AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONETICS

AND PHONOLOGY

Course book for the 1st year English students

enrolled in the long-distance programme

Elena Buja
2013

Introduction

Phonetics studies the physiological, physical and perceptual expressions of

language. In this course it will not be assumed that everyone has had some exposure to
linguistics. The basic terms and concepts of linguistics will become familiar, and most of
them will be re-encountered and reviewed during this course. The emphasis in Phonetics
will be on the systematic description of the sounds and processes of speech production,
transmission, and perception. In the processes of description, the overall phonetic
inventory of speech sounds that are used in the English language will be covered. In
addition to their descriptions, sounds will be illustrated by means of native or recorded
samples found on the sites indicated at the end of the course book.
Aims of the course
The course aims, first of all, to improve the pronunciation of English of the
first year students by making them aware of the fact that languages have different
phonemic inventories and by drawing their attention to the difficulties of English
pronunciation for learners of EFL. In the first part, the focus will be on the
phonetic characteristics of the individual sounds, whereas in the second part of the
course it will be shown how these change in the pronunciation of words in
discourse (connected speech). Further on, students will be offered an insight into
the constituent elements of the English syllables, pointing to the differences in the
structure of the onsets and codas in English and Romanian. Additionally, students
will become familiar with the suprasegmental phonemes, i.e. word-stress and
intonation, which tend to vary from one variety of English to another. Finally, a
brief incursion in the varieties of English as a first language will be made.
Competences
By the end of the course, the student should be able to:
- Identify and produce a broad range of the phonetic sounds observable in the
world's Englishes.
- Transcribe sample data using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
- Demonstrate a basic knowledge of the articulatory system and its operation
during the production of various speech sounds.
- Demonstrate a familiarity with the technical descriptions of speech sounds.

- Start to identify various processes that affect sounds in connected speech.

- Place word-stress appropriately both in individual words and in words placed in
context.
- Use intonation correctly, according to the purpose of communication/discourse
function.
- Identify the characteristics of different varieties of English.
Resources
For this course you may need:
-

access to the internet as you will have to send your assignments by e-mail;
at the same time, you will be asked to access various sites that will help
you practice the sound of the English language on your own;

a good ear (to be able to identify various processes that occur in connected
speech and to identify differences in pronunciation among the varieties of
English as a mother-tongue).

a whole bunch of MOTIVATIOQ

Structure of the course

- The material is structured in 10 units, each of them being covered in
about 21/2 hours.
- The students will have to write 2 assignments, which will be handed in as
follows:
-assignment 1 after unit 1
-assignment 2 after unit 6;
- The assignments should be handed in in a printed form. To be on the
safe side, students should also send them via e-mail. The teachers
feedback on the students work will be provided by mail.
Prerequisites
Since it is the first step in the English Linguistics course, no prior
knowledge of linguistics is required on behalf of the students. The terminology
will be introduced and explained little by little.
Disciplines the material in this course contributes to

Knowledge of phonetics will prove useful in approaching other subjects

such as semantics, pragmatics, or speech therapy.
Average time for individual study
Each unit could be covered by the students in about 2 to 4 hours,
depending on the length of the material and on the evaluation test.
Evaluation
The final mark will consist of:
- the mark in the end-of term examination: 60%
-

the mark obtained for the two assignments: 40% (each assignment

represents 20% of the final mark).

Contents

Unit 1 Phonetics and phonology: an introduction....................................................................9

1.1. Introduction .............................................................................................................9
1.2. Competences.............................................................................................................9
1.3. Language: an introduction .....................................................................................10
1.4. The role of sound in communication ......................................................................11
1.5. Phonemes vs. allophones........................................................................................13
1.6. Classification of the phonemes ...............................................................................16
1.7. Phonetics vs. Phonology .........................................................................................17
1.8. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) .........................................................18
1.9. Summary ...............................................................................................................21
1.10. Evaluation test ......................................................................................................21
1.10. Send away assignment 1 ........................................................................................22
Unit 2 The organs of speech ...................................................................................................23
2.1. Introduction............................................................................................................23
2.2. Competences...........................................................................................................23
2.3. The lungs ........................................................................................................................... 24
2.4. The larynx...............................................................................................................24
2.5. The cavities .............................................................................................................25
2.6. Summary ...............................................................................................................27
2.7. Evaluation test ........................................................................................................27
Unit 3 The English vocalic sounds: the monophthongs.........................................................28
3.1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................28
3.2. Competences...........................................................................................................28
3.3. Classification of speech sounds into vowels and consonants ....................................... 29
3.4. Principles of classifying the vocalic sounds ...........................................................30
3.5. The system of cardinal vowels................................................................................33
3.6. The English front vowels.........................................................................................34
3.7. The English back vowels.........................................................................................38
3.8. The English central vowels .....................................................................................44
3.8.1. The phonemic status of the schwa........................................................................47
3.9. Summary .................................................................................................................48
3.10. Evaluation test ......................................................................................................49

Unit 4 The English diphthongs and triphthongs. ...................................................................50

4.1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................50
4.2. Competences...........................................................................................................50
4.3. The diphthongs .......................................................................................................50
4.3.1. The principles of classifying the English diphthongs ..........................................51
4.3.2. General characteristics of diphthongs ................................................................52
4.3.3. Variants................................................................................................................52
4.3.4. Spelling ................................................................................................................53
4.3.5.The English vs the Romanian diphthongs ............................................................56
4.4. The triphthongs.......................................................................................................56
4.5. The ration between English and Romanian vowel phonemes ................................59
4.6. Summary .................................................................................................................59
4.7. Evaluation...............................................................................................................59
Unit 5 The English consonants. ..............................................................................................61
5.1. Introduction............................................................................................................61
5.2. Competences...........................................................................................................61
5.3. Principles of classifying the English consonants ...................................................62
5.4. The English plosives ...............................................................................................64
5.5. The English fricatives.................................................................................................73
5.6. The English affricates ................................................................................................83
5.7. The nasal sonorants ...................................................................................................85
5.8. The lateral sonorant...................................................................................................88
5.9. The semi-vowels......................................................................................................89
5.10. Summary ...............................................................................................................91
5.11. Evaluation.............................................................................................................91
Unit 6 Sounds in connected speech. ........................................................................................95
6.1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................95
6.2. Competences...........................................................................................................95
6.3. Juncture ..................................................................................................................95
6.4. Assimilation ............................................................................................................98
6.5. Elision ....................................................................................................................102
6.6. Summary ...............................................................................................................103
6.7. Evaluation.............................................................................................................104
6.8. Send away assignment 2.......................................................................................105
Unit 7 The syllable..................................................................................................................106
7.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................106

2.2. Competences.........................................................................................................106
7.3. Phonetical and phonological definitions of the syllable ......................................107
7.4. The structure of the English syllable ....................................................................109
7.4.1. The initial segment ................................................................................................109
7.4.2. The final segment...............................................................................................110
7.4.3. The intervocalic segment ...................................................................................113
7.5. Summary ...............................................................................................................114
7.6. Evaluation .............................................................................................................114
Unit 8 The suprasegmental phonemes: word-stress. ............................................................115
8.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................115
8.2. Competences.........................................................................................................115
8.3. Features of word-stress ........................................................................................116
8.4. Levels of stress......................................................................................................117
8.5. Position of stress...................................................................................................118
8.5.1. Stress in simple words ...........................................................................................118

8.5.2. Stress in complex words ....................................................................................121

8.5.2.1. Stress in derived words...................................................................................121
8.5.2.2. Stress in compound words ..............................................................................125
8.6. Variable stress ......................................................................................................126
8.7. Summary ...............................................................................................................127
8.8. Evaluation .............................................................................................................128
Unit 9 The suprasegmental phonemes: intonation...............................................................130
9.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................130
9.2. Competences.........................................................................................................130
9.3. Form of intonation................................................................................................131
9.3.1. Primary accent ..................................................................................................131
9.3.2. The tone-unit......................................................................................................133
9.3.3. The structure of the tone-unit ............................................................................134
9.4. Pitch possibilities in tone-units ............................................................................135
9.5. Graphical representation of English intonation .........................................................136
9.6. Functions of intonation.........................................................................................137
9.7. The use of the main tones in English ....................................................................139
9.8. Final word on intonation......................................................................................140
9.9. Summary ...............................................................................................................140
9.10. Evaluation ...........................................................................................................141

Unit 10 Varieties of English...................................................................................................147

10.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................147
10.2. Competences.......................................................................................................147
10.3. Regional aspects .................................................................................................148
10.4. Class dialects......................................................................................................148
10.5. Age differences in pronunciation ........................................................................149
10.6. Received Pronunciation......................................................................................149
10.7. American English................................................................................................150
10.8. Canadian English ...............................................................................................154
10.9. Australian English and Qew Zealand English ....................................................154
10.10. Interference .......................................................................................................157
10.11. Summary ...........................................................................................................160
Bibliography. ..........................................................................................................................161
Key to the exercises. ...............................................................................................................164

Unit 1. PHOAETICS AAD PHOAOLOGY: IATRODUCTIOA

Contents
1.1. Introduction .............................................................................................................9
1.2. Competences.............................................................................................................9
1.3. Language: an introduction .....................................................................................10
1.4. The role of sound in communication ......................................................................11
1.5. Phonemes vs. allophones........................................................................................13
1.6. Classification of the phonemes ...............................................................................16
1.7. Phonetics vs. Phonology .........................................................................................17
1.8. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) .........................................................18
1.9. Summary ...............................................................................................................21
1.10. Evaluation test ......................................................................................................21
1.10. Send away assignment 1 ........................................................................................22

1.1. Introduction
In this unit we shall start our investigation by defining language, by
presenting its basic characteristics and by showing some types of languages. Next,
we shall make the distinction between language and speech, and we shall linger
for a while on the role of speech in communication. Little by little, we will
introduce some basic terms related to phonetics and phonology, such as phonemes,
allophones, minimal pairs, free variation, and commutation test. Finally, the
distinction between phonetics and phonology will be made.

1.2. Competences
After having covered this chapter, the students should be able to
distinguish between a phoneme and an allophone, should know what phonetics and
phonology deal with. At the same time, they will be able to do and to read
phonemic transcriptions.

Time envisaged for covering Unit 1: 2 hours.

10

1.3. Language: an introduction

The ability to use language is the most distinctive human characteristic, and yet most
people take this ability for granted, never considering its complexity. It is the attribute that
most clearly distinguishes our species from all others. By means of language we are able to
specify our wishes, our needs and our feelings. Without language we would have to gesture
and touch rather than tell. By means of language we can get in touch with people we shall
never meet or with places we shall never visit. Language is the link between us, our
ancestors and our descendants, it is something we inherit and at the same time send further
to our descendants.
1.3.1. Origin of language. Language seems to have arisen in human beings about a
hundred thousand years ago, but how this happened is very little known. Modern linguists
have adopted an evolutionary hypothesis according to which over the millennia, both the
human brain and those parts of the human body currently termed organs of speech have
evolved so that speech is now part of the human nature.
1.3.2. Properties of language.
- Productivity is the most distinctive characteristic of language in that users can create
sentences never known before, but perfectly understandable to their hearers/readers.
- Arbitrarity refers to the lack of any necessary connection between a word for something
and the thing itself. Thus, there is no link between the word tree and the object we see in
the park, along a road or in the woods. This is shown by the fact that the same thing/object
acquires different names in different languages. Thus, the German term for tree is
Baum, the Romanian copac, the French arbre, etc.
1.3.3. Types of languages. In principle, we could speak of four types of languages or ways
of human communication:
a. Sign languages are used by the deaf. They are extremely interesting, exhibiting all the
complexities of a language.
b. Kinesics or body language is also considered a way of communication among humans.
The way we use our bodies in sitting, standing, and walking is considered to express things
we do not say. But this does not make it language proper.
c. Spoken languages
-The spoken language uses the channel of sound, generated by the speech organs and
perceived by the ear, as its primary mode. Consequently, speech is non-directional, i.e.
anyone within hearing can pick it up, and we can hear from sources that we do not see.
- In the spoken language, any speaker can be a listener and any listener can be a speaker.
When we speak, we get feedback of our own utterances through the ears.
- Our speech acts are specialized, i.e. they have to do only with communication; they do
not serve any other function. Speech is different from other sounds we make, such as a
laugh or a cry of pain or fear. It is true that such sounds can communicate, but only by
accident to those within earshot. Their main purpose is a reflexive one: they occur more or
less involuntarily, like a hiccup, for example.
d. Written languages, too, have many fascinating features, but they are regarded as
secondary to spoken languages for a number of reasons. For instance, children are

11

explicitly taught to read and write sometime after they acquire a spoken language. On the
other hand, many cultures have never used writing systems.
1.4. The role of sound in communication
As mentioned earlier, one of the chief characteristics of human beings is their ability to
communicate with their fellows. A man possessing the normal human faculties achieves
this exchange of information mainly by means of two types of sensory stimulation:
- visual: writing, waving flags, sign language, flashing of a mirror;
- auditory: by foghorn, Morse-key, drum, by word of mouth (speech).
In all ages, the vast majority of messages have been SPOKEN, i.e. transmitted by means of
sounds generated by certain organs of the body, called articulators (or speech organs).
The SPOKEN WORD is, by far, the most frequent medium of communication between
people. But more important than HOW we communicate is WHAT we communicate, i.e.
the message.
The message is only one element of verbal communication. Any verbal communication
presupposes interaction between a SPEAKER (the sender of the message) and a
LISTENER (the receiver of the message). The simplified representation of the process of
communication is given below:
SPEAKER MESSAGE LISTENER
The act of communication can be described in terms of 5 successive operations:
SENDER
MESSAGE
RECEIVER
1. EACODIAG
5. DECODIAG
1.1. semantic SEMANTICS
5.3. semantic
1.2. grammatical
GRAMMAR
5.2. grammatical
1.3. phonological
PHONOLOGY
5.1. phonological
2. SEADIAG Articulatory phonetics
Auditory phonetics 4. RECEPTIOA
5. TRANSMISSION

Acoustic phonetics
1. Encoding: the message that the speaker wants to convey has to be encoded, i.e. has to
take a certain shape, in accordance with the CODE (the language used by the speaker and
listener for communication).
a. semantic encoding resides in the choice of the proper semantic unit(s) that the
languages possesses for the expression of the respective ideas, thoughts, and concepts.
Semantic encoding is revealed evidently when various languages are compared. Compare
the following:
English: to sit and to stand correspond to one unit in Romanian, i.e. a sta ; to know, used
to express such ideas as I know him and I know that... corresponds to the Romanian l
cunosc, tiu c...
The same lack of correspondence can be noticed in the case of whole utterances as well.
Thus, English uses Whats your name? to inquire about ones name, while Romanian
uses Cum te cheam?, which translates literally How (they) call you?.

12

b. grammatical encoding consists in the arrangement of the semantic units in a

particular way, according to the patterns imposed by the language and in carrying out all
kinds of changes (tense, agreement between subject and predicate, etc.).
Assuming that the chosen semantic units are Mary, John, kiss, what the speaker has to do
is to arrange them in a given order, i.e. Mary kiss John or John kiss Mary. The next step
consists in deciding whether the action is habitual/continual and whether the time of the
action is present/past/future and in showing this by means of the inflections on the verb.
Example 1

a) Mary kissed John,

b) Mary is kissing John, etc.

Just like with semantic encoding, in the case of grammatical encoding, too, there will be
differences in the way languages use necessary distinctions. Thus, English uses two
separate forms to indicate that the action expressed by the verb is simultaneous with the
moment of speech (see (a) above) or habitual (see (b) above). In Romanian there is no
such distinction: Maria l srut pe Ion.
c. phonological encoding: the string of morphemes making up the words, phrases or
sentences is turned into a string of phonemes, i.e. phonological units. The speaker has
decided on the kind of sounds and on their arrangement.
The phonological units for each language are not numerous, but they can be combined into
many ways to represent various morphemes. For example, the English segments [Q], [s],
[t], [k] are used to represent various morphemes, e.g. stack [stQk], tact [tQkt], sat [sQt],
cat [kQt], tack [tQk]. Every combination of phonemes representing morphemes follows
well-defined rules. If the rules are not observed, the combinations become meaningless,
e.g. [tsQk], [ktsQ], [Qstk].
The encoding of the message was presented as a series of 3 successive stages: semantic,
grammatical and phonological. This separation of stages has been done for didactic reasons
only. In fact, the 3 operations are performed simultaneously.
2. Sending: once the phonological encoding is fulfilled, the speaker proceeds to the actual
production of the sounds. He sends instructions from the brain to the articulators to
perform certain movements in order to turn each phoneme into sounds. As a result, the
string of phonemes takes the material shape of a string of sounds. Although the speech
organs are anatomically and physiologically the same for the speakers of all languages, the
sounds differ from one language to another because each language has its phonological
code.
3. Transmission: the continuum of sounds resulting from the articulation is now
transmitted from the speaker to the listener under the form of sound waves.
4. Reception: the sound waves reach the listeners ear where they produce vibrations.
These are taken to the brain under the form of sensory innervations.

13

4. Decoding: the activities involved in the decoding of the message by the listener can be
presented as being identical with those of the speaker during the encoding stage, but
performed in reversed order.
- There are (at least) 2 persons involved in the process of communication:
1. the speaker (sender of the message); 2. the listener (receiver of the message).
- There are 5 stages involved in the process of oral communication:
1. encoding; 2. sending of the message; 3. transmission; 4. reception; 5 decoding.

We mentioned the fact that both the speaker and the listener should use the same code, i.e.
the same language, in the process of communication by means of sounds. But we have to
make a first distinction between:
- LAAGUAGE, as a body of internalized knowledge about sounds, meanings and
the way they can be related to one another, and
- SPEECH, as the concrete use of language, the actual production of specific
utterances.
Then, it is necessary to make a second distinction, namely between:
- SOUADS, defined as the result of vibrations of an elastic medium, transmitted in
the form of waves and received through air, and
- SPEECH SOUADS, defined as certain acoustic effects voluntarily produced by
the organs of speech; they are the result of definite actions performed by these organs; they
require that the speech organs shall be placed in certain definite positions or moved in
certain definite ways.
1.5. Phonemes vs. allophones
Every language is a system of signs and symbols conveying a certain message. Linguistics
is the science that analyzes this language system. The analysis takes place at 2 levels:
- the level of expression: the expression is the material support of a sign (word), its
concrete, observable manifestation:
- in vocal noises resulting from the use of speech organs;
- in letters on paper, blackboard, etc;
- the level of content: content represents the thing which is signified, what it stands for or
represents.
At each level a further distinction can be made between SUBSTANCE and FORM:
Example 2

substance (sounds) Phonetics

Linguistic
item
(word)

EXPRESSION
form (phonemes) Phonology
substance Semantics
CONTENT
form Syntax

(For the sake of simplification we shall disregard the CONTENT- part of the linguistic
sign.)

14

At the level of EXPRESSION, speech sounds represent the substance; if they are not
organized according to a code, these speech sounds remain a sequence of vocal noises
which have no linguistic function. In order to discharge their linguistic function of
communication, speech sounds are organized at the level of form.
e.g. [t], [n], [i], [p] = substance
[tin], [tip], [pin], [nip], [nit] = form
Briefly, if [t], [n], [p], and [i] are described as separate and pure speech sounds (alveolar,
voiceless, plosive consonant, or alveolar, voiced, nasal consonant), the description is at the
level of substance and is said to be phonetic. A phonetic description is always a
physiological analysis of a given speech sound in terms of manner and point of
articulation. Such a speech sound has no linguistic function because it does not play any
role in the act of communication. It is independent of any context and it is studied by
PHONETICS.
If the same speech sounds [t], [n], [p], and [i] are placed in word-context tin vs. pin -, the
description is at the level of form. The analysis is phonological; [t] and [p] are called
phonemes and they have a linguistic function since they determine the meaning of words.
[t] and [p] represent two distinctive phonemes which do contrast significantly. If [t] and [p]
are replaced with each other, the meanings of the two words will change. Thus, we can say
that tin and pin make a minimally distinct pair (i.e. a pair of words differing in one
phoneme only).
On the other hand, the ts in tea, eighth and train do not contrast significantly; they belong
to the same phoneme [t]. The differences between them concern the place of articulation.
Being the realizations of one and the same t-phoneme in different word-contexts, they are
called its variants, members or allophones. Thus, we can distinguish a class of tsounds as making up the t-phoneme.

Example 1
/t/ = phoneme

[t1]
tea

[ t2]
eighth

[t3] = allophones
train

Allophones, or actually produced speech sounds can be very different. The question
arises: what is it that is common to all the allophones of the same phoneme? On what basis
are they considered to be the realizations of the same phoneme? Here is the answer:
speech sounds contain both phonologically relevant properties and phonologically
irrelevant ones. It is the former which characterize all the allophones of a given phoneme,
enabling them to be the realization of a particular phoneme.
The phonologically irrelevant properties are due to:
- linguistically conditioned environments, i.e. the actual word-context:
e.g. [t] [t1] in tea; [t2] in eighth; [t3] in train

15

- the degree of education of the speaker and his social class:

e.g. house pronounced [haus] by educated people and [Qus] by uneducated ones;
- age, to some extent:
e.g. door pronounced [d] by the old generation, and [d:] by the youngsters;
- emphatic speech vs. non-emphatic speech: marvellous vs. maaaaaarvellous.
All these have no importance as far as linguistic function is concerned. Because of these
irrelevant properties, speech sounds are never phonemes in themselves (Trubetskoy,
1969, quoted in Makarenko, 1975:12)
In speaking of allophones and phonemes we are concerned with two kinds of reality: the
concrete, measurable reality of the sounds uttered (allophones) and another kind of reality,
an abstraction made in our minds, which appears to reduce this infinite number of different
sounds to a manageable number of categories (phonemes).
The PHOAEME is defined as a family of sounds in a given language which are
phonetically similar, and do not occur in the same environment (Crystal, 1991:258). In
order to understand this term better, lets look at it this way: the word dog refers to any
type of animal that includes many different subtypes ranging from the Golden Retriever to
Chihuahua, with all sorts of dogs in between. The word dog, though it doesnt tell us
exactly what kind of dog, fits any type in the dog family. The same holds for sound
families. Take the phoneme /p/, for example. It doesnt sound exactly the same in port as
in tip, but it is still in the family of /p/.
An ALLOPHOAE can be defined as the actually produced sound. It is a variation of a
phoneme. We can hear that allophones are slightly different from each other, but not
different enough to become phonemes. Try saying the following sentence aloud: John can
open a can of beer. Say the sentence again, this time paying attention to the pronunciation
of the underlined words. The vowel in the first can seems to change slightly in the second.
Now pronounce the first can as if it were a noun and the second as if it were a verb. The
sentence may sound strange, but it doesnt change the meaning. This is because the vowel
sounds in these words are variations/allophones of the phoneme [Q].
The originator of the phoneme theory was a Russian scholar of Polish origin, Baudouin de
Courtenay. Also interested in this theory was a British phonetician of the 20th century,
Daniel Jones, who in his work entitled The Phoneme: its Qature and Use described the
phoneme as a family of sounds in a given language which are related in character (Jones,
1950, quoted in Makarenko, 1975:8). He emphasized the fact that the different members of
the same phoneme are mutually exclusive, since they do not occur in the same position: the
aspirated [ph] in park [pha:k] is not used in hiccough [hikp], where a non-aspirated [p] is
used in word-final position.
The shortcoming of Daniel Jones phoneme theory lies in the fact that it did not take into
consideration the distinctive function of phonemes. He did not consider the long vowels
and the short ones as independent phonemes, but considered the latter to be members
(allophones) of the former. According to him, pairs such as deep and dip, pool and pull
would sound the same.

16

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that in certain situations, independent phonemes can be

in a relation of non-distinctive opposition to one another, i.e. they are said to be in free
variation. For instance, [u:] and [u] are phonologically opposed in pool/pull, fool/full. But
such words as room, broom, groom may be pronounced either with [u:] or [u]: room [ru:m]
or [rum], broom [bru:m] or [brum], groom [gru:m] or [grum]. Since the meaning does not
change, we say that there is free variation between the two vowel phonemes in these
words.
It is worth mentioning that sounds which belong to one phoneme in a given language may
constitute separate phonemes in another language. For instance, [r] and [l] are different
phonemes in English. This can be proved by applying the commutation test, i.e. a process
of sound substitution meant to show contrastivity: e.g. rain vs. lane, rip vs. lip, read vs.
lead. In Korean and Japanese, on the other hand, there is only a single phoneme, which is
sometimes r-like and sometimes l-like.
/x/ phoneme
[r]

[l] allophones

Allophones (phonemic variants) are of great importance in a language because they

develop into new phonemes. Thus, in Old English the pairs [f] [v], [n] [N], [T] [D]
were allophones of one phoneme, each depending on the environment. Today, all of them
are independent phonemes.
On the other hand, a phoneme may cease to function as such. In present-day English the
diphthong [] has no phonemic independence. It has become an allophone of the vocal
phoneme [:]. Nowadays, the diphthong is used only by people of the older generation.
Let's remember...
a) A phoneme is an abstract sound segment; an allophone is the concrete
realisation (production) of a phoneme.
b) A minimal pair is a pair of words that differ in one phoneme only, all
the other sound segments being identical: /li:p/ vs /lip/. It proves to be a
useful tool in establishing whether a certain sound segment is a
phoneme or an allophone.
c) The number and types of phonemes differ from language to language,
and from one period of time to the other within the same language.
1.6. Classification of phonemes
In any language we will find two types of phonemes:
- segmental phonemes, i.e. phonemes into which larger strings can be segmented
(vowels and consonants). For example, the word cat is made up of 3 phonemes [kQt].
- suprasegmental phonemes. The term segmental phonemes is necessary in
order to distinguish segmental phonemes from other sound phenomena of language, which
have a phonemic function. For instance, the sequence of phonemes [QbstrQkt] may mean
two things, depending on whether the first or the second part of the word/sequence is heard

17

as more prominent: [:QbstrQkt] (noun, its meaning is that of a summary) and [Qb:strQkt]
(verb, its meaning being that of extract, remove).
The suprasegmental phonemes are stress, intonation and juncture. These are called
phonemes because they can change the meaning of identical strings of segments, and
suprasegmental because they operate on the segmental phonemes.
Stress has a phonemic status as it differentiates two words or two grammatical forms of
the same word, which have exactly the same sequence of sound segments.
e.g. import n. [:imp:t], vb. [im:p:t].
Intonation has a phonemic function as well, in that a different melody may differentiate
two utterances otherwise alike.
e.g. Who is going to teach phonetics next year?
Elena. (high-fall showing certainty)
Elena. (low-rise showing doubt)
^Elena (rise-fall; she is willing to do it).
Juncture (transition). Other contrasts can be established in English between linguistic
forms which are identical in sound but differ with respect to the manner in which the
transition from one given phoneme to another is carried out. Thus, we can speak of two
types of juncture, namely close (uninterrupted) and open (interrupted). For instance, the
string of phonemes [blQktai] can be interpreted either as a black tie or a blacked eye,
depending on where in the sequence we have a short pause in pronunciation.
The discussion of suprasegmental phonemes is a tentative one. It will be enlarged later on
in individual chapters (ch. 6, 8, 9).
Let's remember...
Phonemes are of two basic types:
-segmental
-suprasegmental (intonation, juncture, word-stress)
1.7. Phonetics vs. phonology
PHOAETICS - the science of speech sounds - is one of the best-known areas of language
study, and perhaps the oldest as well. Descriptions of the sounds of speech date from at
least the 5th century B.C., when Panini, a Sanskrit grammarian, wrote an extensive series of
rules describing the correct way to pronounce the Vedic hymns. In the twentieth century,
phonetics came to be regarded as the prime basis for any scientific study of language
(Graddol et all, 1994: 28). Apart from its intrinsic interest, phonetics is a field of language
study with immediate and obvious practical value. A knowledge of phonetics is generally
recognized as essential in foreign-language teaching and learning, in identifying and
correcting communication disorders such as certain kinds of aphasia (the loss of language
abilities) and stuttering, and in developing appropriate pedagogical and curricular materials
for elementary and secondary school English classes.

18

PHOAETICS is the science that studies the characteristics of human sound-making,

especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their DESCRIPTION,
CLASSIFICATION and TRANSCRIPTION.
In the first part of this course we will look at several aspects of phonetics. We will discuss
first the physiology of sound production, that is, how speech sounds are produced by the
human vocal mechanism. As a field of study, phonetics has several objectives. The first is
to identify and describe the sounds of language. Phoneticians do not attempt to describe the
speech sounds found in all the world's languages, but rather confine their descriptions to
the sounds of one language. Then, using these descriptions, they aim to give a principled
account (by 'principled' we mean one that will reveal the abstract structure of the phonetic
system that lies behind the observed sounds) of the way(s) these sounds are used in natural
language; for instance, how sounds change when they are juxtaposed with other sounds,
and how they are added to or deleted from strings of sounds. Accordingly, we will begin
our investigation of phonetics by identifying and describing the sounds of the English
language.
PHOAOLOGY is concerned with the range and function of sounds in specific languages.
It examines some of the ways sounds are organized and altered in accordance with the
rules of the English grammar. We will see that the grammar of English phonetics severely
limits the numbers and kinds of sounds that can occur in sequence and that it also
determines and specifies the different ways in which a given sound 'changes' when it
appears in different phonetic environments.
1.8. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
To describe the sounds of English (or of any other language) one cannot depend on the
spelling of words. The most appropriate means of representing sounds is through the
International Phonetic Alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association in
1888. The members of this association found it necessary to develop an alphabet, which
should be applied in transcribing all languages. IPA is international, meaning it can be
applied to any language; it is phonetic, meaning it is based on observed speech sounds; it is
an alphabet, meaning it adheres without exception to the alphabet principle of one sound
per symbol (Hahner et al. 1997:39).
Besides the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, the members of the Association had to
develop a stock of letter-shapes (symbols) in order to be able to render sounds whose
spelling required a group of letters. Each letter-symbol serves to sum up the way in which
a given sound is produced and the association of the sound with the symbol must be
consistent.
IPA can be very useful to students (and not only) as they learn more about speech. First, by
learning the IPA symbols, they will be learning to distinguish all the sounds of spoken
English. Second, as they become familiar with IPA, they will begin to associate the
symbols with actual movements of the speech mechanism, which will reinforce the sounds
as they learn them. Third, IPA solves the problems created by English spelling: it provides
us with a common framework for understanding speech sound variations.
One of the traditional exercises in pronunciation teaching by phonetic methods is that of
phonetic transcription. This has been defined as a kind of alphabetical writing in which
each symbol represents one sound and never any other. This description is not strictly

19

accurate, for in a transcription we write /k/ at the beginning of [ki:p] and also at the
beginning of [kuk], but the [k]s differ from each other. Apart from this, when we compare
one language with another or one dialect with another, we find that symbols often have to
be used with somewhat different values in each language or dialect. The conclusion is that
phonetic transcription is only a general term.
Within the general term of phonetic transcription we distinguish between two types of
transcription: phonemic transcription (also called broad transcription) and phonetic
transcription proper (or narrow transcription).
A) Phonemic transcription is a broad transcription using the smallest number of
symbols representing a given form of language without ambiguity. Every speech sound
must be identified as one of the phonemes that exist in a language and written with the
appropriate symbol. In a phonemic transcription only the phonemic symbols are used. This
has the advantage that it is comparatively quick and easy to learn and use and that it
combines simplicity with accuracy. The disadvantage is that as one continues to learn more
about phonetics he/she becomes able to hear a lot of sound differences not perceived
before. Students at this stage might find it frustrating not to be able to write down more
detailed information.
The phonemic system described for Received Pronunciation (RP, i.e. the Standard English
language) contains 44 phonemes. The following is the list of symbols used in the phonemic
transcription of the English sounds.
THE VOWEL SYSTEM OF RP
/i:/
as in sea, feet, me
/i/
as in him, village
/e/
as in get, head, Thames
/Q/
as in sat, hand, bad
//
as in sun, blood, does
/a:/
as in father, car, calm
//
as in dog, swan, cough
/:/
as in cord, saw, more
/u/
as in put, wolf, good
/u:/
as in soon, moon, shoe

/:/
//
/ei/
/ai/
/i/
/U/
/i/
/E/
/U/
/au/

as in bird, her, turn

as in butter, about
as in shape, waist
as in time, cry, die
as in boy, noise, voice
as in so, road, toe
as in deer, here
as in care, air, bear
as in poor, sure, tour
as in out, how, house

THE CONSONANT SYSTEM OF RP

/p/
as in pie
/b/
as in boy
/t/
as in tie
/d/
as in dry
/k/
as in cook
/g/
as in good
/tS /
as in China
/dZ / as in jaw
/f/
as in five
/v/
as in view
/T/
as in thin

/s/
/z/
/S /
/Z/
/h/
/m/
/n/
/N/
/l/
/r/
/w/

as in so
as in zoo
as in shoe
as in usual
as in high
as in money
as in nun
as in finger
as in alive
as in around
as in one

20

/D/

as in this

/j/

as in yellow

B) Phonetic transcription
As the same sound may not be produced in exactly the same way in all the contexts in
which it occurs or in all languages, various diacritics are used to show subtle differences.
For example, the sound [p] in park is slightly different from the [p] sound in tip. The first
[p] is produced with a slight puff of air (called aspiration), and thus the sound is said to
be aspirated, whereas the second one does not present this feature. This difference may be
captured by the phonetic (narrow/allophonic) transcription, which mirrors all that is
known about a sound in a given context/environment. Thus, the word park is transcribed
phonetically as [pHa:k].
The diacritics modify the phonemic symbol in some way. The diacritical marks are also
provided by the International Phonetic Alphabet. Here are some commonly used diacritics:
- o placed below the symbol of a voiced consonant shows devoicing (e.g. bad [bQd]);
- h placed higher, immediately after a voiceless plosive consonant indicates aspiration
(e.g. car [kHa:]);
- j placed higher, after a consonant indicates palatalization (e.g. tJ, kJ);
- w stands for a labialized pronunciation (e.g. tw, dw);
- placed after the phoneme symbol indicates a pharyngealized pronunciation (e.g. t, d);
- 9 placed below a consonant symbol shows a dental articulation (t, d).
The students are not asked to know all the diacritics used1, but someone who knows them
all could write a transcription that would be much more accurate in phonetic detail, and
contain more information than a phonemic transcription. By making use of phonemic
symbols and of the diacritical marks it is possible to represent the allophones of a phoneme
in a schematic manner.
The current practice in transcriptions is to enclose the symbols representing the allophones
in square brackets [ ], while those representing phonemes between slants / /. No capital
letters and no punctuation marks are used in transcriptions. A single vertical line ( ) is
used to separate clauses, and a double one () to separate sentences.
It is important to remember that the letters of the alphabet are used for spelling words,
while the phonetic symbols are used to indicate the sounds that make up the words.
For linguistic purposes, phonemic transcriptions are the most practical ones. They
represent one of the traditional exercises in pronunciation teaching. There are two different
kinds of transcription exercises:
a. transcription from a written text the student is given a passage of a text written in
orthography and must use phonemic symbols to represent how s/he thinks it would be
pronounced by a speaker of RP;
b. transcription from dictation the student must listen to a person or a tape-recorder and
write down what s/he hears.

For further diacritics, see the International Phonetic Alphabet (revised to 1993, updated 1996) in Radford et
al., 1999:137, or Clark, J. and Yallop, C, 1995:425.

21

Callary (1994:304) gives the following piece of advice: When doing phonetic
transcription, one of the most important things to remember is to transcribe the words as
you actually say them in normal conversational speech, not how you think they should be
pronounced or how they are written in the regular alphabet. After you have determined
your normal pronunciation, you must then select from the phonetic alphabet the symbols
that represent that pronunciation.
1.9. Summary
In this first unit we have introduced the students to the basic terminology of
the subject matter. We started by mentioning the participants and the main
stages in the process of communication, making the distinction between the
spoken and the written message. Based on this, further distinctions were
pointed out: speech vs. language, phoneme vs. allophone, phonetics vs.
phonology. Finally, the students were introduced to the phonemic and phonetic
transcriptions, an important tool that will help them improve their
pronunciation.
1.10.
Evaluation

1. What are the participants and the stages involved in the act of
communication by means of language?
2. What does grammatical encoding consist of?
3. By what means can a message be transmitted following its semantic and
grammatical encoding?
4. What does a speaker turn into sounds?
5. How are sounds perceived by a hearer?
6. What is a minimal pair?
7. Give the phonemic transcription of the following fragment:
Once there was a little girl who lived with her mother at the edge of the
forest. The little girl always wore a red cloak and hood that her grandmother
had made for her. Thats why everyone, even her mother, called her Little Red
Riding Hood.
One day, Little Red Riding Hoods mother said to her: Grandmother is
not feeling well. I have packed a basket with fruit and cake and honey. Will
you take it to her?
8. Here is the phonetic transcription of a conversational passage. Try to render
it in normal spelling.

22

j:r ga:dnr a:ntju: d ju: nu eniTiN baut bizi liziz

baut wt bizi liziz wtn :T Dei
U ai T:tju:d nU Dei haus pla:nts aiv dZsbi:n givnwn baimai sistr
nai wnt t nU hau tlUk a:ftrit
aimfreid ai dUnt nU mtS baut haus pla:nts btaiv gt buk smwE
Dt mait help lets si: a: jes hir it iz D kEr v haus pla:nts mmDQt
luks ju:sfl
dju: hQpn t nU D lQtin neimvit
aimfreid ai dVnt bizi liziz Di Unli neim aiv h:d
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1.11. Send away assignment 1.
Transcribe phonemically the following text. Send the assignment to the teacher according
to the deadline provided in the calendar.
On the last house in a little village the storks had built a nest, and the mother stork sat in it
with her four young ones, who stretched out their necks and pointed their black beaks,
which had not yet turned red like those of the parent birds. A little way off, on the edge of
the roof, stood the father stork, quite upright and stiff; not liking to be quite idle, he drew
up one leg, and stood on the other, so still that it seemed almost as if he were carved in
wood. It must look very grand, thought he, for my wife to have a sentry guarding her
nest. They do not know that I am her husband; they will think I have been commanded to
stand here, which is quite aristocratic; and so he continued standing on one leg.
Hans Christian Andersen, The Storks

23

Unit 2. THE ORGAAS OF SPEECH

Contents
2.1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................23
2.2. Competences...........................................................................................................23
2.3. The lungs ........................................................................................................................... 24
2.4. The larynx...............................................................................................................24
2.5. The cavities .............................................................................................................25
2.6. Summary ...............................................................................................................27
2.7. Evaluation test ........................................................................................................27
2.1. Introduction
Unit 2 of this course-book presents the parts of the human body that are
responsible for the production of speech sounds. We shall see that the production
of speech sounds is, actually, a secondary function of these organs.

2.2. Competences
Once the students have read the information in this unit, they will be able
to identify correctly the articulators involved in the production of each an every
sound. As future teachers of English, they will be capable of correcting the
pronunciation of their students by pointing out which articulators move and how
they move to produce speech sounds.

Time envisaged for covering Unit 2: 1 hour.

Speech sounds are produced by modifying the stream of air coming from the lungs. In
English, all speech sounds are made on the outgoing breath. Air is pushed by the lungs
through the trachea and into the oral/mouth or nasal cavity, or in some cases into both.
Different modifications of this flow of air cause different sounds to be articulated. The
simplest act of articulation requires the coordination of hundreds of muscles of various
organs of speech.
The totality of speech organs is referred to as the vocal tract or the speech mechanism.
The speech mechanism may be divided into three main parts according to the role they
have in the production of speech sounds:
- lungs, representing the sound source,

24

- the larynx with the vocal cords, acting as sound generator,

- the cavities (i.e. the pharynx, the mouth and the nose cavity) performing the function of
resonators.
2.3. The lungs, whose primary biological function is related to breathing, generate the air
stream required for the production of speech sounds. We fill our lungs with air, which is
expelled immediately by contracting the muscles of our chest. The lungs need refilling at
short intervals, and this determines the short pauses we make when speaking. These pauses
in speech coincide with the syntactic divisions of an utterance. Thus, speaking does not
seem to interfere with breathing.
2.4. The larynx. The first point at which the air stream from the lungs may be modified is
at the larynx. But where is the larynx located? Take the thumb and forefinger of one hand,
and very gently pinch Adams apple (i.e. the thyroid cartilage). With your forefinger, you
can trace the outline of the thyroid cartilage which forms the outside wall of the larynx.
Lying within the larynx (also known as the voice box) are the vocal cords or vocal folds.
These are two bands of elastic tissue that start vibrating when air is forced out of the lungs.
For speech, the vocal folds assume one of two basic positions:
a) they can be tensed and drawn close together so that there is only a narrow
opening between them (this opening is called glottis). In forcing its way out through the
narrowing, the airflow will make the vocal folds vibrate. This situation is characteristic of
voiced consonants (b, d, z, v) and vowels (a, i:, u).
b) they can be relaxed and spread relatively far apart. When the air comes out of the
lungs, it passes through the open glottis, and consequently there will be no vibration of the
vocal cords. This is characteristic of the production of the voiceless consonants (e.g. p, t,
s, f).

Figure 1. Articulators above the larynx.

(The drawing represents the human head, seen from the side, displayed as if it had been cut
in half. You will need to look at it carefully while the articulators are described)

25

2.5. The cavities

The air stream, having passed through the larynx, is now subject to further modification
according to the shape assumed by the upper cavities of the pharynx and mouth, and
according to whether the nasal cavity is brought into use or not. These three cavities in our
neck and head function as the main resonators; they are open chambers filled with air.
They are actually very sophisticated resonators, because we can change their size and
shape and, thereby, change the tones they resonate. The vocal resonators are used to
transform the buzz of the vocal folds into voice. They selectively amplify the buzz and not
only do they make our voice louder but they also give it its unique characteristics. Let us
have a brief look at each of them.
A. The pharynx is a tube that begins just above the larynx. It is about 7 cm long in women
and about 8 cm long in men, and its top end is divided into two, one part being the back of
the mouth and the other the beginning of the way through the nasal cavity. If you look in a
mirror with your mouth open, you can see the back of the pharynx.

Figure 2. Sub-divisions of the tongue

The resonance characteristics of the pharynx are controlled by the constrictor muscles.
From the pharynx the air escapes in one of three possible ways, determined by the position
of the soft palate:
when the soft palate is lowered, like in normal breathing, the air can pass both through
the mouth and the nose.
when the soft palate is raised the air comes out through the mouth only.
the soft palate is lowered and a complete obstruction is formed at some point in the
mouth, so that in spite of the fact that the air enters all or part of the mouth cavity, it cannot
escape through the mouth, but is directed through the nasal cavity.
B. The mouth is the most important of the three cavities, and this is due to the fact that its
shape determines finally the quality of the majority of the speech sounds. The organs
inside this cavity may be divided into movable and fixed.
the movable parts are called articulators; they are on the move most of the time. The
articulators are described below.
- The TOAGUE can be moved into many different places and different shapes. It is usual
to divide the tongue into different parts, though there are no clear dividing lines within the
tongue. They are: the tip, the blade (these two parts form the apex which is approximately
opposite the alveolar ridge), the front of the tongue (which is actually the central part and
is opposite the hard palate) and the back of the tongue (next to the soft palate). In the

26

articulation of sounds, various parts of the tongue can come into contact with different
fixed or movable parts of the mouth cavity. Thus, the tip can touch the teeth (as in the
production of [T]), the alveolar ridge (in the production of [t], [d]), the front of the tongue
can touch the hard palate (as in the production of [S]), whereas the back of the tongue can
form a total obstruction by its contact with the soft palate, raised in the case of [k], [g];
- The LIPS are important in speech. They can be pressed together (when we produce the
sounds [p], [b]), brought into contact with the teeth (as in [f], [v]), or rounded to produce
the lip-shape for vowels like [u]. Sounds in which the lips are in contact with each other
are called bilabial, while those with lip-to-teeth contact are called labio-dental.
In producing vowel sounds the lips can assume different shapes, as seen below:

close rounding [u]

open rounding []

spread [i:]

neutral [e]

Figure 3. Shapes assumed by the lips

These different shapes have a strong influence on sound quality.
-The JAWS. Certainly we move the lower jaw a lot in speaking, but the jaws are not
articulators in the same way as the others because they can not themselves make contact
with other articulators. But by changing the distance between the jaws, we obtain
important modifications in the production of certain speech sounds; a great distance
between the jaws corresponds to a great distance between the tongue and the hard palate.
the fixed parts are called points of articulation. These are:
- The TEETH: they are shown in Fig. 1 only at the front of the mouth, immediately behind
the lips. This is for the sake of a simple diagram, and one should remember that most
speakers have teeth to the sides of their mouths. The tongue is in contact with the upper
side teeth for many of the speech sounds. Sounds produced with the tongue touching the
front teeth are called dental, whereas those produced by pushing the tip of the tongue
through the upper and lower teeth are called interdental;
- The ALVEOLAR RIDGE: this is the area immediately behind the upper teeth. Its
surface is really much rougher than it feels, and is covered with little ridges. You can see
these if you have a mirror small enough to go inside your mouth (such as those used by
dentists). Sounds made with the tongue touching here (such as [t], [d]) are called alveolar.
- The HARD PALATE (bony dome) extends further behind the alveolar ridge. Its surface
is smooth and curved. Sounds produced with the tongue touching this area are called
palatal (e.g. [j], [S], [Z]).
Two further things should be mentioned in connection with the speech organs. First, one
should not forget that despite their involvement in the production of speech sounds their

27

primary function is a biological one: they keep the human body alive. Second, the speech
organs are dealt with within articulatory phonetics, so called because it deals with the
ways in which the human vocal apparatus is manipulated as sounds are produced. The
basic assumption of articulatory phonetics is that different sounds result from, and are best
described in terms of, the different configurations of the vocal tract as different sounds are
uttered.
C. The nose is the third cavity that acts as a resonator. The airstream coming from the
pharynx is directed towards the nasal or oral cavity by the soft palate (velum). When the
soft palate is lowered, the air stream escapes through the nose. The sound produced in this
ways are the nasal sounds /m, n, /. When the soft palate is raised, the air is pushed out
through the mouth cavity, and the sounds produced in this manner are called oral sounds.
There are also situations in which the air stream escapes both through the nose and the
mouth. This results in the partial nasalization of sounds which are oral by nature
(Chitoran, 1977:34).
2.6. Summary
This unit has shown they way the speech organs, especially those above the larynx,
contribute to the production of speech sounds. The Latin denomination of the speech
organs proves to be of great importance once the sounds need to be defined, as the
latter get their names according to the articulators involved, as will be shown in the
following unit.

2.7. Evaluation
1. Define articulatory phonetics.
2. List the speech organs.
3. Is there any organ in the human body which is, in fact, a speech organ
proper?
4. What is the primary function of the so-called speech organs?
5. What is the role of the lungs in speech production?
6. How does the air escape from the lungs?
7. What is the role of the vocal folds?
8. Give the names of the supra-glottal cavities which act as resonators.

28

Unit 3. THE EAGLISH VOWEL SOUADS

Contents
3.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................28
3.2. Competences...........................................................................................................28
3.3. Classification of speech sounds into vowels and consonants ....................................... 29
3.4. Principles of classifying the vocalic sounds ...........................................................30
3.5. The system of cardinal vowels................................................................................33
3.6. The English front vowels.........................................................................................34
3.7. The English back vowels.........................................................................................38
3.8. The English central vowels .....................................................................................44
3.8.1. The phonemic status of the schwa........................................................................47
3.9. Summary .................................................................................................................48
3.10. Evaluation test ......................................................................................................49
3.1. Introduction
This unit introduces students to the classification of speech sounds into the
two major groups (i.e. vowels and consonants), focussing further on on the English
monophthongs. We shall mention the principles according to which vowels could
be described; we will also show that there is no one-to-one correlation between the
vocalic sound and its graphical representation in the English words. More
importantly, the differences between the English and the Romanian vowel sounds
will be highlighted, making the students realize that unless they pronounce the
English words with the appropriate vowel length, all kinds of misunderstandings
may arise.

3.2. Competences
When the students have completed this unit, they will know the difference
between a vowel and a consonant, they will be able to describe, distribute and spell
the English monophthongs, as well as pronounce them correctly, without any trace
of interference of the vocalic sounds of their mother tongues. They will also know
that in English, unlike Romanian, vowel length has a phonemic status.

29

Time envisaged for covering Unit 3: 2 1/2 hours.

3. 3. Classification of speech sounds

Speech sounds are traditionally divided into vowels and consonants. But the principles of
this division, which should be universal and applicable to any language, are not quite well
defined.
a. The most common view is that vowels are sounds in the production of which there is no
obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips, while consonants
represent sounds in the production of which the air flow is obstructed to various degrees
and at various points in the oral cavity.
One problem with respect to this view is that some English sounds that we consider
consonants, such as the sounds at the beginning of the words hay and want, do not really
obstruct the flow of air more than some vowels do. Another problem is that different
languages have different ways of dividing sounds into vowel and consonant. For instance,
the sound [r] in red is felt to be a consonant by most English speakers, but in some other
languages (some dialects of Chinese), the same sound is treated as a vowel.
b. The etymology of the word consonant (Latin con (= with) + sonore (to sound)) suggests
the idea that by a consonant was understood a sound used with another sound (a vowel).
But any sound can be produced in isolation [a:], [ai], [u:], [f], [m], [l], etc. Therefore, we
can not take etymology as a basis for separating vowels from consonants.
c. Daniel Jones (1964) attempted to define vowels and consonants according to the criteria
of sonority. According to him, the major distinction between vowels and consonants is 'a
distinction based on acoustic considerations, namely on the relative sonority or carrying
power of the various sounds. Some sounds are more sonorous than others, that is to say
they carry better or can be heard at greater distance when pronounced with the same
length, stress and voice-pitch. Thus, the sound [a] pronounced in the normal manner can be
heard at a much greater distance than the sound [p] (...) pronounced in the normal manner.
It so happens that the sounds defined as vowels (...) are on the whole more sonorous than
any other speech sounds (...): and that is the reason why these sounds are considered to
form one of the two fundamental classes (Jones: 1964:23-24).
A shortcoming of Jones assertion is the fact that he made a contrast in terms of sonority of
vowels and voiceless consonants [p], [t], [k]. Indeed, the latter have no sonority at all,
being pronounced without vocal cords vibration. But in English there are other consonants
the semi-vowels [w], [j], the sonorants [m], [n], [N], [l], [r] and voiced consonants [b],
[d], [g], which possess sonority in a lessening degree. Consequently, neither sonority can
be used as a basis for separating vowels and consonants.
d. Closely connected with sonority is the criterion of syllabicity. Vowels, being more
resonant and sonorous than consonants, are always syllabic. Some scholars say that the
number of syllables in an English word correlates exactly with the number of vowel

30

phonemes, but we can not disregard the fact that such consonants as [m], [n], [N], [l], [r]
are sounds of complete sonority as well and, hence, syllabic in certain situations. But while
vowels are always syllabic in any position, the above-mentioned consonants are syllabic
only in word-final position or in middle position:
e.g. hidden [:hi-dn], temporary [:tem-pr-ri], bottom [:b-tm], little [:li-tl].
e. The criterion of context as a basis for separating vowels from consonants must also be
mentioned here because it is very satisfactory for the English language. It consists in taking
a word which begins with the sound to be tested and using before it successively a/an, the
[D]/[Di] and to [t]/[tu]. If the sound to be tested accommodates itself to the pronunciation
[n], [Di], [tu], satisfying the sense of fitness of the English-trained hearer, it is a vowel. If
[], [D], [t] seem more appropriate, then the sound is a consonant.
e.g.

a boy [ bi], the boy [D bi], to buy [t bai]

an act [n Qkt], the act [Di Qkt], to act [tu Qkt]

The shortcoming of this criterion consists in the fact that the consonants used as tests are
limited in English, since some sounds are not used initially. This is the case of [u] and [N].
f. The criterion of distribution of sounds is not so important for the purpose of this chapter,
but it is, nevertheless, worth mentioning. Study of sounds found at the beginning and end
of English words has shown that two groups of sounds with quite different patterns of
distribution can be identified, and these two groups are those of vowels and consonants. If
we look at the vowel - consonant distinction in this way, we must say that the most
important difference between a vowel and a consonant is not the way that they are made,
but their different distributions. Thus, in a word beginning with [h], the h-sound will be
followed by sounds we normally think of as vowels (e.g. hen, house, ham, hill, hut, hot),
but never by what we consider a consonant.

Let's remember...
We shall refer to the vowel as a speech sound produced by modifying a relatively
free-flowing air stream (Callary, 1994:313), the vocal cords vibrate, and the
muscular tension is spread over all organs of speech. A consonant, on the other
hand, is a speech sound in the production of which the air flow coming from the
lungs is obstructed in various degrees and places along the vocal tract.
There are many interesting theoretical problems connected with the vowel - consonant
distinction, but we will not return to this issue. For the rest of this course it will be assumed
that the sounds are clearly divided into vowels and consonants.
3. 4. The Principles of Classifying the English Vowels
We begin the study of English sounds by looking at vowels; in this respect, it is necessary
to say something about the ways vowels differ from each other.

31

English vowels are classified according to the following principles:

a. The stability of articulation: according to this we have monophthongs (whose
articulation is stable) and diphthongs2 (produced by the movement of the tongue from one
vowel position to the next). There are 12 monophthons [i:, i, e, Q, a:, , , u, u:, , , :]
and 8 diphthongs [ei, ai i, i, E, u, u, au].
b. The height to which the tongue is raised. According to it, there are:
- close vowels - in their production the tongue is held as high as possible: [i:], [u:];
- open vowels in their production the tongue is held as low as possible: [a:];
- half-close vowels the tongue occupies 1/3 of the distance between close and open:
[e];
- half-open vowels the tongue occupies 2/3 of the distance between close and open:
[Q].
c. The part of the tongue which is raised. According to this principle vowels are
classified into:
- front vowels when the front part of the tongue is raised in the direction of the palate.
The front vowels are: [i:], [i], [Q] and [e];
- back vowels when the back part of the tongue is raised against the palate. The back
vowels are: [a:], [], [], [u], and [u:];
- central vowels vowels intermediate between front and back (the middle/central part of
the tongue is raised against the palate). There are 3 central vowels in English, namely [],
[], [:].

Fig.1. Tongue height for [i:] and [Q]

Fig.2. Tongue position for [],

[:], [u], and [u:]

d. Lip-rounding is an important variable of vowel quality. Although the lips can have
many different shapes and positions, we will, at this stage, consider only three possibilities.
These are:

The word diphthong comes from the Greek di meaning twice or double and phthongos meaning sound
or voice. So diphthongs are literally two sounds.

32

- rounded, where the corners of the lips are brought towards each other and the lips are
pushed forwards. This is most clearly seen in [u:];
- spread, where the corners of the lips move away from each other, as for a smile. This is
most clearly seen in [i:];
- neutral, where the lips are not noticeably rounded or spread. The noise most English
people make when they are hesitating (written er) has neutral lip position.
e. Duration (length). Vowels may be either long or short. But the actual length of vowels
varies considerably according to their position in word contexts. The long vowels are fully
long only when situated in final position or when followed by a voiced consonant.
e.g. bee [:bi:], been [:bi:n]
When followed by a voiceless consonant, long vowels are reduced (shortened).
e.g. beat vs. bead.
f. Degree of muscular tension. This principle is closely related to the previous one (i.e.
length). Long vowels require a tenseness of the muscles of the tongue and lips; therefore
they are called tense vowels. In the production of the short vowels the muscles do not make
such a great effort, they are lax. Consequently, the short vowels will be called lax vowels.
g. The position of the soft palate may affect the vowel quality. In the articulation of
normal vowels the soft palate is raised. The result is that no air can pass through the nose.
When vowels are pronounced with the soft palate lowered and the air can pass through the
nose as well as through the mouth, they are said to be nasalised. A vowel may be slightly
nasalised if it follows or precedes a nasal consonant within a word or at word boundaries:
e.g. man [mQn]. Nasal pronunciation is common in London dialectal speech and in
American English.
h. Distribution refers to the position(s) in which the respective vowel can or cannot
appear. Long vowels can be used in any position:
- initial: art [:a:t]
- medial: heart [:ha:t]
- final: car [:ka:].
Short vowels are restricted in their use to:

- initial position: utter [:t] and

- medial position: blood [:bld].
They cannot be used in word final position, with the exception of [i] (city [:siti]) and []
(sister [:sist]).

Let's remember...
The English vocalic sounds are classified/described according to a number of
principles, such as:
- stability of articulation;
- part of the tongue which is raised
- height to which the tongue is raised
- duration (length)

33

lip-rounding
degree of muscular tension
position of the soft palate
distribution

3.5. The system of cardinal vowels

We have used the terms front, back, close open. They are, to some extent, vague since
they can be interpreted differently in different languages. For instance, both the Romanian
[i] and the English [i] are front vowels. Still, there is some difference between them, so it is
quite a problem for us to guess what precise vowel is indicated by the term.
In order to compare vowels of different languages it is necessary to have some standard
vowels which would represent certain well-defined tongue positions. This brought about
the establishment of a set of so-called cardinal vowels which can conveniently be used as
points of reference.
The scale of 8 cardinal (primary) vowels can be arranged on a diagram according to two
main dimensions, namely:
- the relative position of the tongue;
- the specific part of the tongue used for the production of the vowels.

Close

Front
i
1

Close-mid
Open-mid
Open

Central

Back
U
8
o

5A

Figure 3. Diagram of cardinal vowels.

This diagram was suggested by Henry Sweet and devised by Daniel Jones, both being
British phoneticians. It represents a practical method of describing and classifying vowel
phonemes. On the basis of this diagram we can define cardinal vowel no. 1 i as the
vowel which is as close and as front as possible, while cardinal vowel no. 5 a as the
vowel which is as open and as back as possible.
When one is familiar with the extreme vowels, s/he has learned a way of classifying and
comparing vowels. For instance, the English vowel [Q] as in cat, is not as open as cardinal
vowel no. 4 [].
Now, using the diagram of cardinal vowel sounds and the principles of classification
explained before, we will examine some of the English vowels.

34

3.6 The English front vowels

English has a large number of vowel sounds (12 pure vowels); the first ones to be
examined are the front vowels.
[i:]

*
[i:] is the closest of the English front vowels, but not so close as cardinal vowel no.1. In its
production the lips are spread. It is long and tense. Its length differs, nevertheless,
according to different phonetic contexts:
- longest in word final position: me [mi:], sea [si:], bee [bi:];
- relatively shorter before voiced consonants: beam [:bi:m], mean [:mi:n], seal [:si:l];
- shortest before voiceless consonants: beat [:bi:t], feet [:fi:t]. This is due to the fact that
voiceless consonants require more energy for their production. By way of compensation,
the preceding vowel loses some of its length.
Distribution: [i:] can be used in all basic positions:
- initial position: ease [i:z], evil [i:vl];
- medial position: beast [bi:st], feet [fi:t];
- word-final position: me [mi:], tea [ti:].
Spelling:
-ee (in stressed position): feed [fi:d], tree [tri:], seem [si:m], absentee [Qbsn:ti:],
week [wi:k];
-e: me [mi:], evening [:i:vniN], scene [si:n], cathedral [kTi:drl];
-ea: leave [li:v], meat [mi:t], peak [pi:k], please [pli:z];
-ie: believe [bi:li:v], niece [ni:s], yield [ji:ld];
-ei/ey: ceiling [:si:liN], conceive [kn:si:v], key [ki:];
-i:
-in loan-words, esp. in stressed suffixes: -ine [i:n] as in marine [m:ri:n], ique [i:k] as in antique [Qn:ti:k];
-in native words: police [p:li:s], ski [ski:];
-oe, ae in words of Greek origin: Oedipus [:i:dips], Caesar [si:z], formulae
[f:muli:].
Exceptional spelling: quay [ki:], people [pi:pl], Beauchamp [bi: tSm]
[i]

35

[i] differs from cardinal vowel no. 1 in that it is more open and nearer to the centre. The
tongue is not so high as for [i:]. As compared to [i:], [i] is not so close it is almost halfclose). [i] is not on the line of front vowels, but near it, because for its production the front
of the tongue is retracted.
[i] is front-retracted, almost half-close; it is short and lax. In a special phonetic context
(when pronounced with complicated tone (rise-fall-rise)), [i] sounds longer than [i:]
pronounced with a simple tone.
Example

Compare:
I ~ live and lords do no more vs. I leave next week

But in similar phonetic contexts (in minimal pairs pronounced with the same intonation),
[i:] is longer than [i]. These two vowels function as different phonemes, thus distinguishing
one word from another otherwise alike.
e.g.

sheep [Si:p]
lead [li:d]
feet [fi:t]

vs. ship [Sip]

vs. lid [lid]
vs. fit [fit]

Free variation (i.e. substitutability of one sound for another in a given environment, with
no consequent change in the words meaning): there is free variation between [i:] and [i] in
the following words: eleven [i:levn] or [i::levn], between [bi:twi:n] or [bi::twi:n]
Variants: a. [i] in word-final position is pronounced by some speakers as [i:]: pretty
[:priti:], Derby [:da:bi:]. This form is used by a number of educated people from the southeast of Britain and also by some Americans.
b. [i] in word-final position is pronounced by public speakers as a more open
vowel, moving it in the direction of [e]: city [:site], pretty [:prite].
Distribution: [i] can appear in any position:
- initial: it, ill, industry;
- medial: bit, sill, fin
- final: city, coffee
Spelling:
-i and y

- in graphically closed syllables (i.e. syllables that end in a

consonant letter): rid, with, lynch [lintS], skin, mirror, syllable
rhythm;
- in graphically open syllables (i.e. syllables that end in a vowel
letter): live, lily, fuzzy;
- ui: guilty [gilti], biscuit [biskit], build [bild];
- ee (in unstressed position): coffee [kfi], Yankee [jQNki];
- ey (in final position): money [mni], journey [dZ:ni];
- ie: auntie [a:nti], bookie [buki], Charlie [tSa:li];

36

- a (in weakly stressed affixes or words ending in ace, -ate, -ain): delicate
[delikit], affricate [Qfrikit], furnace [:f:nis], menace [menis], fountain [fauntin],
mountain [mauntin];
- e (in ed adjectivized participles): learned [l:nid], wicked [wikid]
- e (in word-final position in words of Greek origin): apostrophe [pstrfi],
catastrophe [ktQstrfi], syncope [siNkpi].
Exceptional spelling: England [:iNglnd], character [:kQrikt], busy [:bizi], lettuce [:letis],
minute [:minit], women [:wimin], sieve [:siv], breeches [:britSiz], Greenwich [:grinidZ],
forehead [:frid], pigeon [:pidZin], pretty [:priti].
Aote: the diphthong [ei] may be reduced to [i]: Wednesday [:wenzdei] or [:wenzdi],
yesterday [:jestdei] or [:jestdi].
1. Find as many minimal pairs as possible (in all basic position) for the
following vowel phonemes: [i:] vs. [i];
2. Read aloud the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between [i:]
and [i]:
feel - fill;
bead - bid;
read - rid;
scheme - skim;
steel still; been bin;
greed grid;
leap lip;
feet fit;
reap rip;
seal sill;
deep dip.
leave live; peel pill;
reach rich;
feast fist;
peach pitch; least list;
deal dill;
Gene/Jeangin.
eat it
cheap chip
cheek chick
peak pick

[e]

*
[e] is a front, half-open, lax vowel. In its production the lips are unrounded (they are in
neutral position).
Example

English [e] vs. Romanian [e]. Normally, there should be no difficulty for
Romanians in acquiring this English vowel sound, since the 2 types of [e] are
quite similar.
English
Romanian
set
set
check
cec
net
net

37

Distribution: - initial position: egg, every, exit

- medial position: debt friend, breakfast
Variants. In present day RP there is:
-a general tendency to pronounce a closer variety of [e] in order to keep the
opposition [e] [Q] clear;
-a tendency to diphthongize [e] towards [] or [i], before a voiced consonant: e.g.
i
bed [be d].
Spelling:
-e as in ten, press, insect;
-ea as in weapon, death, deaf, measure, realm;
-ai as in against [:genst]/[:geinst], said [sed];
-eo as in leopard [:lepd], Leonard [:lend], Geoffrey [:dZefri], jeopardy [:dZepdi];
-ei as in Leicester [lest], leisure [:leZ], heifer [:hef];
-u as in bury [beri];
-ue as in guess [ges], guest [gest];
-ay as in says [sez];
-ie as in friend [frend];
-a (in a few words): ate [et], any, many, Thames [temz], Pall Mall [pel mel].
[Q
Q]

*
[Q] is a front vowel, but not quite as open as cardinal vowel no. 4 [a]. In its production the
lips are slightly spread. For practical reasons it can sound as long as [Q:], especially before
voiced consonants. The tendency of lengthening [Q] may be considered as an attempt to
keep the [Q]/[e] opposition clear (Chioran, 1978:159).
Distribution: This vowel sound can appear only in:
- initial position : ant, abstract, anchor;
- medial position: cat, shadow, fashion.
It generally appears in stressed syllables.
Variants
- in RP [Q] is closer to [e] than to [a]. As a result of the [e] [Q] proximity, the two vowel
phonemes are kept apart by lengthening the latter, i.e. [Q], or by diphthongizing it towards
[]: bad [bQd];
- when followed by [l], [Q] acquires an opener quality, quite close to [a:]: e.g. ballot,
ballet.
Spelling: a both in graphically closed syllables (mad, badly, jam) and in graphically open
ones, in words of non-Germanic origin (family [fQ -m li], cabin [kQ-bin].

38

Exceptional spelling: Balaam [:beilQm], Caedmon [kQdmn], Aelfred [Qlfrid] (the last
two examples are proper names that have retained their Old English spelling).
Find as many minimal pairs as possible (in all basic position) for the following
vowel phonemes: [e] vs. [Q];

Describe the simple front vowels in the following sentences and explain the
difficulties encountered by Romanians in acquiring their correct
pronunciation:
a. Maggies bag is easy to carry.
b. He felt extremely well after such a big meal.

Let's remember...
The English front vowels are: /i:/, /i/, /e/ and /Q/. The English /i/ and /e/ are
different from the Romanian counterparts in that they are much closer. The
English /Q/ does not have a Romanian counterpart, consequently Romanian
speakers of English need to keep their jaws open when producing it.
Describe the simple front vowels in the following sentences and explain the
difficulties encountered by Romanians in acquiring their correct
pronunciation:
a. Maggies bag is easy to carry.
b. He felt extremely well after such a big meal.

3.7. The English back vowels

These vowels are called back because in their production it is the back part of the tongue
which rises to different heights in the mouth cavity.
[a:]

[a:] is a back, open, long, tense, unrounded vowel. It is not quite as back as cardinal vowel
no. 3 [a]; that is why we can say that it is back advanced.
If one compares the Romanian [a] to the English [a:] s/he will realize that the former is a
central vowel phoneme, while the latter is almost back. A good starting point for acquiring
the English [a:] could be provided by the Romanian [a] situated in a velar context: cal,
gal.

39

Distribution: - initial position: art, argue, answer

- medial position: park, master, draught [dra:ft];
- final position: par, bar, car [ka:].
Variants: this vowel phoneme has 2 main dialectal variants:
- an even more retracted (fully back) variety, typical of refined RP;
- an advanced variety of [a:], closer to cardinal vowel no. 4, typical of Australian English.
This variant also occurs in some cities in the north of England, e.g. Liverpool, Manchester
and Leeds.
RP [a:] followed by a voiceless fricative or a nasal plus another consonant generally
corresponds to [Q] in northern English and in General American. But there are examples
where RP itself has [Q] in these contexts, e.g. passage, gas, finance, romance. In such
cases hypercorrections may sometimes be heard from speakers of Regional RP, e.g.
[:pa:sidZ], [ga:s], [fi:na:ns], [rV:ma:ns].
Besides dialectal variants, the vowel phoneme has also got positional variants:
- a fully long [a:] in word-final position, e.g. car, bar, or when followed by a
voiced consonant, e.g. card, farm;
- a slightly reduced [a:] when followed by a voiceless consonant, e.g. art, ask,
laugh.
Free variation. In a number of words in RP, [a:] and [Q] are in free variation (i.e. either
may be heard), e.g. contrast [:kntra:st ] or [:kntrQst], transfer [:tra:nsf] or [:trQnsf],
elastic [i:la:stik] or [i:lQstik], lather [:la:D] or [:lQD].
In American English [a:] is replaced by [Q] in all these cases.
Spelling:
-a (+ ff, ss, th, f, s, n + cons), staff, chaff, pass, Bach, charge, mass, bath, craft, last,
past dance, demand, father, rather;
-a in loan-words: garage [:gQra:Z], drama [dra:ma], pyjamas [p:dZa:mz],
moustache [ms:ta:S].
-ar as in farm, marble, card, garden, march;
-ear as in heart, hearth;
-a + silent l as in calm, palm, half, psalm;
Exceptional spelling: - er as in clerk [:kla:k], Derby [:da:bi], sergeant [:sa:dZnt],
Berkshire [:ba:kS];
- au as in aunt, laugh, draught.
[
]

40

[
] is a pure back, almost open, short, lax, slightly rounded vowel.
Example
Romanian [o] vs. English [
]: there is no similar vowel in Romanian. Care
should be taken to pronounce this vowel with the mouth wide open and lips
slightly rounded. There is a dialectal form of the sound in Transylvania. This
is used to render the standard Romanian diphthong [oa] as in coad [:k(:)d],
toat [t(:)t], which is somewhat similar to this English sound, only that it is
much longer.
Distribution: this vowel phoneme may appear in
- initial position: on, odd, operate,
- medial position: got, fox, want, quality.
Variants. The realization of [] varies very little within RP. A small number of speakers
prefer [:] in refined RP, e.g. off, cloth, across [:kr:s]. This pronunciation is also typical
of Cockney.
In Scottish English almost all words with RP [] fall together with [:], the quality being
nearer to the latter RP vowel: thus cot, caught; not, naught; nod, gnawed, etc, will be
pronounced with [:].
One other variety tends to lose the lip rounding and thus becomes similar to [a]. This
variety is very common in the south-west of England and in General American. Here, the
distinction between [] and [a:] is made by the pronunciation of the [r], e.g. hot [ha:t] vs.
heart [ha:rt].
Spelling:
-o in graphically closed syllables: stop, cotton, lost, dock, dog, gone, and in
graphically open syllables (in very few words): sorry, holiday;
-a as in was, what, swan, want, watch, quality;
-ou, ow as in cough, trough, Gloucester [:glst], knowledge;
-au as in because, sausage, laurel, Austria, Australia, cauliflower.
Aote: short, back open vowels occurring in other languages often differ from the English
[] in that they are either somewhat closer or more centralized, or are pronounced with
stronger lip-rounding. The extremely open nature of the English vowel can be emphasized
by relating it to [a:].
[
:]

41

[
:] is described as a long, tense vowel. In its production the back of the tongue is raised
between the mid-open and mid-close positions, and the lips are rounded.
Distribution. Being a long vowel, [:] can appear in any position, i.e.
- initial position: orchard, order;
- medial position: form, board, torn, fought;
- final position: law, four, floor, core.
Free variation: The vowel phonemes [] and [:] are in free variation in the following
examples: cost [kst] or [k:st], frost [frst] or [fr:st]. These are alternative pronunciations
which reflect age differences: [] is used by younger people, while [:] by older ones.
Spelling:
-ar, or: orchard [::tSd], form [f:m], sort [s:t], war, horse;
-ore: shore, before, more, bore, core;
-aw: law, paw, dawn [d:n], saw, lawn, yawn, awesome [::sm];
-au/augh: cause, taught fault, daughter;
-ou + silent gh: fought, naught, ought;
-oar: roar, board, oar;
-our: pour, four, court;
-oor: door, floor;
-a + l +cons: all, call, talk, walk, halt, chalk;
Exceptional spelling: George, sword [s:d], Maugham [m:m].
[u]

*
[u] is a back (advanced), almost half-close, short, lax, rounded vowel. In comparison with
the Romanian counterpart, the English vowel sound is more open, more advanced and less
rounded.
Distribution. This vowel sound can appear in medial position only: butcher, sugar, full. In
final position it appears only exceptionally, in the strong form of the particle to, e.g. the
place he is going to [tu].
Variants. With some speakers of English there is a tendency to use less lip-rounding and a
lower tongue position. Thus we get an opener half-close vowel sound, the symbol of
which is [F_]: should, could, would [wF_d]. Throughout the north of England no contrast is
made between [u] and [], a vowel in the region of [u] occurring for both the RP vowels.

42

Free variation: [u] and [u:] are in free variation in words such as room [rum] or [ru:m],
groom, booth, tooth, broom, the commoner phoneme being [u:]. In other contexts they are
independent phonemes, as shown by the following minimal pairs: look Luke, full fool,
could cooed, should shooed.
Spelling:
-u: butcher, bush, put, pudding, cushion, sugar, full;
-oo + k/other cons.: book, cook, look, took, good, wood, wool, foot, hood;
-o: bosom [buz()m], wolf, woman, Boleyn [bulin], worsted [wustid], Worcester
[wust];
-ou: could, courier, should, would, bouquet.
[u:]

[u:] is back, close, long, tense, rounded vowel. It is not completely close, and it is slightly
advanced from fully back.
Example

Romanian [u] vs. English [u:]. The English sound is quite similar to the
Romanian one, although it is a little more open and less rounded, and, of
course, considerably longer.
Distribution: this sound can appear in all positions, i.e.
- initial (in very few words): ooze [u:z], oops [u:ps];
- medial: rude, ruby, usual, tomb;
- final: shoe, toe, crew, who, flew, chew.
Variants: there is some variation in the realization of this vowel within RP. Two variants
within General RP are:
- a more centralized vowel [u_], when preceded by the palatal semi-vowel [j]: usual, feudal,
duke, tulip.
- a short diphthong [Uu], particularly common in word-final position (do, shoe).
A diphthongized version also appears when [u] is followed by l, e.g. fool [fu:l].
Some other distributional variants are given below:
- a fully long variant in word-final position, or when followed by a voiced
consonant: shoe, too, move, lose;
- a reduced variant when [u:] is followed by a voiceless consonant: boot, fruit,
loose.

43

Spelling:
-u: June, duty, rule, humour, crucial;
-oo (not followed by k): food, soon, moon, spoon, cool, loose, fool;
-o: do, lose, tomb, who, move;
-ou: group, soup, wound, through:
-ew: crew, grew, few;
-eu: feud [fju:d], neuter [nju:t], rheumatism [ru:mtizm];
-ue, ui, oe: blue, clue, juice, fruit, shoe, canoe.
Exceptional spelling: view, two.
Let's remember...
The English back vowels are: /a:/, //, /:/ /u/, and /u:/. Of these, the //
sound is very different from the Romanian sound.

1. Find as many minimal pairs as possible (in all basic position) for the
following vowel phonemes:
[u:] vs. [u]; [] vs. [:];

2. Read aloud
and [u].
pool pull
suit
soot
Luke look
fool full
wooed would
whod hood
Cooed could

the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between [u:]

He had to be pulled out of the pool.
His suit was full of soot.
Look at Luke!
The world is full of fools.
She would like to be wooed by an Uzbek ruler.
Whod wear a hood nowadays?
The pigeons cooed whenever they could.

3. Read aloud the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between [:]
and []:
cord
cod
awed
odd
dawn
don
stalk
stock
pawned
pond
port
pot
naught
not
sport
spot
gnawed
nod
cork
cock
forks
fox
sworn
swan
wars
was
court
cot
roared
rod
Morse
moss
corpse
cops
born
Bonn (town in Germany)

44

3.8. The English central vowels

In the production of this category of vowels it is the central (middle) part of the tongue that
is raised to different heights in the mouth cavity. That is why these sounds are called
central.
[
]

*
[
] is one of the controversial English vowels with regard to its description and change. It
can be described as a central, open, short, lax, unrounded vowel.
Example

Romanian [a] vs. English []. The English sound is quite similar to the
Romanian [a], especially when situated in unstressed position, e.g. capac,
catan.
Distribution: being a short vowel, [] is restricted to initial (utter, usher, unable) and
middle position (luck, shut, mother, country).
Variants:
- sometimes we may hear a back-advanced, mid-open variant of the [] sound;
- a fully open and fully front vowel [a] may be heard in the London region;
- in the northern dialects of English a half-close, back vowel [u] is used, e.g. bus [bus],
truck [truk], husband [huzbnd], love [luv]. This sound may have been the starting point of
the central vowel sound [] some 400 years ago.
Spelling:
-u: study, mutton, sun, cut
-o: London, none, oven, constable [:knstb()l], monkey, tongue, colour;
-ou: country, couple, trouble, southern, enough.
Exceptional spelling: flood, blood, does, two pence [:tpns].
[
:]

45

RP [
:] is articulated with the centre of the tongue raised between close-mid and open-mid,
no firm contact being made between the tongue and the upper molars; the lips are neutrally
spread.
Romanian [] vs. English [
:]. The Romanian sound has much similarity with
the English vowel sound [:].

German speakers of English tend to pronounce this sound as a centralized front rounded
vowel, of the [O] or [] types. This is quite unacceptable in English because of the liprounding of the respective variants.
Distribution. Being a long sound, [:] can appear in any position, i.e.
- initial: earth, earl, urge;
- medial: bird, circle, burn, first, thirst, word, journey:
- final: fir, Sir, prefer.
Variants. There is some variation in the degree of opening of the vowel []. In British
English one can come across a closer variety (typical of certain regional dialects in the
Birmingham and Liverpool areas) and a more open variety (characteristic of Refined RP).
Such a pronunciation comes close to the usual RP position for [a:]; however, speakers of
Refined RP generally use a retracted variety of [a:] to ensure the vowels keep their
distance.
Aote: the phoneme [:] occurs only in stressed syllables
Spelling:
-er, err: her, herb, clergy, mercy, verse, serve, kernel, err;
-ir, yr: bird, thirsty, first, myrtle [m:tl];
-ur, urr: occur, turn, fur, church, nurse, purr;
-ear: earth, heard, earn, pearl, learn;
Exceptional spelling:
-our (in words of French origin): journey, courtesy, scourge
-w + or: work, worm, word;
The word colonel is pronounced as [k:n].
[
]

46

This particular vowel sound has a high degree of occurrence in unaccented syllables. It is
described as a central, mid-open, short and lax vowel. In its production the lips are in
neutral position. This vowel phoneme is also called the schwa/shwa (pronounced [Swa]),
from a similar vowel occurring in Hebrew3.
Romanian vs. English []. The English [] can be considered similar to the Romanian
sound in unstressed position. Compare the following English and Romanian words:
English
miller
sitter
colour

Romanian
mil
sit
cal

Distribution. This short vowel sound may appear in all three positions:
- initial: above, allow, attempt;
- medial: police, method, balloon;
- final: summer, better, theatre, sofa.
Aote: the vowel [] has the greatest frequency of occurrence of all English vowel
phonemes.
Variants:
- in non-final position [] has a closer value than the one described, e.g. effort, movement;
- preceded and followed by [k] and [g], the vowel is still closer and more retracted, e.g.
back again [bQk:gen], long ago [lN:gU];
- in final position it is much more open, being quite similar to [], e.g. never, mother,
China, Canada.
Aote: when in unstressed position, all English vowel sounds tend to reduce to [
].
Neither the phenomenon of reducing vowel sounds to an unstressed allophone nor the use
of weak forms in unstressed positions are encountered in Romanian, and that is why they
present difficulties for the Romanian speakers of English.
The vowel sound [] may be omitted altogether and yet not destroy the meaning of words
(especially in final syllables or in suffixes), e.g. physician [fi:ziSn]. The omission of [] is
not allowed in certain phonetic contexts, namely when it is both followed and preceded by
a nasal consonant, e.g. German [dZ:mn], lemon [lemn], woman [wumn], and when it
is preceded by a nasal and a plosive and followed by another nasal, e.g. London [lndn],
incumbent [inkmbnt].
Spelling: [] is spelt with all vowel letters of the English alphabet and combinations of
these letters.
-a: aloud, academic, alarm;
-e: audience, gentlemen;
3

Shew is the name of a point marking a want for a vowel sound.

47

-i: intention, possible;

-o: tailor, doctor;
-u: suppose, sulphur;
-y: martyr.
Aote: the vowel is typical of any vowel letter or combination of vowel letters situated in an
unstressed position. The majority of affixes will include an [] sound, irrespective of their
spelling: -er (baker), -our (neighbor), -able (liable), -ence (resistence), -tion (emotion), -ial
(partial), -ent (management).
Find as many minimal pairs as possible (in all basic position) for the following
vowel phonemes:
[;] vs. [a:]; [Q] vs. [a:]; [] vs. [].

3.8.1. The phonetic status of [

]
There is controversy as far as the phonemic status of [] is concerned. Some phoneticians
do not treat this vowel as a separate phoneme on account of its free variation with vowels
of full quality. Consider the following examples:
kindness [:kaindnis] or [:kaindns]
handicapped [hQndikQpt] or [hQndikpt]
sawdust [:s:dst] or [:s:dst].
Another reason why [] is not considered an individual phoneme is the fact that all English
vowels and diphthongs tend to be reduced to [] in unstressed position:
e.g. [Q] []
man [mQn] policeman [pli:smn]
[e] []
men [men]
policemen [pli:smn].
What these phoneticians suggest is that [] is a member of all English vowel phonemes in
unstressed position. But if we take into consideration the negative essence of the phoneme
what it is not, what it contrasts with we can assert that [] is in a relation of distinctive
opposition to [i]. Consider the following examples:
proceed [pr:si:d]
vs.
precede [pri:si:d]
affect [:fekt]
vs.
effect [i:fekt]
allusion [:lu:Zn]
vs.
illusion [i:lu:Zn].
Thus, [] is a commutable element and can, therefore, be regarded as an independent
phoneme of English.

Let's remember...
The English central vowels are: //, //, and /:/. The English // differs
from the Romanian one in that it can be dropped in unstressed syllables and in
that it can replace most of the other short vowels in such syllables.

48

Read aloud the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between [a:] and
[]:
lark
luck
cud
card
dark
duck
last
lust
barks
bucks
carp cup
March
much
barge budge
cart
cut
barn bun
psalm
sum
calm come
A final word on vowels would be in place at the end of this chapter. The characteristics of
the vowel phonemes mentioned so far can be presented in a diagram based on essentials.
This presentation is not a traditional one. Nevertheless, it is based on the general rules
governing pronunciation. It makes the description brief and avoids repetition.
CLOSE
HALF-CLOSE
OPEN

FRONT
i: i
e
Q

CENTRAL
:

BACK
u: u
:
a:

The diagram is a synoptic presentation of the English vowel phonemes and it must be read
in a different way. This presupposes the following situations to be cleared up:
- articulatory characteristics: when learning vowel pronunciation it is important to know
which part of the tongue articulates the sound and whether the vowel phoneme is long or
short, open or close. The degree of tenseness and lip-rounding are less important.
- distribution is insignificant from a practical point of view.
- variants: every sound is contextually dependent. The variant of a vowel phoneme is that
sound which under certain circumstances and in certain word contexts acquires a
pronunciation different from the RP patterns.
Natural variant. One type of variant, and the most important, is that which cannot be
avoided since it comes by itself according to some natural laws of phonation. We term it
natural variant. So, when a voiceless consonant follows a vowel phoneme, its length is
reduced. When followed by a voiced consonant or when in final position, the vowel is fully
long. The same variants are valid for Romanian as well as for any other languages in the
world. Such a natural rule is part of RP and must be taken as such.
Free variant. Another type of variant is that which depends upon individuals, social or
geographical surroundings. Such a variant is termed free variant, and it is not part of RP.
Though some of these free variants can be included in the category of natural variants,
because they cannot be generalized at the level of the whole pronunciation mechanism they
will be discussed in a special section of the course.
3.9. Summary
In this unit we have dealt with the way in which we can make the distinctions between
vowels and consonants, and then we focused on the descriptions of the simple vowels,

49

providing details concerning their distribution and spelling. Wherever the case, the
main differences between the English and the Romanian monophthongs were
highlighted with a view to acquiring the correct production of the English sounds.

3.10. Evaluation
1. Name some distinctive features of the English vowels.
2. Are deal and dill a minimal? Why?
3. Are deal and did a minimal pair? Why? Why not?
4. Match the words in the first column with those in the second one so as to
obtain minimal pairs:
Column I
catch
pip
cheap
sap
he
caught
lap
pal
say

Column II
zip
fought
lass
Sam
mink
cap
Paul
she
heap

sink

lay

5. Give the vowel phonemes that cannot appear in word-final position.

6. Specify the English phonemes that cannot appear in initial position.
7. Give the English sounds corresponding to the following descriptions:
- central, mid-open, short, unrounded vowel;
- back, mid-open, long, rounded vowel;
- front (retracted), close, short, unrounded vowel;
- back (advanced), close, short, unrounded vowel.
8. Write the symbols for the vowels in the following words:
a. bread b. rough c. foot d. hymn e. full f. cough g. sat h. friend
i. cool j. Oedipus k. ask l. further.
9. Which are the vowel phonemes that can appear in front of [N]?
10. If one compares short vowels to long ones, which of them have a more
restricted distribution?

50

Unit 4. THE EAGLISH DIPHTHOAGS AAD TRIPHTHOAGS

Contents
4.1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................50
4.2. Competences...........................................................................................................50
4.3. The diphthongs .......................................................................................................50
4.3.1. The principles of classifying the English diphthongs ..........................................51
4.3.2. General characteristics of diphthongs ................................................................52
4.3.3. Variants................................................................................................................52
4.3.4. Spelling ................................................................................................................53
4.3.5.The English vs the Romanian diphthongs ............................................................56
4.4. The triphthongs.......................................................................................................56
4.5. The ration between English and Romanian vowel phonemes ................................59
4.6. Summary .................................................................................................................59
4.7. Evaluation...............................................................................................................59
4.1. Introduction
This unit continues the investigation of the vocalic sounds of the English
language, focussing this time on combinations of two and three vowels
pronounced within the same syllable. The major characteristics of the English
diphthongs and triphthongs will be emphasised, as well as the differences between
the English and the Romanian vowel combinations.

4.2. Competences
Once the students have completed this unit, they will know the difference
between the structure of the English diphthongs and that of the Romanian ones.
The students will be able to identify in the speech of native speakers of English the
process of reduction of diphthongs/triphthongs and may attempt to use it in their
own pronunciation in order to sound more native-like.

4.3. The Diphthongs

RP English has a large number of diphthongs which are combinations of two vowel sounds
in the production of which the tongue moves or glides from one vowel position to another.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about all the diphthongs is that the first
element (sound), called nucleus, is much longer and stronger than the second one, called
glide.

51

[ai]
a

diphthong
i

nucleus
glide
Figure 1. Structure of the diphthong.
For example, most of the diphthong [ai] (which appears in words such as eye, I) consists of
the vowel [a], and only in about the last quarter of the diphthong does the glide to [i]
become noticeable. As the glide to [i] takes place, the loudness of the sound decreases. As
a result, the [i]-part is shorter and quieter. Foreign learners must, therefore, always
remember that the last part of the English diphthongs must not be made too strongly.
a

Figure 2. Decrease of length and sonority in the diphthong.

The total number of diphthongs in English is eight. The easiest way to remember them is
in terms of three groups divided as in the following diagram:
DIPHTHONGS
CENTRING (opening)
glides to [
]
i
E U

CLOSING
glides to [i]
ei ai i

glides to [u]
U aU
U

Figure 3.The English diphthongs

4.3.1. Principles of classifying diphthongs
Just like the simple vowel sounds, diphthongs are classified according to a number of
principles.
a. The first refers to stress. If the stress falls on the nucleus, we will speak about falling
diphthongs (all the English diphthongs are falling, as a rule); if the stress falls on the
glide, we will have rising diphthongs (in exceptional cases4).
b. The second principle concerns the distance covered by the tongue in producing the
diphthongs. If the distance is short, the diphthongs will be called narrow (ei, U, i,
E, U); if the distance is longer, the diphthongs will be named wide (ai, au, i).
c. The height of the tongue in producing the nucleus should also be taken into account. If
the nucleus is opener than the glide, the diphthong will be closing (ei, ai, i, au, U). If
the nucleus is closer than the glide, the diphthong is opening (i, E, u).
4

Consider the following examples: idea [ai-d] and idiom i-Idim]. In the first word, it is the first vowel
(i.e. i) which is stressed, consequently the diphthong [i] is falling, whereas in the second word, the stress
falls on the second vowel, i.e. the glide , and thus the diphthong is rising.

52

ei

U
a
i

Fig. 4. Centring (opening) diphthongs

i
aU

Fig. 5. Closing diphthongs

4.3.2. General characteristics of diphthongs

a. Diphthongs have a monosyllabic character, i.e. a diphthong must necessarily consist
of one syllable (Jones, 1964:58).
b. As far as the quantity of the English diphthongs is concerned, they are on a par with
the long pure vowels and are subject to the same length variations. Thus,
-in word final position they sound the longest (more exactly their first element);
-when followed by a voiced consonant they are slightly shorter;
-before a voiceless consonant they sound the shortest.
LOAG
pay[pei]
eye [ai]
now [nau]

HALF-LOAG
paid [peid]
file [fail]
loud [laud]

SHORT
pate [peit]
fight [fait]
louse [laus]

c. From the point of view of their distribution, English diphthongs can be used in any
position (just like the long vowels). There is only one restriction in force, i.e. no
diphthong can be used before [N
N].
d. The diphthongs are the least stable of the English speech sounds and of the sounds of
Germanic languages in general.
4.3.3. Variants
a. Reduced values of diphthongs: VOWELS
If simple vowels are sometimes heard as diphthongs, diphthongs are sometimes heard as
vowels. In words like day, pay, the glide of [ei] is omitted and the nucleus becomes longer:
[dE:]. The reduction of diphthongs to monophthongs represents one of the differences in
pronunciation between British English and American English. While the British speakers
of English preserve the diphthongs in home and no, the Americans tend to reduce it to [],
especially in unstresse final position (in casual speech): potato, tomato, fellow.
b. Alternative pronunciation
-[oi] may be used instead of [i]; [oi] having a closer nucleus is used in popular London
speech, the open variety [i] being typical of RP;
-[ou] used instead of [U]; [ou] is typical of RP. It is used in such contexts as now [nou].
The same word can also be pronounced [nau] and even [nQu].

53

-In the case of the words ending in ine, some are pronounced with the diphthong [ai]
(columbine, serpentine, carmine), some others with the monophthong [i] (engine, feminine,
etc.).
c. r colouring
When the three centring diphthongs [i, E, U] are followed by r, a tendency for rcolouring is felt in the West and North-West, where r is sounded before consonants, e.g.
sure [Su:r], but also [SU].
d. When the closing diphthongs are followed by dark l, their glides are changed into a
sort of [], e.g. pale [peil] [pel].
e. Variants depending on the distribution of the diphthong
- when [i] and [E] appear in word-final position, their glide becomes [], e.g. idea
[ai:di][ai:di], fair [fE] [fE];
- when [i] and [U] occur in unstressed position, their nucleus is shorter and less sonorous
than the glide, e.g. idiom [:idim], influence [:inflVns]. In this case the diphthongs are
rising ones. When [U] appears in stressed position, the nucleus is longer. Consequently,
the diphthong is a falling one, e.g. poor [pU].
AOTE: [V
V] cannot be followed by a voiceless consonant!
- when diphthongs are followed by voiceless consonants, they suffer the same variations of
quantity as the long (pure) vowels, e.g. baize [beiz] base [beis]. The reduced forms show
a considerable shortening of the first element.
4.3.4. Spelling
[ei]
- a: tame, fame, brake, take;
-ai: aim, main, drain, waist;
-ay: day, may, lay, pay, hay;
-ei, ey; eight, veil, rein, vein, grey, they;
-ea: great, break, steak,
Exceptional spelling: goal [:dZeil], gauge [:geidZ], halfpenny [:heipni].
[ai]

-i + cons: wild, fine, mild, title, island, kind, benign;

-ie: die, tie, lie, pie, tried;
-y, ye: cry, dry, by, dye;
-igh, eigh: high, light, fight, height

Exceptional spelling: buy [bai], aisle [ail].

[
i]

-oi: oil, boil, noise, void, point, voice;

-oy: boy, toy, oyster;

Exceptional spelling: buoy [bi], Freud [:frid]

54

1. Practice the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between [ai] and
[ei]:
white wait
lied
laid
rice
race
rise
raise
like lake
file
fail
2. Practice the diphthong [ei] in the following sentences:
- State your name.
- Taste makes waist.
- The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plane.
- They may stay in hay in April and May.
- They say they sleighed all day long.
3. Practice the diphthong [ai] in the following sentences:
- My child likes to fly a kite.
- I like Paris by night.
- Ill try to arrive on Friday night around nine.
- Never smile at the crocodile!
- Id like to buy some nylon tights.
4. Practice the diphthong [i] in the following sentences:
- Its a noisy noise that annoys an oyster.
- Many slave boys toiled in Troy.
- Loyd raised his voice to the naughty boys.
- The boys made noise with their toys.
- Bring the soy-beans oil to the boiling point.
[
U]

-o: note, so, old, bonus, home, dont, wont, folk [fUk];
-oa: oak, road, toast, soap;
-oe: toe, roe, foe, hoe;
-ou: shoulder, soul, mould
-ow: row, grow, flow

Exceptional spelling: brooch [:brUtS], sew [sU]

[au]

-ou: house, mouse, mouth, sound, out;

-ow: owl, allow, cow, bow;
1. Practice the diphthong [U] in the following sentences:
- Those are old notions.
- The phone has no tone.
- He wrote an ode to the rose.
- The whole bowl was full of oat.
- Dont go home alone.
- His only goal was to go to the North Pole.
2. Practice the diphthong [au] in the following sentences:
- Dont shout out so loud!
- The Browns found a mouse in their house.
- Now the cow bowed and found a flower.

55

It was very cloudy in the mountains.

3. Read the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between the
diphthongs [u] and [au]:
no - now
hoe - how
phoned - found
known - noun
load - loud
oat - out
[i
]

-er: series
-eer: steer, beer, deer;
-ear: ear, tear, dear, fear, hear;
-ere: mere, here;
-eir, ier: weird, pier;
-ea: real, ideal;
-eo: theory, theological.

[u
]

-oor: moor, poor

-ure: cure, pure endure
-our: tourism
-ue: fluent, fuel, duel.

[EE]

-air: pair, hair, fair

-are: fare, hare, bare
-ear; pear, bear
Exceptional spelling: there, where, heir, their, scarce.
Aote for the foreign learners of English. Foreign learners should give sufficient length to
the first element of the diphthongs, making the correct reduction of quantity in appropriate
contexts.
1. Read aloud
and [E]:
here
steered
really

the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between [i]

hair
stared
rarely

beer bear
ears airs
weary wary

2. Practice the diphthong [E]

- How dare you share my pear?
- He rarely had money for the fare.
- I saw her somewhere in the square.
- Since Mary found her mare there, she had nothing to declare.
- She bought a new pair of jeans to share with Mary.
- They would rarely wear their golden jewelry.
3. Practice the diphthong [U] in the following sentences:
- England was at war with both the Moors and the Boers.
- The doctor was sure that he was past cure.
- We went on a tour of the moors.
- Henry Moores art is sure to endure the passage of time.
- The jury convicted poor Muriel.

56

4. Practice the diphthong [i] in the following sentences:

- He drew nearer and nearer to the feared pier.
- Beer should not be feared to be dear.
- There were tears in the eyes of the deer.
- He couldnt hear, so he drew nearer.
- Our theatre staged Shakespeares King Lear last year.
4.3.5. The English vs. the Romanian diphthongs
There are important differences between English and Romanian diphthongs. The most
important difference is at the level of quality and length of their nuclei and glides. As a
general rule, the English nuclei vary considerably as to the position of articulation and the
glide is never fully reached, it is only suggested and shows the direction of the movement
of the tongue. In Romanian, in both cases, the place of articulation of the nuclei varies
within narrower limits. The place of articulation of the nucleus is precise and the glide is
reached almost completely. That is one of the reasons which accounts for a more clear
Romanian phonation, while the English phonation is less clear.
Another peculiarity of the English diphthongs is the considerably long nucleus in
comparison to the glide (which is only suggested), especially when followed by a voiced
consonant, or when in final position. This situation is not matched by anything else in
Romanian. When followed by dark l, the movement of the tongue towards [i] or [u] does
not reach farther than the central area surrounding [].
The three central diphthongs in English have no Romanian counterparts, so no comparison
can be made at this level.
The sequence [j] or [w] plus a simple vowel is not considered a diphthong in English, and
neither is [j]/[w] plus a diphthong considered a triphthong, like in Romanian.
Let's remember...
The English diphthongs are combinations of two vowel sounds (unlike the
Romanian diphthongs which contain a vowel and a semivowel) pronounced
in the same syllable. They are classified into closing and opening, depending
on the vowel quality of the nucleus as compared to that of the glide. Each of
these two types can be further classified into wide and narrow, depending on
the distance the tongue has to cover from the nucleus to the glide.
4.4. The English triphthongs
The most complex English sounds of the vowel type are the triphthongs. They can be
rather difficult to pronounce, and very difficult to recognize. A triphthong is a glide from
one vowel position to another and then to a third, all produced rapidly and without
interruption.
The 5 closing diphthongs (i.e. gliding from a more open to a closer position) may be
followed by [], thus forming triphthongs. This [] may be seen either as an inseparable
part of the word, e.g. hire [hai], our [au], tower [tau], iron [ain], or as part of a suffix
attached to the root, e.g. player [plei], higher [hai], employer [im:pli].

57

Here are the 5 triphthongs:

ei + = [ei] layer, player, greyer U + = [U] lower, mower
ai + = [ai] fire, liar, hire
au + = [au] hour, power
i + = [i] loyal, employer
The main cause of difficulty for the foreign learners is that in present-day English the
extent of the vowel movement is very small, except in very careful pronunciation. Because
of this, the middle of the three vowels of the combination (i.e. [i] or [u]) can hardly be
heard and the resulting sound is difficult to distinguish from some of the diphthongs and
long vowels. This process is sometimes known as SMOOTHING.
The most frequently encountered English triphthongs are [ai] and [au]. They are
characterized by instability: in rapid speech they are reduced to diphthongs or even
monophthongs.

Figure 6. [ai] and [au]

[ai
]
The articulation of [ai] requires no special description since it coincides with that of the
diphthong [ai] followed by []. The weakest of the three elements is the second. Therefore,
when [ai] is reduced, it is the second element that is omitted: [ai] [a:]. The reduction
may go even further, to a lengthened [a:]:
e.g. society [s:saiti] [s:sa:ti] [s:sa:ti]
entirely [in:taili] [in:ta:li] [in:ta:li]
Spelling:
-ir + vowel letter: requirement, iron [airn], wire [wai]
-yr + vowel letter: Byron [bairn], tyrant [tairnt]
-i or y + vowel letter in unstressed position: diet [dait], dialogue [dailg], liar
[lai].
Exceptional spelling: choir [kwai]
In derivative words, if the root5 ends in [ai] and the suffix begins with [], the combination
results in [ai]:
5

The root is that part of a word that remains after removing all affixes.

58

shy shyer
sly slyer
buy buyable
lie liar
[au
]
This triphthong is pronounced as the diphthong [au] followed by []. The second element
in the combination being the weakest of the three, [au] tends to be reduced to [a:].
e.g. Gower [gau] [ga:]
Spelling:
-our: sour, flour, hour
-ower: tower, power, flower
-ow + vowel letter in unstressed position: towel, vowel
As mentioned before, both [ai] and [au] can be reduced to mere vowels a frontretracted [a:] and a back-advanced [a:], respectively. But even this phonemic opposition
- tyre [ta:] tower [ta:] - is very often levelled out. As a result, several homophones come
into being:
e.g.
shire, shower, shah will be pronounced as [Sa:]
tyre, tower, tar will be pronounced as [ta:].
The monophthongization of these two triphthongs to [a:] seems to be the most striking
sound change occurring in the southern British English in the 20th century.
Although the reduced forms are quite common among many educated speakers, foreign
learners should avoid them because, as pointed out by Gimson, the most changes of
pronunciation... are often condemned as vulgarisms frequently by those who use them
and are not aware of the fact (Gimson, 1994:131)
1. Read aloud the following words containing triphthongs. The [i] and [u] in
the sequences [ai +] and [au +] should not be made too strong.
[ai
]
[au
]
tyre
coward
trial
tower
quiet
flower
flyer
ours
buyer
shower
tired
bower
riot
towel
iron
powerful
2. The less common triphthongs [ei], [U], [i] should be pronounced with
the normal diphthong smoothly followed by []. The [i] and [u] need not be
weakened at all. Try pronouncing the following words:
greyer, grower, player, royal, followers, employer, thrower, betrayal, lawyers.

59

Let's remember...
The 5 triphthongs that exist in English are combinations of the closing
diphthongs and the central vowel //. There is a tendency among the native
speakers of English to reduce the triphthongs either to diphthongs or even to
monophthongs.

4.5. The Ratio between English and Romanian Vowel Phonemes

Statistically, the ratio is the following:
Simple vowels
7
12

Romanian
English

Diphthongs
22
8

Triphthongs
10
5

Total
39
25

As seen above, though reduced in number compared to their English counterparts, the
Romanian simple vowels combinatorial spectrum is higher than in English. If this is added
to the higher vowel ratio of the Romanian language 49.4% (cf. Roceric, 1968), against
42.9% of the English (cf. Chitoran, 1977), the conclusion is that Romanian phonation is
richer than English in vowel sounds.
4.6. Summary
This unit has concluded the investigation of the English vocalic sounds by presenting
the diphthongs (or twin vowels) and triphthongs (combinations of three vowels
pronounced in the same syllable). We have seen that these English sounds differ from
their Romanian counterparts both in number and in structure. There is a general
tendency among the native speakers of English to reduce these vocalic sounds to
monophthongs, a phenomenon that may pose problems to the non-native users of the
language

4.7. Evaluation
1. Diphthongs have been described as sequences of two vocalic sounds. List
the vocalic sounds serving as diphthong nuclei and the vocalic sounds serving
as glides?
2. Do diphthongs have a general distribution?
3. Is there any functional difference between a diphthong and a vowel in the
following minimal pairs?
beat bite;
bee beer;
mouse mice;
mouth moth;
cord code; fee fear;
mouth myth;
tea tear.

60

4. Does a shortening of a diphthong take place before a voiceless or a voiced

plosive? Consider the example: code coat cope.
5. State whether the following are true or false:
- In distribution and function diphthongs are similar to vowels.
- In English there are as many syllables in a word as there are syllabic vowels
(and syllabic m, n, N, l, r).
-The glides can be isolated as syllabic sounds.
- The syllabic sound of an English diphthong is its first sound..
-The two elements of a diphthong can be divided into two syllables, or
between two syllables.
- Diphthongs are defined as a sequence of two vocalic sounds because, in spite
of their distribution and function, they form only one syllabic peak.
6. On the vowel diagram indicate the glides for the diphthongs in the
following words:
freight, hold, sphere, fair, bow, sky, toil.
7. Write the symbols for the diphthongs in the following words:
tone way hair style beer out
coil
they

61

Unit 5. THE EAGLISH COASOAAATS

Contents
5.1. Introduction ...............................................................................................................
5.2. Competences...............................................................................................................
5.3. Principles of classifying the English consonants .....................................................
5.4. The English plosives ..................................................................................................
5.5. The English fricatives.....................................................................................................
5.6. The English affricates ....................................................................................................
5.7. The nasal sonorants .......................................................................................................
5.8. The lateral sonorant.......................................................................................................

5.9. The semi-vowels..........................................................................................................

5.10. Summary ...................................................................................................................
5.11. Evaluation.................................................................................................................
5.1. Introduction
This unit introduces students to the description of the English consonants.
It starts with the major principles according to which consonants are classified; it
then moves to the detailed presentation of the major classes of consonants in
English, pointing out, whenever the case, the differences between the English and
the Romanian consonants, on the one hand, and between the British and American
pronunciations of certain consonants, on the other hand. Just like with the vowels,
we shall also show the graphical representations for each consonantal sound, as
well as those situations in which consonant letters in the spelling of words remain
silent.

5.2. Competences
Once the students have come to he end of this unit, they will be able to
describe, distribute and spell the English consonants, as well as pronounce them
correctly, especially the ones that have no counterparts in Romanian (i.e. the
interdental fricatives [T] and [D], and the velar nasal sound []).

Time envisaged for covering Unit 5: 4 hours.

62

As seen in chapter 1 (1.8. IPA), by applying a commutation test, 24 consonant phonemes

can be found in the English language.
As opposed to vowels, the essential feature of consonant formation is a certain degree of
obstruction in the vocal tract which can be total (complete) or partial (incomplete). These
different degrees of obstruction and the way in which they are overcome are referred to as
manner of articulation.
For the production of consonants the active organs of speech can assume different shapes
and touch different parts of the mouth. The point where two articulating organs get close to
or contact each other, obstructing the air-stream on its way out is called place (point) of
articulation. The only difficult thing about describing the place of articulation is that it
requires students to know something about the anatomy of the mouth and what the
different parts are called.
Another characteristic feature of consonant formation refers to the concentration of
muscular tension at the point of articulation.
As compared to vowels which are all voiced, not all the consonants are characterized by
the participation of the vocal cords.
5.3. Principles of classifying the English consonants
The above-mentioned characteristics represent actually the principles of classifying the
consonant phonemes in English. Thus, we can classify them according to:
- the manner of articulation;
- the place of articulation;
- the participation/non-participation of the vocal cords;
- the degree of muscular tension at the place of articulation;
- the position of the soft palate.
A. According to the MAAAER OF ARTICULATIOA, the English consonants are
classified into:
- plosives (also called STOPS) these are characterized by complete obstruction of the
air-stream. The articulating organs parting abruptly, the air escapes with an explosion. The
English plosives are: [p, b, t, d, k, g, /].
- fricatives in their production a partial obstruction (narrowing) is formed through which
the air passes with friction. The fricatives are: [f, v, s, z, P, D, S, Z, h, r].
- affricates they are compound sounds. They begin with a complete closure appropriate
for plosives, but, unlike plosives, they end with an impeded plosion since the articulating
organs part gradually, with friction. In English there are two affricate sounds, namely [tS]
and [dZ].
- nasal consonants they are produced with the soft palate lowered, the air-stream
escaping through the nasal cavity. The English nasals are: [m, n, N]

63

- lateral consonant in its production the tongue forms a complete obstruction, just as it
does for plosives, but either one or both sides of it are lowered, making it possible for the
air-stream to escape through the mouth cavity. In English there is only one lateral
consonant: [l].
- semi-vowels (or semi-consonants) these are sounds that combine features of vowels
and consonants. The English language has two semivowels, [j, w].
B. According the PLACE (POIAT) OF ARTICULATIOA the English consonants are
classified into:
- bilabials articulated with the lips brought together, as in the case of [p, b, m]. In the
production of the bilabial semi-vowel [w] the lips are pushed forwards.
- labio-dentals articulated with the lower lip coming into contact with the upper teeth, as
in [f, v].
- interdentals produced with the tip of the tongue placed between the teeth, as in [P, D].
- alveolars produced with the tip of the tongue pressed against the teeth-ridge (the
alveoli): [t, d, s, z, l].
- post-alveolar the front part of the tongue is against the back part of the teeth-ridge: [r].
- palatal produced with the front of the tongue against the hard palate: [j, S, Z].
- palato-alveolar- the tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge, whereas the body of the
tongue is raised against the hard palate: [tS, dZ].
- velar - produced with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate: [k, g, N, ].
- glottal produced in the glottis: [h, /].
C. According to the PARTICIPATIOA vs. AOA-PARTICIPATIOA OF THE VOCAL
CORDS there are:
- voiced consonants produced with the vocal cords vibrating: [b, d, g, v, z, Z, D, dZ, m, n,
N, l, r, w, j];
- voiceless consonants not accompanied by the vibration of the vocal cords. The number
of voiceless consonant phonemes in English is smaller than that of their voiced
counterparts: [p, t. k. f, P, s, S, tS].
The best way to check up voicing and voicelessness is to rest ones palm on the throat (on
Adams apple) and produce the sound. If the palm senses some vibrations, it means that the
sound is voiced.
D. According to the DEGREE OF MUSCULAR TEASIOA involved in their production,
we speak about the English consonants in terms of:

64

- lenis (weak): voiced consonants need less energy for their production;
- fortis (strong): voiceless consonants require much more muscular effort for their
production.
E. According to the POSITIOA OF THE SOFT PALATE, we have:
- oral consonants - for their production the soft palate and the uvula are raised, allowing
the air-stream to escape through the mouth cavity;
- nasal consonants for their production the soft palate and the uvula are lowered and the
air-stream comes out through the nasal cavity, as in the case of [m, n, N].
5.4. The English plosives
A plosive (or stop) is a consonant the production of which is performed in 3 rapid stages:
a. During the first stage one articulator is moved against another in order to form a
stricture. We call this the closing stage.
b. After the stricture has been formed, the air coming from the lungs is compressed behind
it. This is called the hold (compressive) stage.
c. As the pressure of the air increases behind the obstacle, the articulators used to form it
part abruptly so as to allow the air to escape. The escape will produce a noise similar to
that of an explosion (hence the denomination plosive). This stage is called the release
stage.
The release is greatly influenced by the context in which the plosives appear. Thus:
- when a plosive is followed by a vowel/diphthong, an audible release is heard, e.g. park,
tall, bird.
- in word-final position, for example in ebb, fat, lid, there is no audible release, since the
compressed air escapes gently through an opening of the obstruction;
- when two plosives (or a plosive and an affricate) occur in succession, within a word or at
the boundary of two words, the first plosive has no audible release, since its explosive
stage is lost, e.g. fact, black cloud, good jam;
- when a plosive is followed by a nasal consonant [m, n, N] within the same word or at
word boundary, a nasal release takes place, e.g. bottom[btm], hidden [hidn], I can go
[aikNgU], bread and butter [bredmbt];
- when the plosive is followed by the lateral consonant [l] within the same word or at the
boundary of two words, a lateral release occurs, e.g. kettle [ketl], that lamp [DQtlQmp].
The plosives are the most important consonants because they exist in all languages and are
the first to emerge in infant speech. In English there are 6 oral plosive consonant phonemes
[p, b, t, d, k, g] and the glottal stop [/], which has no phonemic status of its own. It is
usually an alternative pronunciation of [p, t, k] in certain contexts.
A. According to the place of articulation, the English plosives are classified into:
- bilabials: [p, b];
- alveolars: [t, d];
- velars: [k, g];
- glottal: [/].
B. According to the participation/non-participation of the vocal cords there are:
- voiceless plosives: [p, t, k]

65

- voiced plosives: [b, d, g].

C. Depending on the degree of muscular tension at the point of articulation, we have:
- fortis plosives (i.e. the voiceless plosives): [p, t, k]
- lenis plosives (the voiced ones): [b, d, g].
In certain conditions the opposition voiceless/voiced is also accompanied by the irrelevant
opposition aspirated/non-aspirated. Aspiration is a vigorous production of a voiceless
plosive when a slight h-sound is heard between the consonant and the following vowel.
Aspiration is a characteristic of the English voiceless plosives which is not shared by the
Romanian language. Compare, in this respect, the following Romanian and English words:
Romanian
English
parc
park [pha:k]
toc
talk [th:k]
cot
caught [kh:t]
Aspiration can be best checked with a sheet of paper or a burning match held before the
mouth. The aspiration of the English plosives will make the sheet of paper or the flare of
the match tremble.
There are different degrees of aspiration, determined by the context in which the voiceless
plosive appears. Thus, aspiration is:
- strongest when initial [p, t, k] are followed by a stressed long vowel or by a diphthong,
e.g. part [pha:t], time [thaim], car [kha:];
- weaker, if the initial [p, t, k] are followed by short vowels: pen, ten, cap;
- almost inexistent, when [p, t, k] appear in medial or final position: upper, lip, rate, lake.

Glottal

Velar

Palatal

Alveolar

Interdental

Bilabial

Place of articulation

Labiodental

Below is the table of consonant phonemes in English.

Manner of articulation
Plosives
Voiceless
p
t
k
(Stops)
Voiced
b
d
g
Fricatives
Voiceless
f

h
Voiced
v
z

Affricates
Voiceless
t
Voiced
d
Nasals
Voiceless
Voiced
m
n

Lateral
Voiceless
Voiced
l
Semivowels
Voiceless
Voiced
w
j
Figure 1: Diagram of consonant phonemes in English in terms of three physical
dimensions: place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing.

66

5.4.1. The bilabial plosives [p], [b]

These sounds are produced in a similar manner, i.e. by completely blocking the air-stream
by means of the lips. The soft palate is raised so that the air cannot escape through the
nose. The air coming from the lungs is compressed for a short while inside the mouth
cavity, behind the closure formed by the lips, and then it is released suddenly, with great
effort.
The phoneme [p]
[p] is described as the voiceless, fortis, bilabial plosive consonant, having the following
variants:
- an aspirated variant, used in initial position, when the plosive is followed by a stressed
vowel or diphthong, e.g. port [pH:t], pale [pHeil].
- an unaspirated variant, used in medial or final position, or when preceded by [n], e.g. tip,
support, sport, input.
- a plosionless variant, when [p] is followed by another plosive or an affricate, e.g. stopped,
hoped, cheap jar.
- nasally exploded (released) variant, when [p] is followed by a nasal consonant, e.g. up
and down [pndaun], happen [hQpn].
- a laterally released variant, when [p] is followed by [l], e.g. apple, application.
Production:
1. Put your lips together: press them fairly firmly closed.
2. Build up air pressure in your mouth; dont let any air escape through your nose. Keep
the teeth slightly apart.
3. Allow the air pressure to force your lips apart making an audible explosion of air.
Spelling:

-p - spot, pill
-pp - apply, happen, support
-ph shepherd [:Sepd]
-pe ape, tape, ripe.

Exceptional spelling: hiccough [hikp] (also spelt hiccup].

The letter p is silent in the following clusters:
pn-: pneumonia [nju::mUni], pneumatic [nju::mQtic]
ps- : psychology, psalm [sa:m], psychic
-pt: receipt [ri:si:t]6.
It is also silent in the following words: sapphire [:sQfai], raspberry [:ra:zbri], cupboard
[:kbd].
The phoneme [b]
[b] is the voiced, lenis, bilabial plosive consonant, having the following allophones:
- a fully voiced variant used between two voiced sounds, e.g. sobbing, abbot, robot;
- a partially devoiced variant in initial position, and a completely devoiced variant in final
position, e.g. boy, bake, rub, cab.
- a plosionless variant, used in final position or when followed by another plosive or an
affricate, e.g. ebb, obtain, subdue [sb:dju:], objection [b:dZekSn];
6

But we have the word concept [kspt], where the sound p is pronounced

67

- a nasally released variant, when [b] is followed by a nasal consonant, e.g. obnoxious,
abnormal, ribbon, submerge;
- a laterally exploded variant, when [b] is followed by [l], e.g. stable, cable, blow, bubble.
Production:
1. Follow the steps for [p], but start to produce voice at the same time that your lips close.
2. Dont press the lips as firmly or hold them together as long as you did for [p].
Spelling:

b rub, cab, bar;

bb - robbery, sobbing, bubble, hobby;
be tube, robe

Silent b-letter appears in the following clusters:

-mb climb, comb, bomb, thumb [Tm], limb [lim], tomb [tu:m];
-bt
debt [det], doubt [daut], subtle [stl]

1. Read the following list of words which illustrate the various phonetic values
of [p]:
aspirated

unaspirated unreleased

peel
pet
part
Paul
powder

speak
spend
span
Spartan
spot

adopt
prompt
kept
roped
keep track

laterally
released
play
uplift
apple
couple
simple

nasally
released
open
happen
hypnotic
stop news
shrapnel

2. Read the following list of words which illustrate the various phonetic values
of [b]:
partially
devoiced
bee
boat
bartender
Berlin
beam
bend
Boston

fully voiced

plosionless

lobby
above
Moby Dick
nabob
obey
about
abacus

subdued
object
grabbed
subpoena
web
snob
tube

laterally
released
blame
cable
bubble
probable
able
emblem
sublime

nasally
released
ribbon
submerge
crabmeat
submarine
obnoxious
abnormal
urban

3. Read the following minimal pairs containing the [p] and [b] sounds:
[p] and [b] in initial position
peak [pHi:k] beak [bi:k]
pack [pQk] back [bQk]
port [pH:t]
bought [b:t]
pride [praid] bride [braid]
pat [pQt]
bat [bQt]

pit [pit]
park [pHa:k]
pull [pul]
plays [pleiz]
pie [pai]

bit [bit]
bark [ba:k]
bull [bul]
blaze [bleiz]
buy/by [bai]

68

pen

Ben

[p] and [b] in mid-position

repel [ri:pel] rebel [ri:bel]
roped [rUpt] robed [rUbd]
simple [simpl] symbol [simbl]
staple [steipl] stable [steibl]
rapid [rQpid] rabid [rQbid]
[p] and [b] in final position
rip [rip]
rib [rib]
cap [kQp]
cab [kQb]
tap [tQp]
tab [tQb]
lap [lQp]
lab [lQb]

rope [rUp]
tripe [traip]
wrap [rQp]
cap [kQp]

robe [rUb]
tribe [traib]
grab [grQb]
cab [kQb]

5.4.2. The alveolar plosives [t], [d]

These sounds are produced in similar fashion. The air passage is blocked by raising the tip
of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. The soft palate is raised; consequently the air is
directed through the mouth cavity. When the tip of the tongue is removed abruptly from
the alveolar ridge, the air compressed behind the closure formed by the tongue and the
alveolar ridge escapes with plosion.
The phoneme [t]
[t] is described as a voiceless, fortis, alveolar plosive, having the following allophones:
- an aspirated allophone used in initial position, before a stressed vowel or a diphthong,
e.g. tar [tha:], take [theik], talk [th:k];
- a non-aspirated variant, used:
- medially: sitter, mitten;
- word-finally: cat, fat,
- when preceded by the letter s: stove, stale, stick.
- a laterally released allophone, when followed by [l], e.g. little, kettle, settle.
- a nasally released variant of [t], when followed by a nasal consonant, e.g. rotten, kitten,
bottom.
The difference between the Romanian and the English t-sounds lies in the fact that the
former is dental, while the latter is alveolar, strongly aspirated in initial position.
In American English the intervocalic [t] is pronounced like a voiced variant, i.e. [d], which,
in its turn, can be pronounced as [r]. Compare the following pronunciations:
letter [:letr] [:ledr] [:lerr]
atom [:Qt()m] [:Qd()m]
Spelling:

-t put, toy, tile;

-tt hitting, attorney, attention;
-te: -kite, plate, skate;
-ed - asked, kissed, liked;
-th - Thames, Thomas, Anthony.

69

-ght tight, delight, fight

Silent t: in the following clusters the letter t is not pronounced:
-st-, when followed by a consonantal sound: whistle, wrestle, listen, Christmas,
chestnut, castle, often;
- in recent borrowings from French: ballet [:bQlei], chalet [:SQlei];
- it is also omitted in compounds or larger constructions when it is preceded by /s/
and followed by another consonant: last night [la:snait], Ive just been given [aiv dZsbi:n
givn]
The phoneme [d]
[d] is described as a voiced, lenis, alveolar plosive.
Variants:
- a fully voiced variant, when the sound occurs between two voiced sounds: pudding,
under, boulder;
- a partially or completely devoiced variant of [d] appears in initial or final position: dim,
day, sad, hand, bad.
- a plosionless variant appears in final position or when followed by another plosive or an
affricate: Edgar, good time;
- a nasally released variant, when followed by a nasal sonorant: hidden, burden, madness;
- a laterally released variant when the sound is followed by [l]: riddle, middle.
Spelling:

d hand, duty
dd - hidden, address
de rude, blade
-ed- loved, cured

Silent d: Wednesday, handsome, landscape, grandmother, handkerchief, Windsor.

In American English there is a tendency to omit [d] in such collocations as cold beer, old
man, hands up.
4. Practice the [t] sound in the following words which illustrate its various
phonetic variants:
aspirated

unaspirated unreleased

time
tool
talk
tar
torch
tooth
tale

stop
stain
stool
disturb
astonish
still
steak

hot dog
night bar
cost price
night cap
smart
lost
scout

laterally
released
cattle
little
at last
settle
battle
parental
total

nasally
released
hot news
mutton
cotton
bottom
bitten
kitten
certain

5. Read the following words paying attention to the sound [d].

70

Partially
devoiced

fully voiced

plosionless

laterally
released

nasally
released

double
day
deal
deer
date
duck
dust
damp

adore
ado
Teddy
lady
cider
soda
body
odor

sad
changed
amazed
under
made
code
wide
aid

saddle
riddle
cradle
handle
middle
paddle
dwindle
poodle

sadness
admission
hardness
cadmium
sudden
hidden
redness
shouldnt

6. Read the following minimal pairs based on the distinction between [t] and
[d]:
two
ten

do
den

torn
tie

dawn
die

[t] and [d] in initial position

ton
don
town down
tune dune
tan
Dan
tea
Dee
tip
dip
tie
die
tuck duck
[t] and [d] in mid-position
writer
latter
whitish
kitty
matter
bitter

rider
ladder
widish
kiddy
madder
bidder

wetting
water
putting
knotted
rated
shutter

wedding
warder
pudding
nodded
raided
shudder

[t] and [d] in final position

bet
late
set
feet
cot

bed
laid
said
feed
cod

heart
sight
brought
hit
shoot

hard
side
broad
hid
shooed

5.4.3. The velar plosives [k], [g]

In producing [k] and [g], the back part of the tongue is raised against the soft palate, thus
forming an obstacle (closure). The stream of air coming from the lungs is compressed
behind this closure. Then, the tongue is lowered suddenly allowing the air to escape out of
the mouth suddenly and with force. In the case of the [g], voice is produced as the tongue
begins to block the air stream.

71

The phoneme [k]

[k] is described as the voiceless, fortis, velar plosive
Variants:
- an aspirated variant in initial position, when followed by a stressed vowel or diphthong:
car, key, coat;
- an unaspirated variant, when followed by an unstressed vowel: seeker, equal, or when
preceded by [s]: scare, school, sky.
- an unreleased variant when situated in final position or when followed by another
plosive or affricate: bake, joke, blackbird, blackberries, Black Church;
- a nasally released variant, when [k] is followed by a nasal sound: acknowledge,
nickname, picnic.
- a laterally released variant, when followed by [l]: claim, clover, clap, climate.
Spelling: k king, key: ck black, sack, freckle; c (not followed by e, i, y): cake, cook,
copper, cut; cc - occur, occupied; -ch character, stomach, choir; ke like, take.
Exceptional spelling: qu queen, quit, cqu lacquer, que plaque, burlesque, kh - khan
The phoneme [g]
[g] is described as the voiced, lenis, velar plosive.
Variants:
- a fully voiced variant occurring between two vowels: ago, aghast, luggage;
- a partially devoiced variant when situated in initial or final position: go,grant, leg, peg,
pig, egg;
- a plosionless variant, when followed by another plosive or an affricate: big game, begged
[begd], big chance;
- a nasally released variant, when followed by [n]: ignorance, ignition, dignity;
- a laterally released variant when followed by [l]: struggle, glory, glue.
Spelling: g: gap, bag; gg: struggle, aggressive; gh: aghast, ghost; gue: vague, dialogue.
Silent g: -before n: sign, reign, gnaw, foreign;
in the digraph gh: right, sight, night.
7. Read the following list of words which illustrate the various phonetic values
of [k]:
aspirated

unaspirated unreleased

keep
call
kite
core
cane
cause
key

scrap
scale
school
scholastic
ascribe
escort
ski

action
contract
electricity
locked
chalk
smoke
stick

laterally
released
clover
climate
club
freckle
pickle
cluster
acclaim

nasally
released
reckon
bacon
acknowledge
thicken

8. Practise the sound [g] in the following words, trying to pronounce correctly
its variants:

72

partially
devoiced
go
guide
game
goose
guess
gown

fully voiced

plosionless

tiger
ago
logo
foggy
toga
begin

rugby
fig tree
plug
tango
vogue
mug

laterally
released
glory
glimmer
struggle
wriggle
igloo
single

nasally
released
organ
ignite
dignity
rigmarole
signature
fragment

9. Keep the [k] and [g] apart in the following minimal pairs:
cave
curl
cap
class

gave
girl
gap
glass

card
could
coal
crow

guard
good
goal
grow

pick
back
lack

pig
bag
lag

dock
lock
Dick

dog
log
dig

5.4.4. The glottal stop [//]

The glottal stop is a plosive consonant. Like all the other plosives, its production is
characterized by three stages:
a. the closing stage: the vocal cords are drawn tightly to each other, closing the glottis.
b. the compressive stage: the air is compressed below the closure by pressure from the
lungs;
c. the explosive/release stage: the vocal cords part abruptly and the air escapes with an
explosion.
Although many native speakers of English quite frequently use it, the glottal stop cannot be
considered an independent phoneme since there are no minimal pairs based on this sound.
Using it or omitting it does not change the meaning of any word.
Reinforcement of vowels: the glottal stop is used as a syllable boundary marker. Thus a
hiatus (i.e. a combination of two successive vowel phonemes belonging to two different
syllables) is usually separated by a glottal stop, e.g. geometry [dZi:/mtri], reaction
[ri::/QkSn].
Reinforcement of consonants: in regional speech (in the Cockney dialect, for instance),
the glottal stop is a substitute for [t] and [k]:
e.g. little [li/l], bottle [b/l], knock [n/]

Let's remember...
There are 7 plosives in English: [p], [b], [t],[d], [k], [g], and [/]. The first 6
are not very different from the Romanian counterparts (except for [t], which in
American English may sound as [d] or as something close to [r]).

73

5.5. THE EAGLISH FRICATIVES

The fricative consonants are formed by drawing together two articulators and by letting the
air escape through a very narrow passage left between them. When the air is pushed out
from the lungs, it forces its way through this narrow passage, and thus causes friction to be
heard. The fricatives are continuous sounds. The manner of articulation being the same for
all of them, they are distinguished by:
a. place of articulation:
- labio-dental fricatives - in their production the lower lip is against the upper teeth: [f],
[v];
- interdentals - the tip of the tongue is placed between the teeth: [T], [D];
- alveolars - the tip and the blade of the tongue are against the alveolar ridge: [s], [z];
- post-alveolar fricative - the tip of the tongue is curled against the alveolar ridge: [r];
- palato-alveolars - the tip of the tongue is against the alveolar ridge, and simultaneously
the blade is raised against the hard palate: [S], [Z];
- glottal - the air escapes through the narrowing in the glottis: [h]
b. the opposition voiceless vs. voiced: this holds good for the pairs of consonant
phonemes [f]-[v] as in few view, [T] [D] as in mouth to mouth, [s] [z] like in house
to house. The degree of voicing of the voiced fricatives depends very much on the
position of the sound in the word. They are fully voiced only in medial position, between
other voiced sounds.
5.5.1. The labio-dental fricatives [f], [v]
For the production of these sounds the upper teeth make a light contact with the lower lip,
forming a narrowing; the air-stream coming from the lungs forces its way through this
narrowing, causing friction to be heard.
Tip: As you start the breathstream moving and force it between your lower lip and upper
teeth, dont allow any air to escape through your nose. Make sure you use a light touch. If
you press too hard, not enough air comes through.
The phoneme [f]
[f] is described as the labio-dental, fortis, voiceless fricative.
Distribution: -initial: flame, fool, fricatives.
-medial: offend, affair, defend, offer, suffer.
-final: huff, half, laugh, leaf, loaf.
Spelling: f fine, fifty; ff Clifford, offer, off; fe - safe, life; ph philosophy, triumph;
gh laugh, tough, cough.
Untypical spelling: lieutenant /lef:tennt/ but also /lu::tennt/7
The phoneme [v]
[v] is described as the labio-dental, lenis, voiced fricative.
7

The forms with left-, lft- were used in the Army whereas in the Navy the alternative forms with lt-, let-,
lu:t- were current.

74

Distribution: - initial: veal, volume, vex, vain, vice, voice

- medial: over, silver, ever, nephew, cover, event
- final: five, drive, leave, have, move
Spelling: v - voice, volume; ve - glove, sleeve; ph - nephew, Stephen.
Aote: - the letter v is never silent;
- as a rule, the letter v is not doubled. There are, nevertheless, words spelt with two
vs: navvy, savvy.
The two labio-dental fricatives [f] and [v] are differentiated by the opposition
voiceless/voiced and fortis/lenis. This phonetic difference was of no phonological
importance in Old English where [f] and [v] were allophones of the same phoneme.
Nowadays, [f] and [v] are treated as distinct phonemes, since the substitution of one for the
other brings about a change of meaning. Compare the following minimal pairs: feel [fi:l] veal [vi:l], fine [fain] - vine [vain], fat - vat
10. Practise the following words, with long, strong friction for [f] and short,
weak friction for [v]:
[f] and [v] in initial position
fast [fa:st]
feel [fi:l]
foal [fUl]
ferry [feri]
fan [fQn]

vast [va:st]
veal [vi:l]
vole [vUl]
very [veri]
van [vQn]

few [fju:]
fear [fi]
file [fail]
fat [fQt]
fail [feil]

view [vju:]
veer [vi]
vile [vail]
vat [vQt]
veil [veil]

[f] and [v] in mid-position

proofing [:pru:fiN]
safer [:seif]
defied [di:faid]
refuse [ri:fju;z]

prooving [:pru:viN]
savour [:seiv]
divide [di:vaid]
reviews [ri:vju:z]

[f] and [v] in final position

When [f] and [v] occur at the end of words, after a vowel, they influence the
length of that vowel. The strong consonant [f] makes the vowel shorter,
whereas the weak consonant [v] makes it longer. Practice this with the
following list of words:
leaf [li:f]
leave [li:v]
life [laif]
live [laiv]
half [ha:f]
halve [ha:v]
strife [straif] strive [straiv]
calf [ka:f]
carve [ka:v]
waif [weif]
wave [weiv]
surf [s:f]
serve [s:v]
safe [seif]
save [seiv]
proof [pru:f] prove [pru:v]
belief [bi:li:f] believe [bi:li:v]
11. Read the following sentences containing the sound [f] and [v]:
-Valery was a vivacious vixen, variously proving herself vindictive and

75

benevolent.
-Did you receive a Valentine from your lover?
-They proved that the levels were even.
-Olivias fianc believed that her sylphlike figure was effectively featured in
her effervescent offering of flamenco.
-Vivienne vacations at Valetta the first fourteen days of February.
5.5.2. The interdental fricatives [T
T], [D
D]
The two interdental fricative sounds [T] and [D] are articulated by pressing the tip of the
tongue against the upper teeth. The tip of the tongue may actually be projected out between
the upper and lower teeth in the case of some speakers. Since the Romanian speakers of
English very frequently have problems in uttering these soundes, here are the stepts they
need to follow in order to get them right.
Open your mouth until your teeth are slightly apart.
Round the tip of your tongue; dont try to point it too sharply.
Place your tongue so that it protrudes very slightly between your upper and lower front
teeth.
Force the breathstream to come out between your tongue and teeth. Dont press too tightly;
you will end up forcing the sound.
For the [D] sound, add voice as soon as you feel your tongue touch your teeth.
The phoneme [T
T]
[T
T] is described as the interdental, voiceless, fortis fricative
Distribution: - initial: thief, thick
- medial: ethics, lethal, method
- final: earth, smith, path
Spelling: the sound is represented by the digraph 'th'
- when followed by r: three, through, throw;
- when it appears initially in nouns, verbs and adjectives: thirst, thought, to think, to thank,
thorough, thin, think;
- when it appears medially in words of non-Germanic origin: author, monophthong,
method.
The phoneme [D
D]
[D
D] is defined as an interdental, voiced, lenis, fricative
Distribution: - initial: there, though
- medial: leather, gather
- final: with, soothe
Spelling: th
- initially in adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions and articles: there, this, thus, though, the:
- medially in words of Germanic origin: father, mother, another, brother.
A change from [T] to [D] can take place in final position
- when it marks the change from noun to verb: bath [ba:T] - bathe [beiD]

76

- when a singular noun ending in [T] preceded by a long sound is turned into plural: bath
[ba:T] - baths [ba:Dz], path - paths.
12. Read aloud the following words, phrases and sentences in which the sound
[T] occurs frequently:
three
theory
thorough
thick
throw
thrush
throat
therapy
thistle

method
author
ethical
diphthong
lethal
healthy
atheist
toothpaste
lethargic

a thorough method
ethnic pathways
a thousand toothpicks
three bathrobes

both
death
wealth
mouth
depth
warmth
earth
growth
south
thick thumb
thought nothing
youthful theme
fourth birthday

pathetic thug
mammoth theft
third Thursday
thirsty throng

-Thing worth thinking thoroughly about

-Throw the thick thing at a greater depth.
-The cathedral was at the end of the path.
-He wrote a third theory about the toothache.
-She lived on the fourth floor, in room thirteen.
-On the fourth of the month he thought of Elisabeth.
-Two fifths equals four tenths.
-It was his third faithless love affair.
-Thanks for thinking of both of us; it was thoroughly thoughtful of you.
-Three threadbare travellers threaded their way through isothermal pathways
to reach their zenith.
-Without a thesaurus, authoring three growth phrases with the phoneme [T] is
a thankless task.
13. Read aloud the following words, phrases and sentences containing the
sound [D]:
there
though
these
the
thus
that
thereafter
theirs
themselves
those rhythms

mother
although
together
other
worthy
leather
rhythm
wither
neither

breathe
with
bathe
loathe
clothe
soothe
teethe
seethe
scathe

their mother

father is there

77

within and without

thee and thou

gather together
farther and farther

other feather
either mother or father

-Father and mother are rather tired.

-This leather is as smooth as a feather.
-They were gathering cotton before the hot weather.
-Either brother may be bathing in the river.
-He was breathing smoothly, although the weather was rather bad.
-There was fine weather when father and mother went on the trip.
-They were within the boundaries.
-Their things were put together in a leather bag.
-The baby is teething, dont tease him.
- Therein lies the tale of Wuthering Heights.

5.5.3. The alveolar fricatives [s], [z]

This pair of alveolar fricatives is frequently encountered in alternations performing
grammatical functions. The alternation s/z, for instance, is used to distinguish a noun from
a verb, or an adjective from a verb.
[s]
[z]
use
to use
house
to house
close
to close
So, the difference between [s] and [z] is a functional (relevant) one.
The phoneme [s]
[s] is a voiceless, fortis, alveolar fricative.
Distribution: - initial: sat, soon, sign
- medial: essay, concert, pencil
- final: niece, pass, goose
Spelling: s - locks. sun, sister; ss - Mississippi, associate, hassle; se - to practise, to lapse;
ce - niece, licence; sc - science, scissors;
Silent s: the letter s is not pronounced in words like isle [ail], island [ailnd], aisle
[ail]. Neither is it uttered in words of French origin, such as burgeois [buZwa:], chamois
[SQmwa:] or debris [debri].
The phoneme [z]
[z] is described as a voiced, lenis, alveolar fricative.
Distribution: - initial: zeal, zoo, zone
- medial: easy, lazy, dizzy
- final: is, says, loves, was, ooze

78

Spelling: s (in the morphemes -(e)s which stand for the plural of nouns, the 3rd person
singular verbs, and the synthetical genitive) when the letter s is preceded by a voiced
sound: loves, goes, blows, smells, Doras; se hose; z: lazy, zoo, zone; ze: seize, ooze; zz:
jazz, dizzy; cz: czar /za;/; ss: dissolve, possess, scissors, x xylophone, xerox.
14. Read the following phrases and sentences containing the sound [s]. Adjust
your tongue to produce the clearest, strongest [s]:
set aside
kiss Sarah
safe and sound
sad sermon
solar system
-

silk suit
purchase price
Sweet Swan of Avon
tasteless lettuce
classic ceiling

sing a song
pass the salt
sexy Swiss hats
actress address
deceitful policy

They set sail to South America.

The sand made a mess on the seat
Its the tip of the iceberg.
Im going to sign the lease for the house.
Thats the worse lettuce Ive ever tasted.
Send me a press release.
My silly sister sold her new bicycle at a loss.
The actress had to rehearse the role of a nurse.
The screaming gusets have been frightened by the snakes.
The instructor spoke respectfully to the students.
The mosquito is a pest that makes tou scratch.
The Orient Express stops twice before leaving France.
The masters assistant will register your instrument or instruct you in its
use.

15. Read the following words, phrases and sentences containing the [z] sound:
zero
zealous
zip
zombie
zone
zebra
zoo
zone
zinc
zipper
buzzing bees
noisy music
was it his
-

present
observe
prism
dosing
daisy
rosy
risen
music
easy
possess

loves
booze
rose
blouse
cause
falls
breeze
gaze
wise
because

zodiac zone
hazy days
amazing news

busy Tuesday
amazing design
Xerox disaster

She was gazing at a fuzzy wool blazer.

The bruise was due to a fall from the trapeze.
He was awarded a prize for braving the freezing blizzard.
Does the amusement park close early on Tuesdays?
He heard the buzzing of bees in the daisies.

79

Xerox earns zillions of dollars by setting examples for other rising

companies.
Suzie was busy as a bee while Ezra lazed around noisily.

5.5.4. The post-alveolar fricative [r]

The number of allophones of the consonant phoneme [r] is larger than that of any other
English consonant phoneme. This accounts for very different definitions and classifications
of [r] from the point of view of manner of articulation. Some phoneticians call it a
fricative consonant, some others a frictionless continuant or an approximant.
The post-alveolar sound [r] has been included in the class of fricatives because like any
other fricative it is characterized by a narrowing. But unlike the other fricatives, the
narrowing is so wide that it allows the air-stream to pass without any audible friction, but
with voicing.
[r] is described as a voiced, lenis post-alveolar, fricative. It has the following variants:
- the variant described above appears in initial position: right, rumour, rain;
- a devoiced [r] occurs after voiceless consonants: cry, try, pray;
- an alveolar, flapped (one-tap) variant that appears in intervocalic position. This means
that the tip of the tongue performs one single flap against the alveolar ridge: very, sorry.
- a rolled variant, characteristic of Scotland and Northern Ireland. The tongue performs
several taps against the alveolar ridge.
In American English the [r] sound is different from its English counterpart. It is a retroflex
sound: the tip of the tongue is curled back towards the hard palate and, simultaneously with
the production of the sound, it takes the normal position.
In order to acquire a correct pronunciation of the English r-sound, the Romanian speaker
has to start either from [:] or [w], raise the tip of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge and
curl back its main body.
Distribution: - initial: ride, rainbow, rheumatism
- medial: servant, arrive
- final: only in American English: car [ka:r], bar [ba:r]
In British English the r-sound is not used in pre-consonantal or in word-final position.
Linking r: if one word ends in orthographical -r or -re and the following word begins
with a vowel, the so-called linking r (which is a hiatus breaker) will link the two vowels.
From a phonetic point of view, the linking r is a flapped sound.
Compare:
far [fa:]
but
far away [fa:rwei]
mister [mist] but
mister and misses [mistrn(d)misiz]
Intrusive r: on analogy with the linking r we have the so-called intrusive r, which has
no orthographical justification for it, i.e. two vowels are linked by an unjustified r-sound
which breaks the external hiatus of vowels as in:
e.g. I dont like the idea of it [aidirvit], Anna and Linda [Qnrn(d)lind], I saw it
[so:rit].

80

From a phonetic point of view, the intrusive 'r' is also flapped. Its alternative pronunciation
is the glottal stop.
Spelling: r - rose, rain, ritual; rr - ferry, berry; wr - wrap, write, wrong; rh - rheumatism,
rhapsody, rhetoric, rhythm.
16. Read the following words, phrases and sentences containing the sound [r].
reef
rag
ring
right
rest
riddle
rheumatism
reverend
rare

grass
crowd
train
brand
bread
arrive
curious
surround
aggressive

Brooklyn Bridge
broken promises
his brothers bride
pouring rain
pride and prejudice
very direct

rake
write
wreck
rock
roam
raid
robber
wrong
ride

narrow
berry
hurry
carrot
worry
terrific
circular
direct
merry

Great Britain
broad protection
red herring
hurry around
red roses
narrow corridor

wreck the car

brain drain
marriage rite
write to Harry
worry tomorrow

-Strawberries, raspberries and red-currants, with real cream are really very
refreshing.
-This train and its trucks are trapped by a tree-trunk across the track.
-Three hundred readers used the library reading room in the period from
February to April, reports the librarian.
-He roamed around the room to find the rake.
-The carrier was on the rural route.
-April gives us freedom from the trials of winter.
-Its rare to find a real pearl.
-The red ferry went in the wrong direction.
-Ralph has the list of rules for the raffle.
-The florist hurried across the road.
-I roamed around the room to find the rake.
-He worried that the tar would ruin the rug.

5.5.5. The palatal fricative [SS], [Z

Z]
In the production of these sounds the tip and the blade of the tongue are raised against the
back part of the alveolar ridge, while at the same time the body of the tongue is raised
against the palate. The rims of the tongue touch the upper lateral teeth. The air-passage
thus formed is wider than for the alveolar fricatives, for example. The lips are slightly
rounded.

81

The phoneme [SS]

[SS] is described as a voiceless, fortis, palatal fricative;
Distribution: - initial: shoe, sure, sheet, shop
- medial: Asia, bishop, special
- final: dish, cash, push
Spelling: sh: share, shoe, mushroom, bush; ch (in initial and medial position, in words of
French origin): charade, chef, machine; s: sugar, sure, tension; ss: Russian, mission,
passion; sch: schwa, schedule, schnaps.
Exceptional spelling: c ocean, chs- fuchsia [fju:S], sc- fascist [fQSist]
The phoneme [Z
Z]
[Z
Z] is a voiced, lenis, palatal fricative
Distribution:
- in native words [Z] appears only medially: pleasure, measure, treasure;
- in loan-words, the sound may appear in initial and final position as well: gigolo,
jabot, genre, barrage, rouge, beige, garage.
Spelling: s: usual, visual, vision, measure; z: seizure, azure; ge (in words of French
origin): massage [:mQsa:Z], beige [:beiZ], j - bijou
17. Read the following words, phrases and sentences in which [S] occurs
frequently:
ship
sure
shallow
shade
chaperone
Chicago
shed
shower
chef
sugar
washing machine
Polish nation
foolish charades
shabby chef

nation
fishmonger
intention
machine
cushion
usher
fashion
tissue
ocean
tension

bush
blush
splash
ambush
fresh
crush
moustache
Spanish
slash
foolish
ocean ships
short shower
fashion shoe
fish dish

spatial relations
shrill shriek
wash the dish
shine a shoe

-She shouldnt have mentioned her shameful mission in front of the bishop.
-She washes her hair with fresh shampoo.
-Its a sure sign of shock.
-Shall I wear my new fashionable shawl?
-She sells seashells by the seashore.
-She relished the thought of looking for shells at the shore.

82

-The usher was shut out of the show.

-The chauffeur stopped at the barber shop for a shave.
-The flashlight was crushed when the shelter collapsed.
-Dont brush against the fresh varnish.
18. Read aloud the following words and phrases paying attention to the
pronunciation of the [Z] sound:
pleasure
rouge
measure
beige
allusion
garage
visual
camouflage
treasure
prestige
leisure
massage
casual
mirage
measure for measure
precision explosion
casual decision

Asian vision
visual mirage
beige garage

5.5.6. The glottal fricative [h]

This fricative has no voiced counterpart and it is quite different from the Romanian [h],
which is less glottal and more velar. The English sound is a sound of pure breath, the airstream coming against no obstacle within the mouth cavity.
In a special context, i.e. in intervocalic position, the phoneme [h] is realized by its partially
voiced allophone, as in alcohol, behind, behave, perhaps. In such pronunciations, the
strong air-stream of [h] is accompanied by vocal folds vibration, the result being a breathy
vowel or voiced glottal fricative.
In many types of popular regional speech in England and Wales and in Australia, [h] is
lost, so that no distinction is made between such RP minimal pairs as hill - ill; high - eye;
hair - air. Usually, in such speech, the [h] words will behave as if they had an initial
vowel, e.g. a hill [n il], but sometimes a trace of the boundary marking function of [h]
will be shown in the use of the glottal stop, or at least a weak glottal constriction, e.g. a hill
[ /il].
Over-corrections may also occur whereby the usual forms of the article preceding a vowel
are not used, and a weak glottal stop or glottal fricative is inserted, e.g. an egg [ /eg] or
[ heg].
The loss of [h] is usually considered characteristic of uneducated speech, but certain
function words (especially have, has, had, pronouns and pronominal adjective) frequently
lose [h] in RP in unaccented, non-initial, situations in connected speech, e.g. he pushed him
on his back [hi: :puSt im on iz :bQk].

83

Some RP speakers treat an unaccented h-syllable, as in historical, hysterectomy, hysterical,

as if it belonged to the special group hour, honest etc, i.e. without an initial [h], e.g. an
historical event [n is:trikl i:vent]. Pronunciations with initial [h] are, however, more
common, as in a historical novel [ his:trikl :nvl].
Distribution: - initial: hoe, hare, hair, here
- medial: behind, perhaps, ahead, anyhow, abhor
Spelling: h: how, hat; wh: who, whose, whore
Silent h:
- in French loan-words, in initial position: heir [E], hour [au], honest [:nist];
- in some digraphs: wh: what, where, when; rh: rhapsody, rheumatism; gh: ghost, aghast.
- in the ending ham (=home), in names of counties: Durham [drm], Tottenham
[ttnm], Qottingham, Wickham;
- in shepherd [Sepd], forehead [frid];
- in names like Pooh [pu:], Sarah [ser], Qoah [nu].
Let's remember...
The English fricatives are the following: [f], [v], [s], [z], [r], [], [], [T],
[D ],and [h]. From the point of place of articulation, [f], [v],=labio-dental, [s],
[z]=alveolar, [r]=post-alveolar, [], []=palatal, and [h]=glottal. From the point
of view of voicing, [f], [s], [], [T], and [h] are voiceless, whereas [v], [z], [r],
[], and [D ] are voiced.
5.6. The affricates [tSS], [dZ
Z]
The production of the affricate consonants implies a complete closure, just like the
plosives, but the organs of speech, instead of parting abruptly, are separated slowly, so that
considerable friction occurs. The production of these sounds starts in the same way as that
of the plosives and ends like that of the fricatives.
Phonemic status. From a functional or distributional point of view, these compound sounds
may be considered either as single phonemic entities or as sequences of two phonemes.
The choice of phonemic solution will depend upon the purpose of the analysis.
According to the point of articulation, both affricates are palato-alveolar, [tS] being
voiceless, and [dZ] being voiced.
The phoneme [tSS]
[tSS] is described as the voiceless, fortis, palato-alveolar affricate.
Distribution: - initial: cheese, chain, charge, charm, choke, cheer;
- medial: feature, richer, orchard, butcher, gesture, posture, juncture,
lecture;
- final: catch, porch, much, coach, inch, bench, branch.

84

Spelling: ch: cheap, teacher, bachelor; tch: catch, butcher; t + ure, eous: nature,
furniture, righteous; t+ ion: suggestion, indigestion, question.
Rare spelling: cz as in Czech [tSek].
As a rule, medial [t] + [j] gives the assimilated [tS]:
mutual [:mju:tjul] or [:mju:tSul],
actual [:Qktjul] or [:QktSul]
literature [litr:tju]or [:lit()rtS]
The non-assimilated forms are regarded as pedantic.
The phoneme [dZ
Z]
[dZ
Z] is described as the voiced, lenis, palato-alveolar affricate.
Distribution: - initial: gin, jest, jar, Jew, jerk, joke
- medial: midget, margin, fragile, urgent, orgy, adjacent, major, danger
- final: ridge, edge, judge, sponge, change
Spelling: j: jug, jaw, jam, judge; g: general, gymnastics; dg: midget, judge; gg: suggest;
dj: adjective, adjacent.
Untypical spelling: gaol [dZeil], Greenwich [:gri:nidZ], Qorwich [:nridZ], soldier,
spinach [spinidZ].
The sound [dZ
Z] may result from the assimilated [d + j], as in did you [didju] [didZ],
would you [wudZ].
19. Keep the [tS[ and [dZ] apart in the following words:
[tSS ] and [dZ
Z] in initial position
chin [tSin]
gin [dZin]
cheer [tSi]
jeer [dZi]
choke [tSUk] joke [dZUk]
choice [tSis] Joyce [dZis]

chain [tSein]
chest [tSest]
chunk [tSN]
cheap [tSi:p]

[tSS ] and [dZ

Z ] in mid-position
riches [:ritSiz]
ridges [:ridZiz]
catching [:kQtSiN]
cadging [:kQdZiN]
batches [bQtSiz]
badges [bQdZiz]
breeches [bri:tSiz]
bridges [bridZiz]
purchase [ptSis]
purges [p:dZiz]
[tSS ] and [dZ
Z] in final position
rich
ridge
batch
badge

Jane [dZein]
jest [dZest]
junk [dZN]
Jeep [dZi:p]

85

search
catch
H [eitS]

surge
cadge
age [eidZ]

5.7. The nasal sonorants [m], [n], [N

N]
The nasal consonants resemble the oral plosives in that a total closure is made within the
mouth; they differ from the plosives in that the soft palate is in its lowered position,
allowing an escape of air into the nasal cavity and giving the sound the special resonance
provided by the naso-pharyngeal cavity. Since the air-stream may escape freely through
the nose, nasal consonants are continuants; they differ, however from continuants such as
fricatives in that no audible friction is produced and in that they are usually voiced, without
significant voiced/voiceless oppositions. In many respects, therefore, being normally
frictionless continuants, they resemble vowel-type sounds.
The three nasal phonemes correspond to the three oral plosive areas of articulation:
bilabial [m] [p, b]; alveolar [n] [t, d]; velar [N] [k, g]. If in the articulation of a nasal
consonant the nasal passage is blocked, as it often happens during a cold, [m, n, N] will be
realized as [b, d, g]: morning [:b:dig], some nice lemons [sb :dais lebdz].
The vocalic nature of the nasals is underlined by the fact that they readily perform the
syllabic function of vowels, i.e. they can form the nucleus of syllables when they appear in
word-final position and are preceded by a consonant: prism [:pri-zm], bottom [:b-tm];
reason [:ri: - zn]; bacon [:bei-kN].
The phoneme [m]
[m] is the voiced, lenis, bilabial nasal.
Distribution: - initial: might, mine, merry
- medial: common, summer, almost
- final: slim, mime, Jim
Spelling: m: make, meat, mouse; me: tame, fame; mm: immediately, summer; mb: climb,
limb, dumb, tomb, bomb; mn (only in word-final position): autumn, column; gm (only in
word-final position): phlegm [flem], diaphragm [:daifrQm].
Silent 'm: in the initial cluster mn- : mnemonic [ni::monik]
Syllabic [m]. In the following words, the sound [m] is syllabic, i.e. it represents the
nucleus of a syllable: rhythm [:ri - Dm], prism [:pri zm], bottom [:b - tm].
The phoneme [n]
[n] is described as a voiced, alveolar nasal
Distribution: - initial: nice, nowhere, gnat, knit, nurse
- medial: find, sneeze, snake, pansy, invoice, answer
- final: mean, gone, soon, learn, melon

86

Spelling: n: name, hunter; nn: annoy, inn, funny; ne: tune, phone; kn, gn, pn: know,
knight, gnat, gnaw, sign, pneumonia.
Silent n. In the final cluster -mn the letter n is not pronounced: solemn [:slm],
autumn [::tm], damn [dQm]. When adding verbal morphemes (e.g. ing, -ed) to such
words, the letter n remains silent: damning [dQmiN], damned [dQmd]. In the
corresponding derivative adjectives, adverbs and nouns, the letter n is pronounced:
autumnal [:tmnl], damnation [dQm:neiSn], solemnity [s:lemniti].
Syllabic [n] appears in such words as cotton [:k - tn], sudden, oven, southern, listen,
mission, vision.
The phoneme [N
N]
[N
N] is described as the velar, lenis, nasal consonant.
In Old English [N] was an allophone of the phoneme [n] in a velar context. In present-day
English [n] and [N] are in a relation of distinctive opposition to each other: sin vs. sing, kin
vs. king, robin vs. robbing.
Distribution: - medial: singer, finger, hanger, anxiety, angle, monkey, uncle
- final: sing, wrong, tongue
the sound NEVER appears in initial position:
the sound does not appear after long vowels or diphthongs.
Spelling: n + k: uncle [Nkl], monkey [mNki], conquer, wrinkle, ankle; n + g: finger
[fiNg], English [iNgliS], language, hungry.
AOTE: The cluster ng is pronounced as [Ng] a) medially in a word when it is not
immediately followed by a suffix: e.g. linger, mingle, singular, anger, language; b) when
it occurs at the end of a stem which is immediately followed by the comparative or
superlative suffixes er and est: e.g. longer, longest, stronger, strongest. Elsewhere, ng
is pronounced [N], i.e. word-finally: sing, long, tongue, thing, or medially, before suffixes
other than the comparative er and the superlative est: singer, hanger, longing.
The word-final letters nk are always pronounced as two sounds: link [liNk], monk
[mNk], drink [driNk].
20. Read aloud the following words, phrases and sentences in which [m]
appears frequently:
maid
milkman
mice
Mark
mastermind
mayday
mouse
mistake
metal

amount
summer
comfort
clumsy
thimble
lemon
demand
camera
woman

same
autumn
comb
phlegm
rhyme
rhythm
broom
synonym
crumb

87

amount of money
remember me

summer time
team name

time bomb
tempt me

- Mark and Mary have mumps.

-Millie and Melody mustnt munch margarine and marmalade at the
moment, says Mummy.
- It was a mistake to wear a metal mask..
- An immense mammoth in the museum at Memphis!
- The museum has many memorable monuments to the memory of some
remarkable members of the Moslem community.
- The man was calm after he hit his thumb with a hammer.
- Im going to school for one summer semester.
21. Practise the [n] sound in the following words, phrases and sentences.
need
native
Nigeria
network
nostril
knee

annoy
union
pension
undertake
concept
antique

a thin man
nobody knocked
wounded knee

earn
burn
nun
loan
fun
happen

nine nuns
never naughty
annoying granny

nineteen needles
Nancys knitting
a tin can

-Naughty Nancy has bent the knitting needles and knotted Nannys knitting.
-Henry hands his nephew Nigel a brand-new pound-note on Sundays.
-Norman Brown signs his name again and again with a fine pen line.
-Jane needed a can-opener for the ninety-nine cans.
-She began knitting mittens in November.
-We used satin-finish varnish on the furniture.
22. Practise the sound [N] in the following words, phrases and sentences:
thing
herring
wrong
strong
gang

singer
longing
hanger
banking
finger

a strong young monk

racing and jogging
buying rings

a ringed finger
strong hanger
asking the singer

staying among
doing wrong
amazing things

-Sing a song to me, Jennifer!

-The young king tried the ring on his finger.
-English rankers marching along, singing a rousing drinking-song.
-I think that singing is good exercise for your tongue.
-She is always asking the wrong questions.

88

-Running and jumping conflict with eating and relaxing.

5.8. The lateral approximant/sonorant [l]
There is only one lateral consonant phoneme in English, [l]. In actual speech it is realized
by two main allophones (variants):
clear [l]: the soft palate being in its raised position, shutting off the nasal resonator, the
tip of the tongue is in contact with the upper teeth ridge, allowing the air to escape on both
sides. For the clear [l], the front of the tongue is raised in the direction of the hard palate at
the same time as the tip contact is made, thus giving a front vowel (or palatalized)
resonance to the consonant: leave, large, live.
dark []: for this variant, the tip contact is again made on the teeth ridge, the front of the
tongue being somewhat depressed and the back raised in the direction of the soft palate,
giving a back vowel (or velarized) resonance: film, health, pale, little.
Variants: The RP distribution of [l] and [] is the following:
- [l] when a vowel or [j] follows, e.g. lamp, allow, lukewarm
- [] in all other positions. In word-final positions following a consonant (giggle, final,
parcel, kettle), syllabic dark [] occurs.
In some dialects of English, the RP distribution of [l] and [] may not obtain. In General
American, in Scottish English, in Australian and New Zealand English, as well as in large
parts of the north of England (e.g. Manchester) and north Wales, dark [] may occur in all
positions. In Irish English, in West Indian English, as well as in the variant spoken in the
south of Wales and on Tyneside, clear [l] may occur in all positions.
Distribution: [l] can be used in any position
Spelling: l: lily, lake, level; le: smile, tale, file; ll: fill, dollar, bill, call.
Silent l. In the following word the letter l is not pronounced: could, should, would,
talk, walk, chalk, folk, yolk, calm, calf, half, Lincoln, Faulkner.
23. Read aloud the following words, phrases and sentences containing the [l]
sound:
lemon
place
girl
laughter
flame
simple
lettuce
yellow
smuggle
lame
shilling
purple
lentil
lollipop
fool
long life
yellow daffodil
cauliflower fields

little Lucy
lonely lady
faulty link

lame lion
late lunch
smell of garlic

-A simple symbol of love is all she longs for.

-This little girl called Lucy, left alone, loves her small doll.
-A noble old lion and a lioness are lying asleep in their lair.
-There were lilies around the blue lake.

89

-Shes not likely to be lonely.

-The lock was literally welded close.
-There will be hail or sleet late tonight.
-The colours blended together beautifully.
-Lilly slowly ladled little Lettys lentil soup into the lemon-yellow bowl.
-Lately, people have been complaining bitterly about untangling world
problems.

5.9. The semi-vowels [j], [w]

A semi-vowel is a rapid vocalic glide onto a syllabic sound of greater steady duration. In
English the semi-vowels are phonetically like vowels: the articulation of [j] is almost the
same as that of [i:] whereas that of [w] is closely similar to that of [u:], e.g. year, west. But
despite their vowel-like character, phonologically they are treated as consonants, mainly
because their function is consonantal:
- they only occur before vowel phonemes (this being a typical consonantal feature);
- the articles the and a preserve their pre-consonantal value: [D] and [];
- unlike vowels and like most of the consonants, they are not syllabic because of their
extremely short duration.
The semi-vowels can be defined as follows:
[j] is the palatal, unrounded semi-vowel;
[w] is the velar, rounded semi-vowel.
As seen above, in defining the semi-vowels we make use of both consonantal (place or
articulation) and vocalic (lip rounding) features.
Natural variants
- The actual point at which the essential vocalic glide begins depends on the nature of the
following sound: [j] and [w] are close when they are followed by close vowels, e.g. yes,
yellow, woo, wool, and more open when they are followed by open vowels, e.g. yard,
water.
- Both [j] and [w] are devoiced when preceded by voiceless consonants, e.g. tune, twist.
Free variation
- [j] or [u:] after [s], [z], and [l] in initial position: Sue [sju:] or [su:], assume [:sju:m] or
[:su:m];
- [j] or [i] when followed by []: familiar [f:milji] or [f:mili];
- in rapid speech, the combinations [tj], [dj], [sj] and [zj] can be replaced by [tS], [dZ], [S]
and [Z]: statue [:stQtju:] or [:stQtSu:]; education [edju:keiSn] or [edZu:keiSn], issue [:isju:]
or [:iSu:], visual [:vizjul] or [:viZul].
Distribution. Both semivowels can occur in initial position or initial clusters: yes,
window, and in medial position: dune, twig.
Spelling:
[j]:
-y: in initial position followed by a vowel: yellow, young, yard, yacht;

90

-i/e followed by a vowel letter or a group of letters realized phonetically as []:

opinion [:pinjn], righteous [:raitjus] ;
- u followed by a consonant and silent e: use, mule, tune;
-eu/ew: few, feud.
[w]:

-w in initial position: window, willow;

-w after consonants: sweet, swing, twig, Twain;
-wh: when, where;
-u preceded by g/q: quit, quench, quick, language, penguin.

Untypical spelling: one, once, suite [swi:t], choir [kwai]

Words with silent w: answer, sword, two, wrap, wrist, write, Greenwich.
24. Practise the semivowel [j] in the following words, phrases and sentences:
yard
youth
university
yellow
Europe
use
unit

yet
yacht
yesterday
universe
unique
year
Utah

beauty
value
due
new
nephew
cupid
onion

music
tune
rescue
mutual
humour
popular
communicate

a new suit
a yelping yapping terrier
European University yellow onion

the musical youth

humorous nephew

-Young Una is beautiful and alluring in her superb new yellow tunic.
-Unas tutor, Hugo, is an amusing humorous musician.
-Hugos tuneful duet for tube and euphonium is musically unique.
-The problem of uranium disposal has become universal.
-Some musicians use popular folk tunes to produce music which goes beyond
the usual.
-Onions grown in the yard usually produce yearnings for yeasty bullions.
25. Practise the semivowel [w] in the following words, phrases and sentences:
window
once
William
water
wave
windy weather
water waves

wine
one
waiter
Welsh
wishbone

twenty
always
dwindle
quit
tweed

weeping Wilma
twenty dwarves

twice
twinkle
quality
square
dwarf
watered-down wine
quiet waiter

-William is always away.

-A weeping willow is moving in the wind.
-I would like some sweet white wine.
-Wilma is worried about the woodworm in the woodwork of her wardrobe.
-Why wouldnt Walter wash with water that wasnt warm? Walter works at a

91

waxworks and wax wont wash off without warm water.

-William always wears a warm woollen vest in winter.
-Walter, however, will not wear woollen underwear even in the Wild West.

5.9.1. EAGLISH vs. ROMAAIAA SEMI-VOWELS

In Romanian, the semi-vowels [j], [w], [e] and [o] have a different status from the English
semivowels [j] and [w]. However, one could find some similarities, out of which the most
important one is that a semi-vowel cannot be realized but contextually. In Romanian and
English [j] and [w] have almost similar sound qualities (compare yes/ies; one/Oana), but
different distribution. The English semi-vowels occur in initial and medial position,
while their Romanian counterparts can also occur in final position, when preceded by a
vowel (dau, dai).
In both languages [j] is the most frequently used semi-vowel. In Romanian, every
diphthong or triphthong presupposes a semi-vowel sound, while in English this situation is
different. Compare the English boy with the Romanian boi (as se boi).
If this characteristic of the Romanian phonation is added to the general tendency of the
uneducated people to use semi-vowels even in non-typical situations, we can see that the
status of the developing Romanian language is dominated by semi-vowels. As mentioned
before, developing English, on the other hand, is dominated by [].

5.10 Summary
This chapter is the last in our endeavour of presenting the sounds of the English
language (in this particular case the consonants) individually, out of any contexts. We
have seen the way in which these sounds how each consonant is produced (from the
point of view of the articulators involved, the involvement or non-involvement of the
vocal cords, and theway in which the obstruction produced by the articulators is
overcome). We have provided as many important details as possible concenring the
distribution and the spelling possibilities for each and every consonant. Moreover, we
insisted on those sounds that do not exist in Romanian and which we assume may
pose problems to the Romanian speakers of English.
5.11. Evaluation

1. Distinguish the manner of articulation of the English consonantal sounds

and specify the classes of consonants thus produced.
2. Distinguish the basic points of articulation in English.
3. Give the articulators and the points of articulation for the following English
sounds: [p], [k], [h], [z], [f].

92

4. For each group, identify the segment that differs in manner of articulation
from the other three.
a. /n/, /f/, /s/, /z/
b. /v/, /h/, /d/, //
c. //, /r/, /d/, /h/
5. For each group, identify the segment that differs in place of articulation
from the other three.
a. /s/, /t/, /t/, /n/
b. /k/, /n/, /g/, //
c. //, /p/, /b/, /m/
6. The transcription /ri t/ represents the word
a. reach
c. ridge
b. rich
d. reach
7. Give the English sounds corresponding to the following simplified
descriptions:
a. voiced, alveolar fricative;
b. voiceless, velar plosive;
c. voiceless, palatal fricative;
d. voiced, alveolar plosive.
e. voiced, labio-dental fricative;
f. voiceless, interdental fricative;
g. voiceless, glottal plosive.
8. Each of the following purports to be an articulatory description of English
consonantal sound. Which of these descriptions are representations of actual
English sounds, and which are impossible features?
a. voiceless, labio-dental fricative;
b. voiceless, apico-velar plosive;
c. voiceless, glottal fricative:
d. voiceless, bilabial fricative;
e. voiced, apico-dental (interdental) fricative;
f. voiceless, dorso-velar fricative.
9. Identify the words made up of the sounds corresponding to the following
articulatory descriptions:
a. voiceless, fortis, bilabial plosive; front, close, short, lax, unrounded
vowel; voiceless, fortis, velar plosive.
b. voiced, lenis, bilabial plosive; back, close, short, lax, rounded vowel;
voiceless, fortis, velar plosive.
c. alveolar, voiceless, fortis plosive; narrow, closing diphthong (glide
to [i]); voiceless, alveolar fricative; alveolar, voiceless, fortis plosive.
10. Give the articulatory description of the sounds which make up the
following words: front, nasal, velar.
11. Find minimal pairs (whenever possible in all basic positions - initial,
medial and final-) for the following English phonemes: [s : z], [p : b], [tS : dZ],

93

[l : r], [f : v], [T : D].

Example: - initial: [si:l] seal vs. [zi:l] zeal
- medial: [:si:siN] ceasing vs. [:si:zing] seizing
- final: [sins] since vs. [sinz] sins.
12. How does voicing/voicelessness of a consonant affect the preceding
vowel or diphthong?
13. Indicate with a & mark which of the following vowels and diphthongs are
shortened as a result of a following voiceless, fortis consonant:
a. tea [ti:]
d. dark [da:k]
g. egg [eg]
b. meat [mi:t]
e. card [ka:d]
h. oak [uk]
c. toad [tud]
f. lip [lip]
i. kite [kait]
14. Specify the variants (allophones) of the plosive consonants in the
following words: peak, blame, ribbon, adore, climate.
15. Identify and describe the syllabic /m/, /n/, /N/ and /l/ in the following lines:
a. I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the
bottom simply by looking at the man at the top (Frank Moore Colby,
Essays)
b. In the grave, dust and bones jostle not for the wall. (Proverb)
c. What you say is nothing but a truism.
d. A spasm of coughing made her stop laughing.
e. This is the spray the Bird clung to/Making it blossom with pleasure
(R. Browning, Misconceptions)
16. Find possible cases of intrusive r and linking r in the pronunciation of
the sentences below. Mark the place where the intrusive r occurs by a small
cross, and the occurrences of linking r by a small circle.
a. Granada is famous for its monuments. But therere a lot of
interesting places outside Granada itself.
b. The area of a room of 10 feet by 15 feet is 150 square feet.
c. My grandpa is ill.
d. Fancy Sarah asking Ada out! The idea of it makes me laugh.
e. When Freda attended her first speech class in her drama academy the
tutor said she did not keep her jaw open.
f. Australia and New Zealand are two English speaking countries.
g. New Zealand has other islands far out.
17. Consider the following forms:
cloth /kl/
clothing /klouDiN/
north /nr/
northern / nrDrn/
south /sau/
southern /sDrn/
bath /ba: / /b/ (AmE)
bathing /beiDi/
a. In what environment does // show up as /D/?
b. What type of phonological process accounts for this change (take into
consideration the fact that all vowel phonemes in English are [+voice])?

94

c. Is there any reason to state this rule as one in which // becomes /D/, rather
than a rule in which /D/ becomes //? Explain. (Parker & Riley, 2005:123).

95

Unit 6. SOUADS IA COAAECTED SPEECH

Contents
6.1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................95
6.2. Competences...........................................................................................................95
6.3. Juncture ..................................................................................................................95
6.4. Assimilation ............................................................................................................98
6.5. Elision ....................................................................................................................102

6.6. Summary ...............................................................................................................103

6.7. Evaluation.............................................................................................................104
6.8. Send away assignment 2.......................................................................................105
6.1. Introduction
So far we have looked at the production of both vowels and consonants,
but only as isolated sounds. In general, these sounds are pronounced in words or
longer structures (phrases, sentences), where one sound follows closely on the
next. In such joined-up speech, there are many transitional effects as one sound
merges into the next, and we find that many sounds are modified in systematic
ways according to the characteristics of the other sounds surrounding them. This
means that there is considerable variation in the articulation of what might have
appeared as instances of the same sound. As it will be shown, underneath the
complex patterns of phonetic variation lie much simpler functional patterns. The
following sections will describe the respects in which the continuous speech
displays complex variation.
6.2. Competences
Once the students have come to the end of this unit, they will be able to
identify the various phenomena that affect sounds in connected speech. Though
they are not advised to employ them, they need to be aware of pronunciations of
sounds by native speakers of English which are not familiar to them.

Time envisaged for covering Unit 6: 2 hours.

6.3. Juncture
The articulation of any vowel or consonant pronounced in isolation is characterized by
three stages:
- the on-glide (initial stage) during which the speech organs take up the position
necessary for the production of the respective speech sound;
- the retention (medial stage), during which the articulators preserve this position
for a given period of time;

96

- the off-glide (final stage), during which the organs of speech move away to a
neutral position.
These articulatory stages are most obvious in the production of the plosives (stops).
Graphically, this could be represented in the following way:
Example

b2

b1

b3

b1 = initial stage
b2 = medial stage
b3 = final stage

Except for a few cases, when a given phoneme is also a word (e.g. eye, I [ai]), in actual
speech sounds are not produced in isolation, but merge and blend into one another. This
means that all the speech sounds within a given word (and very often at the boundaries of
words) are connected by the stages of their articulation. The transition from one speech
sound to the next is called juncture.
The way in which sounds are linked together (i.e. the manner in which the transition from
one sound to the next is carried out) in order to form syllables, words and longer stretches
of speech depends to a large extent on the similarity between the respective sounds, more
exactly on the amount of articulatory movements performed by the organs of speech to go
from one position they assumed for the production of a given sound to the position
required by the immediately following sound. Thus, we can speak of mainly two types of
juncture:
close (muddy) juncture
open (sharp) juncture
6.3.1. Close juncture is the normal, uninterrupted transition from one speech sound to the
next (as within a word). For instance, the sequence of sounds [b] and [a:] pronounced
separately, without any link, will not constitute a word.
b2
a:2
b1
b3
a:1
a:3
But the same sequence pronounced with a close connection between the elements will
make up the word bar [ba:]. This means that the off-glide or release stage of [b] will merge
with the on-glide of [a:]. Thus, the final stage of [b] and the first stage of [a:] will be
almost simultaneous. The transition from [b] to [a:] is close.
b1

b2

b3 a1

a:2

a3

The close type of juncture occurs between two sounds that are different enough from one
another to require a significant movement of the speech organs from one position to

97

another. Consequently, it is the typical kind of juncture that appears between a consonant
and a vowel or between two consonants or two vowels differing greatly in manner and
point of articulation.
The transition becomes even closer when the adjacent sounds are of an identical or similar
character. For instance, in the so-called double-peaked consonants i.e. combinations in
which the same consonant appears twice in succession at the boundary of morphemes or
words a special act of inter-penetration takes place. As a result, the off-glide of the first
sound and the on-glide of the second sound will disappear. Here are some examples: short
time, part-time, stop pushing, big girl.
The double-peaked consonant [-t t-] in short time [S:ttaim] can be graphically represented
as follows:
t2

t2

t1

t3

In this representation there is one on-glide (t1), a prolonged retention (t2 t 2) and one offglide (t3). The sequence t2 t2 does not result in a longer t-sound, but in a change of the
tenseness of the articulation, decreasing with the first and increasing with the second
6.3.2. Open juncture (as before a pause) occurs when it is necessary to mark the
boundaries between words. So, there is a break at speech boundaries. If we take the
sequence [smdresiz], it may mean summer dresses, some addresses or some are dresses,
according to the different types of juncture:

Example

open j.
summer dresses [sm

dresiz]

open j.
some adresses [sm dresiz]
open j. open j.
some are dresses [sm

dresiz]

Some other examples of different types of juncture providing evidence in support of this
linguistic function are: [neim] an aim/a name, [naismQn] an iceman/a nice man,
[aiskri:m] ice-cream/I scream, [DQtstf] thats tough/that stuff, [DQtsp:t] that
sport/thats port. In all these examples, identical numbers of phonemes are arranged in
exactly the same order. Still, if we take a closer look we will identify some slight
differences in sound quality. Thus, the [p] sound in thats port is aspirated, as it appears in

98

initial position, followed by a long vowel in a stressed syllable. On the other hand, [p] in
that sport is unaspirated, being preceded by [s].
As far as the way in which the speakers pass from one sound to the other is concerned, we
can state that there are differences between English and Romanian. In Romanian the
transition between two sounds belonging to two adjoining syllables is fast and abrupt. In
English, the transition is slower and gradual. English speakers keep their tongue on the
move so that they anticipate the new sound faster, while continuing to preserve the quality
of the preceding sound over the following one. This phenomenon of anticipating and
continuation of sound feature results in more cases of assimilation and elision of sounds in
English than in Romanian.
Let's remember...
Juncture is defined as the transition from one sound to the next in connected
speech. There are two types of juncture, namely close (uninterrupted) and
open (interrupted). Due to the fact that identical strings of sounds may have
different interpretations depending on the types of juncture that appear
between certain segments in such strings, this phenomenon is considered to
be a suprasegmental phoneme.
6.4. Assimilation
In connected speech sounds are pronounced in a linked fashion as they are connected by
the stages of their articulation. As a result, the articulation of one sound may influence the
articulation of the neighbouring sounds in such a way as to make them similar to itself.
This process is called assimilation. The process can be explained in terms of economy of
articulation movement and of a change in the direction of least resistance and greater
simplicity.
Assimilation is something which varies in extent according to speaking rate and style: it is
more likely to be found in rapid, casual speech and less likely in slow, careful speech.
Sometimes, the difference caused by assimilation is very noticeable, and sometimes it is
hardly perceptible.
In the case of assimilation, we could speak of two types of sounds:
- the assimilating sound8 (A), i.e. the sound influencing the articulation of the
neighbouring one, and
- the assimilated sound9 (B), i.e. the sound whose articulation suffers a
modification under the influence of a neighbouring sound, or as Radford et al (2000:109)
put it, the sound that acquires a specification for some feature or a set of features from the
trigger.
6.4.1. If we take into account the direction in which assimilation works, we can classify
the assimilating process into three types:
a) progressive assimilation, working from left to right, in which a given phoneme
influences the immediately following one. This type of assimilation is based on the
continuation of some of the features of the respective sound after having started the
pronunciation of the next one10.
8

Radford et al (2000) name this sound the trigger for assimilation (p.109)
Radford et al (2000) name this sound the target of the assimilation (p.109)
10
This is why this type of assimilation is also known as perseverative (cf. Lass, 1995:171)
9

99

Example
loves [lvz] - -in this example the voiced sound [v] determines a voiced
realization of the morpheme s
A
B
[v]
[s]
[z]
- likes [laiks], liked [laikt]: -in these examples the voiceless sound [k]
determines a voiceless realization of the above-mentioned morphemes.
b) regressive assimilation in which a sound changes under the influence of the
immediately following one. Regressive assimilation is based on the anticipation of one or
more features of the second sound before completing the first one11.
Example
cupboard [kbbd] - in this example the voiced bilabial plosive [b] assimilates
the voiceless plosive [p] turning it into a similar sound, i.e. [b].
B
[p]

A
[b]

[b]
subpoena [sppin] - here the voiceless bilabial plosive [p] assimilates its
voiced counterpart [b], turning it into a p-sound.
c) reciprocal (bi-directional)12 assimilation, in which the phonemes involved in
an assimilation process influence each other to an equal extent. An example of reciprocal
assimilation is offered by the word train, where [r] is partially devoiced under the
influence of the voiceless [t], while [t] itself becomes post-alveolar (instead of alveolar)
under the influence of the post-alveolar [r].
A special case of reciprocal assimilation is coalescence in which two adjacent phonemes
mix so intimately that they give birth to a third one. Thus, the two phonemes [d] and [j]
may coalesce (fuse) and be realized as [dZ] in a rapid pronunciation of did you? [did j]
[didZ
Z], what you see [wtS si:]:
A
d
11
12

B
j

Lass (1995:171) calls it anticipatory.

Lass (1995:173) also calls this type of assimilation fusional.

100

dZ
The output of a fusion is usually a compromise segment: in the example above, the
alveolarity of the first element ([d]) and the palatality of the second ([j]) meet halfway in a
retracted alveolar with a raised tongue-body.
6.4.2. If we consider the features that are assimilated, we come to another classification of
the process of assimilation. Generally speaking, the cases that have been described are
assimilations affecting consonants. In what way can a consonant change? We have seen
(chapter 5) that the main differences between consonants are of three types:
- in place of articulation;
- in manner of articulation;
- in voicing.
Parallel to this, we can identify:
a) Assimilation of place of articulation. Sounds may change their place of articulation
under the influence of a neighbouring sound; this change may be allophonic or phonetic. In
the latter situation, sounds assimilate to the place of articulation of the assimilating sound.
Consider the following examples: that person [DQp p:sn], that cake [DQk keik], bright
colour [braik kl], gone past [gm pa:st], this year [DiS ji].
Another example of assimilation of place is represented by the so-called homorganic nasal
assimilation (Katamba, 1989:88), i.e. a nasal sound shares the place of articulation of the
following consonant. Consider the following examples:
A
B
in [in] inappropriate
un[n] uninteresting
[im] inplausible (implausible)
[n] unpretentious
[in] indecent
[n] undeserving
[iN] ingratitude
[n] ungrateful
This kind of assimilation is not universal, as the prefix un-, which also ends in [n], does
not undergo assimilation.
So far we have presented examples assimilation occurring between consonants, i.e. one
consonant acquires the place features of another consonant. But this process can be seen in
terms of whether a vowel or a consonant acquires the vowel or consonant features,
respectively, of a neighbouring segment. Two sub-types of assimilation of place involving
the acquisition of vowel features by consonants are palatalisation and labialisation.
A. Palatalisation
Katamba (1986:88) gives the following examples:
key [kji:]13
car [ka:]
[ka: kji:z]
keep [kji:p] calm [ka:m]
[kji:p ka:m]

13

Katamba (1989:88) indicates the palatalised consonants by a subscript (+) under the consonant. I preferred
the traditional diacritic (j), placed at the top of the consonant symbol.

101

In each case, when a velar consonant is followed by a front vowel, there is a slight
anticipatory fronting of the part of the tongue that blocks the air. Thus, the obstacle is not
produced at the back of the mouth cavity, but in the palatal area. The effect of the fronting
is that the velar consonant is produced partly in the palatal region. This process is called
palatalisation.
B. Labialisation
Labialisation is another process by means of which a vowel feature can be acquired by
consonants. Consider the following examples:
peel [pi:l]
pool [pwu:l]
teal [ti:l]
tool [twu:l]
The words in the second column are pronounced with some lip rounding. Anticipating the
next segment, which is a rounded vowel, the speaker starts rounding the lips before the
articulation of the consonant is completed. The diacritical mark used in phonetic
transcriptions to render labialisation is a raised (w) after a consonant, i.e. [Cw].
b) Assimilation of manner of articulation appears in the case of the coalescence of the
plosives [t] and [d] and the semivowel [j], resulting in the affricates [tS] and [dZ] that have
a different manner of articulation (see 6.4).
The negative prefix in- mentioned above, can also be affected by assimilation of manner of
articulation, as shown below:
in - + logical
illogical
in- + licit
illicit
in- + rational
irrational
in- + resolute
irresolute.
What these examples show is that before that begin with /l/ or /r/, the nasal sound of the
prefix assimilates the manner of articulation features of the liquids, so that /n/ becomes [l]
before roots beginning with a /l/ and [r] before roots beginning with /r/. Just like in the case
of the assimilation of place of articulation related to this prefix, this alternation is not
conditioned purely phonetically, since [n] can be followed by [l] or [r] in words such as
unloved or unreasonable. Katamba (1986:92) points out that in fact, this is a historical
assimilation which took place in Latin, and is simply reflected in modern English through
Latin borrowings.
c) Assimilation affecting voicing is best illustrated by the examples of words marked by
the inflection of the plural/of the possessive genitive/of the 3rd person singular, present
tense: comes [kmz], Johns [dZnz], girls [g:lz], but sits [sits], Alecs [Qleks], cats
[kQts].
The alternation in the shape of the morpheme is phonologically conditioned. This means
that the allomorphs (i.e. alternative realisations of a morpheme) are determined by the
sounds found in adjacent morphemes. Thus, the allomorphs of the plural morpheme and
the third person singular being [-z, -s, -iz], the suffix agrees in voicing with the preceding
sound.
Out of these three types presented above, assimilation of place is most clearly observable.
Assimilation creates something of a problem for the phoneme theory; when, for example,

102

[d] in good becomes [g] in the context good girl [gugg:l] or [b] in the context good boy
[gubbi], should we say that one phoneme has been substituted for another? If we do this,
how do we describe assimilation in good thing where [d] becomes dental before the [T] of
thing, or in good food, where [d] becomes a labio-dental plosive phoneme before [f] in
food? English has no labio-dental or dental plosives, so in these cases although there is
clearly assimilation, we cannot say that there is substitution of a phoneme for another. The
alternative is to say that assimilation causes a phoneme to be realized by a different
allophone: this would mean that, in the case of [gug g:l] and [gub bi], the phoneme [d] of
good has velar and bilabial allophones. Traditionally, phonemes were supposed not to
overlap in their allophones, so that the only plosives that could have allophones with
bilabial place of articulation were [p], [b]. This restriction is no longer looked on as so
important.
The task of foreign learners of English with respect to assimilation is a very complex one.
If we want their pronunciation to be as native-like as possible, then they should use the
assimilated forms of the English sounds just like the English speakers do. But even if they
do not use certain non-obligatory assimilations, especially those of an extreme nature
which destroy the identity of words, e.g. [dZmeik] for did you make her?, they should
nevertheless be aware of their existence if they want to understand the familiar speech of
native speakers.
Let's remember...
Depending on the direction of the process, assimilation is of 3 types:
progressive, regressive and reciprocal (mutual). From the point of view of the
features that can change in rapid speech, we have assimilation of manner of
articulation, assimilation of place of articulation, and assimilation of voicing.

6.5. Elision
The nature of elision can be stated quite simply: under certain circumstances sounds
disappear, or are omitted altogether, especially in clusters when in unstressed position. As
with assimilation, elision is typical of rapid, casual speech. Producing elision is something
which foreign learners do not need to do, but it is important for them to be aware that when
native speakers of English talk to each other, quite a number of phonemes that the
foreigner might expect to hear are not actually pronounced.
Elision may affect both vowels and consonants.
a) Elision of vowels
The vowels that are elided most frequently are [i] and [], when they appear in unaccented
syllables.
-[
] may be lost:
- when preceded by a consonant and followed by [l] or [r]:
temporary [:temprri], police [pli:s], generous [dZenrs], secretary;
- when followed by linking r and the next word begins with
another []: neither of us [naiDrvs].
-[i] may be lost in such words as difficult [:difklt], university [ju:ni:v:sti], family
[fQmli].

103

b) Elision of consonants
In clusters, consonants were lost at an earlier date in the history of English. For instance,
[t], [s] and [l] were omitted in words like island, listen, calm. In clusters of three plosives
or two plosives and a fricative, the middle plosive may disappear, so that the following
pronunciation results: acts [Qks], looked back [lukbQk], scripts [skrips].
Example

In present day English elision is restricted to certain sounds (especially

alveolar) in consonant clusters, e.g. last time [la:s taim], fast bus [fa:s bs],
best man [bes mQn]. The sounds [t] and [d] are omitted when medial in a three
consonant cluster: handsome [hQnsm], grandmother [:grQnmD], prompts
[prmps], blind man [blain mQn], skimmed milk [skim milk].

The initial consonant is omitted in know, gnaw, wrinkle, psychiatry. The final [b] and [n]
are omitted when preceded by [m]: comb [km], autumn [::tm]. The digraph gh is lost
in words like caught [k:t], bought [b:t], whereas the final v-sound in of is lost before
consonants: lots of them [ltsDm], waste of money [weistmni].
It is difficult to know whether contractions of grammatical words should be regarded as
examples of elision or not. The fact that they are regularly represented with special spelling
forms makes them seem rather different from the above examples. The best known cases
are:
- had, would spelt d, pronounced [d] after vowels, [d] after consonants, e.g. hed
[hi:d/hid];
- is, has spelt s, pronounced [s] after fortis consonants, [z] after lenis consonants, except
that after [s, z, S, Z, t, d] is is pronounced [iz] and has is pronounced [z] in contracted
forms;
- will spelt ll, pronounced [l] after vowels, and [] after consonants;
- have spelt ve, pronounced [v] after vowels, and [v] after consonants;
- not spelt nt, pronounced [nt];
- are spelt re, pronounced [] after vowels, usually with some change in the preceding
vowels, e.g. you [ju:] youre [ju], they [Dei] theyre [DE]. Contracted are is also
pronounced as [] or [r] when following a consonant.
6.6. Summary
In this unit we have seen that the characteristic features of sounds as pronounced in
isolation change once we combine them into larger structures (syllables or words).
This is due to the fact that neighbouring sounds tend to influence each other. This
influence results mainly in two basic phenomena: assimilation and elision.

104

6.7. Evaluation
1. Is the individual quality of sounds as pronounced in isolation preserved
when they are used in connected speech?
2. What are the three stages distinguishable in the production of a given
sound?
3. How are sounds joined together in connected speech?
4. Which are the most important phonetic phenomena (processes) that occur in
connected speech?
5. How is the transition from one sound to the other fulfilled?
6. Give examples of close and open juncture.
7. What is the direction of the adjustments of the articulatory movements?
8. What is the name of the process consisting of a change in at least one
feature in the articulation of a sound in a word or at word boundaries, which is
due to the tendency of the speakers of a language to achieve a certain degree
of similarity in the pronunciation of contiguous sounds?
9. Describe and illustrate by examples the three types of assimilation:
progressive, regressive and reciprocal.
10. Give the phonetic transcription of the following phrases and sentences.
What kind of assimilation takes place in them?
right place
those shoes
hit you

gone past
plant carrots
kid you

that girl
this year
I miss you

11. Transcribe the following English joke and explain by what phonetic
process it has become a source of humour?
Mr. Smith: My wife has just left for the West Indies.
Mr. Brown: Jamaica?
Mr. Smith: No, of her own accord.
12. Listed below are several variants of one of the English prefixes meaning
'not'. Examine their distribution and explain the instances of assimilation:
Variant
Found in
[im] immature, imperfect, impartial, implausible, imbalance, immortal,
[in] inoperative, indecent, innocent, indedible, inaudible, interminable
[iN] incomplete, incapable, incorrigible, inglorious, ingratitude
[ir] irregular, irresponsible, irreversible, irresistable, irrespective
[il]
illegal, illegible, illogical, illiterate, illegitimate
13. Define elision and specify whether it affects: a) only vowels; b) only

105

consonants; c) both vowels and consonants.

14. In what kind of syllables does the elision of vowels occur?

6.8. Send away assignment 2

Make use of the knowledge you acquired in this unit and answer the three questions below.
Send your assignment to the tutor according to the deadline stipulated in the calendar.
1. Identify the vowels which are usually elided in the pronunciation of the following
words:
family
garden
deliberate
history
generous
pattern
comfortable evil
suppose
2. Find elision of consonants in the following words and phrases:
handbag, landscape, grandmother, castle, crumbs, best man, first night, left knee, kind
nurse, skimmed milk.
3. How can juncture change the meaning of the following strings of sounds?
[neiSn], [dZisli:ps], [greitQbi], [grikspai], [ai s: h:reis], [tikit]

106

Unit 7. THE SYLLABLE

Contents
7.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................106
2.2. Competences.........................................................................................................106
7.3. Phonetical and phonological definitions of the syllable ......................................107
7.4. The structure of the English syllable ....................................................................109
7.4.1. The initial segment ................................................................................................109

7.4.2. The final segment...............................................................................................110

7.4.3. The intervocalic segment ...................................................................................113
7.5. Summary ...............................................................................................................114
7.6. Evaluation .............................................................................................................114
7.1. Introduction
The focus of this unit is the syllable, the smallest unit into which sounds can combine. As
the combinations of sounds in syllables follow different rules in different languages, we
will insist on the structure of the English syllable, making comparisons with that of the
Romanian one. First, the students will become familiar with the terminology related to this
issue. Then, we will investigate the constituents of the initial segment and of the final
segment of the English syllable. Finally, we shall highlight the strong connection between
linguistics and literature on the basis of the rhyme.

7.2. Competences
Having covered the material in this unit, the students will be able to identify the
basic constituents of the English syllable; they will be also expected to identify wellformed onsets and codas of the English syllables. Moreover, they will able to divide the
English words into the appropriate syllables.

Average time for covering unit 7: 2 hours

As we have seen in the previous chapter, the sounds of a language are not uttered in
isolation, but combine in order to form larger linguistic units. The first higher unit into
which sounds are combined is the syllable. The combination of the sounds in the syllable
does not occur at random, but in a certain manner determined by the phonological system
of each language. This system imposes certain restrictions on the combinatorial choice at
the beginning and end of a syllable. But what is a syllable?

107

7.3. Phonetical and phonological definitions of the syllable

The syllable may be defined both phonetically and phonologically.
A. Phonetically (i.e. in relation to the way we produce it and the way it sounds), a syllable
may be defined as a unit of pronunciation consisting of a centre which has little or no
obstruction to the airflow and which sounds comparatively loud; before and after this
centre (i.e. at the beginning and end of the syllable), there will be greater obstruction to the
airflow and/or less loud sound. Phonetically, attempts at defining the syllable have been
made at all levels: articulatory, auditory and acoustic.
- From the articulatory point of view, the syllable has been defined as a puff of air forced
upward through the vocal channel by a compression of the inter-costal muscles.
Consequently, the syllable is a problem of chest pulse (muscular and articulatory activity),
consisting of three successive phases: onset (release), nucleus (culmination), coda
(arrest). Culmination is the nuclear factor of the syllable and it is primarily the vowel
sounds and also some consonants [m, n, N, l, r] which form the nucleus of a syllable.
- Acoustically, syllables seem to be marked by increases in intensity and (in many
instances) of the fundamental frequency of the nuclei over the margins of the syllable.
Acoustic measurements will indicate peaks of acoustic energy corresponding to syllable
nuclei.
- In auditory terms, one can decode the number of syllables on the basis of the
prominence of certain sounds in the continuous flow of speech. Some sounds are
inherently more prominent than others and on these grounds they stand out in contrast with
them. The sonority differences are determined by a number of factors of which the most
important are: vocal cords vibration (voicing), the amount of air expelled from the lungs,
the duration and resonance quality of sounds in passing through the vocal tract.
The stream of speech appears to the listener as a continuously undulating flow of sounds
marked by high peaks and low points of sonority depending on the qualities of successive
segments. A group of sound segments, which includes a peak of sonority, will form a
syllable.
A syllable can therefore be defined as a segment of speech containing a peak of sonority or
as a stretch of speech between two valleys of sonority.
In terms of sonority scale, the word Manchester will be marked by 3 successive phases,
carried by [Q], [e], []

tS

108

The syllable boundaries fall at points of relatively weak prominence. It is difficult to

determine to which syllable the weak sounds can be attributed, i.e. whether to interpret
them as onsets of the immediately following syllables or as codas of the preceding ones.
The task is even more complicated when consonant clusters appear at syllable margins.
What can certainly be said is that the arrangement of sounds in the syllable indicates a
tendency of sounds to group themselves within the syllable around the most sonorous ones,
so that the least sonorous are further away from the nucleus. This tendency is obvious in
such examples as class, strong, bring.
We will look now at some examples of types of syllables.
a. What we might call a minimum syllable is a single vowel/diphthong in isolation, e.g.
the words are [a:], or [:], err [:], eye [ai]. The vowel/diphthong is preceded and
followed by silence. Isolated sounds such as [m], which we sometimes produce to
indicate agreement, or [S], to ask for silence, must also be regarded as syllables.
b. Some syllables have and onset (i.e. they have more than just silence preceding the
centre of the syllable), e.g. bar [ba:], key [ki:], more [m:].
c. Syllables may have no onset, but may have a coda, e.g. am [Qm], ought [:t], ease [i:z].
d. Some syllables have onset and coda, e.g. run [rn], sat [sQt], fill [fil].
There are still problems with the phonetic description of the syllable, particularly in the
matter of deciding on the division between syllables. In Romanian it is much easier to
determine where the syllable cut is to be made, since the onset of the syllable is clearly
distinguished from the preceding segment in the stream of speech. Thus, CVCVC
sequences are always CV CVC as in rcit (r cit), while CVCCVC ones are CVC
CVC as in nscut (ns cut).
In English it is more difficult to establish where a syllable ends and where the next one
begins. That is one of the reasons why syllable division in the spelling of English is very
difficult. We shall look at two words that are good examples of this difficulty.
Most English speakers feel that the word going [guiN] consists of two syllables;
presumably we can decide that u in the middle is the dividing point between the two
syllables, since the articulation is slightly closer to obstructing the airflow than the vowel
next to it. This still leaves unanswered the question of whether the u belongs to the first or
to the second syllable. We know that u is part of the [u] diphthong, but this is a fact of
phonology, not of the phonetic structure of the syllable.
Another difficult case is the word extra [ekstr]. One problem is that by some definitions
the s in the middle, between [k] and [t] would be counted as a syllable, which most English
speakers would reject. They feel that the word has two syllables. However, opinions
usually differ as to where the two syllables are to be divided. The possibilities are: [e kstr], [ek - str], [eks - tr], [ekst - r], [ekstr - ]. Usually the second or the third
possibilities are chosen, but it is not possible to say which of these is the correct one.
Looking at the syllables in this way, which at first seems the obvious thing to do, turns out
not to be very useful.

109

B. Phonologically speaking, the situation is quite different. What the phonological

approach involves is the analysis of the possible combinations of English phonemes. From
this point of view, then, a syllable can be defined as the lowest phonological construction
into which phonemes are combined.
Each language has its own rules for combining phonemes into syllables. The most
important restrictions are related to the combinations of consonants in clusters appearing in
the initial and final segments (i.e. at the beginning and end of the syllable). The difficulty
of the pronunciation of a foreign language is also a matter of the patterning of its sounds,
different from the learners mother tongue.
We shall start by looking at what can occur in initial position in other words, what can
occur at the beginning of the first word when we begin to speak after a pause. We find that
the word can begin with a vowel, or with one, two or three consonants. Yo word begins
with more than 3 consonants. In the same way, we can look at how a word ends when it is
the last word spoken before a pause: it can end in a vowel, or with one, two, three or (in a
small number of cases) four consonants. Yo word ends with more than four consonants.
Let's remember...
Phonetically
Syllables have internal structure: they can be divided three parts. The parts are the onset, the
nucleus and the coda. Not all syllables have all parts; the smallest possible syllable contains
a nucleus only. A syllable may or may not have an onset and a coda.
Phonologically
Each language imposes certain restrictions uopn the combinations of sounds in the onset
and the coda. Thus, there is first a restriction related to the number of consonants that occur
in each: max. 3 consonants in the onset and max. 4 consonants in the cod. Secondly, the
restrictions also concern the kind of consonants that combine to form these syllable
constituents.

7.4. The structure of the English syllable

Just as the phonetic syllable, the phonological one consists of three segments: a central
segment (the nucleus/peak of the syllable), an initial segment the (onset) and a final one
(the coda).
7.4.1. The initial segment (onset)
Let us now look in more details at the syllable initial segments.
- If the first syllable of the word in question begins with a vowel (any vowel except [u]),
we shall say that this initial syllable has zero onset.
- If the syllable begins with one consonant, the initial consonant may be any consonant
except [N].
- When the syllable begins with two or three consonants, we call them consonant clusters.

110

Initial two-consonant clusters are of two sorts in English:

a. [s] + one of a set of about 11 consonants [p, t, k, f, m, n], where [s] is called the preinitial consonant, and the other the initial consonant.
e.g. sting, sway, smoke, snow, skin, sphynx
b. one of a set of 13 consonants + one of the set [l, r, w, j], where the consonant belonging
to the first set will be the initial consonant, and the consonant belonging to the second set
is called the post-initial consonant.
e.g. plan, trail, twin, cue
Initial three-consonant clusters are quite few. At a closer look we can notice a
clear relationship between them and the two kinds of two-consonant clusters described
above. Examples of three- consonant clusters are to be found in split, stream, scream, and
squeak. The [s] is the pre-initial consonant, the [p], [t], [k] that follow [s] are the initial
consonants and the [l, [r], [w] are post-initial.
Post initial

S+ initial cons.

splash

spring

spew

stream

stew

sclerosis

scream

squirrel skew

Of the following list of consonant clusters, find the ones that can appear in
word-initial position in English:
bl; kl; dl; pl; tl; ml; nl; sl; Sl, Tl; kr; br; tr; dr; gr, mr, nr, Dr, Zr, hr, dZr, tzr, st,
pt, bt, ft, zt, St, ht, pk, rk, sgl, sk, spr.
7.4.2. The final segment (coda)
As mentioned earlier, in the final segment we find the possibility of up to four consonants.
- If a syllable does not end in a consonant, e.g. sky [skai], we say that there is a zero coda.
- When the nucleus is followed by one consonant only, this is called the final consonant.
Any consonant may be a final consonant, except [h, r, w, j].
e.g. cub, hat, man, girl, king, kiss
- A syllable may end in two or more consonants. In this case we speak about final
consonant clusters.
Two-consonant clusters are of two types:

111

a. pre-final consonant [m, n, N, l, s]

+ final consonant

e.g. lump [lmp], tent [tent], tank [tQNk], belt [belt], task [ta:sk]
b. final consonant + post-final consonant [s, z, t, d, T]
e.g. cats [kQts], heads [hedz], packed [pQkt], loved [lvd], fifth [fifT].
The post-final consonants can often be identified as separate morphemes, i.e. the plural
morpheme, the past tense morpheme and the ordinal numeral morpheme.
Final three-consonant clusters are also of two types:
a. clusters made up of a pre-final + final + post-final consonant.
Pre-final + final

+ post-final

milked [mi

t]

thanked [TQ

t]

golfs
[ g
twelfth [twe

l
l

f
f

s]
T]

b. The second type of three-consonant clusters is made up of one final consonant followed
by two post-final consonants:
fifths [fi
widths [wi
lapsed [lQ

final
f
d
p

+ post-final1 + post-final2
T
s]
T
s]
s
t]

The second post-final consonant is again one of [s, z, t, d, T].

Four-consonant clusters are also of two types:
a. Most of these clusters can be analysed as consisting of a final consonant preceded by a
pre-final consonant and followed by post-final1 and post-final2:
pre-final
attempts [te m
instincts [insti N
prompts [pr m

+
p
k
p

final

+ post-final1 +post-final2
t
s]
t
s]
t
s]

Usually, these four-consonant clusters can be reduced to three-consonant clusters by the

omission of the post-final1 consonant, e.g. [prmpts][prmts].
b. A small number of cases seem to require a different analysis, as consisting of a final
consonant with no pre-final but three post-finals:

112

sixths [si

pre-final
-

final
k

+post-final1
s

+post-final2
T

+post-final3
s]

From among the following, find the clusters that can appear in the final
segment of the English syllables.
fs, tk, pt, ps, kt, fT, sp, Ts, sl, ns, mz, lp, St, vz, pd, zd, kst, tSt, sts, lks, nzd,
ndz, lvz, lpt, gTs.

To sum up, we may describe the English syllable as having the following maximum
phonological structure:
Pre- initial post- VOWEL
Initial
initial
ONSET

NUCLEUS

prefinal

final

post- post- (postfinal1 final2 final3)

CODA

Recent work in phonology makes use of a rather more refined analysis of the syllable in
which the nucleus (vowel) and the coda (if there is one) are known as the rhyme. If you
know any rhyming English verse you will see that this works by matching just this part of
the last syllable in the line. Rhyme is divided into the peak/nucleus which is normally a
vowel sound) and the coda (but this is optional, as the rhyme may have no coda, as in a
word like sea [si:]).
Let us illustrate this on the basis of some lines from a well-known bedtime lullaby.
Hush little baby, dont say a word [w:d]
Mamas gonna buy you a mockingbird [b:d]
And if that mockingbird dont sing [siN]
Mamas gonna buy you a diamond ring [riN]
And if that diamond ring turns to brass [bra:s]
Mamas gonna buy you a looking-glass [gla:s].
As we have seen, the syllable may also have an onset, but this is not obligatory.
Consequently, the structure of the syllable looks as follows:

113

Metrical tree representation of CVC syllable structure

= syllable
O = onset
R = rhyme
N = nucleus
C = coda

Source: Wikipedia

7.4.3. The intervocalic segment

The consonants occurring between two syllable nuclei will be interpreted as belonging
either to the coda of the first syllable or to the onset of the following one.
- When there is one consonant between two vowels, this is interpreted as the onset of the
second syllable: VCV = V CV, e.g. bakery [bei - k - ri].
- When there are two consonants in intervocalic position, the obvious solution is to allot
the first consonant to the first syllable, and the second one to the second syllable,
especially when they cannot form an initial or a final cluster: VCCV = VC + VC, action
[Qk - S()n], picture [pik -tS].
Three intervocalic consonants will be divided as follows:
VCCCV = VC CCV: pilgrim [pil grim]
= VCC CV: anxious [QNk - Ss] (Chitoran, 1978:272)
Four consonant medial clusters may be segmented in the following ways:
VCCCCV = VCC CCV: exclaim [iks klaim];
= VC CCV: extreme [ik stri:m]
We hope that the understanding of the basic syllable structures presented above will help
the Romanian learners become aware of precisely what consonant clusters present
pronunciation problems, as the Romanian consonant clusters differ to a certain extent from
the English ones.
7.5. Summary
This unit has dealt with the smallest unit into which sounds can combine. We have
seen how the syllable can be approached phonetically and phonologically. We have
pointed out the main constituents of the syllable and have indicated the types of
sounds that can occur in the onset and in the coda, as well as the maximum number of

114

sounds in these two parts. A bit of knowledge about the syllable is of great use,
especially in investigating word-stress, which is the topic of the following unit.

7.6. Evaluation
1. An English word may begin with a maximum of three consonants. List as
many examples of different three-consonant clusters as you can, then answer
the following questions:
a. What must the first consonant be?
b. What two phonetic features must the second member of the cluster
have?
c. What phonetic features must the third member have?
2. What does the nucleus of the syllable correspond to?
3. Grammar mistakes are sometimes the result of not hearing the number of
syllables. For example:
a. Theyve rent(ed) a house.
b. There are two dish(es).
A. Which of the following
syllables:
painted
rented
walked
worked
landed
closed
What is the rule?
B.
causes
dishes
rules
files
mixes
changes
What is the rule?

words have one syllable and which have two

added
watched
folded

caused
started
laughed

watches
misses
loves

cakes
pieces
prices

4. Sometimes in natural spoken English vowel contractions cause syllables to

disappear completely. Look at the following words. How many syllables
would you expect in each word? How many do you actually pronounce? Write
the numbers down.
Expected number
Actual number
e.g.: medicine
3
2
chocolate
vegetable
comfortable
interesting
secretary
library

115

Unit 8. THE SUPRASEGMEATAL PHOAEMES: WORD-STRESS

Contents
8.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................115
8.2. Competences.........................................................................................................115
8.3. Features of word-stress ........................................................................................116
8.4. Levels of stress......................................................................................................117
8.5. Position of stress...................................................................................................118
8.5.1. Stress in simple words ...........................................................................................118

8.5.2. Stress in complex words ....................................................................................121

8.5.2.1. Stress in derived words...................................................................................121
8.5.2.2. Stress in compound words ..............................................................................125
8.6. Variable stress ......................................................................................................126
8.7. Summary ...............................................................................................................127
8.8. Evaluation .............................................................................................................128
8.1. Introduction
This unit focuses on another suprasegmental phoneme (remember, the first we have
approached was juncture), namely word-stress. We will present the factors that contribute
to the realization of stress, what the speaker does in order to produce stressed syllables and
how the listener perceives them as stressed. We shall also try to present some guidelines
for placing stress on certain syllables in the English words, depending on their structural
make-up. Differences in the position of stress in British English and American English
will be pointed out. Finally, it will be shown how stress may vary due to rhythm or
analogy.

8.2. Competences
After reading the material in this unit, the students will hopefully be able to place
the stress correctly in the English words, both when the words occur in isolation, but more
importantly when they are used in discourse.

Average time for covering this unit: 3 hours

116

8.3. Characteristic features of word-stress

The word, composed of one or more phonemes, has a separate linguistic identity, in that it
is a commutable entity, higher than the phoneme, which may either constitute a complete
utterance or may be substituted in a longer utterance for other words of its same class. It
may be thought of as a shape or pattern, constituted from the qualitative and quantitative
elements of its phonemes, these phonemic elements being also capable of distinctive
commutation, e.g. [t] and [d], in writer [rait] and rider [raid]. In addition, in polysyllabic
words, the word shape has an identity determined by the relationship of its parts. Thus,
writer, rider may be said to have a pattern consisting of a strong syllable, followed by a
weak syllable. In the case of return, the pattern is reversed: weak syllable + strong
syllable. It may be said, therefore, that the identity of return depends not only on the
phonemes which distinguish it from, say, written, but also on the different patterns of the
total word-forms which derive from the varying prominence of the parts. The syllable or
syllables of a word which stand out from the other syllables are said to be accented
(stressed), or to receive ACCENT (STRESS).
What are the characteristics of stressed (accented) syllables that enable us to identify
them? It is important to understand that there are two different ways of approaching this
question, one being to consider what the speaker does in producing a stressed syllable, and
the other being to consider what characteristics of sound make a syllable seem to a listener
to be stressed. In other words, we can study accent from the point of view of
PRODUCTION and PERCEPTION. The two are closely related, but not identical.
The PRODUCTION of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker, using more
muscular energy than normally used for unstressed syllables.
From the PERCEPTUAL point of view, all stressed syllables have one characteristic in
common, and that is PROMIAEACE: stressed syllables are recognized as stressed
because they are more prominent than the unstressed ones. There are at least 4 factors that
make a syllable prominent:
(1) Pitch change. The main cue to accent is pitch prominence. PITCH in speech is
closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal cords: if the vocal cords vibrate
strongly, the pitch is high, whereas if the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds is low,
the pitch is low. If one syllable in a word is said with a pitch that is noticeably different
from that of others, this will have a strong tendency to produce the effect of prominence.
For example, if all syllables are said with low pitch except for one pronounced with high
pitch, then the high-pitched syllable will be heard as stressed and the others unstressed.
Pitch prominence depends as much upon the pitch change as upon pitch height. The
different accentual patterns of insult (n.) and insult (v.) are easily distinguished by their
pitch patterns. If a falling intonation is used, the fall occurs on the first syllable of the
nouns and on the second syllable of the verb.
(2) Loudness. Accented syllables are often assumed to be louder than unaccented syllables,
and in many cases this may be so. Greater loudness is carried mainly by voiced sounds, in
which greater amplitude of vibration of the vocal folds, together with the reinforcing
resonance of the supraglottal cavities, results in acoustic terms in relatively greater
intensity. This strong intensity and the loudness perceived by the listener results from the

117

relatively greater breath effort and muscular energy used in the articulation of a sound by
the speaker.
Loud syllables are not equal in quality: they may be stronger or weaker. In English we
distinguish 3 degrees of loudness (stress): strong (primary stress), medial (secondary
stress), weak (no stress).
It is important to realise that it is very difficult for a speaker to make a syllable louder
without changing some other of its characteristics, such as pitch, quality and quantity.
(3) Quality and quantity. While accent is mainly achieved by pitch change, sometimes
accompanied by extra loudness, among unaccented syllables some will be more prominent
than others, owing to the quality and quantity of the vowels at their centre. Long vowels
and diphthongs are more prominent than short vowels, while among the short vowels
themselves [i, u, ] (when unstressed) are the least prominent and are often referred to as
REDUCED vowels as opposed to other FULL vowels.
Quantity and quality act together in producing a special type of prominence to the syllable.
Generally, all the 4 factors work together in combination, though syllables may sometimes
be made more prominent by means of only one or two of them. Experimental work has
shown that these factors are not equally important; the strongest effect is produced by
pitch.
Let's remember...
Word-stress is the result of a number of factors, such as:
-pitch change;
-degree of loudness of the syllable

8.4. Levels of stress

So far se have talked about stress as if there was a simple distinction between accented and
unaccented syllables, with no intermediate levels. This would be a two-level analysis of
stress. Usually, however, we have to recognize one or more intermediate levels.
We have analysed stress within the word; this means that we are looking at words as they
are in isolation, which is a rather artificial situation. We usually do not use words in
isolation, but treating them in this way will help us identify stress levels and stress
placement more clearly.
Let us take as an example the word around [ :raund]: the stress is on the 2nd syllable and
the pitch falls from a higher to a lower level. We could say that the second syllable in the
above-given word bears primary stress.
Example
Primary stress is rendered by the symbol ( : ) placed at the top, in front of the
stressed syllable.
be:hind, :apple, ki:lometer

118

In some other words, we can notice a type of stress that is weaker than the primary stress,
but stronger than that of the first syllable of around, e.g. photographic [fut :grQfik].
This stress is called secondary stress, and is sometimes represented in transcriptions with
a low mark ( )
We have identified two levels of stress: primary and secondary, as well as a 3rd level which
can be called unstressed and regarded as being the absence of any recognizable amount of
prominence.
8.5. The position of stress
One of the major difficulties posed by the English pronunciation refers to the position of
the accent, especially in the polysyllabic words.
The accentual pattern of English words is fixed, in the sense that the main accent always
falls on a particular syllable of any given word, but free, in that the main accent is not tied
to any particular situation in the chain of the syllables constituting a word, as it is in some
languages (e.g. to the penultimate syllable in Polish, to the first in Czech and Hungarian,
and to the last in French). Thus, the primary stress falls regularly on the first syllable in
such words as :finish, :answer, :afterwards; on the second syllable in be:hind, re:sult,
to:gether, im:possible; on the third syllable in under:stand, edu:cation; or later in
articu:lation, palatali:zation, etc.
In order to decide on stress placement, it is necessary to recognize some relevant factors in
connection to each word:
a) the origin of the word (i.e. whether it is of Greek or Latin origin). The English words of
Latin origin tend to follow the Latin rules of stress;
b) whether the word is morphologically simple, or whether it is complex as a result of
either affixation (the attachment of prefixes and suffixes) or of compounding (the
combination of two or more simple words).
c) the lexical category to which the word belongs (noun, verb, adjective);
d) the number of syllables in the word;
e) the phonological structure of the syllables (whether it contains certain kinds of vowel
and consonant combinations).
8.5.1. Stress in simple words
A. Single-syllable words do not present any problems with respect to stress: if they are
pronounced in isolation, they bear primary stress.
B. Two-syllable words: here the choice is still simple: either the first or the second syllable
will be stressed.
a.) Verbs and adjectives. The basic rule is the following: if the second syllalbe of the
word contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or if it ends in more than one consonant, that
second syllable is stressed:

119

Example

Verbs
apply [:plai]
attract [:trQkt]
become [bi:km]

Adjectives
divine [di:vain]
correct [k:rekt]
alive [:laiv]

If the final syllable does not meet the above-mentioned conditions, i.e. if it contains a short
vowel and one (or no) final consonant, then the first syllable will be stressed.

Example

Verbs
enter [:ent]
open [:upn]
hover [:hv]

Adjectives
lovely [:lvli]
even [:i:vn]
happy ['hQpi]

The verbs also receive stress on the first syllable if the second one contains the diphthong
[u], e.g. 'follow.
b) Adverbs and prepositions behave like verbs and adjectives: behind [bi:haind],
upon [:pn].
c) Aouns. If the second syllable contains a short vowel, the stress will usually come
on the first syllable. Otherwise, it will be on the second syllable:
Example

money [:m-ni], product [:pr-dkt], writer [:rai-t] vs.

estate [i-:steit], balloon [b-:lu:n], idea [ai-:di].

This accentual pattern covers by far the greatest part of disyllabic nouns. This is explained
by the fact that it agrees with the general tendency in English of placing accent on the
initial syllable.
If we have words containing identical letter sequences, the placement of stress will indicate
whether they are nouns or verbs.
Example

Verbs
trans:fer
per:mit
ac:cent
pro:gress
in: sult
in:crease

Youns
: transfer
:permit
: accent
: progress
:insult
:increase

120

a :ffix

:affix

This is paralleled by a similar opposition between some verbs and adjectives, on the one
hand, where the verb is again characterized by its pattern [ _ _$ ], and by some adjectives
and nouns, on the other hand, where the adjective takes either the noun or the verbal
structure:
Example

Verb
ab:sent
di:lute
di:rect
fre:quent

Adjective
:absent
:dilute
:direct
:frequent

Youn
:August
:minute
[:minit]

Adjective
au:gust
mi:nute
[mai:nju:t]

State which of the following words display two accentual patterns associated
with two different syntactic functions (sometimes unrelated semantically), and
which preserve the accentual pattern while still discharging the two distinct
syntactic functions. Point out those instances in which a shift in accent is
accompanied by a change in the quality of the vowels in the unaccented
syllables:
abandon, absent, addict, address, amend, collect, combine, comfort, comment,
compress, test, content, contest, correct, corrupt, decease, degrease, deject,
demand, deposit, digest, discharge, discount, discourse, display, effect, escort,
extract, exact, import, incline, insult, insert, object, perfume, permit, present,
prefix, produce, progress, protest, rebound, record, refill, refund
C. Three-syllable words.
Here we find a more complicated picture.
a) Verbs. If the last syllable contains a short vowel and ends with no more than one
consonant, that syllable will be unstressed, and the stress will be placed on the preceding
(penultimate) syllable, e.g. encounter [in- :kaun-t], determine [di - :t- min], inhabit [in :hQ - bit].
If the final syllable contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or ends with more than one
consonant, the final syllable will be stressed, e.g. resurrect [re - z - :rekt], entertain [en t - :tein].
b) Aouns. If the final syllable contains a short vowel or [u], it is unstressed; if the
syllable preceding this final syllable contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or if it ends
with more than one consonant, that middle syllable will be stressed, e.g. mimosa [mi- :mu
- z], potatoe [p - :tei - tu].

121

If both the final and the penultimate syllables contain a short vowel, they will be
unstressed, the accent falling on the first syllable, as in quantity [:kwn ti ti], cinema [:si
- n - m].
Most of the above rules show that stress tends to go on syllables containing long vowels
or diphthongs and/or ending with more than one consonant. However, three-syllable
simple nouns are different. If the final syllable is of this type, the stress will usually be
placed on the first syllable. The last syllable being quite prominent, it can receive
secondary stress, e.g. stalactite [:stQ -lk tait], intellect [:in - t - lekt], consequence
[:kn si - kwns].
c). Adjectives seem to need the same rules to produce stress patterns such as:
opportune [: - p - tju:n], insolent [:in sl- nt] , anthropoid [:Qn-Pr-poid].
The rules above do not, of course, cover all English words. They apply only to major
categories of lexical words. The statements indicate tendencies rather than absolute rules
(that is why the term rules has been placed between inverted commas.
Let's remember...
The position of stress in simple words depends, first and foremost, on the
structure of the syllable, secondly on the lexical class the words belong to (i.e.
whether they are nouns, verbs or adjectives), and thirdly on the number of
syllables the words have.

8.5.2. Stress in complex words

Complex words are of two major types:
- words formed from a basic stem by adding affixes (8.5.2.1.)
- compound words, which are formed out of two or more independent English
words, e.g. ice-cream, armchair) (8.5.2.2)
8.5.2.1. Stress in affixed words
Affixes will have one of three possible effects on word stress:
- the affix itself receives primary stress: semi-+ circle = semicircle [:semis:kl]
- the affixed word is stressed as if the affix were not there: :market - :marketing.
- the stress remains on the stem, but is shifted to a different syllable: :magnet mag:netic, edit - edi-tion
A) PREFIXES
Semantically, prefixes can be divided into 3 classes:
(a) Prefixes which have lost their meaning and do not carry any accent: a-, be-, for(a:bove, a:live, a:jar, a:shore, be:come, be:lieve, for:give, for:get, for:bid). These prefixes
are not productive anylonger.
(b) Prefixes which may have a meaning of their own, and are still productive, but whose
fusion with the root to which they are attached is so indestructible, that the resulting word

122

is no longer felt as a derivative. In some other cases, the root to which the prefix is added is
no longer used as a meaningful word in English and, consequently, the meaning of the
derived word is not decomposable into the meaning of its component elements.
Example
1. depress, derail => completely fused derivatives; their component

morphemes are quite easily identifiable, since they are also used individually:
{de-} = deprive of, do the reverse of; {press}, {rail} = roots which are
obviously quite meaningful.
2. :hypocrite, :dedicate, :prejudice, pa:ralysis => these are not looked upon as

prefixed words by the ordinary English speaker, because there are no such free
morphemes (forms) as {crite}, {dicate}, {judice}, {lysis}, though he may
possibly know that hypo- = under, below, pre- = before, para- = beside,
beyond.
The importance of these considerations from the point of view of accent is that whenever a
word belongs to one of these two categories above, or to both, it is accented as if it were
not a derivative, but a simple word. This means that the prefix does not take any secondary
stress.
(c) A third category contains prefixes that almost always have a distinct meaning of their
own and are highly productive. They behave like the prefixes in the second category (see
(b) above), i.e. when their fusion with the root is complete, they bear no influence on the
accentual pattern of the formation (the derivative behaves as if it had not been derived).
But when the prefix adds an important meaning to the root, it must bear secondary stress.
Such prefixes are: mis-, non-, out-, over-, re-, under-.
Example

MIS (= badly)
accented
,misad'venture
,mis:believe
,mis:inform
,mis:place
AOA- (=not)
accented
(secondary stress)
,non a:ttendance
,non- e:ssential
,non-ob:servance
,non-:stop
,non-con:formist

unaccented (in long words where quite

often the meaning has been slightly altered)
mis:carry= to deliver prematurely
mis:chance = bad luck
mis:conduct = adultery

accented
(primary stress)
:nonsense
: nondescript

unaccented
non:entity

123

OUT- Though highly productive, out- is never accented like an independent normative,
but the whole formation observes the general stressing rules of English as if the word had
not been prefixed at all, irrespective whether the derivative is new or a long-established
word, or whether out- is meaningful or meaningless;
:outbreak (n) ,out:live (v)
:outcome
,out:brave
:outdoor (adj) ,out:number
:outline
:outfit

out:doors (adv)

OVER- behaves like mis- and non-:

but
:over,load
,over:act
,over:boil
:over,lap
,over:work
RE- The accentuation of words prefixed by re- depends on 2 factors:
(1) -whether the word is a verb or a noun;
(2) whether re- has fused with the root into a new meaning, or it preserves its own
meaning, i.e. again.
(A) Verbs are stressed on the root, nouns on the prefix:
VERBS
AOUAS
re:bel
:rebel
re:cord
:record
re:ject
:reject
:refuse
re:fuse
re:fill
:refill
re:make
:remake
(B) Older formations have unaccented re- and a new meaning. Newer formations
have accented re- (secondary stress), its meaning being again.
Unaccented

Accented
(secondary stress) (V)
re:bound = spring back, re:bound = bound again
re:count =relate
,re:count = count again
re:fund = pay back
,re:fund = fund again
re:fuse = say no
,re:fuse = fuse again
UADERAccented (when meaning is preserved)
,underde:veloped
,under:estimate
,under:graduate

Accented)
(primary stress) (A)
:re,bound = act of rebounding
:re,count = story
:re,fund = repayment
:re,fuse = waste material
Unaccented (meaning is lost)
under:take
under:go
under:stand

124

B) SUFFIXES
Suffixes raise more difficulties than prefixes, as here the exceptions are more numerous.
There are so many suffixes that it will be only possible to examine a small proportion of
them, and we shall concentrate on those which are common and productive (i.e. are applied
to a considerable number of stems to make new English words).
(a) Suffixes carrying primary stress themselves
In the examples given below, which seem to be the most common, 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, moved to an earlier syllable, e.g. Ja:pan => ,Japa:nese
Example

-ee: refu:gee, emplo:yee, refe:ree

-eer: mountai:neer, engi:neer, volun:teer
-ese: Portu:guese, Chi:nese, Japa:nese
-ette: ciga:rette, ushe:rette, kitche:nette
-ental: ori:ental, acci:dental
-esque: pictu:resque, ara:besque, gro:tesque
(b) Suffixes that do not affect stress placement
These are grammatical suffixes (plural and tense markers, -ing, etc). The stress is preserved
on the root.
-less: :power => :powerless
-able: :comfort => :comfortable
-age: :anchor => :anchorage
-ly: :hurried => :hurriedly
-al: :refuse => :refusal
-ment: :punish =>: punishment
-en: :wide =>: widen
-ness: :happy => :happiness
-ful: : wonder => :wonderful
-y: :fun => :funny
-ing: :amaze => :amazing
-fy: :glory =>:glorify
-ish: :devil => :devilish
-wise: :other => :otherwise
-like: :bird => :birdlike
Other suffixes belonging to this group are: -er, -dom. hood.
Exceptions: :pyramid => py:ramidal, :proverb => pro:verbial
a:pply => :applicable
pre:fer => :preferable
com:pare => :comparable
ad:mire => :admirable
(c) Suffixes that influence stress in the stem
>Primary stress on the last syllable of the stem:
-ous: ad:vantage => ,advan:tageous, cou:rageous, :injure => in :jurious
-graphy: :photo =>, pho:tography
-ic: :climate => cli:matic

125

-ion: :perfect => per:fection

-ive: :reflex => re:flexive
>Suffixes which throw the stress two syllables before them:
-atepronounced [eit]: to :alternate, to :cultivate, to :animate, to ap:proximate
pronounced [it]: :accurate, :obstinate, :delicate

Let's remember...
The position of stress in prefixed words depends very much on whether
the prefix preserves it meaning or not in combination with the root. When
the meaning of the prefix is preserved, then this receives secondary stress,
while the primary stress falls on a syllable in the root of the lexical item. If
the prefix is not perceived to have a meaning in combination with a root,
then it is not stressed.
In the case of suffixed words, the position of stress is influenced by the
type of suffix: there are suffixes which do not seem to affect the original
stress in the root; then there are suffixes that attract stress on the syllable
containing them, and finally, some suffixes tend to change the position of
stress from one syllable to another within the root.
8.5.2.2. Stress in compound words
Compounds are composed of more than one root morpheme but function grammatically
and/or semantically as a single word: sunflower, easy-going, chatterbox, hot-water-bottle.
In most cases the two roots are free morphemes themselves.
A combination category is grammatically unitary when it functions as a grammatical
constituent which is normally composed of a sequence of word classes. Thus, daybreak is
composed of the noun day plus the verb break, but such a noun verb combination does
normally constitute a noun phrase functioning as the subject of a sentence as in Daybreak
comes early in summer.
A compound is semantically unitary because it has a meaning representing a specialized
conjugation of the meaning of its components.
Compounds are written in various ways:
- as one (solid) word: armchair, sweetheart, pickpocket;
- with the components separated by a hyphen: gear-change, fruit-cake, merry-go-round;
- with the component elements separated by space: desk lamp, battery charger.
In the last case there would be no indication to the foreign learner that the pair of words is
to be treated as a compound. There is no clear dividing line between two-word compounds
and pairs of words that simply happen to occur together quite frequently.
The accentual pattern of compounds depends both on their morphemic structure (i.e.
number and arrangement of constituent morphemes) and on semantic unity. One element
of a compound word carries primary accent, while the other(s) will carry one (or more)
secondary accent(s). In most cases it is the first syllable in a compound which carries the

126

primary accent, a fact which corresponds to the general tendency in English of placing the
main accent towards the beginning of words rather than towards their end.
A few rules can be given though these are not completely reliable.
a. Stress on the first element. The most familiar type of compound is the one which
combines two nouns, and normally has the stress on the first element, e.g. :typewriter,
:sunrise, :headache, :honeymoon,: word-stress, :newspaper.
b. Primary stress on the final element. In this category there are a number of possible
combinations:
Compounds with an adjectival first element and the ed morpheme at the end
e.g. bad:tempered, half-:opened, left-:handed.
Compounds in which the first element is a numeral:
e.g. three-:wheeler, second-:hand
Compounds that function as adverbs:
e.g. Qorth-:West, down-:stream
Compounds that function as verbs and have an adverbial first element:
e.g. toill-:treat, to up:grade.
As Pyles and Algeo (1992:263) point out, this primary-secondary type of stress in
compounds marks the close connection between the constituents that give the compound
its special meaning. In effect, it welds together the elements and thus makes the difference
between the members of the following pairs:
Example

hotbed place that encourages

rapid growth
highbrow intellectual
makeup cosmetics
headhunter savage
loudspeaker sound amplifier
hotrod car whose engine has
been changed so it can go much
faster

hot bed warm sleeping place

high brow result of receiding hair
make up reconcile
head hunter leader of a safari
loud speaker noisy talker.
hot rod heated piece of metal

Give the accentual pattern of the following compounds: greenhouse, hot dog,
briefcase, blackboard and then switch it with the accentual patterns of the free
combinations corresponding to them. Analyse the resulting changes in
meaning as well.
8.6. Variable stress
It would be wrong to imagine that the stress pattern is always fixed and unchanging in
English words. The accentual patterns of words are liable to change. Considerable changes
of this kind have taken place within the last hundred years.

127

Hesitancy and variation of accentual pattern occurring at present are the result of rhythmic
and analogical pressures, both of which entail in addition considerable changes of sound
pattern in words.
A. Rhythmic changes. In some words containing more than two syllables there appears to
be a tendency to avoid a succession of weak syllables, especially if these have [] or [i].
Thus, in words of three syllables there is variation between [:_ _] and [_ :_] patterns, e.g.
exquisite [:ekskwizit] or *[iks:kwizit], integral *[:intigrl] or [in:tgrl], sonorous
*[:snrs] or [s:n:rs].
Primary stress is also unstable in some compounds, e.g. camp-fire, lacklustre, life-size
[laif:saiz] or [:laifsaiz], overcast [:Uvka:st] or [Uv:ka:st[. However, the number of
truly unstable compounds is relatively small. Although many may be subject to accentual
shift determined by connected speech, the main effect is that stress on a final element of a
compound tends to move to the preceding element/syllable if the following word begins
with a strongly stressed syllable.
Example

bad-:tempered but a :bad-tempered :person, after:noon but :afternoon :tea.

B. Analogical changes refer to derived forms, which tend to preserve the accentual pattern
of the stem, e.g. com:pare [km:pE]com:parable [km:Erbl] instead of :comparable
[:kmprbl], ad:mire [d:mai] ad:mirable [d:mairbl] instead of :admirable
[:Qdmirbl].
C. A third type of stress changes is due to the variety of English considered. Several
patterns distinguish British and American English pronunciation. Thus, stress patterns may
differ, resulting in a different pattern of full and reduced (//) vowels. This pattern is
evident in the following pairs.
laboratory
garage
massage
cervical

American English
/:lb()rtri/
/g:ra:/
/m:sa:/
/:svikl/

British English
/:lbrtri/
/:gra:/
/:msa:/
/sr:vaikl/
(Parker&Riley, 2005:145)

8.7. Summary
In this unit we have investigated the second supra-segmental phoneme, namely
word-stress, considering the factors that contribute to the production and
perception of a certain prominent syllable in words. The position of word
stress was dealt with in details, showing that this depends on a number of
factors, among which the type of words (simple or complex), the lexical class
of the words in question (i.e. verbs, nouns, adjectives), the structure of
syllables, and the number of syllables the words contain. Moreover, we have
shown that accent is not stable: it varies according to the rhythm of the clause,

128

and also to the variety of English employed.

8.8. Evaluation
1. Accent is a suprasegmental feature of language, which discharges a
distinctive function, since, just like the segmental phonemes, it can signal
differences in meaning.
a) Over what length does accent (stress) extend?
b) What does it consist of?
2. Syllable prominence is due to a variety of factors. What are they?
3. Accent discharges its function in English in two ways. What are they?
4. Analyze the following words from the accentual point of view. Show
whether a change in their stress pattern brings about a change in their
grammatical function: affix, increase, abstract, import, insult, contest,
contrast, replay, survey.
5. The shift in accent from one syllable to another is sometimes marked by
changes in the segmental phonemes of the words in question. Minimal pairs of
the incense (n) vs. incense (v) type are very rare in English. There are, instead,
numerous examples of shift of accent co-occurring with minor segmental
changes, mainly the reduction of the vowels in unstressed syllables to [].
Discuss the accentual patterns of the words below and indicate the syntactic
function (and the meaning) corresponding to each of the two accentual
patterns they possess: contract, convict, refuse, progress, rebel, project,
minute, alternate, supplement, invalid.
6. Identify the appropriate accentual patterns of the italicized words (simple or
compound) or phrases, as revealed by their syntactic function:
1. a. He spoke with no trace of accent.
b. The way you accent these words tells me you were not born in England.
2. a. Thats very abstract.
b. One can abstract several general rules from the examination of these
facts.
3. a. He was not on the missing list.
b. He couldnt find the missing list; its been missing for several days.
4. a. You will need a permit to visit the place.
c. This job does not permit of any delay.
7. Read the following words aloud, reading across the page. Place the primary
stress on the appropriate syllable:
major
majority
sacrifice
sacrificial
reference
referee
incident
incidental
continent
continental
simplify
simplification
occupy
occupation

129

product
beautify
converse
nominate
photograph
object
subject
person

production
beautification
conversational
nomination
photography
objective
subjective
personify

nominee
photographic
objectification
subjectification
personification

8. English speakers do not always agree as to which syllable in a word should

be stressed: should contribute, for example, be pronounced CONtribute or
conTRIBute? Here are some words which are stressed differently by different
speakers. Which syllable do you stress in each case? Check the pronounciation
in a dictionary.
a. adversary
b. applicable
c. centrifugal
d. cigarette
e. comparable
f. contribute
g. controversy
h. (an industrial) dispute
i. distribute
j. exquisite
k. ice cream
l. kilometre
m. magazine
n. pejorative
o. primarily
p subsistence
(Source: Trask, R.L., 1994:28)

130

Unit 9. IATOAATIOA
Contents
9.1. Introduction...........................................................................................................130
9.2. Competences.........................................................................................................130
9.3. Form of intonation................................................................................................131
9.3.1. Primary accent ..................................................................................................131
9.3.2. The tone-unit......................................................................................................133
9.3.3. The structure of the tone-unit ............................................................................134
9.4. Pitch possibilities in tone-units ............................................................................135
9.5. Graphical representation of English intonation .........................................................136
9.6. Functions of intonation.........................................................................................137
9.7. The use of the main tones in English ....................................................................139
9.8. Final word on intonation......................................................................................140
9.9. Summary ...............................................................................................................140
9.10. Evaluation ...........................................................................................................141
9.1. Introduction
The aim of this unit is to discuss some central issues directly concerned with the third
supra-segmental phoneme, namely intonation. The aspects tackled relate to the form and
functions of intonation, as well as the use of the two basic tones (falling and rising) in
English discourse.

9.2. Competences
Having covered the material in this unit, the students will be able to intone
correctly shorter and longer stretches of speech. They will also be able to use intonation
for the purpose of showing their mood or their attitude towards the interlocutors.

Average time for covering unit 9: 3 to 4 hours

What is intonation? No definition is completely satisfactory, but any attempt at a definition

must recognize that pitch of the voice plays the most important part. 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 analysing
intonation is to listen to the speakers pitch and recognize what it is doing. We describe
pitch in terms of high and low.

131

Pitch changes in English have three principal functions:

a) they signal the division of utterance into INTONATIONAL PHRASES (besides pitch
change, other phonetic cues often mark such boundaries, in particular pause and final
syllable lengthening) boundaries between intonational phrases generally correspond
syntactically with clause boundaries;
b) they signal syllables with primary and secondary accent, both in the citation of isolated
words, and in longer utterances of speech;
c) the shape of the tunes produced by the pitch changes can carry various types of
meaning, primarily discoursal and attitudinal.
Particularly important is the pitch pattern beginning at the primary accent and ending at the
end of intonational phrase often called the NUCLEAR TONE.
It is very important to point out that we are not interested in all aspects of speakers pitch;
the only things that should interest us are those which carry some linguistic information.
In what follows, we shall try to provide to two questions, namely:
- What is the FORM of intonation?
- What is the FUACTIOA of intonation?
9.3. The form of intonation
Longer stretches of speech, like sentences, are divided into the so-called intonational
phrases14, the boundaries between them being marked by a combination of internal and
external factors. Most obvious among the external ones is pause: in the following
examples pauses can occur at the points where boundaries are indicated by (/);
Example

When we started/ early in the morning / the weather was beautiful; / the sun
was shining, / the sky was blue / and there were no clouds at all/
Often, as an alternative to pause, speakers may lengthen the final syllable before the
boundary.
These external cues are supported by internal factors: (i) if one of the pitch patterns
associated with the nuclear tone is completed at a certain point, this in itself may indicate a
boundary, and (ii) rapid change of the pitch height of unaccented syllables will generally
only occur at boundaries.
9.3.1. Primary accent.
The pronunciations of single words and of longer intonational phrases are both described
in terms of an obligatory PRIMARY ACCEAT and an optional SECOADARY
ACCEAT. In the realization of primary accent in single words, the final pitch accent in a
word or intonational phrase is usually the most prominent (and hence is referred to as the
primary accent), while a pitch accent on an earlier syllable is referred to as the secondary
14

An intonational phrase is a phonological unit with the following properties: (i) it is the largest
phonological unit into which an utterance can be divided, (ii) it has a specifiable intonational structure
including a single most prominent point (the nucleus), and it matches up in some way with syntactic and
discourse structure. Synonymous terms for it are: phonemic clause, tone group/unit or breath group.

132

accent. The final pitch accent identifies the syllable which is called the NUCLEUS, and
begins one of a number of pitch patterns known as NUCLEAR TONES. In other words, an
accented syllable which carries a change in pitch direction is called a nuclear or tonic
syllable. Its accent is similarly called a primary accent, or a nuclear (tonic) accent.
a. Simple tones
We will begin by looking at intonation in the shortest piece of speech we can find the
single syllable. At this point a new term will be introduced: we need a name for a
continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a clear pause, and we will call this
an utterance. We are going to look at the intonation of one-syllable utterances, as these are
quite common, and give us a comparatively easy introduction to the subject.
Two common one-syllable utterances are yes and no. The first thing we notice is 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 behaviour of the
pitch in these examples is TONE; a one-syllable word can be said with either a level tone
or a moving tone. If you try saying yes or no with a level tone you may find the result
does not sound natural, and indeed English speakers do not use level tones on one-syllable
utterances very frequently. 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 a 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.
In talking about different tones, some idea of function has been introduced; speakers are
said to select from a choice of tones according to how they want the utterance to be heard,
and it is implied that the listener will hear one-syllable utterances said with different tones
as sounding different in some way.
In order to represent the three tones we introduced, we will use some marks placed before
the syllable in the following way:
Level tone: =yes =no
Falling tone: \ yes \ no
Rising tone: / yes / no
Obviously, this simple system for tone transcription could be extended to cover a greater
number of possibilities. For example, if we need to distinguish between a high level and
low level tone, we could represent this in the following way:
High level tone: #yes #no
Low level tone: =yes =no
b. Complex tones
Apart from the three simple tones that can be used on one-syllable utterances (level, fall
and rise), other more complex tones are also used. One that is quite frequently encountered
is the fall-rise tone, where the pitch falls and then rises again; another complex tone, which
is less frequently used, is the rise-fall in which the pitch follows the opposite movement.
These could be represented in the following way:
Fall-rise:

yes no

133

Rise-fall:

9yes

9no

Let's remember...
In English (just like in most of the other languages) there are two types of
tones, simple and complex. The simple tones are of 3 types: level, falling, and
rising. The complex tones are also of various kinds: rise-fall, fall-rise, risefall-rise, or fall-rise-fall.
9.3.2. The tone-unit.
For the purpose of analysing intonation, a unit generally greater in size than the syllable is
needed, and this unit is called the tone-unit; in its smallest form the tone-unit may consist
of only one syllable, so it would in fact be wrong to say that it is always composed of more
than one syllable. The tone-unit is difficult to define, and a couple of examples may help to
make it easier to understand the concept.
a) Let us begin with a one-syllable utterance:
/ you (syllables carrying a tone will be underlined).
b) In a three-syllable utterance:
is it / you,
the third syllable is more prominent than the other two and carries a rising tone. The other
two syllables will normally be much less prominent, and be said on a level pitch.
The above-given utterance is made up of three syllables, and composed of one tone-unit;
the only syllable that carries a tone is the third one. From now on, a syllable that carries a
tone will be called a tonic syllable. The tonic syllables have a high degree of prominence,
which is a property of stressed syllables, and a tonic syllable not only carries tone (which is
sometimes related to intonation, but also a type of stress that will be called tonic stress.
(Some linguists use the terms nucleus and nuclear stress for tonic syllable and tonic
stress).
c) The example can be extended to:
John is it /you
If there is a clear pause (silence) between John and is it you, then according to the
definition of an utterance given before, there are two utterances; however, it is quite likely
that a speaker would say John is it you with no pause, so that the four syllables would
make up a single utterance. In spite of the absence of any pause, the utterance would
normally be regarded as divided into two tone-units: John and is it you. Since it is very
difficult to lay down the conditions for deciding where the boundaries between tone-units
exist, the discussion of this matter will be postponed for a little later.
It should be possible to see now that the tone-unit has a place in a range of phonological
units that are in a hierarchical relationship: speech consists of a number of utterances
(the largest unit we shall consider); each utterance consists of one or more tone-units; each
tone-unit consists of one or more feet; each foot consists of one or more syllables; and
each syllable consists of one or more phonemes.

134

9.3.3. The structure of the tone-unit.

The tone-unit has a clearly defined internal structure, but the only component that has been
mentioned so far is the tonic syllable (nucleus). This syllable is an obligatory component
of the tone-unit. But apart from the tonic syllable, a tone-unit has other components, too.
The HEAD
Consider the following one-syllable utterance:
\ those
We can find the same tonic syllable in a longer utterance (still of one tone-unit);
:give me \those
The rest of the tone-unit in this example is the head. The first syllable has a stress mark;
this is important. A head is all that part of a tone-unit that extends from the first stressed
syllable up to (but not including) the tonic syllable. It follows that if there is no stressed
syllable before the tonic syllable, there cannot be a head. In the above example, the first
two syllables (words) are the head of the tone-unit. In the following example, the head is
the first five syllables:
:Bill :called to :give me \those
head
tonic syllable
In the next example, the tone-unit has no head, since the tonic syllable is preceded by
unstressed syllables:
in an \hour
The syllables in an are not stressed. They form a pre-head, which is another component
of the tone-unit.
The PRE-HEAD
The pre-head is composed of all the unstressed syllables in a tone-unit preceding the first
stressed syllable. Thus, pre-heads are found in two main environments:
i) When there is no head (i.e. no stressed syllable preceding the tonic syllable), as in
the example above:
ii) When there is a head, as in the following example:
in a :little :less than an \hour
pre-head head
tonic syllable
In this example, the pre-head consists of in a, the head consists of little less than an, and
the tonic syllable is hour.
The TAIL
It often happens that some unstressed syllables follow the tonic syllable. Any syllables (be
they stressed or unstressed) between the tonic syllable and the end of the tone unit are
called the tail. In the following examples, each tone-unit consists of an initial tonic syllable
and a tail:
\look at it
\both of them are here
/what did you say
When it is necessary to mark stress in a tail, we will use a special symbol, a raised dot ( ).
The above examples should, then, be transcribed as:
\look at it

135

/what

did you say

\both of them were here
This completes the list of tone-unit components. If we use brackets to indicate optional
components (that is, components which may be present or may be absent), we can
summarize tone-unit structure as follows:
(pre-head)
(head) tonic syllable (tail).
What we need to add is that the organization of the head and tonic syllable (or nucleus)
will depend not just on the syntax of the utterance, but crucially on where the speaker
places the sentence focus. This, in turn, depends on a variety of contextual and semantic
factors. Let us consider the following sentence:
I wanted to go to the ball.
It may have a structure of different kinds, depending on the speakers focus.
a) pre-head
head
tonic syllable
I
:wanted to :go to the \ball
In this case, the nuclear tone falls on ball.
b) pre-head
head
tonic syllable
tail
I
:wanted to
go
to the ball
\
In (b), the focus is on go.
Divide the following sentence into intonational phrases and then identify the
constituent elements of each phrase (punctuation marks have been omitted on
purpose!).
Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived with her mother at the edge
of the forest.

Let's remember...
The tone unit may contain 4 elements: a pre-head, a head, the nucleus/tonic
syllable, and a tail. Of all these, the nuclear syllable (i.e. the stressed syllable
which is also characterised by pitch movement) is absolutely necessary.

9.4. PITCH POSSIBILITIES IA TOAE-UAITS

It has been underlined several times that tone is carried by the tonic syllable, but intonation
is carried by the tone-unit.
In a one-syllable utterance, the single syllable must have one of the five tones described
previously. In a tone-unit of more than one syllable, the tonic syllable must have one of
those tones. If the tonic syllable is the final syllable, the tone will not sound much different
from that of a corresponding one-syllable tone-unit. For example, the word here will be
said in much the same way in the following:
/here

| 'shall we 'sit /here

136

However, if there are other syllables following the tonic syllable (i.e. if there is a tail), we
find that the pitch movement of the tone is not completed on the tonic syllable. If a tail
follows a tonic syllable that has a rising tone, it will almost always be found that the
syllable or syllables of the tail will continue to move upwards from the pitch of the rising
syllable. For example, if the word what is said on a rising tone, e.g. /what?, it might
have a pitch movement that could be diagrammed as follows:
/
The four syllables in /what did you say might be said like this:

with the pitch of the syllables in the tail getting progressively higher. In such cases, the
tonic syllable is the syllable on which the pitch movement of the tone begins, but that pitch
movement is completed over the rest of the tone unit (i.e. the tail). If, in rising
progressively higher, the pitch reaches the highest part of the speakers normal pitch range,
subsequent syllables will continue at that level. The situation is similar with the falling
tone, only in opposite direction.
9.5. Graphical representation of english intonation
For the sake of analysis we shall have to record English intonation graphically. In doing so,
we shall use of the following set of symbols:
a) - a dot () for an unstressed syllable;
- a dash (-) for a stressed syllable;
- an upward curve ( ) for a stressed syllable pronounced with a rise in pitch within that
syllable;
- a downward curve ( ) for a stressed syllable pronounced with a fall in pitch within
that syllable;
- a vertical line ( | ) for a pause marking the end of a syntagm or that of a sentence.
These symbols will be inserted between two horizontal lines, representing the range, i.e.
the distance between two pitch levels.
b) Dots and arrows
- the tonic syllable is marked by a large dot followed by a curve indicating the pitch
movement:

- the syllables carrying a secondary accent are represented by a larger dot [] and the
unaccented ones by a small dot []. The following example illustrates this:
Theres nothing I can do
.
. . .

137

c) If we want to indicate intonation in an utterance we will make use of the following

symbols:
[\ ], [/ ], [^], [], []. These are used in front of the syllable carrying a primary accent, based
on a change in pitch direction.
9.6. Functions of intonation
An interest in the study of intonation patterns is justified by intonations functional
complexity which has been fully recognized since the 1960s.
Intonation makes it easier for a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey.
The ways in which intonation does this are very complex, and many suggestions have been
made for ways of isolating different functions. Among the most often proposed are the
following:
a) Attitudinal function. Intonation enables us to express emotions and attitudes as we
speak, and this adds a special kind of meaning to the spoken language.
We can all mean different things with the same words by modulating our intonation. Thus,
an utterance like come in can be interpreted as a command or a polite invitation. But in
general, the meaning of an utterance depends on a number of factors. First of all, it
depends on the semantic content of the words as well as on the grammatical and logical
relationships between the words that appear in the utterance. Secondly, and less obviously,
the meaning of an utterance also depends on the context of utterance, i.e. the linguistic
context in which the words are uttered and the background situation which is considered
relevant by both the speaker and the listener. Finally, this meaning depends on the
paralinguistic features, e.g. gestures, facial expressions and voice quality employed.
Katamba (1989:248) is of the opinion that there are no cast iron rules which govern the
use of intonation to signal attitude. There are only tendencies. The right interpretation of an
utterance depends only in part on intonation. () It would be nave to attempt to establish
a simple, one-to-one correlation between attitude and intonation.
b) Accentual function. Intonation helps to produce the effect of prominence on syllables
that need to be perceived as stressed. In particular the placing of tonic stress on a particular
syllable marks out the words to which it belongs as the most important in the tone-unit.
Katamba (1989: 242) points out that the accentual function is the most basic function of
intonation. In unmarked cases tonic stress is often used to make a syllable in the lexical
word containing new information stand out. But in marked cases, the tonic syllable can be
the most prominent syllable of virtually any word which the speaker chooses to highlight.
Consider the following sentence which may be pronounced with 5 intonational patterns
(the nuclear syllable is underlined):
Example

He travelled from Qew York.

He travelled from Qew York.
He travelled from Qew York.
He travelled from Qew York.
He travelled from Qew York.

138

c) Grammatical function (segmenting 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, such things as the placement of boundaries
between phrases, clauses or sentences, the difference between questions and statements
and the use of grammatical subordination may be indicated. This function is illustrated in
the following examples where the slashes mark the tone group boundaries.
Example

When she left / the baby started crying (main clause separated from the
subordinate clause).
Mark and Jane or Helen / went to the party (noun phrase separated
from the verb phrase).
Old /men and women / like going to the opera (determiner separated
from the noun phrase).
d) Discourse function. When we talk, we rarely produce isolated utterances. Usually,
utterances are strung together, and in conversation the speaker and the listener often swop
their role. Intonation plays an important role in structuring and gluing together the
discourse.
Looking at the act of speaking in a broader way, we can see that intonation can signal to
the listener what is to be taken as new information (which the speaker assumes that the
listener is not familiar with) and what is already given (i.e. the information known or
assumed to be already known to the addressee). Given information is kept in the
background, while new information is foregrounded, or brought into focus. Imagine the
teacher taking the attendance and asking:
Who is \absent to'day? (absent = new information)
One of the students answers:
\John is 'absent today. (John = new information, absent = old information)
Furthermore, intonation can suggest when the speaker is indicating some sort of contrast or
link with material in another tone-unit, as in:
Would you like /one or \two lumps of sugar?
In conversation, intonation can mark turn-taking: a falling intonation usually indicates a
completed turn, without the expectation of ones interlocutor replying. A rising intonation
gives a strong indication that the speaker intends to continue, or that a response from the
interlocutor is expected.
We shall not go into details with respect to the functions of intonation, but rather will try to
demonstrate how the same sequence of words may represent different communicative
sentence-types and have different connotations when intoned differently.
1) a. :Has her com:plexion become more or less :beautiful after she has :had a baby?
b. :Has her com:plexion become more or less beautiful after she has had a baby?
2). a. :Will you :have one or two :boxes of chocolate?
b. Will you have one or two boxes of chocolate?
3) a. There was a :tough compe:tition. I thought he would be beaten (and he was).
b. I :thought he would be beaten (but he wasnt).

139

4) a. :Couldnt you :type this :letter sooner? (a request)

b. :Couldnt you type this :letter sooner? (a reprimand)
5) He has :promised to give up smoking.
a. :Does he :mean what he says? (mere question)
b. :Does he :mean what he says? (non-question with an insisted or sceptical note).
Sentences like I beg your pardon and Pardon pronounced with the falling tone are
perceived as excuses or expressions of regret for something one has said or done. Being
used, however, to express the idea of the listeners not having understood something, these
sentences must be pronounced with the rising tone.
Thus, in all these examples it is intonation that is responsible for the different
interpretations of the structurally homonymous sentences.
Let's remember...
The main functions of intonation are:
- the attitudinal function,
- the grammatical function,
- the discourse function, and
- the accentual function.
9.7. The use of the main tones in English
There are 2 main tones in English (also called 'tunes'):
1) The falling tone, or tune I is categorical in character. It expresses finality or semantic
completeness of a non-final sense group. This kind of tone is used with:
a) statements: Its cold.
I think so.
There were :no :clouds at all.
b) commands or orders and categorical requests (expressed by imperative or interrogative
sentences):
:Make haste!
:Will you :come to the blackboard.
c) special questions (wh-questions):
:Why did you :put the :table here?
:Where do I sign?
:When do you come?
:How do I look?
d) disjunctive questions: a disjunctive question is made up of two parts. The first part being
a statement, the appropriate tone is falling. The second part is a general question in form.
Its intonation depends on the speaker. If he is sure of what he states in the first part and
doesnt want a confirmation of his statement, the question is pronounced with a falling
tone.

140

You are :not busy, are you?

2) The rising tone (tune II) is non-categorical in character. Therefore it is appropriate in
non-categorical statements. It indicates semantic incompleteness and dependence on the
neighbouring sense group. It is generally used in the following communicative types of
sentences:
a) non-categorical statements (implying doubt, regret, protest, hesitation):
I :didnt say it was bad. (protest)
b) general questions (requiring yes or no answers)
:Are you very :busy just now?
:Will this :take me to the station?
c) non-categorical and polite requests:
:Could you :speak a little louder?
d) disjunctive questions (i.e. in the second part of the disjunctive questions, if the speaker
is not quite sure of what he states in the first part and wants some confirmation of his
statement):
You are :not busy, are you?
e) repeated questions (where the stress falls only on the interrogative word):
What did you say? (the speaker repeats his question because he couldnt hear
the answer well).
f) enumeration:
I shall buy a pullover, a scarf, a hat, a jacket ...
(3) Complex tones (fall-rise, rise-fall, fall-rise-fall and rise-fall-rise) are used to indicate a
variety of emotional attitudes.
a) fall-rise: You cant? (the speaker implies unwillingness to believe)
b) rise-fall: :What a ^surprise! (sarcasm, envy)
9.8. A final word on intonation
Foreign learners of English at advanced levels should be given some training to be able to
recognise and copy English intonation; the only efficient way to learn to use intonation of a
language is the way a child acquires the intonation of its first language, and the training
referred to above should help the adult learner of English to acquire English intonation in a
similar (though much slower) way through listening and talking to English speakers. It is
perhaps discouraging to say, but learners of English who are not able to talk regularly with
native speakers of English, or who are not able at least to listen regularly to colloquial
English, are not likely to learn English intonation, though they may learn very good
pronunciation of the segments and use stress correctly.
9.10. Summary
This unit has offered the students a picture of the form and functions of
English intonation, in an attempt to help them sound as close to native

141

speakers of English as possible. To this aim, students were introduced to the

graphical representation of intonation and a series or practical activities that
may help them practice intonation on their own. Furthermore, they became
aware of how intonation can make a difference in the feelings and attitudes
conveyed by speakers.
9.11. Evaluation
Tune I
1. Statements. Read the following sentences, paying attention to the correct
intonation.
It was :quite $good.
I :like it :very $much.
I :wouldnt :mind :seeing it again.
I :dont think I can.
The :flowers were b eautiful.
They had :difficulty in :finding accommo dation.
2. Repeat the following phrases according to the pattern:
Were late
at night
by heart
I know
by day
at sight
Just now
hes gone
of course
Its mine
at school
in b ed
3. Read the following statements with the correct intonation:
I :heard him :play at the :Albert Hall.
:Alice was be:ginning to get :very tired.
Its the :early :bird that :catches the worm.
:Too many :cooks :spoil the b roth.
She has a :very :small :private income.
He :works :all :day in the city.
:What a :pity he :couldnt come sooner.
4. Wh-questions. Read the following questions with appropriate falling
intonation.
:Why did you :change your mind?
:Who on :earth was that?
:Whats the time?
:When can you come?
:Whats the date?
:Why dont you listen?
:What have you done?
:When do the :shops open?
:Where do you :want to sit?

142

:Which do you :like b est?

:How many :pennies are there in a shilling?
:How :long have you been waiting?
5. Commands. Read the following imperative sentences, paying attention to
the falling tone.
:Dont be a :stupid idiot!
:Take your :feet off the chair!
:Come and have :dinner with us!
:Have some chocolate, Eliza!
:Bring me a chair!
:Buy me a newspaper!
:Lend me your p enknife!
:Find :page :twenty- nine!
:Run and :fetch a hammer, :John!
:See if you can!
:Turn on the radio!
6. Exclamations. Read the following exclamations.
:Good Heavens!
:How extraordinary!
:What a :very :pretty dress!
Thank you!
:Thank you :very much!
What a :cold day!
:How lovely it all looks!
:Welcome :home again!
:What a question!
:What a :terrible tragedy!
:What a :glorious view!
:Poor :old thing!
7. Question-tags (remark and tag both on falling intonation). This pattern is
used in remarks where the statement is obviously true and the tag merely a
polite phrase to invite the interest of the other person. It is also used where the
speaker feels reasonably sure that his remark is correct and expects the listener
to agree with him.
Read the following sentences, paying attention to the intonation marks.
-To:morrows Monday, isnt it?
Youre :wondering who I am, arent you?
Im :rather late, arent I?
He :wasnt :very p olite, was he?
You :dont be lieve me, do you?
I could :try a gain, couldnt I?

143

We shall :see each :other a gain, shant we?

It :looks like rain, doesnt it?
We :had no choice, had we?
They :should have known, shouldnt they?
That was :most un fair, wasnt it?
Tune II
8. Statements
Tune II is used in its simple from for statements made as requests, remarks of
concern, sorrow, apology and almost any emotion that makes an objective
statement less definite. Read the following sentences, using the correct
intonation:
I :wish I could :speak :English like /that.
I :shant be /long.
:John will be :here /soon.
I :wont drive too /fast(so dont worry)
:Thats all /right.
:Thats the :sort of :man he /is.
:Thanks :very /much.
If you /like.
:Thats /funny.
:Good /morning.
Its :all the /same.
9. Yes/Ao questions
:Are you :quite /sure?
:Didnt they :promise to :do it at /once?
:Have you been :staying here /long?
:Do you su:ppose theres :any :chance of /meeting him?
:Did :John :post :that /letter?
:Can I /see it?
:Did you go a:way for /Easter?
:Would you :like it :painted /red?
:Is it :possible to :get it /out?
:Are you :sure it can be /done?
:Can you :come to /lunch tomorrow?
:Would you :like a:nother :slice of /bread?
:Were you in :time for the /concert last night?
Can :anybody :tell me the :name of the :young :man who was /speaking to me
just now?
10. Requests
This is the typically polite and encouraging intonation. It often denotes a
somewhat formal politeness, i.e. casualness and indifference may be present as
in the case of statements (with Tune II). It is, however, more polite than Tune

144

I, but not so polite as Tune II with emphasis. A sentence which with Tune I is
a command becomes a request if Tune II is used.
Read the following requests with the appropriate intonation:
:Let me :know how you get /on.
:Dont go :back just /yet!
:May I :fetch your /coat?
:Come and :see me /soon!
:Dont :trouble to /answer it!
:Let me :know how you /get there!
Ex:cuse me one /moment!
:Mind what you are /doing!
:Dont be /silly!
:Dont :tease your :little /sister!
:Lets :try /again!
11. Question-tags
If the tag is spoken on the rising pattern of Tune II, we understand that the
speaker is less certain of his remark; it is presented more as a true question.
The speaker suggests: I believe that this is so, but please correct me if I am
wrong. By using this rising tag he is asking the listeners opinion, and would
not be very surprised if he were contradicted.
Read the following sentences using Tune II for the tags.
It :isnt sold, is it?
You can :drive a car, cant you?
You were :late this morning, werent you?
We :last :met in March, didnt we?
I :ought to :give it back, oughtnt I?
Its a :long :way fromhere, isnt it?
He was :top of his class, wasnt he?
You :do smoke, dont you?
We could :find :out tomorrow, couldnt we?
12. Shift the position of the nucleus in the following sentences and analyse the
resulting modifications in the structure of their intonation patterns:
-I dont think he knows (+2)
-Im going home at six (+2)
-George is a fraud (+2)
-What can you see? (+2)
-I dont think he ought to go (+3)
-How do you know its wrong? (+1)
-I dont want the money (+1).
13. Choose appropriate intonation patterns for the following sentences. Pay
attention to the possibility of choosing several intonation patterns for each
sentence and specify the change in meaning. Notice the deliberate omission of

145

the comas.
- I asked the captain Mr. Brown.
- Janet my wife and John have left.
- Would you like one or two lumps of sugar.
- I thought it would rain.
- I want more experienced people.
- John my brother who lives in Oxford loves fishing.
14. Commands and requests are also distinguished by means of intonation.
Transform the commands in the first column into requests in the second
column:
I
II
:Ring me :up at \twelve!
Ring me up at twelve!
:Will you :pass the \sugar, please?
Will you pass the sugar, please?
Alter it!
\Alter it!
Ex\cuse me one moment!
Excuse me one moment!
Come in!
:Come \in!
:Dont :trouble to \answer it!
Dont trouble to answer it.
15. The following sentences are given with intonation marks. Sketch the pitch
within the lines below, leaving a gap between each syllable.
a) :Which was the cheap one did you say
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------b) I :only :want to taste it
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------c) She would have thought it was /\obvious
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------d) There :wasnt :even a :piece of bread in the house
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------e) Now will you believe me
--------------------------------------------------------------------16. 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 on the text
the intonation you think is appropriate (mark only the response). Punctuation
has been left out, since it can cause confusion.
Its rather cold (doubtful)
a) It looks nice for a swim.

146

b) Why not get a car?

c) Ive lost my ticket.
d) You cant have an ice cream.
e) What time are the buses?

Because I cant afford it (impatient)

You are silly then (Stating the obvious)
Oh please (pleading)
Seven oclock seven thirty and eight.
(listing)
f) She got eight A levels.
Eight (impressed)
g) How much work have you got to do? Ive got to do the shopping (and
more things after that)
17. The following sentences are given without punctuation. Underline the
appropriate tonic syllable places and mark tone-unit boundaries where you
think are appropriate.

a) (he wrote the letter in a sad way) he wrote the letter sadly
b) (its regrettable that he wrote the letter) he wrote the letter sadly
c) four plus six divided by two equals five
d) four plus six divided by two equals seven
e) we broke one thing after another fell down
f) we broke one thing after another that night.

147

Unit 10. TYPES OF PROAUACIATIOA (VARIETIES OF EAGLISH)

Contents
10.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................147
10.2. Competences.......................................................................................................147
10.3. Regional aspects .................................................................................................148
10.4. Class dialects......................................................................................................148
10.5. Age differences in pronunciation ........................................................................149
10.6. Received Pronunciation......................................................................................149
10.7. American English................................................................................................150
10.8. Canadian English ...............................................................................................154
10.9. Australian English and Qew Zealand English ....................................................154
10.10. Interference .......................................................................................................157
10.11. Summary ...........................................................................................................160
10.1. Introduction
The last unit of this course-book is meant to offer the students an overview of some of
the varieties of English spoken as a mother tongue. Focus will be placed on the
differences at the level of the vocalic and consonantal systems of these regional
varieties, as well as on word-stress and intonation. The Englishes to be investigated are
British, American, Canadian, and Australian English. At the same time, within each of
these regional varieties, further pronunciation features will be identified, depending on
the social class the speakers belong to and on the age of the users.

10.2. Competences
Once the students have covered the material in this unit they will be more aware
of and also capable of identifying the differences in pronunciation between one variety
of English and another. Due to the fact that they are exposed mainly to British and
American English, it is assumed that these will not pose any problems. The students are
expected to name the most striking characteristics of the less known varieties of
English, such as Canadian, Australian or New Zealand English. They will also be
capable of identifying whether a speaker of a certain variety belongs to the higher or
lower social scale or whether s/he is young or old.

Average time for covering unit 10: 2 to 3 hours

148

In English the number of pronunciations is very great. These different pronunciations are
determined by a number of factors, such as region, social status, and age of speakers.
10.3. Regional aspects
English has inherited a lot of regional pronunciations because during the period of
feudalism the isolation of localities and the poor intercourse between them encouraged the
existence of a number of dialects. Since the Industrial Revolution there have been greater
facilities for the increased mobility of the population and, consequently, improved
communication between people speaking different dialects. It is also true that there is a
general tendency towards levelling out local (or regional) dialects, which is reinforced by
the introduction of universal and compulsory education and the promotion of a particular
form of English through news broadcasts. Thus, rural traditional dialects are dying out.
However, the number of dialects is still great.
An example of a regional British dialect is Northern English. This dialect developed in the
northern part of England. At its core there is the rural component: Qorth associates
farming, pastures, and beautiful landscape in the Lake District or in the Yorkshire Moors.
() It has been e region characterized by mining and the demanding conditions of life that
came with it, by early industrialization and consequently urbanization, hard labor and
poverty (Schneider, 2010:69). From among the main features that characterize this dialect,
the following are worth mentioning:
- The RP // sound is replaced in NE by /u/: cut /kut/, shut /ut/, come /kum/, somebody
/sumbdi/;
- The /a:/ sound which elsewhere tends to be long is short in the north: passed /past/; fast
/fast/;
- Diphthongs are usually monophthongized:
/ou/ to /o:/: go /go:/, groan /gro:n/
/ei/ to /e:/: face /fe:s/, came /ke:m/
/ai/ to /i:/: frightening /fri:tnin/.
- Sometimes monophthongs are diphthongized: lean /lin/, feet /fit/.
10.4. Social differences (class dialects)
Within the same region there is a hierarchy of class dialects, representing differences
between educated and uneducated speech. In England, class differences have often been
more prominent than those of age or place. It is true that in the twentieth century England
was much democratized, but the language differences are far from having disappeared.
One can still tell much about a persons family, his school background, his general position
in life by the way he speaks. Social lines are hard to cross, and language is perhaps the
greatest barrier. One may make a million pounds and own several cars and a place in the
country, but his vowels and consonants (and nouns and verbs and sentence patterns) will
still show that he is not a part of the upper crust.
Consider the following contrast between educated and uneducated speech.
Example

Tuesday
looking
better

Educated speech
[:tju:zdi]
[:lukiN]
[:bet]

Uneducated speech
[tSu:zdi]
[:lukin]
[:bed] or [:ber]

149

house
take

[haus]
[tHeik]

[aus/Qus]
[taik]

10.5. Age differences

The sound system of any language is continually undergoing changes. That is why there
always co-exist conservative old-fashioned forms used by the older generation with
advanced innovated forms, used by the younger generation.
tyre
tower
cross
poor

Conservative (old speakers)

[:tai]
[:tau]
[:kr:s]
[pu]

Advanced (young speakers)

[:ta:]
[ta:]
[krs]
[p:]

The number of pronunciations being so great, the learners of English might ask themselves
the question: Which of the various forms of pronunciation should we acquire?
English phoneticians recommend one kind of pronunciation that has come to stand out
above all others, conveying associations of respectable social standing and good education.
This prestige pronunciation is known as Received Pronunciation, or RP.
The term received shows that although this form of pronunciation had not been imposed
on people by any higher authority, it is received or accepted by the majority of native
speakers because:
- it is most widely understood not only in Great Britain, but also in the USA, South
Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada;
- it is free of dialectal peculiarities.
10.6. Received Pronunciation (Standard British pronunciation)
The ancestral form of RP developed in the late Middle Ages, in London and the south-east
as the accent of the court and the upper classes. During the 19th century, RP became the
accent of public schools, and was soon the main sign that people had received a good
education. When the radio broadcasting began in 1920s, the RP having few regional
overtones and being more widely understood than any regional accent, it came to be
adopted by the BBC. During World War II, the accent became associated in many peoples
minds with the voice of freedom. The terms RP and BBC English became synonymous.
These days, with the breakdown of rigid divisions between social classes and the
development of mass media, RP is no longer the preserve of social elite. It is now best
described as an educated accent (or accents) as now there are several varieties. The most
widely used variety is the one heard on the BBC.
Early BBC recordings show the remarkable extent to which RP has altered over just a few
decades, and they make the point that no accent is immune to change, not even the best. In
addition, RP is no longer as widely used as about 50 years ago. Only about 3% of British
people speak it in a pure form now. Most other educated people have developed an accent
which is a mixture of RP and various regional characteristics. This kind of accent is known
as modified RP.

150

But on the other hand, it is not uncommon these days to find educated people expressing
hostility towards RP, both within and outside Britain, because of its traditional association
with conservative values.
Nonetheless, RP continues to be the most widely used accent in the Court, Parliament, the
Church of England, the legal profession and in other national institutions. It has received
more linguistic research than any other accent. It is the accent taught to foreigners who
want to learn a British model, and it is thus widely used abroad. In fact, today there are far
more foreign speakers of RP in other countries than mother-tongue users in Britain.
10.7. American English
The American language, as a name for the English spoken by Americans is as much a
misnomer as is the Mexican language for the Spanish spoken by Mexicans. There is no
essential difference between the English of America and that of Great Britain or that of
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, or various other countries of the
world to which the speech of the small northern European tribe of the English has spread.
The English language in all of its national varieties throughout the world is remarkably
uniform. There are, nevertheless, variations between national varieties, just as there are
variations within them.
Since language undergoes no changes as a result of crossing an ocean, the first Englishspeaking colonists in America continued to speak as they had done in England. The
Englishs first attempts to colonize North America took place at the end of the 16th century,
but those settlements quickly disappeared. The first viable colony was settled in Virginia in
1607 and it was called Jamestown, after King James I. Then, in 1620 the first group of
puritan settlers - the Pilgrim Fathers - arrived on the Mayflower searching for a land
where they could found a new religious kingdom. They landed at Cape Cod, in Plymouth,
Massachusetts, and established a settlement there.
It is important to appreciate that these two patterns of settlement resulted in different
linguistic consequences.
The southern explorers came mainly from the West Country, and brought with them the
characteristic west-country accent, with the voicing of the s-sound (i.e. [s] is pronounced
as [z]) and the r pronounced after vowels. Strong hints of this accent can still be heard in
the speech communities living in some of the isolated villages in the area. These varieties
(called tiedwater accents) are said to be closest to the sound of Shakespearean English.
In contrast, the Puritans came mainly from East Anglia and the surrounding countries, and
their accent was quite different notably lacking the r after vowels (as in present day
Standard English). This tendency not to pronounce the r-sound is still a main feature of
the speech of people from the New England area today.
Other features of the dialects of the 17th century England can be identified in modern
American speech, such as the short flat [Q] vowel where British RP later developed the [a:]

151

10.7.1 Main features of American English

A. VOWEL SOUADS
The pronunciation of some American speakers is characterized by a phenomenon known as
drawl, i.e. the lengthening of stressed vowels. This is encountered especially among the
southerners. Thus, a sentence like This is bad will be heard as /Ti:s iz bQ:d]. On the other
hand, the speakers of the Middle West are noted for the nasal twang, i.e. the nazalized
pronunciation of vowels. A more detailed presentation of the American pronunciation of
vowels is given below.
- [i:] shows a great tendency to diphthongization in AmE. It occurs most commonly as [i#i],
i.e. a front, close, unrounded [i# ] followed by a more tense, close front unrounded glide [i].
The glide element is evident when in final stressed position, e.g. she, tree, but also when
[i:] is in unstressed final position, e.g. hungry, or when followed by a voiced consonant or
a fricative, e.g. dream, breathe.
- [i] does not occur in word-final position. Here it is replaced by [i:], e.g. guilty [gilti:].
- In American English short vowels are not allowed in final position, except [Q], which can
occur in interjections.
- [Q
Q] is unstable in many varieties of AmE. It may be heard as [Q^] or [Q^], and is
commonly referred to as flat. As shown above, many words which in RP have the vowel
[a:], have in AmE [Q], as in dance, ask, past, France.
- [A
A] in AmE differs from the RP [a:] in point of duration and it is more similar to the
Romanian [a]. It replaces the RP [a:], but also the RP [], in such words as not, holiday,
quality.
- The vowel sound in words like hot, lodge, Tom, dollar is similar to the RP []. In words
like current, courage, thorough the RP vowel [] is replaced in AmE by [:]: [k:ridZ].
- In unstressed syllables [] is pronounced instead of the RP [i]: naked [:neikd], started
[:sta:td], greatness [:greitns], minute [:mint].
One of the most important differences in pronunciation between British and American
English concerns the pronunciation of the letter a when followed by the fricative sounds
/f, s, / or by the nasals /m, n/. Thus, in British English the vowel will be pronounced as
/a:/ whereas in American English it is pronounced as //.
Example

British English
Staff /sta:f/
Bath /ba: /
Ask /a:sk/
Dance /da:ns/

American English
/stf/
/b/
/sk/
/dns/

Very often the British // sound is replaced by the Americans by //. Thus, a word like
cotton is pronounced as /kt()n/ by the Brits and as /ktn/ by the Americans.
B. DIPHTHOAGS
- Although in most parts of the U.S. the diphthong [ai] is realized as a central, open,
unrounded vowel followed by a glide to a half-close or fully close, front, unrounded vowel
[ae] or [ai], there are at least two important regional variants. The first variant can be
encountered in the Southern States where the glide element of the diphthong may be

152

partially or totally lost as in five [fa:v]/[fav], time [ta:m]/[taim]/[tam]. The other variant of
[ai] appears in eastern Virginia and the extreme north-eastern part of the U.S where [ai] has
the variant [i] or [i] before voiceless consonants as in ripe, light, rice, wife. We should
also mention the fact that throughout America this diphthong has the monophthongal
variant [a] or [A:] in contracted words such as Ill, Ive, Id.
- The centring diphthongs [i], [E] and [u] of RP are the result of the loss of the postvocalic [r] in this variety of English. Since Standard AmE has not lost post-vocalic [r],
centring diphthongs resulting from its loss do not occur. Centring diphthongs occasionally
occur in RP before [l] as in ideal [ai:dil], realistic [rilistik], jewel [dZul]. In such words
in American English we find either two separate vowel phonemes as in ideal [ai:di:l] or a
single long vowel phoneme as in jewel [dZu:l].
C. COASOAAATS
American English has exactly the same consonant phonemes as RP, but it is the
distribution of these phonemes and their phonetic variants that differ in American English.
We will focus only on those consonants that vary in AmE.
- The alveolar phoneme [t] is, for most part, the same as in RP. Nevertheless, there is one
important difference. When this phoneme appears word-medially preceded by a vowel or
[r] or [l], and is followed by an unstressed vowel, [r] or [l] it is very rapidly and weakly
pronounced resulting in a sound which is similar to the Romanian r in pere. For [t] this
variant is partially or fully voiced. This allophone is symbolized [R] and can be
encountered in words such as butter, letter, etc. As a result of this we find that in many
areas of America words such as writer and rider, letter and ladder sound almost the same.
In post-nasal position, the sound /t/ is dropped altogether: winter /win/, twenty /tweni/.
- The AmE [r] is difficult to describe. As compared to the RP [r], which was described as a
voiced, post-alveolar fricative, the American English [r] is a retroflex, voiced frictionless
continuant. Besides, the AmE [r] differs from its RP counterpart in being slightly
lateralized. This is explained by the fact that the tongue being drawn towards the hard
palate, the air stream from the lungs finds an easier passage along the side of the tongue.
Thus, AmE [r] is close to [l]. Moreover, by drawing back the tip of the tongue, the back
part will raise towards the soft palate. This results in the AmE [r] being slightly velarized.
This allophone appears most often when [r] is in initial position, and is symbolised by [].
- The phonemes [T], [D] are both interdental fricatives. Still, in many regional varieties
these two phonemes may be pronounced as dental or alveolar stops instead of fricatives,
i.e. [t9], [d9], or [t], [d]. Thus, a sentence like This is what I think will be pronounced as [d9is
is wt ai t9iNk].
- The phoneme [N] is identical to the RP phoneme, i.e. it is a voiced, velar nasal consonant.
In AmE it has one allophone which appears in the ing morpheme, marking the present
participle and the gerund of the verbs. Thus, in large areas of the US [N] is replaced by [n]
in this particular morpheme in words such as reading [ri:din], dreaming [dri:min], but sing,
long, thing are pronounced with a final [N], since these words do not contain the aforementioned morpheme.

153

Below are a couple of words that have different pronunciations in RP and AmE.
Example

either
ate
nephew
fragile
process
leisure
quinine
squirrel
tomato

RP
[aiD]
[eit]
[nefju:]
[frQdZil]
[pruses]
[leZ]
[kwini:n]
[skwirl]
[tma:tu]

AmE
[i:D]
[et]
[nevju]
[frQdZail]
[proses]
[liZ]
[kwainain]
[skwrl]
[tmeitu]

D. WORD STRESS
British English long ago lost its secondary stress on the penultimate syllable of
polysyllabic words ending in - ary, -ery, and ory (for example, military, millinery,
obligatory). This subordinate stress is regularly retained in American English, as in
m@onastery, s@ecretary, t@erritory.
Some other differences between these two varieties of English at the level of stress are
illustrated below:
Example

British English
address
research
resource
perfume

American English

E. IATOAATIOA
Intonational characteristics risings and fallings in pitch distinguish British English from
American English far more than pronunciations of individual words. The intonational
differences are most noticeable in questions and requests. Contrast the intonational patterns
of the following sentences, very roughly indicated as they would customarily be spoken in
British and American English:
Give the phonemic transcription of the following words, as you assume they
are pronounced by an American speaker of English; mark the stress on your
transcription: kilometre, aluminum, advertisement, potato, data, and process.
Compare the American with the British pronunciation and state your
conclusions.

154

BE: Where are you going to be?

AmE: Where are you going to be?
BE: Are you sure?
AmE: Are you sure?
BE: Let me know where youre going to be?
AmE: Let me know where youre going to be?

10.8. Canadian English

Because of its origins, Canadian English has a great deal in common with the rest of the
English spoken in North-America, and is often difficult to distinguish for the people who
live outside the region. To British people, Canadians may sound American; to Americans,
they may sound British.
What characterizes Canadian English is the mixed character of its American English or
British English pronunciation. Nevertheless, Canadian English has several important
identifying features notably the sound of the [au] diphthong, which in words like out
sounds more like the RP oat.
The vowel [] is much longer than the RP sound. Thus, cot sounds almost similar to
caught. There is a social preference for the British pronunciation in words like tune, due,
news with the semivowel [j] after the first consonant, rather than using the American [tu:n],
[du:], [nu:z].
The sound [Q] is used instead of the RP [a:] in class, dance, etc. On the other hand, [r] is
sounded in all positions, just like in American English.
Canadian speakers seem to be inconsistent in their treatment of [h]. This consonant is
dropped in herb, in keeping with the British pattern, but also in honorarium, where RP
speakers preserve it. They pronounce it clearly in hospital, hostel, words uttered with a
light h by the Britishers and vary in pronunciation of historical, using a clear [h] as in
British English or an aspirated one.
In Canadian English, just like in American English there is the tendency to voice [t] in
intervocalic position into [d], so that there wont be any difference in the pronunciation of
pairs such as bitter bidder, latter ladder. Sometimes, the sound [t] is suppressed as in
centre [sen] or in the popular pronunciation of Toronto [trnou].
10.9. Australian English (Strine) and Aew Zealand English (Kiwi)
These two varieties of English are treated together because they share many features.
Studies of these two variants have emphasized two aspects: on the one hand, the

155

geographical distance between these two communities and the source community in Great
Britain which caused the English language transplanted from Britain to develop itself in an
entirely new environment, and on the other hand, the marked difference in education and
linguistic background of the immigrants.
Australia was discovered by James Cook in 1770 and within 20 years Britain had
established its first penal colony at Sydney, thus relieving the pressure on the overcrowded
gaols of England. The immigrants were very few in the beginning, but later the number
increased. In New Zealand, the story started later and moved more slowly. A few
Europeans settled in the country in the 1790s, but the official colony was not established
until 1840.
The main source of settlers, and thus the main influence on the language, was Britain.
Many of the convicts came from London and Ireland, and features of Cockney and Irish
English can be traced in the characteristic pronunciation patterns still heard today.
In relation to pronunciation, Australians and New Zealanders can tell each other apart,
though the differences are not readily apparent to outsiders, nor are they very great (mainly
a matter of slight changes in vowel quality). But within each country, few regional
dialectal differences have been noted.
The absence of dialectal differences within Australian English and New Zealand English
may be more apparent than real, since very little detailed regional study has taken place. In
spite of this, factors to do with the social prestige are important. In particular, RP continues
to exert a considerable influence. The variety known as cultivated (educated) Australian
English, used by about 10% of the population, shows this most strongly. At the opposite
extreme there is the broad Australian accent, used by 30%, and most clearly identified as
Australian in the popular mind abroad. In between there is a continuum of accents often
called simply general Australian used by the majority of the population.
A similar situation exists in New Zealand, though the country tends to be rather more
conservative in speech style, with RP-influenced accents more dominant, and it lacks the
extremely broad accent found in Australia.
A. VOWELS
- A characteristic of Australian English and New Zealand English is the tendency to
diphthongize the [i:], its nucleus shifting over a wide area and its glide being [i] or [j].
Consequently, sea is pronounced [sij], whereas tea is [ti].
- The [i] sound approaches the value of [], so no distinction can be made between affect
and effect. In final position [i] is systematically replaced by [i:] or [ei], e.g. pitty [piti:],
Billy [bilei].
- [e] is much closer than the RP counterpart and sometimes it is diphthongized, e.g. bed
[bid], very [vEri]. This diphthongization makes the New Zealand yes sound as [jis].
- [Q
Q] is close in both Australian and New Zealand, being raised to the cardinal vowel no. 3
[E], e.g. man [mEn]. This vowel can also be diphthongized as [Q] or [E]. Thus, minimal
pairs such as pad paired become homophonous.
- [a:] is fronter than its RP counterpart, approaching the value of cardinal [a]. It may be
diphthongized to [], as in darling [dliN], or replaced by [Q] as in AmE. This tendency
is not felt in New Zealand.

156

- the vowel sound [

] acquires the value of RP [
], thus pocket is pronounced as [pkit].
- [
:] is much closer than in RP. At the same time there is a tendency of diphthongization
toward []. Thus, for will be pronounced as [f].
- the same tendency of diphthongization appears in the case of the [u:] sound. In Australian
English this is diphthongized by an intrusive schwa-coloured on-glide. The pronunciation
is given as [u], e.g. too [tu], soon [sun].
- the RP [
:] is realized in Australian English as closer and more rounded. To acquire the
English sound an Australian must consciously relax the corners of the mouth.
- the [
] sound is closer in Australian, especially in final position.
B. DIPHTHOAGS
The Australian pronunciation of diphthongs attracts more popular attention than the
differences that are phonemically important, and this is because within Australia these
sounds distinguish broad from educated speech.
- The Australian norm for the RP [ei] is []. The Australian pronunciation has often been
compared with the pronunciation of the corresponding phoneme in Cockney, but there the
first element appears to be a fully front sound, whereas in Australian it is typically only a
little forward of the central position.
- The diphthong [ai] tends towards [] in the broad speech, but is similar to the RP sound
in educated Autralian.
- The nucelus of the [au] diphthong in Australian is a front sound, i.e. [Qu]. Thus, the word
house is pronounced as [hQuz], town is pronounced [tQun]. In RP [ai] and [au] are
distinguished mainly by their glides, but in Australian by their starting-points, as shown
above.
- Since [] in Australian English is a closer sound than RP [i], the diphthong [i] will be
much closer, i.e. []. A monophthongal pronunciation [:] is sometimes heard, due to the
diphthong reduction.
-

The RP [u] is heard under two variants in Australian English, one identical to [:], the
other a slightly lowered and centralized [u:] followed by [], something like [u:]. The
phoneme corresponding to RP [u] is not a very common one in Australia. The word
poor is normally pronounced as [p:], and youre as [j:].

Give the phonemic transcription of the following words, as you assume they
are pronounced by an Australian speaker of English: sure, endure, beer, peer,
find, kinds, take it easy, mate, broom, room.

157

Let's remember...
As far as the distinctive differences between Standard English and Australian
English with respect to vowels are concerned, the following can be noticed:
a. Australian English front vowels tend to be closer than in RP, i.e. the body
of the tongue is close to the palate;
b. There is a tendency in Australian English to diphthongize any long vowel
with a glide towards the central [];
c. There is also a tendency to move back vowels frontwards ;
d. Some of the diphthongs are wider than in RP, i.e. the difference between
the open first element and the close second element is greater in
Australian English than in RP.
C. COASOAAATS
There is much greater correspondence in consonant phonemes between Standard English
and Australian English. A description of the norms and allophones of most RP consonants
applies equally well to Australian English. Nevertheless, a few current deviations from the
RP of consonants may be noticed:
- the [w] sound. In RP the words what watt, where wear are not always distinguished,
but if they are, the wh-spelling is pronounced with a sound resembling that of [hw], the [w]
being devoiced. This distinction is more frequent in New Zealand.
On the other hand, Australians lack [w] in words such as quarter or quart, making these
homophonous with caught her or caught.
- the [r] sound is pronounced in words such as dark, work, while in RP it is omitted;
- the [t] sound often sounds more like [d] in intervocalic position, especially in
Waynespeak, the language of young Australians (Wayne is a boys name).
- it has been claimed that Australians use [s] rather than [z] for the possessive singular
ending on agent nouns with the suffix er, making teachers [ti:tSs] distinct from the
plural teachers [ti:tSz].
Listen to a less encountered variety of English (say Indian English) and try to
jot down some differences between this variety and Standard British English
in terms of the pronunciation of the vocalic and consonantal sounds. A good
opportunity for this would be watching documentaries about India (or any
other country where English is spoken as L1 or L2).
10.10. Interference
Those persons who speak two languages are considered to be bilingual. The two languages
can be acquired simultaneously, if the person receives input in both languages until the age
of 3. This is the case of the children born in mixed families where one of the parents
speaks to the child in one language (say Spanish) and the other parent in the second
language (say English). A second possibility would be the successive acquisition of the

158

two languages, when a person learns the mother tongue (L1) at home, and the second
language (L2) with the play mates or school mates. This usually happens after the age of 3
(Owens, 2008).
Irrespective of the way in which a second language is acquired, in the case of bilingual
persons we encounter a phenomenon according to which the mother tongue influences the
second language (in our case the English language). This phenomenon has been given
various denominations. Thus, Weinreich, 1968 (quoted in S. Romaine, 1995:51) calls it
interference; Chyne, 1967 (quoted in S. Romaine, 1995:52), on the other hand, prefers the
term transference. Sherwood-Smith & Kellerman, 1986 (quoted in S. Romaine, 1995:52
and in Ellis, 1994:299) suggested a neutral, more encompassing term, namely crosslinguistic influence. The two linguists state that the term cross-linguistic influence
() is theory-neutral, allowing one to subsume under one heading such phenomena as
transfer, interference, avoidance, borrowing and L2-related aspects of language loss
and thus permitting discussion of the similarities and differences between these
phenomena (Sherwood-Smith & Kellerman, 1986, quoted in Ellis, 1994:299) An even
more encompassing definition was suggested by Odlin, 1989 (quoted in R. Ellis, 1994:301)
who is of the opinion that the linguistic transfer represents an influence that results from
the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that
has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired.
The linguistic transfer between the mother tongue and a second/ foreign language
manifests itself in a number of forms, the most common of them being the errors. The
errors produced by those people who speak two or more languages occur due to the
negative transfer of some patterns of L1 onto L2. Lado (1957:2) considers that a peson
who comes in touch with another language will find some of its features simpler, and some
others more difficult than in his mother tongue. Those features that are similar to his
mother tongue will be acquired more easily, whereas those that are different will be more
difficult to acquire. The basic idea is that the difficulties in acquiring a certain aspect of
L2 will bring about errors. An error is produced when a deviation from L2 occurs due to
the lack of knowledge of a certain aspect of this language. As Ellis (1994:306) puts it, it
represents a lack of competence on behalf of the speaker.
There is a widespread recognition that linguistic transfer (or interference) is more
pronounced at the level of the sound system than at any other level of a language. The
existence of foreign accent in L2 learning is so well attested that it hardly requires any
documenting. In general, native speakers have little difficulty in distinguishing the
language background of different learners.
Weinreich, 1968 (quoted in Romaine, 1995) gives a detailed analysis of what happens
when the phonological systems of the bilingual individual are in contact. Interference
arises when bilinguals identify a phoneme of the secondary system (L2) with one in the
primary system (L1). When they reproduce it, they subject it to the phonetic rules of their
primary language. For example, when the weaker, or secondary, language has two
phonemes, and the stronger, or primary, language has only one, the bilingual may fail to
distinguish the two phonemes and may use a sound from the stronger language to replace
both of them. Grosjean (1982:300) points out that French has only one /i/ sound as in
petit, whereas English as two: /i:/ as in seat and /i/ as in sit. This may lead the FrenchEnglish bilingual to under-differentiate between the two sounds and replace both with the
French /i/, producing phrases such as

159

Heet the nail (instead of hit).

The same holds true for the Romanians who apart from making no differentiation between
the long and short /i/ sounds in English, also fail to distinguish between the English /e/ and
//. Thus, a sentence like A bad bed may be pronounced as / bd bd/.
Haugen, 1982 (quoted in Romaine, 1995:53) reports that Norwegian-English bilinguals in
the USA substitute /s/ for the English /z/ because there is no /z/ in Norwegian. Thus,
Norwegian Americans say roses /rusis/ instead of /ruziz/.
In the same line, the Romanian speakers of English tend to replace the interdental
fricatives // and /D/ either by the alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/ or by the alveolar plosives
/t/ and /d/. Most of the Hungarian speakers of English replace the /v/ with the semivowel
/w/ and the other way round. Thus, a word like vowel is frequently pronounced as /wawl/,
while week-end is heard as /vikend/.
Other, less serious interferences occur when the two languages have different
pronunciations for a single sound (for instance the Romanian /r/ as opposed to the English
/r/); the substitution of one for the other is quite obvious but it does not hinder
understanding.
No language has borrowed English words more enthusiastically than Japanese. But the
sound system of Japanese is very different from that of English (for example, Japanese has
no I sound), and so the borrowed words have to be adapted to make them pronounceable in
Japanese. Below is a list of Japanese words borrowed from English; see if you can
recognize them. Note that the Japanese vowels a, e, , o, u are pronounced roughly as in
far, fetch, machine, post and rude.
Example

a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)

aisu kuriimu (ice-cream)

kompyuutaa (computer)
miruku (milk)
masukara
appurupai (apple-pie)
jampaa

g) herikoputaa (helicopter)
h) purezento
i) firumu (film)
j) hambaagaa (handbag)
k) sukaafu (scarf)
l) gureepufuruutsu (grapefruit)

Prosody may also be affected by interference. Thus, the differences in stress and intonation
between two languages may lead to transfer of patterns from one language to the other.
Hungarian speakers of English tend to stress the initial syllables in all words, by analogy
with the stress pattern in their mother tongue. The French people, on the other hand, tend
to stress the last syllables in the English words, following the stress rules applying to the
French language. Thus, a word like library may be pronounced by French-English
speakers as li-bra-RY instead of LI-bra-ri.
Try to listen to an Italian or a German speaker of English. Note the
pronunciation features which you find interesting in their pronunciation of
English. At what level is interference of the mother tongue stronger: at the
level of vowel sounds or consonantal sounds?

160

Failure to use the right stress pattern in English often leads to unintelligibility for the native
speaker, as reported by Grosjean (1982:301): when a rather fluent French-English
bilingual told an English friend that she had visited Edinburgh, she stressed the second
syllable and reduced the first to the schwa, giving e-DIN-burgh /dinbr/, making the
name totally unintelligible. Only repeated and altered pronunciation of the word finally
made it comprehensible to the listener.
10.11. Summary
In this unit we have seen that although nowadays English is employed as a
mother tongue by a number of peoples, its pronunciation differs from one
country to another. The differences are more obvious in what concerns the
vocalic sounds and less in connection with the consonants and the
suprasegmental phonemes (word-stress and intonation). These differences are
first and foremost due to the dialect of English spoken by the first settlers of
the new territories where English became the official language, and then they
are the result of the influences of the languages spoken by the natives of the
respective territories. One variety relates to non-native speakers of English;
this is greatly influenced by the pronunciation of the mother tongues (L1) of
these persons.

161

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Armstrong, L & Ward, I. (1959), A Handbook of English Intonation, 2nd edition, W.
Heffer & Sons Ltd, Cambridge
2. Buck, T. (1973), Modern Phonetic Texts for Foreign Students of English, Max Hueber
Verlag, Mnchen.
3. Chioran, D. & Petri, L, (1977), Workbook in English Phonetics and Phonology, Ed.
Didactic i pedagogic, Bucureti
4. Chioran, D. (1978), English Phonetics and Phonology, Ed. Didactic i pedagogic,
Bucureti.
5. Callary, E. Phonetics, in Clark, V. P. Eschholz, P. A, Rosa, A. F. (eds.) (1994),
Language: Introductory Readings, St. Martins Press, New York
6. Clark, J. and Yallop, C. (1995), An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, 2nd
edition, Blackwell, Oxford, UK and ambridge, USA
7. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1986), An Introduction to English Prosody, Max Niemeyer
Verlag: Tubingen
8. Cruttenden, A. (1986), Intonation, Cambridge University Press
9. Cruttendenc A. (1994), Gimsons Pronunciation of English, 5th edition, Arnold,
London, New York
10. Crystal, D. (1975), The English tone of voice. Essays in intonation, prosody and
paralanguage, Edward Arnold,
11. Crystal, D. (1992), A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 3rd edition, Blackwell
reference
12. Cunningham, S. & Bowler, B. (1993), Headway. Intermediate Pronunciation,
Oxford University Press
13. Ellis, R. (1994), The Study of Second Language Acquisition, Oxford University Press,
Oxford
14. Graddol, D., Cheshire, J. , Swann, J. (1994), Describing Language, 2nd edition,
Open University Press: Buckingham, Philadelphia
15. Grosjean, F. (1982), Life with Two Languages. An Introduction to Bilingualism,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachussetts and London, England
16. Hahner, J.C., Sokoloff, M.A., Salisch, S.L. (1997), Speaking Clearly. Improving
Voice and Diction, 5th edition, McGraw Hill: Boston, New York
17. Jones, D. (1964), An Outline of English Phonetics, 9th edition, Hefer, Cambridge

162

18. Jones, D. (1991), English Pronunciation Dictionary, 14th edition, Cambridge

University Press
19. Katamba, F. (1989), An Introduction to Phonology. Longman: London and New York
20. Lado, R. (1957), Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language
Teachers, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
21. Lass, R. (1984), Phonology. An introduction to basic concepts, Cambridge University
Press
22. Makarenko, T. (1975), Curs de limba englez contemporan fonetic fonologie,
Univ. Babes Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca
23. Adasdy, A. (1996), Practice Book in English Phonetics and Phonology, School of
English and American Studies, Etvs Lornd University, Budapest
24. OConnor, J. D. (1991), Phonetics, Penguin Books, London
25. OConnor, J. D. (1990), Better English Pronunciation, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
26. Owens, R, E. jr. (2008), Language Development. An Introduction, 7th edition, Pearson
Educational, Boston, Paris, Munich
27. Parker, F. & Riley, K, (2005) Linguistics for Qon-Linguists. A Primer with Exercises,
4th edition, Pearson Educational, Boston, Paris, Munich
28. Peculea, P. (1992), An Elementary Course in English, Universitatea Transilvania,
Braov
29. Prlog, H. (1997), English Phonetics and Phonology), Ed. ALL, Bucureti
30. Pyles, Th. & Algeo, UJ. (1993), The Origins and Development of the English
Language, 4th edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, New York,
Sydney, London
31. Radford, A, Atkinson, M, et al. (1999), Linguistics. An Introduction, CUP
32. Roach, P. (1991), English Phonetics and Phonology, 2nd edition, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge
33. RocericAlexandrescu, A. (1968), Fonostatistica limbii romane, Editura Academiei ,
Bucuresti
34. Romaine, S. (1995), Bilingualism, Blackwell, Oxford, UK
35. Schneider, G. (2010), English Around the World, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge
University Press
36. Thompson, I. (1990), Intonation Practice, Oxford University Press

163

37. Trim, J. (1975), English Pronunciation Illustrated, Cambridge University Press,

London, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne
38. Trudgill, P. & Chambers, J. (1994) Dialectology, CUP, Cambridge.
39. Trudgill, P. (1992), The Dialects of England, Blackwell, Oxford UK& Cambridge
USA.
40. Vasiliu, E. (1974), Fonologia in LRC, vol.1, Ed. didactica si pedagogica, Bucuresti
41. Wells, J.C. (1982), Accents of English, CUP
42. Wolfram, W. (1991), Dialects of American English, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliff,
New York

164

Key to the exercises

Unit 1:
1. Participants: speaker (sender) and listener (receiver:
Stages: encoding, sending, transmission, reception, decoding.
2. Arrangement of words according to the rules of each language and inflecting them for
agreement in number/tense, etc.
3. Visual means (sign language, flags, pictograms) and sonorous means (speech, Morse
code, whistling).
4. Phonemes
5. The sound waves transmitted through the elastic medium (air) reach the auditory organs
of human beings.
6. A pair of words that differ in ONE SOUND SEGMENT (phoneme) only.
7. Give the phonemic transcription of the following fragment:
wns e wz litl g:l hu: livd wi h: m t i ed v frst litl g:l :lweiz
w: red klouk nd hud t h: grnm hd meid f: h: ts wai evriwi:vn h:
m k:ld h: litl red raidi hud
8. Youre a gardener, arent you? Do you know anything about Busy Lizzies?
About what? Busy Lizzie? What on earth are they?
Oh, I thought youd know. Theyre house plants. Ive been given one by my sister and I
want to know how to look after it.
Im afraid I dont know much about house plants. But Ive got a book somewhere that
might help. Lets see. Ah, yes! Here it is! The Care of House Plants. Mmm. That looks
useful.
Do you happen to know the Latin name of it?
Im afraid I dont. Busy Lissies the only name Iv heard.
Unit 2.
1. Articulatory phonetics = a sub-branch of phonetics that deals with the description and
classification of speech sounds..
2. Tongue, lips, soft palate, nose, alveolar ridge.
3. No.
4. To keep the body alive.
5. To produce the air flow necessary in the production of speech sounds.
6. It is squeezed by the diaphragm and the muscles of the chest.
7. To vibrate when the air passes through them and produce voiced sounds.
8. The pharynx, the mouth cavity, the nasal cavity.
Unit 3.
1. Degree of opening of the mouth cavity, part of the tongue involved in producing the
vowel, length.
2. Yes, they differ in the vowel sound: /di:l/ vs. /dil/.
3. No; they have two sounds segments that differ: /di:l/ vs /did/.
4. catch - cap
cheap - heap
pip - zip
sap - Sam

165

he - she
lap -lass
say - lay

caught - fought
pal - Paul
sink mink

5. /u/, // , //, //, /e/.

6. /u/
7. Give the English sounds corresponding to the following descriptions:
- central, mid-open, short, unrounded vowel; //
- back, mid-open, long, rounded vowel; /o:/
- front (retracted), close, short, unrounded vowel; /i/
- back (advanced), close, short, unrounded vowel. /u/
8. a. bread /e/ b. rough // c. foot /u/ d. hymn /i/ e. full /u/ f. cough // g. sat // h. friend
/e/ i. cool /u:/ j. Oedipus /i:/ k. ask /a:/ l. further /:/.
9. /i/ sing, // long, // bang, // lung.
10. The short vowels.
Unit 4.
1. diphthong nuclei: e, a, o, i,u.
glides: i, u,
2. Yes.
3. Yes. If we change the diphthongs with the monopthongs in each pair, the meaning of
words will change.
4. Before a voiceless consonant (whether it is a plosive or a fricative).
7. tone /ou/; way /ei/; hair /e/; style /ai/; beer /i/; out /au/; coil /oi/; they /ei/.
Unit 5.
1. Plosive, fricative, affricate, lateral, nasal, semi-vowels.
2. Bi-labial, labio-dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal.
3. [p] both lips
[k] back part of the tongue in touch with the velum
[h] glottis (the opening between the vocal cords)
[z] front part of the tongue in touch with the alveolar ridge
[f] upper teeth in touch with the lower lip.
4.

a. /n/, /f/, /s/, /z/;

b. /v/, /h/, /d/, //;
c. //, /r/, /d/, /h/;

5.

a. /s/, /t/, /t/, /n/

b. /k/, /n/, /g/, //
c. //, /p/, /b/, /m/

/n/ is a nasal sound, the others are fricatives

/d/ is an affricate, the others are fricatives
/d/ is a plosive, the others are fricatives

6. /ri t/ - rich
7.
a. voiced, alveolar fricative; /z/
b. voiceless, velar plosive; /k/
c. voiceless, palatal fricative; //
d. voiced, alveolar plosive. /d/

166

e. voiced, labio-dental fricative; /v/

f. voiceless, interdental fricative; //
g. voiceless, glottal plosive. //
8.

9.

a. voiceless, labio-dental fricative; /f/

b. voiceless, apico-velar plosive; NO
c. voiceless, glottal fricative: /h/
d. voiceless, bilabial fricative; NO
e. voiced, apico-dental (interdental) fricative; //
f. voiceless, dorso-velar fricative. NO

a. /pik/ pick.
b. /buk/ book
c. /teist/ taste
12. Voiceless consonants shorten a preceding long vowel or a diphthong
13.
a. tea [ti:]
d. dark [da:k]
g. egg [eg]
b. meat [mi:t]
e. card [ka:d]
h. oak [uk]
c. toad [tud]
f. lip [lip]
i. kite [kait]
14. peak aspirated [p],
blame laterally realeased [b],
ribbon nasally released [b],
adore fully voiced [d],
climate laterally released [k]
15. Syllabic /m/, /n/, /N/ and /l/ in the following lines are bolded:
a. I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom
simply by looking at the man at the top (Frank Moore Colby, Essays)
b. In the grave, dust and bones jostle not for the wall. (Proverb)
c. What you say is nothing but a truism.
d. A spasm of coughing made her stop laughing.
e. This is the spray the Bird clung to/Making it blossom with pleasure (R.
Browning, Misconceptions)
16. intrusive r (italicised) and linking r (bolded)
a. Granadar is famous for its monuments. But thererer a lot of interesting places
outside Granadar itself.
b. The arear of a room of 10 feet by 15 feet is 150 square feet.
c. My grandpar is ill.
d. Fancy Sarahr asking Adar out! The idear of it makes me laugh.
e. When Fredar attended her first speech class in her dramar academy the tutor said
she did not keep her jawr open.
f. Australiar and New Zealand are twor English speaking countries.
g. New Zealand has other islands far out.
17. a. When the interdental fricative appears between two vocalic sounds.
b. Trans-categorial assimilation (transfer of [+voice] from the vocalic sounds onto the
voiceless interdental fricative //).
c. The process of assimilation the [+voice] feature is more natural and frequent than
that of assimilation of [-voice].

167

Unit 6.
1. No.
2. The on-glide, the retention, and the off-glide.
3. The off-glide stage of a sound partially overlaps with the on-glide of the next sound.
4. Juncture, assimilation, and elision.
5. In some situations the transition is smooth/uninterrupted, in some others it is interrupted
(there is a short break between one sound and the next).
6. /kleim/ -if we have close junctures between all the sounds in this stretch of speech, then
this would be interpreted as acclaim. If, on the other hand, there is an open juncture
between the sound // and /k/ and if all the other sounds after /k/ are linked by close
junctures, then the string would be interpreted as a claim.
7. Anticipation of features of the following sound or transfer of features from a preceding
sound onto the next.
8. Assimilation.
10. right place /rait pleis/ /raip pleis/ = regressive assimilation of place of articulation
gone past /gn pa:st/ / gm pa:st/ = regressive assimilation of place of articulation
those shoes / uz u:z/ / u u:z/ = regressive assimilation of place of articulation
plant carrots /pla:nt krts/ /pla:n krts/ (elision) /pla: krts/ regressive
assimilation of place of articulation
11. /didjumeikh/ /didjumeik/ (h dropping) /didjmeik/ (reduction of /u/ to // in
an unstressed syllable) /didmeik/ (reciprocal assimilation between /d/ and /j/
resulting in /d/) /ddmeik/ (elision of /i/ in an unstressed syllable + dubble peaked
/d/).
13. Define elision and specify whether it affects: a) only vowels; b) only consonants; c)
both vowels and consonants.
Unit 7.
1. a) s; b) it must be [+plosive] & [-voiced]; c) it must be [-plosive] & [+voiced].
2. Usually, the nucleus of a syllable is represented by a vocalic sound (monophthong,
diphthong or triphthong), but there are situations in English (not in Romanian) when the
nucleus of the syllable is a voiced consonant (a so-called syllabic consonant m, n, , l,
and r).
3.
A. two-syllable words:
painted /pein-tid/ rented /ren-tid/ added /-did/ started /sta: -tid/ landed /ln-did/
folded/foul-did/
All the other words have one syllable only.
Rule: if the final sound of the verb is an alveolar plosive (i.e. /t/ or /d/), by adding the past
tense marker ed, a second syllable is created.
B. two-syllable words:
Causes, dishes, watches, misses, pieces, prices, mixes, changes
One-syllable words:
Cakes, rules, files, loves
Rule: if the final sound of the word is a sibilant (s, z, , , t, or d), by adding the suffix s
a second syllable is created.

168

4.
chocolate
vegetable
comfortable
interesting
secretary
library

Expected number
3
4
4
4
4
3

Actual number
2
3
3
3
3
2

Unit 8.
1. a) over the syllable
b) more muscular effort on the part of the speaker, change of pitch of the voice.
2. Change of pitch, lengthening of the syllable, loudness.
3. it makes the difference between verbs and nouns or nouns and adjectives that have
almost the same pronunciation;
- it makes the difference in meaning between identical stretches of speech.
4.
affix = noun
affix = verb
increase = noun
increase = verb
abstract = noun, adjective abstract = verb
import = noun
import = verb
insult = noun
insult = verb
contest = noun
contest = verb,
contrast = noun
contrast = verb
replay = noun
replay = verb
survey = noun
sur vey = verb.
5. For this exercise, consult a monolingual or a pronunciation dictionary.
6. 1. a. He spoke with no trace of accent. (noun)
b. The way you accent these words tells me you were not born in England. (verb)
2. a. Thats very abstract. (adjective)
b. One can abstract several general rules from the examination of these facts.(verb)
3. a. He was not on the missing list. (list of missing persons)
b. He couldnt find the missing list; its been missing for several days. (list that is
missing)
4. a. You will need a permit to visit the place. (noun)
d. This job does not permit of any delay. (verb)
7. Syllables carrying primary stress are underlined.
major
majority
sacrifice
sacrificial
reference
referee
incident
incidental
continent
continental
simplify
simplification
occupy
occupation
product
production
beautify
beautification
conversational
converse
nominate
nomination
nominee
photograph photography
photographic

169

object
subject
person

objective
subjective
personify

objectification
subjectification
personification

[gud lk wi j:r w:rk]