¡Descarga Stress and Rhythm in English: A Phonetics and Phonology Guide y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity!
Phonetics and Phonology 2
Autor/Fuente Peter Roach Categoría
Estatus Cerrado
Resumen Modificado Creado
Set 1
A. Language and the Linguistics Sciences. Language → highly complex system. Speech sounds → express ourselves and extract meaning → communication. Linguistics → study of the languageʼs system nature and properties. Language → system of arbitrary vocal symbols by which members of a society cooperate and interact. System → organization. Combining sound units according to certain rules → large and complex structures.
March 20, 2022 1210 AM January 28, 2022 1023 AM
Example: Range: phonemes → syllables → words → phrases → clauses → sentences. Arbitrary → conventional connection between symbol and meaning evoked by the symbol. Example: house in English → “ dwelling placeˮ → no reason; people use it with that meaning. Vocal → separates language from other systems of communication. Example: telegraphic code, sign language and excludes writing → not a language.
Spoken languageʼs analysis → complex task → speaker use an infinite number of sounds when he/she is speaking.
Two different speakers or the same speaker → utterance wonʼt be produced twice with the same sequence of sounds. Different sequences → variations of the same sound.
Studying speech 2 realities
Concrete approach → sounds in relation to speech. Abstract level → behaviour of sounds in a particular language. Sciences concerned with language → Linguistics and Phonetics. Early linguists → the origins of the language. During Nineteenth-century → linguists Historical Linguistics → traces the history of languages and their development throughout the ages. Late nineteenth century European linguists → languages on their present state Descriptive Linguistics → science as we know today Ferdinand de Saussure. America Amerindian languages → no writing system → fast disappearing
Phonology → the way languages use different sounds in order to convey meanings, each L has its own sound patterns. Phonetics → sounds of L. Phonology → sound system of langs PH and Ph worth studying: Phonology → how the whole system of L works Phonetics of a foreign L improves our abilities to be better L and S Prepares us to understand and correct mistakes made by L and to teach pronunciation.
B. Introduction
💡 Native speakers of eng. → one syllable in a word →
phonetically prominent. Example: FAther → stronger than the second aBOUT second syllable stronger Prominent syllables are stressed; STRESS → cumulative property + phonetic factor →to pick out a stressed syllable from the unestressed ones.
💡 Three important factors → signal stress
- V of stressed syllables → higher fundamental frequency → vocal folds vibrate more quickly and heard as higher pitch
- Duration of stressed syllable is greater and longer
- Stressed syllables → greater intensity and heard as louder than unstressed syll. Stress has effects on V quality V reduce to schwa in UNTRESSED syll.
Levels of stress By comparing syllables of a word or longer string we can find out which is more prominent. In a word, we can find levels of stress
Stress vs unstressed → father, about, syllable Degree of stress → entertainment Phonologists distinguish primary stress (main stress) on 3rd syllable Secondary stress (lesser degree of stress) on the 1st syllable.
Free and fixed stress
Languages can be classified according to stress position. Fixed-stress languages → primary stress is on a particular syllable. Scots Gaelic → initial Swahili → penultimate syllable Free-stress languages → words are identical in phonological segments but semantically different, the position of stress makes the difference. Rusian ‘muka torment vs muʼka flour English is neither fixed stress nor a free stress language → history Inherit from Germanic → system with fixed stress on the 1st syllable Influenced by Latin , French and other Romance languages → words borrowed Pair of words that can be contrasted because of the position of stress → conʼvert (verb) vs ‘convert (noun) Look like a free stress language but such stress rules vary depending on the lexical class of the word.
The nature of stress
Stress → the relative degree of force with which sound/syllable is uttered. Sound/syllable has a greater or lesser amount of energy expended upon it. Sound/syllable is important for S it is produced with greater energy involving a vigorous articulation together with a strong breath force
rhythmic beat → articulators do not achieve the vowel target resulting in centralized vowels (a.i.u) English → the reduction and subsequent elision of unstress vowels results in consonant clusters and a complex syllable structure English → speaking rate does not affect the duration of stress/unstress syllables proportionally Spanish → speaking rate effects on the duration of stress/unstress vowels is the same Stress-timed languages have secondary stress to avoid long sequences of unstressed syllables and keep the rhythmic beat English → no stress syllable can be preceded by more than two unstressed syllables → it is necessary to add secondary stress. Example: ,clarifiʼcation; ,variaʼbility After the stressed syllable can be followed up to three unstressed syllables → certain suffixes. Example: adʼministrative; ‘candidacy Syllable-timed languages → syllable is the rhythmical unit in verse Spanish verse → ‘octosyllable, decasyllable) Stressed time languages → metric system is based on the foot English verse → iambic, trochee) refers to the stress pattern on the foot
The influence of rhythm upon stress
In connected speech, we tend to keep the rhythmic regularity of strong stress but words/syllable may change their normal stressing when it is final and preceded by stress, the word loses their own first stress Example: heʼs quite unʼknown; sheʼs just sixʼteen Stressed word follows the word, it loses its secondary stress. Example → the ‘unknown ‘soldier; itʼs ‘sixteen ‘miles Stress both precedes and follows double stressed word, it loses both stresses. Example → we are ‘over sixteen ‘miles to go
Double stressed compound words are similarly affected. Example: Lose its first stress → it was ‘bought second ‘hand Lose its secondary stress → a ‘second hand ‘book shop
Set 2
A. Communication: speech and writing Writing → system of communication based on language. Itʼs an imperfect and inefficient one because it doesn't take notes of all features of speech for comprehension. Example: stress in English and intonation in all languages. Language points to the matter of communication. Language is vocal and people interact by audible symbols. Human beings communicate messages through visual and auditory stimulation. At a young age, children learn to respond and imitate sounds from adults. Those sounds/tunes that became familiar are used for communication. They began to use speech because of the constant exposure to spoken language together with the need to convey information that results in rapid acquisition of spoken language. the mastery of the sound system used in the community will take years. Even learning a second language later in artificial context will be difficult because it involves more conscious and analytical effort than learning the mother tongue. CHILDREN WILL LEARN WRITING. Writing was an attempt to reflect the spoken language but in the case of English, there is a lack of consistent relationship between spelling and sound. written form of English (based Latin alphabet)has existed for more than 1.000 years and there were few basic changes in spelling since 15 century but the pronunciation has been
Generative → something that could be admitted or not in a language
generative grammar → set of statements that delimit all the possible structures that are part of the language. REcognizes things that are possible or not in language.
GG accounts for different things Language has a structure → we cannot speak a language by combining bits of it. Native speakers know which combinations are grammatical and ungrammatical example: the dog chased the cat → grammatical; the cat dog chased → ungrammatical Combination of words together to form sentences and the relationship between words in sentences. example: “theˮ “dogˮ form a unit related Syntactic knowledge → syntax Morphology → how words are formed → morphological component of language. Example: “happyˮ change the meaning by adding “unˮ or lyˮ; unhappy, happily or unhappily but native speakers recognize “lyhappyunˮ as ungrammatical “sˮ → dog → plural marker use it at the end of the word Semantics → meaning of words and how they are related and how they are combined to form sentences. Phonological knowledge NATIVE sPEAKERS →sounds of language and how they are organized → phonological component of language. The distinction between things that are predictable and arbitrary. “catˮ → relationship between the animal and the sequence of sounds to name it → arbitrary → not all languages have the same sequence of sounds to name this animal predictable → the first sound is aspirated whereas the last sound is not. Arbitrary information→ lexicon (similar to a dictionary)
predictable facts → formal statements or rules
Competence and performance
The aim of the generative theory of linguistics → formal way the tacit knowledge of native speakerʼs competence → unconscious knowledge about the organization of the language. performance → actual use of a language External nonlinguistic factors (how tired we are, who we are talking to) affect our speaking but they are irrelevant to our knowledge and how the language is structured→ peripheral to the core of the native speakerʼs competence
B. Kind of stress: lexical and syntactical stress
Stress patterns at 2 levels Word stress → relative degree of force used to pronounce a different syllable in a polysyllabic word. Monosyllables does not have word stress. It has a fixed distribution. Example: ‘journalism ,meninʼgitis Sentence stress → the relative degree of force given to a word in a sentence. Monosyllables can take sentence stress if they are important in the utterance and polysyllabic words may be unstressed if they are unimportant in the utterance. It has no fixed distribution. Words that carry stress and are prominent are those important for mining ( content words) → nouns, adjectives, demonstratives, verbs and adverbs. Grammatical, structural or function words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliaries and conjunctions) → unstressed. Example: the ‘bus ‘leaves at ‘seven Lexical pronunciation → pronunciation given to a word in isolation as if it is quoted from the dictionary. Basic pronunciation of the word that suffers modifications in connected speech. Lexical stressing → fullest form of the stressing given to a word in its lexical pronunciation. Affected by wordʼs context
primary stress 3 unstressed syllables (l—-)
unstressed syllable+primary stress 2 unstressed syllable (-l —)
Secondary stress + unstressed syllable+ primary stress + unstressed syllable (,-l-) category; arbitrary; testimony; architecture
geography; demonstrative; laboratory; orthography
elementary; variation; relocation; explanation
Words of 5 syllables
primary stress+ 4 unstressed s. (l ——)
unstressed s + primary stress+ unstressed s (-l —-)
secondary stress + unstressed s + primary stressed + 2 unstressed s (,-l —)
secondary stress 2 unstressed s + primary stress + unstress s (,—l-)
capitalism; cannibalism; puritanism; figuratively
inevitable; catholicism; communicative; vocabulary
university; curiosity; possibility; pedagogical
characteristic; classification; Mediterranean; qualification
C. Intonation: intonational phrasing. Chunking speech.
Short sentences → one breath Long sentences → rhythm units separated by a pause/pauses to emphasize a certain point to make his ideas clear to take a breath People pause within a rhythm unit because this unit consists of a group of words that are related grammatically. Groups that form rhythm units: Noun+its adjectives (modifiers) Example: the pretty little girl / is the new secretary Main verb + auxiliary I will have gone / before tomorrow Prepositions + objects He came to our house / in the new station wagon
Main clauses + dependent clauses If I go / it wonʼt be for very long Single word which speaker wants to emphasize Personally/ I wouldn't want it Characteristics of Rhythm units Stressed syllables are not given the same weight of emphasis. Some are less forcefully uttered than others and this alternation helps to establish certain rhythmic patterns. Function words → are spoken rapidly without stress so vowels are often reduced to /ɪ/ ə/ Words within RU are said smoothly, one blending into the next RU one word RU are combined into sentences → primary stress occurs at equal time intervals. Unstressed words are said quickly so unstressed words+ stressed words may take no longer to say that a stressed one
Set 3
A. The production of speech: speech sounds Language can be transmitted by two kinds of substances. Spoken one is the most common which its manifestation is speech. Speech communication process → series of events that takes place at different stages and levels. Chain btw Sʼs brain and Lʼs brain Psychological level S has a message to transmit to a L. Activity on Sʼs brain. Linguistic stage → arranges his thoughts into a linguistic form by choosing the correct word, sentences and sounds according to grammatical and phonological rules of the lang → message is encoded. Physiological level → action of nerves and muscles. The motor nerves that connect Sʼs brain with his speech mechanism activate the corresponding muscles.
be - befriend
di - dislike
re - reactive
un - unnatural
ex - ex-president
para - paranormal
sub - subprogram
under - understand
mid - midnight/ midpoint
Neutral suffix (no change to the stress pattern of the root)
Influencing suffix (change in the stress pattern of the root)
Suffix with primary stress
er : designer
or : decorator
al : arrival - graphy : photography - ial : controversial - ity : tranquillity - ious : prestigious - ian : mathematician - eer : engineer - ee : devotee - ese Portuguese - ade : lemonade - aire : questionnaire
Compound word stress patterns Compound noun →words made up of two words. Witten: One word Ex: typewriter Separated by a hyphen Second-class Two separated words → mental home Compound nouns in English Single accented compounds Ex: ‘current account Double accented compounds Ex: ‘city centre
💡 We are dealing with stress/accent within words → as they are
said in isolation. Artificial situation → do not often say words in isolation. Words change their stressing/accent in linguistic units/contexts such as sentences.
Single stressed or single accented compounds → take accent on their first element.
Combination of two nouns: a Second noun indicates the performer of the action. Example: baby-sitter; car dealer; book seller; housekeeper; dish washer. b First noun delimited the meaning of the second (what type of thing it is) Example: (head/tooth/ear/stomach/back) ache; School (boy/girl/time/book/days); (egg/dessert/soup/table/tea/salt) spoon Combinations of adjectives and nouns a Noun is preceded by adjective → both are accented. Combination constitutes a specific, long-established compound → first element carry primary stress. Example: folk music; dark room; postal order; secondary school; grand (child/daughter/father/ma/parent/son) b Adjective is a -ing form → stress is on the first element Example: driving school; swimming pool; parking zone; freezing point; selling price Double accented compounds Made of nouns a First noun indicates the position of the second one. Example: camp bed; shop window; country house b Second noun is made of the first one. Example: apple sauce; lemon squash; pork pie; olive oil; fruit salad c Common noun+noun compounds double accented → mother tongue; city centre; science fiction; woman driver Formed by nouns and adjectives: a Adjective+noun → black market; best seller; civil war; common sense b Noun+adjective → stone (blind/cold/dead/deaf/sober); (duty/post/rent/tax) free
Noun phrases and compound nouns stressing
Helps S organize the message and L to interpret it Approaches that explain how intonation helps communication according to the function focused Intonation allows us to express emotions, moods, attitudes as we speak (attitudinal function) Produces the effect of prominence on stressed syllables and draw L attention to the important part of the message (accentual function) Identify grammatical and syntactical structure in speech (grammatical function) Part of the message is new or common ground, also provides info about context, the role of S, etc (discourse function)
Set 4
A. Features of connected speech:
Connected Speech → not a sequence of citation forms. speaking, produce a continuous, connected stream of sounds. Segments suffer process of simplification →position on the suprasegmental structure. Lose their phonological identity by being reduced, lost or by acquiring phonological features from the following segment. Reduction: schwa can occur in positions where citation forms have full vowels. Put down a loss of stress → syllable that is stressed in citation forms, may be unstressed in CS. Example: potato/ potato peeler syllables in citation forms that have secondary stress and full vowels CS may occur without secondary stress with vowel reduction. Function words → strong (stressed) form when they are cited but CS occur in unstressed positions displaying their weak forms.
Loss of segment (elision) → consonant or vowel. Example: police, thousand times, textbooks.
Gradation
Process of phonemic changes → strong vowels are weakened and V/C sounds are elided. Looking at the phonemic compositions of polysyllabic words reveals that unaccented syllables contain a centralized vowel or not at all. Originally these syllables contain strong vowels but they were weakened or elided. Evident in words that exist on their own and at the same time form part of compounds. Example: man/gentleman; board/cupboard; fast/breakfast. Structural words → different phonemic patterns depending on accentuation or prominence and the position in the utterance. Weak-form words → one or more weak forms that always are non-prominent in the utterance and a strong form that is always prominent.
💡 Fluent speech flows with a rhythm and we
produce/perceive syllables as bumping into each other. Citation forms of words may suffer changes or adaptations that happen at word boundaries, at the end of a word. These changes are described as features of connected speech.
Coarticulation (germination, sounds twinning)
Word ends in a consonant sound and the following word begins with the same consonant sound → both sounds are produced together as a longer one. One single elongated articulation of the consonant. Example: Iʼm a bit tired; Stop pushing
