Semester Outline Introduction to English Phonology and

1

Introduction to English

Phonology and Phonetics

Dr. Nadja Nesselhauf

Semester Outline

1. Phonetics and phonology: basics

(& introducing transcription)

2. English consonants

3. English vowels

4. Beyond the phoneme (connected speech,

suprasegmentals etc.)

5. Accents of English

American vs. British English- rhoticity

- flapped /elided t

- more yod-dropping

- absence of /P/ (usually @9)

- flat /z/ vs. broad /@9/

- often /@9/ vs. /N9/

- /29/ vs. /U/ in some words

Purely phonetic differences:

/r/ retroflex, /l/ always dark; /e/ more open, /@9/ further

back, less movement in /eH/, /?T/ vs. /nT/

Approximant /r/

Pronouncing /r/ in RP:

� /r/ / __ V (Cara)

� /r/ / __ # V (car engine) = linking /r/

� Ø / __ C,# (car, cart)

� not having /r/ in the last two contexts, RP is

non-rhotic; GA is rhotic (r-full)

2

Plosives: Allophonic Variation

T-flapping in General American [π]:

� /t/ → flap / V __ .V (better)

/ r __ .V (party)

/ __ kÿÿ, qÿ, lÿ (bottle, shutter, bottom)

� flap → Ø / n __ .V (winter)

Plosives: Allophonic Variation

D-flapping in GA in the same contexts as t-flapping

(cf. ladder, weirdo, saddle)

-> NEUTRALISATION of the contrast /t-d/ in the

relevant contexts

-> homophones such as

shutter – shudder, writing - riding etc.

Approximant /j/:

Yod-Dropping Before /u:/

[t9][t9]revolution/ l __

[t9][it9it9it9it9] [t9]enthusiasm/ θ __

[t9][it9it9it9it9] [t9]resume/ z __

[t9][it9it9it9it9] [t9]assume/ s __

[it9] [t9t9t9t9][it9]new/ n __

[it9] [t9t9t9t9][it9]duke/ d __

[it9] [t9t9t9t9][it9]Tuesday/ t __

[it9][it9]pure/ p __

[it9][it9]few/ f __

[it9][it9]mule/ m __

GARPExampleContext

English Monophthongs:

RP – GA Correspondences

RP /U/

GA /U/ cut

GA /29/ / __ r hurry, worry

RP /@9/

GA /@9/ father

GA /z/ / __ e,S,r,m,l(+C) staff, bath...

RP /N9/

GA /@9/ laundry

GA /N9/ <o,ou,oo> / __ r court

<a> /w __ r war

RP /P/ GA /@9/ lot

3

American vs. British English

Some more examples of “flat a:”

advance, after, ask, aunt, banana, basket, bath,

castle, class, disaster, fasten, France, glass, grass,

half, last, laugh, mask, monograph, nasty, passport,

past, path, plant, raspberry, rather, staff, task, vast

Approximant /r/ [¢¢¢¢]

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 4

7

Approximant /r/ [±±±±]

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 4

7

Lateral /l/: Allophonic Variation

Allophones of resonance in RP:

� clear [l] / __ V,j (land, billion, will you)

� dark [4] / __ C,# (silk, ball)

dark [4] = velarized

GA: dark [4] only

4

English Monophthongs (RP)

Source: S

auer 1

990, 1

6

English Monophthongs (GA)

Source: S

auer 1

990, 1

6


Task: Please transcribe the following words in your

preferred variety:

anti-, adult, ate, clerk,

herb, leisure, medicine, progress,

schedule, semi-, shone, tomato,

vase, vitamin, with, zebra


Semi-systematic differences:

<er> sometimes /@9/ in RP /29/ in GA:

clerk, derby, Berkely

<ei> sometimes /dH/ or /d/ in RP and /h9/ in GA

either, neither, leisure

Differences in individual words:

advertisement, alumin(i)um, apricot, data, dynasty, falcon,

khaki, lieutenant, lever, mum/mom (mummy/mommy), wrath,…

5

Word Stress

Suffix –ary, -ory:

/ !S __ /(?)qH/ (satisfactory)

<-ary,-ory>

/(?)qH/ in RP

/ .S __ (territory,

/dqH,N9qH/ in GA temporary)

→ pattern !1-2-$3-4 exists in GA, but not RP

Further Stress Differences

Task: How would you stress the following words (+ does your stress pattern correspond to RP or GA?):

address inquiry

advertisement laboratory

ballet magazine

cafe moustache / mustache

cigarette research

controversy translate

frontier weekend

garage (source: Crystal 1995)

Further Stress Differences

Semi-systematic differences:

- a number of words ending in –ate have the stress on the first syllable in GA: donate, migrate, vacate, vibrate and on the second in RP

- -ony like ory/ary/(ery): secondary stress on second syllable from end: testimony, ceremony

- GA has secondary stress of the last element of some compounds, esp. –berry: blueberry, raspberry etc.

- -ile endings: reduced vowel in GA but not in BrE: fertile, fragile, hostile,…

Accents of English in the World

� accent, variety

� linguistic variation:

� regional

� social

� ethnic

� gender

� standard vs. non-standard

6


regional and social variation:

after Trudgill 2000

regional variation

social variation


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anglospeak%28800px%292.png


Source:Crystal, D

avid 2003.The Cambridge Encyclopedia of

the English Language.Cambrid

ge: C

UP, 1

07.

Kachru (1985): three circles of English users


Language spread= the increase in the number of users of a language, often in new areas

Types of language spread (Quirk 1988):� demographic: speaker movement, settlement in new areas

� imperial: language is introduced to new areas through political domination

� econocultural: the language gains new speakers through its economic / cultural attractiveness

7


20th + 21st centuryAll regions of the

worldEconocultural

phase 4

16th – 20th century

South Asia, South East Asia, West

Africa, East Africa, Caribbean, Pacific

Imperialphase 3

17th – 19th century

North America, Australia, New Zealand, South

Africa

Demographicphase 2

11th – 19th centuryIreland, Scotland,

WalesImperial

phase 1

Rough TimelineAreas InvolvedDominant Type of

Spread


Types of accent variation:

� systemic: different accents possess

different phoneme inventories

� distributional: certain phonemes occur

in different environments

� lexical: individual words or word

groups take different phonemes

� realizational: phonemes have different

phonetic realizations

Accents of English: British Isles

/α:/ in bath

(instead of

/æ/)

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

44


/H/ as the final

vowel in happy

(no happY-

tensing)

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

44

8


/T/ instead of

/U/ (systemic

variation)

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

44


force and North

words are

distinguished:

e.g. [mNqS] vs.

[enqr]

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

44


light grey:

monophthongs in

face and goat

dark grey:

diphthong shift in

face, price, goat

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

45


rhoticity

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

45

9


h-dropping

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

45


word-medial

glottal stop

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

45


Listen to:

London

(Cockney)

[41]

Source: C

ollin

s/M

ees 2003, 1

43


There was one of our blokes – one of his family –like cousins or uncles – or you know – in that range – had had an accident – and been taken to hospital – so he spent – I think most of his weekend without any sleep at all – at this hospital like – until he knew – that the person was going to be OK – anyway – come Monday morning – he decides to go straight to work –and – he comes to work – and say he has had no sleep at all and he‘s got a job to do in this house to provide – an extension phone – you know –and usually – it‘s – you run the cable upstairs into a bedroom – it‘s the usual place to have the phone – and – the bed – was fitted into slots in the floor – so he couldn‘t sort of – move it over.

10


I mean – he could only get two legs out of the holein the floor and he couldn‘t – he needed two people to actually lift it and move it – so he laid across the bed – to – finish the cabling – and screw the – terminal box on the wall – and – not having had any sleep – he just sort of drifted off – and the thing is – the gentleman who let him in – but said he was going to work – and his wife would be in shortly – and she‘s come in – and not knowing the telephone man was there – I mean –to see a van outside – but she didn‘t – you know – sort of put two and two together – she‘s come in – she‘s gone upstairs – into the bathroom –


and she‘s taken her clothes off like – you know –and gone into the bedroom to get her housecoat – she was going to have a bath – and there‘s a strange man laying on the bed – snoring his headoff – needless to say – our bloke spent about six hours in the nick – trying to explain what had happened – yes – spent six hours in the police station


A closer look at Scotland

The languages of Scotland:

� Scottish Gaelic (today almost extinct)

� Scots (might be considered a distinct

language, an earlier split from English)

� Scottish English (the Scottish standard

of English)


Task: Listen to the following excerpt from “Saving

Grace”, with the Scottish actors Craig Ferguson and

Valerie Edmond [Kapitel 5, 31:07]:

1) In what ways is the pronunciation of the phoneme /r/

different from Standard British English?

2) How is what would be Standard BrE /?T/ pronounced?

3) How is what would be Standard BrE /dH/ pronounced?

4) How is what would be Standard BrE /`T/ pronounced?

11

Accents of English: North America

North American accents (USA and Canada) are

relatively uniform.

Special features are to be found in: New England,

South, Canada

Two important ethnic accents:

� the accent of African Americans (~ African-

American Vernacular English = AAVE)

� the accent of Hispanic Americans (~ Chicano)

Accents of English: North America

Canada:

• house is [?T] and price is [?H] before fortis consonants

= “Canadian raising”

• otherwise, like GA

Accents of English:

The Southern Hemisphere

The three major Southern Hemisphere

varieties of English are:

� Australian English

� New Zealand English

� South African English

They share:

� a similar history (British settlement in the

18th-19th centuries)

� similar accents!

Accents of English:


Some shared features of Southern

Hemisphere accents:

� non-rhotic

� /e/ and /æ/ are very close

� palm is very front: [a9] (only AusE and

NZE)

12

Accents of English:


Listen to New Zealand English [55]:

- Close /e/: went, bed, very, everybody, let

- Close /z/: bad, flatmate

- Long /@9/ very front: car, guitar

Listen to South African English [56]:

- Close /e/: went, special, together, vegetable


Source: Trudgill/Hannah

Systematizing the major differences between native-speaker accents of English:


Key to the previous figure:

1 /a:/ rather than /æ/ in path

2 absence of non-prevocalic /r/

3 close realizations for /æ/ and /e/

4 front [a:] for /@9/

5 absence of contrast between cot and caught

6 /æ/ rathern than /a:/ in can’t

7 absence of contrast between bother and father

8 voicing of intervocalic /r/

9 unrounded vowel in pot

10 syllabic /r/ in bird

11 absence of contrast between pull and pool


Numbers of English native speakers in different countries

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:English_dialects1997.png

13

Accents of English:

Second-Language Varieties

� apart from native-speaker varieties, new

varieties have also developed in post-

colonial settings

� these institutionalised varieties have their

own accent, lexicon and syntax

� some New Englishes: Indian English,

Singaporean English, West African English,

Jamaican English

Accents of English:


Criteria for an institutionalised New English:

� function: the variety must be used for a

broad range of functions

� form: the variety must have its own

distinctive features

� attitude: the speakers must recognize

their own variety as the standard

→ the status of many varieties is still

debated (e.g. Fiji, Philippines, Bahamas)

Accents of English:


West African English accent:

� smaller set of monophthong

phonemes: /h,d,`,N,t/

� no /?/; e.g.: perpetrate /o`o`sqds/

� syllable timing

� tendency for spelling pronunciation

Accents of English:


Listen to:

West Africa

[60]

Source: h

ttp://e

n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im

age:Afric

a-m

ap.jp

g

14

The Chaos

(The Joy of English Pronunciation)

(by Gerard Nolst Trenité)

Dearest creature in creation

Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you Susy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy;

Tear in eye, your dress you‘ll tear;

Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

The Chaos


(About 65 stanzas on):

Pronunciation – think of Psyche!-

Is a paling, stout and spiky.

[…]

It’s a dark abyss or tunnel

Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,

Islington, and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don’t you think so, reader, rather,

Saying lather, bather, father?

The Chaos


Finally, which rhymes with enough,Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??Hiccough has the sound of sup...My advice is: GIVE IT UP!

http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php

MY ADVICE IS: DON‘T GIVE UP!!!

Documents

Semester Outline Introduction to English Phonology and