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I. Assignments Next week: Ladefoged p. 79, exercise D (http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter3/exercises3/exercise3D.pdf) In class youll be asked to provide two examples of two randomly chosen phonological rules stated in chapter 3 (2 thru 19). Your examples have to be different from Ladefogeds. Optional reading about RP: look at pages 279-283 in Accents of English 2 (The British Isles) by J. C. Wells [on the web: http://books.google.cz/books?id=a3-ElL71fikC&pg=PA268&dq=Accents+of+English+british+isles&sig=ACfU3U1XVH1y5TpXGaZqM2GRynV7lgyZig#PPA279,M1 or in the British Center]. Make sure you can answer the following questions: What types of RP does Wells differentiate? What types of RP does Gimson differentiate? What are the main differences between different type sof RP? Prepare for the midterm test, Wed Nov 4, 18.30 Velka ucebna. Look at http://www.anglistika.upol.cz/phonetics/phsem/tests/MIDTERMquestions.pdf.

Todays homework: test exercise Seminar 3/2.8 II. Prosody training In DB finish Unit 1. It goes with the db1.wav file in Phonetics\Sem01. III. Topics of todays lesson: 1. citation forms of words and connected speech 2. obligatory and optional phonological rules 3. contexts for reducing/weakening/simplifying pronunciation in connected speech 4. the most common types of reductions/simplifications 1. English conversational speech is not a sequence of citation forms of words. Citation form of a word is o what the word sounds like when it is pronounced loud and clear by itself. It is its dictionary pronunciation (LPD); o the form a word has when it is cited or pronounced in isolation (Ladefoged), o the most formal pronunciation used by a particular person (Shockey: 2)1. A question: What is your citation form of the words celery and gradual? What about LPD? Prosodic means of connecting words in fluent speech Are words ever spoken in isolation? Of course they are. Still, one word utterances like Stop!, Really?, Outrageous! are relatively infrequent compared to our multi word productions. A stream of continuous speech normally does not include breaks between words. These days even computers are able to link words together. Speech does include breaks between larger chunks though. We use the term tone unit (tone group or intonational phrase) for such chunks stretches of speech tied together by a single intonation contour or melody. Tone units are units of information and they do not always overlap with syntactic units. The breaks between tone units may or may not be signaled by pauses but they are always marked by a pitch change. In transcribing we use a double slash // to mark a tone unit boundary.

Shockey, Linda (2003). Sound Patterns of Spoken English. Ve Zbrojnici: 411:010/639 (KUP)

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TASK 1.1 Listen to the following extract from an interview with the writer Jodi Picoult (Picoult.wav) and divide it into tone units. I think that the things I tend to gravitate towards are the questions I cant answer and there are so many of them in this world that everyone thinks might be black and white but when you begin to dissect them there are so many shades of gray. In a tone unit some words are highlighted while others are in the background. Usually the words that stand out carry the most important information. We say that they are in focus. Language provides several means of focusing the receivers attention on the key info in discourse. One of these means is prosody the most important word in the tone unit receives a tonic accent (pitch accent). It is perceptually more distinct it may be louder, its stressed vowel is lengthened and marked by a pitch change. TASK 1.2 Listen to Picoult.wav again. Which of the words have the most precise articulation and thus are perceptually most distinct? Which words stick out? A question: Do you expect someone who is talking slowly to divide their speech into more or fewer tone units? Will there be more or fewer tonic syllables? What are then the consequences for perceptual distinctiveness of such speech? TASK 1.3 Listen to Frazen.wav, divide the test into tone units and mark tonic syllables. Im embarrassed to say that my motivations were of the ego when it came to this book. I .. Id written two novels in the eighties Words in connected speech are not only grouped into melodic chunks, they are also linked by rhythm. One traditional account of linguistic rhythm describes English as a stress-timed language (as opposed to syllable-timed languages). The auditory impression of rhythm in spoken English is created by more or less regular reappearance of stressed syllables. The intervals between stressed syllables are called stress groups or feet, each foot starting on a stressed syllable and stretching as far as the next stressed syllable. For example: the | questions | I cant | answer x X x X x X x but | when you be|gin to di|ssect them x X x x X xx X x (the anacrusis)

It is not true that feet containing different number of syllables have the same duration. But it has been shown that as the number of syllables in a foot increases, duration of the syllables is shortened. TASK 1.4 Listen to Frazen2.wav and divide the text into feet. Its not very pretty but that actually came to be one of the motivations. In Gimson (Chapter 11) you will learn that rhythm of English speech depends on the distribution of full and reduced vowels. Reduction (not only vocalic) affects especially function words. 2

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Monosyllabic function words are often codified in dictionaries in two forms strong (full phonemic realization) and weak (with vowel weakening, consonant elision). On p. 254 Gimson mentions circumstances in which function words do not reduce. A question: Which words will be reduced in a normal, non-contrastive delivery of these statements and questions? a) I thought he had gone. b) He had two apartments. c) This one is for you. d) What is this for? e) Who is the most powerful man in Britain? f) There is no answer. g) What have you done? h) He has been in the pub. YOUR READING: Read Section 5 in JV (p. 62-69). He starts from the term foot, describes (pseudo) resyllabification and linking sounds, which both contribute to the flow of connected speech. Reread Ladefogeds Chapter 5, Gimsons Chapter 12. 2. Obligatory and optional phonological rules Citation form is not the same as the phonemic form: Words cannot be realized as strings of clear-cut phonemes. Adjacent phonemes have to be coarticulated - there is some degree of overlap of articulatory gestures that make up adjacent sounds and that means that their phonetic properties interact. Even the most formal pronunciation of a particular word will involve coarticulation. Effects of coarticulation are practically unnoticeable but the absence of coarticulation would sound distinctly odd and mechanical. (see Ladefoged, p. 6871) Actual pronunciation of words is further different from the abstract phonemic form in including allophones the context dependent variants substituted by phonological rules. Phonological rules change feature composition of the underlying phoneme. Different allophones of the same phoneme then involve articulatory gestures aiming at different targets. (Ladefoged, p.71) Many phonological rules apply even when single words are uttered aloud slowly and carefully. Citation pronunciation of the word keep is [kip] in RP while the citation form of spill would sound naturally with a plain p and a dark l. In mainstream RP, aspiration and l-velarization are obligatory rules, they have to apply every time the phonetic context is right. Without the right allophones, the speech would sound accented. Some phonological rules apply only to words in connected speech. They affect sounds at word-boundaries when words are linked together. The resulting effect is smearing of the boundary between words. Such rules are often optional, which means that their application depends on nonlinguistic factors such as style and speed. They are much more likely to have an effect when speakers do not pay attention to their pronunciation (in spontaneous rather than in formal scripted speech) and/or when they talk fast. Speakers in formal situations who are aware of what they sound like may consciously suppress optional rules. In slow speech a pause between words will destroy the phonetic context for a rule. Palatalization rule may serve as an example because you are here will be [bkjh] but [bkz ..jh]. Notes: 1. Not all optional rules are word-boundary rules. 2. Although, word boundary rules apply more frequently in fast casual speech without pauses, some pronunciations became conventionalized: For example, reductions of 3

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unstressed functional words are common even in careful, slow speech (spic and span [n]) 3. Some rules are optional when they apply at the word boundary but obligatory inside a word. For example, in Get out! tapping/flapping will not take place when one makes a pause between get and out but a speaker of a flapping variety is likely to have a flap in city even in slow and careful speech. 3. What contributes to reductions of sounds in connected speech? Phonological rules that apply in connected speech often involve some kind of a reduction of the linguistic material. Here is a summary of the factors that have an effect on. Patterns of Reductions in Connected speech Non-linguistic factors: Speech rate: Attention to form: Word frequency: Prescription: Discourse function: slow scripted speech frequent words negative opinion first mentioned/focused word fast spontaneous speech infrequent words unnoticed subsequent mentions unstressed middle/end

Place in larger prosodic units: stress: stressed syllable/word position beginning Phonological identity of the sound: Alveolars are more likely to be affected than labials and velars.

TASK 3.1 Listen to the samples Task3.1a.wav and Task3.1b.wav. Which one is easier to listen to? Why? 4. What kinds of sound reductions are common in standard, even relatively formal unscripted speech? Assimilation Most commonly affecting alveolars. (black and white [m]) Elision of sounds Omission of the middle part of /nt, nd/ or /mps, mpt, nts, ks, kt/ in words like lunch, change, lumps, rings, etc. Alveolar stop deletion (the most powerful man, middle-aged mother) Schwa deletion and formation of syllabic consonants Compression compressing two syllables into one: /i, u/ may lose syllabicity (convenient [k vin i nt] ~ [k vin jnt], colonial, Celia; a graduate [dwt]) Schwa(vowel) deletion and syllable elision (factory, secretary) Smoothing of a long vowel or a diphthong (annual [n.ju.l] ~ [n.jl]) Reduction of weak forms