More rgeular spelling-pronunciation link clerk,
  Derby
•  LOT unrounding  bother father
• Changes in open vowels raising of  cat, man ,
  merger of caughtcot For many GA speakers (and
  most Canadians) cod, calm cause have one vowel
• Lacking /j/ after /t d/ tune, dew, duty

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Australian

• Like London but
• T tapping
• No glottalling
• Weak  happy  sound becomes schwa valid, salad
• Raised /e/ dress sounds like /drIs/

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Other Englishes

• Indian English http//www.indiaradio.com/
• Nigerian English
• Singlish
• Spanglish

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English-es? And if so, which?

• Written / spoken
• Constant change nature of the beast
• Last 500 years Attitude regarding
  norms/standards, there  should  be one
  pronunciation that is preferable over others
• Which?

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Which English?

• RP traditional norm taught to learners, the most
  commonly described/applied in published materials
• But role of RP has changed dramatically
• Now over 320 million people speak English as
  their 1st language but the majority of these
  speak a form of American English
• Another 150 million use English as an official
  language, and a form of local pronunciation
  domniates (Indian English)
• But RP continues to serve as a model, for
  historical reasons (Africa, Asia, Indian
  subcontinent)
• And Indian English is now being  exported 

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Future?

• Two  catatrophe  scenarios, acc. to Trudgill
• Americanisation
• Disintegration
• Phonology the most divergent area of change,
  compared to lexis grammar
• Cut fronting to cat
• New Zealand /dres/ raising closer to /drIs/
•  th  becoming /f/ or /v/
• Rhoticity disappearing in UK, opposite in USA
• /t/ flapping glottalling
•  h  dropping
• labio-dental /r/

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Which models for the future?

• RP or Estuary English?
• British or American or neither?
• A Lingua Franca core?
• Minimum General Intelligibility?
• Should we bother? Should we care?

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What advice for you?

• Learn to listen to hear English sound patterns
• Choose a speaker as a model and imitate that
  person  wacky  extreme accents are the most
  fun
• Dont be afraid to be/feel  silly 
• Remember native English speakers are in the
  minority on this planet, so everybody needs to
  learn more tolerance of variety

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• Its a wide wide world, so
• get out there and feast your ears!

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Bibliography

• Ashby, P. (1995), Speech Sounds, Routledge, New
  York.
• Cruttenden, A., (2001), Gimsons Pronunciation of
  English, Arnold, London.
• Greven, H. (1994), Travaux pratiques de
  phonétique anglaise, Université de Rouen.
• Seuss, Dr. (1971), The Lorax, Random House, New
  York.
• Trudgill, P.  World Englishes , Plenary
  Session, SAES Conference, (2000), Université de
  Savoie.
• http//www.ic.arizona.edu/lsp/index.html
• http//eleaston.com/world-eng.htmlng