Modification of phonemes in connected speech

Phonetic units are greatly modified in real speech. Their modifications may be conditioned by: complimentary distribution of phonemes in a word; contextual variations at the junctions of words; by the style of speech (formal, colloquial). Every phoneme displays wide variety of variants in connected speech. We distinguish the main types: idiolectal (individual peculiarities of articulating sounds. A speaker can mumble or lisp or stammer, we may even pick up information of the emotional state of the speaker whether he is angry or tied and, thus, we can easily identify the speech of definite individuals), diaphonic (gives us information about the locality in which the person lives, his origin, his social standing. This variation is conditioned by historical tendencies active on certain localities. In some regions of Great Britain there is no distinguishes between short and long vowels: in Scottish dialogues. There is no distinguishes between ǽ, a:, a), phonostylistic (are conditioned by the style of speech and the purpose of communication), allophonic (are less noticeable; assimilation, accommodation, vowel reduction and elision).

Modifications of consonants.

There are a lot of modifications of sounds in speech. These modifications are observed both within words and at word boundaries. Assimilation – the result of coarticulation when one sound is made similar to its neighbor. It can be conditioned by: the distribution of the phonemes; the contextual variations; the style of speech. Assimilation can be: progressive - when the 1st of 2 sounds makes the 2^nd sound similar to itself (desks/pegs); regressive - when the 2^nd of 2 sounds makes the 1^st similar to itself (t, d, n, l, s, z + ð, Ө = regressive acc to the place of obstruction: in the →dental); double or reciprocal - when 2 adjacent sounds influence each other (tr/dr – acc to the place and the manner of articulation, t/d – post-alveolar; r-fricative + devoiced after t: train). Assimilations: (t, d, n, l, s, z + ð, Ө = regressive acc to the place of obstruction: in the →dental); progressive acc to the work of the vocal cords (voiceless cons + [r]: free. [r] is devoices partially: in unstressed position, at a word boundary, spr/str/skr, fricative+r//////completely: after [p, t, k] in a stress syllable); tr/dr – acc to the place and the manner of articulation, t/d – post-alveolar; r-fricative + devoiced: train/////////Өr/ðr-progressive acc to the place and the manner of articulation → [r] – alveolar + partially devoiced after Ө; gw/dw – regressive acc to the active organ of speech → g/d – labialized ///////// kw/tw/sw – reciprocal assimilation → t/k/s – labialized; w – partially devoiced. Accommodation – adaptation of vowels to different adjacent sounds. So they are modified according to: lip position, labialization of cons, under the back vowel: pool, moon. It is possible to speak about the spread tip position of consonants followed or preceded by front vowels [i:], [i]: tea-bent; the position of the soft palate, slight nasalization of vowels under the sonorants [m, n]: morning, men. Elision - is a complete loss of sounds. It is typical of rapid colloquial speech and marks the following sounds: [h] in pronouns (he, his, her, him) and auxiliary verbs (have, has, had) in initial position and when unstressed; [t, d] are omitted between two consonants (next day); linking [r] – a teacher of English/ intrusive [r] – the idea of.

Modification of vowels in connected speech.

The modifications of vowels in a speech chain occur in the following directions: they are either quantitative or qualitative or both. These changes of vowels in a speech continuum are determined by: the position of the vowel in the word, accentual structure, tempo of speech, rhythm etc. Shortening of the vowel length is known as a quantitative modification, which may be illustrated as follows: the shortening of the vowel length occurs in unstressed positions (blackboard, sorrow-reduction. In this case reduction affects both the length of the unstressed vowels and their quality); the length of a vowel depend on its position in a word. English vowels are said to have positional length (knee – need – neat). Qualitative modifications of most towels occur in an unstressed position. Unstressed vowels lose their colour, quality: in an unstressed position vowels of full value are usually subjected to qualitative changes (man – sportsman). In such case the quality of the vowel is reduced to the neutral sound [ə]. This neutral sound is the most frequent sound of English. In continuous text it represents about eleven per sent of all sounds; slight degree of nasalization marks vowels preceded or followed the nasal consonants [n, m]: never, then, men. The realization of reduction as well as assimilation and accommodation is connected with the style of speech. In rapid colloquial speech reduction may result in vowel elision, the complete omission of the unstressed vowel (He hasn’t done it).

 

Orthoepic norm of the language

English is an international language (science, medicine, computing). Any language exists in numerous varieties of pronunciation and English is not an exception. The variety of the language can serve both small groups and large nations. Today all English-speaking countries have their national varieties of pronunciations. All of them have their peculiarities. Thus we speak about British English, American English, Australian English. But within Great Britain the pronunciation of every locality has its own specific features that distinguish it from the pronunciation of other localities. They are called Local dialects. There are also social dialects reflecting class distinction, various education and up brining not mentioning individual differences. But at the same time they are all varieties of one and the same language and they have much in common. Though it is believed that dialect speakers are, as a rule, less educated, we should remember that dialects enrich the language, make it more lively and fresh and stimulate its development. At present the number of local dialects is reduced to a fewer regional types. These are all dialects used in a certain region. They are grouped under one name - a given regional type of pronunciation. British phoneticians distinguish 3 main regional types of pronunciation: southern, northern, Scottish regional types. One of the pronunciation types becomes the national standard pronunciation = ON (It’s called the orthoepic norm). It’s accepted by native speakers as the proper way of thinking and is considered to be literary pronunciation. The ON comprises the variants of pronouncing vocabulary units and prosodic patterns which reflect the main tendency (of pronunciation) that exist in this language. It is used by most educated people. Phoneticians claim that there are 3 main conditions necessary for the variety of pronunciation to be occupied as the orthoepic norm: wide currency (usage); social acceptability; agreement with the main phonetic tendencies. The ON does not remain unchanged. It is recorded in pronunciation dictionaries. Some new pronunciations may be included in the norm. Some others may become old-fashioned. That means that in the entry of the pronunciation dictionary we can find different variants of pronouncing one and the same word. Usually the first variant is the well-established pronunciation. It is followed by less frequent, secondary variants. We can also find there dialectal variants, stylistic variants, and American pronunciation of all the words. The pronouncing dictionaries have to be revised from time to time. The ON involved prosodic phenomena as well. The intonation of the speaker may be acceptable and unacceptable because there is a generally agreed norm of loudness, tempo and certain pitch pattern and cultured speakers do not deviate from them. ON is not constant. It’s influenced by social, territorial, stylistic factors and American influence.

 

Received pronunciation (RP)

It is considered to be regionless though historically it appeared on the bases of London dialect belonging to the group of the Southern regional type. It was accepted as the phonetic norm in the second half of the 19^th century. It is spoken all over Britain but by a very small number of people =5% of population. RP has some name – Public School Accent - because there are the most prestigious type of school, with classical type of teaching, they provide pupils with knowledge which gives them the opportunity to enter famous universities, pupils of such schools belong to higher level of society. BBC English members of BBC use it. Royal English members of Royal family speak it. Though these varieties of British English are carefully reserved in Public school, modern RP differs greatly from the former RP of the previous century. Thus 3 variants of RP are distinguished today: the conservative RP – older generation; general RP – used mostly on radio, television; advanced RP – by young generation, very often it reflects temporary passion. The main changes that have recently taken place in RP concern mainly vowels: diphthongization of historically long vowels; smoothing of triphthongs and diphthongs; the change of the former diphthong (centring of the nucleus). This tendency is so strong that the transcription symbol has been changed in British dictionaries. In the system of consonants the main changes are: devoicing of final B,D,G (dog, mood, mob)/voicing of T in intervocalic position (better); the assimilation of the sounds; loss of initial H esp in rapid speech. Smt it is dropped completely; the use of the intrusive “R” (the intrusive R is pronounced where their is no letter R in spelling. Some 30-40 years ago it was carefully avoided by RP speakers).

RP is the teaching norm of the teaching of English because it has been investigated and described more thoroughly, more than any other type of British Pronunciation. It is a teaching norm because of the degree of understandability in English-speaking countries, and the number the textbooks and audio-visual aids. Yet, there are many educated people in Great Britain who do not speak RP but their English is good and correct because they speak standard English with accent.

British English.

Northern regional type: [a:]→[ǽ] – is fronted (glass, after); [ǽ] is more open like in [a] (beg, bad [bag, bad]); [Λ] is pronounced like [u] (half, love); diphthong [əu] is pronounced like monophthong [o:] (go [go:]); [əi]→[3:] (say [s3:], take [t3:k]); all tones are dropped and speech is generally slower that in southern English – Low-Rise is used much more often and it gives a sing-song quality to the speech. Scottish regional type: they don’t have diphthong [iə] and [3:] (here [hir], bird [bird]); [au]→[u] (down [dun]); [Λ]→[ǽ] (grass [grǽs]); all vowels are short, length isn’t a distinctive feature ([ka:st=ka•st=kǽst]); voiceless labio-velar fricative is used [m=hw] (which-witch [hwitƒ]).The British people distinguish between RP educated regional types of pronunciation on the one hand and local dialects on the other. One of the best examples of local dialects is Cokney used by the less educated in the working class areas of London. It has certain striking peculiarities: [əi]→[ai] (lady [laidi]); [au]→[a:] (loud [la:d]); P,T,H – are heavily aspirated; the final [ŋ] sounds like N or NK (nothing [nΛfin, nΛfink]); [ð, Ө]→f, d, r, v ([nΛfin, nΛfink]); [L] - vocalic (milk); instead of P, T, K they pronounce glottal stop? (butterfly [bΛ?flai]).

American English

American English pronunciation is the national variant of English in America, it has peculiar features in vocabulary, grammatical structure and pronunciation. It dates back to the English language of the early 17 century (the epoch of Shakespeare). American English at present is not homogeneous The most widely used regional types of AE pronunciation are the Eastern, the Southern types and the General American (GA), also known as Northern America it is considered to be the pronunciation standard of the USA. The peculiarities of GA lie in: a) pronunciation of sounds; b) differences in stress patterns of words; c) differences in intonation.

Peculiarities of pronunciation of GA sounds: [r] - is more sonorous than the corresponding RP sound; [l] is always dark; [ j] is omitted before [u]: duty ['du:ti], news [nu:z]; intervocalic [t] is voiced: better [‘bedə], or may drop out: twenty ['tweni], or it is replaced by a glottal stop before [ m,n,l,r ] - certainly [sə:?nli]; [k] is omitted before [t]: asked [ǽst]; the presence of a voiceless labiovelar fricative [m]; GA vowels are not differentiated by length, they are all long; besides they are mostly nasalized. Nasalization is often called an American twang; [ǽ] is used instead off [a:] in words which do not contain [r]: glass, path, laugh; GA has no [o], instead of it [a:] is pronounced; [əu] is much less diphthongal than in RP, it may be represented as [o:]. Peculiarities in stress patterns: American speakers make much greater use of tertiary stress, or post-tonic stress than British speakers do. The tertiary stress falls on the suffixes -ary, -ory, -mony: 'dictionary, 'territory; the words of French origin in GA retain the original stress on the final syllable, while RP has it on the initial one: ballet, café; some words have different pronunciation in contrast to RP having the stress on the first syllable: 'magazine, ^lcigarette, ^laddress. Differences in intonation: the most important differences between British and American pronunciation involve intonation rather than pronunciation itself. British intonation is often characterized as having "wider melodic curves" and more rapid changes than AE intonation. As a result of such intonation patterns, the speech of an Englishman sounds abrupt, manneristic to American ears. At the same time American speech often sounds unemotional, rather dry, monotonous and colourless to an Englishman. The thorough analysis of both types of intonation reveals both structural and functional differences. The structural differences: a) in pre-terminal pitch contours - in RP the most common contour is Gradually Descending Stepping Head, while in GA the intonation group has a level pre-terminal contour. Thus, in GA there is almost no need to single out the prehead, the head, etc. b) in the realization of the terminal tones -in GA the starting point of practically all tones is at the medium pitch level, while in RP the starting point can be observed at the low, medium or high pitch levels. The functional differences; 1)In GA the most frequent intonation contour for General Questions is the tune beginning low, rising to a high level and then steadily falling (Did he ask you to do it?). Even if General Questions are pronounced with a rising tone, it rises from a low pitch level and ends on a high pitch level. 2)RP requests are normally pronounced with a Low Rise, while in GA the speakers pronounce them with Fall-Rise undivided (GA - Hurry up. Shut the door. RP -' Hurry up. Shut the door. 3) Leave takings: GA - Good-bye. RP - Good-bye. So^ long. On account that the features that distinguish AE from BrE are so numerous, some linguists thought that AE cannot be considered a variant of the English language and must be defined as American language. But most linguists express the opposite point of view.

 

Phonostylistics

Phonostylistics is a quickly developing branch of Phonetics. Its aim is to study various phonetic means and how they are used in this or that particular situation. A concrete situation is determined by various extra-linguistic factors. Human speech is characterized by a certain norm and in fact the speech behavior of a person is his adaptation to social circumstances (eg a lawyer: acting in court; every day communication; ordering a dinner in a restaurant; telling a joke to a familiar company). This adaptation can be natural or purposeful. Each native speaker uses several varieties of the language (at home, at work, addressing audience).Each of these varieties may differ in the use of vocabulary, grammatical structure, but the most striking distinction are phonetical (We can trust him to do it well). The main extra-linguistic factors that cause speech modifications are as follows: 1) the aim or purpose of speech: to instruct, to persuade, to analyse, to narrate, to chat. The aim of the utterance greatly influences pronunciation. The speaker chooses a certain strategy and according to it he selects a member of functional phonetic means which make the realization of his purpose more effective; 2) the speaker’s attitude to the situation and to what he is saying. His speech behavior in this case may reveal his personal interest and participation in what he is talking about (These things may (dis)satisfy him). They may please him or not, he can express his emotions through speech. In this case different intonation varieties will give subjective coloring of oral speech; 3) The nature of interchange of the form of communication. It means that our speech may suggest only listening or listening and exchanging remarks. The form can be: a lecture, a discussion, a conversation. Some linguists consider that this factor influences the division of the language into 2 varieties: a monolog; a dialogue. This forms differ on lexical, grammatical, phonetic levels; 4) The degree of spontaneity or preparedness we distinguish between prepared and unprepared speech (Prepared: delivering a lecture, report that was rehearsed at home, rehearsing a poem. Unprepared: short commentaries, class speech). This factor has a decisive influence on the phonetic organization of a test and most phoneticians for the aim of their analyses distinguish between speaking and reading. Reading is characterized by a very high degree of regularity. As a result, the text sounds distinct and loud. 5) A number of social phonological factors which determine the degree of formality and the attitude of the speaker as well. Formality reflects how the speaker interacts with the listener (whether hi is formal, casual, familiar). The degree of formality is reflected in the use of segmental and suprasegmental units. This group of social factor may include age, sex, speaker’s individuality, his social background etc.