Mariana - NEAGU - and - Roxana - MARE - CONTEMPORARY - ENGLISH - LA NGUAGE PDF

Mariana NEAGU and Roxana MARE
CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH LANGUAGE

PRONUNCIATION, SPELLING AND VOCABULARY
English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 1

2 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary
Mariana NEAGU and Roxana MARE
CONTEMPORARY
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
PRONUNCIATION, SPELLING
AND VOCABULARY

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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................11
UNIT 1
THE PHONEMIC SYSTEM OF ENGLISH ....................................17
Unit aims ...........................................................................................18
1.1. Phonetics and phonology .......................................................18
1.2. The connection of phonetics and phonology with non-
linguistic and linguistic sciences .........................................19
1.3. The importance of phonetic studies .......................................21
1.4. Phonetic symbols and types of transcription..........................21
1.5. Types of standard pronunciation............................................25
1.5.1. Received Pronunciation* (RP) .......................................25
1.5.2. General American (GA)..................................................26
1.5.3. British Non-Regional Pronunciation..............................26
Key concepts.............................................................................27
Further reading..........................................................................28
UNIT 2
THE ENGLISH VOWELS PHONEMES .........................................29
Unit aims ...........................................................................................30
2.1. The classification of speech sounds .......................................30
2.2. Classification of English Vowels...........................................30
2.3. English Primary and Secondary Vowel Charts......................32
2.4. The description and distribution of English
monophthongs and diphthongs ..............................................33

2.4.1. English front vowels .......................................................33
2.4.2. English back vowels .......................................................34
2.4.3. English central vowels [, :, , ].................................36
2.5. Diphthongs.............................................................................37
2.5.1. Glides to /i/ .....................................................................38
2.5.2. Glides to /u/ ....................................................................38
2.5.3. Glides to /......................................................................39
2.5.4. English tripthongs ..........................................................39
Key concepts.............................................................................40
Further reading..........................................................................40
UNIT 3
THE ENGLISH CONSONANT PHONEMES .................................41
Unit aims ...........................................................................................42
3.1. Classification of English consonants .....................................42
3.2. The plosive consonants ..........................................................43
3.3. The affricate consonants /, d/ ...............................................44
3.4. The fricative consonants f, v, , , s, z, , , h/..............45
3.5. The nasal consonants /m, n, / ..............................................48
3.6. The liquid consonants /l, r/.....................................................50
3.7. The semi-vowels /j, w/...........................................................52
Key concepts.............................................................................53
Further reading..........................................................................53
UNIT 4
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN
ENGLISH.............................................................................................54
Unit aims ...........................................................................................55
4.1. Pronunciation differences ......................................................55
4.1.1. The vowel system ............................................................55

4.1.2 The consonant system ......................................................57
4.2. Differences in spelling ...........................................................59
4.2.1. Phonetic spelling tendencies ..........................................60
4.2.2. The omission of superfluous letters in American
English............................................................................60
4.3. Lexical differences in main subject areas ..............................61
4.3.1. People and their immediate environment .......................61
4.3.2. Human interaction and communication .........................63
4.3.3. Social institutions ...........................................................64
4.3.4. Natural environment.......................................................64
Conclusions...................................................................................
Key concepts.............................................................................65
Further reading..........................................................................66
UNIT 5 ..................................................................................................67
PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING..............................................67
Unit aims ...........................................................................................68
5.1. The spelling of consonants.....................................................68
5.2. Vowel markers.......................................................................69
5.3. Keeping a spelling constant ...................................................68
5.4. Silent letters ...........................................................................72
5.5. Homographs and homophones...............................................73
5.6. Pronunciation and etymology ................................................73
Key concepts.............................................................................75
Further reading..............................................................................
UNIT 6
ASPECTS OF CONNECTED SPEECH ...........................................77
Unit aims ...........................................................................................78
6.1. Linking r and intrusive /r/ ......................................................78
6.2. Assimilation ...........................................................................79

6.2.1. Regressive assimilation ..................................................79
6.2.2. Progressive assimilation.................................................80
6.2.3. Reciprocal assimilation ..................................................80
6.2.4. Obligatory and non-obligatory assimilation ..................81
6.3. Elision ....................................................................................82
6.3.1. Vowel elision ..................................................................82
6.3.2. Consonant elision ...........................................................83
6.4. Strong and weak forms of function words .............................84
6.4.1. Uses of weak forms.........................................................84
6.4.2. Uses of strong forms.......................................................83
Key concepts.............................................................................87
Further reading..........................................................................88
UNIT 7
SYLLABLES AND STRESS IN ENGLISH .....................................89
Unit aims ...........................................................................................90
7.1. The English Syllable. .............................................................87
7.1.1. The nature of the syllable ...............................................90
7.1.2. The structure of the English syllable..............................90
7.1.3. Types of syllable.............................................................92
7.2. Stress in English.....................................................................92
7.2.1 The nature of stress..........................................................92
7.2.2. Primary and secondary stress.........................................94
7.2.3. Stress and vowels ............................................................96
7.2.4. Some word stress guidelines ...........................................97
7.2.5 Stress guidelines for compounds......................................99
7.2.6 Sentence stress- the basis of rhythm in English .............100
7.2.7 Stress shift and semantic implications ...........................101
Key concepts...........................................................................104
Further reading........................................................................104
UNIT 8
ENGLISH AS AN INTONATION LANGUAGE ...........................105
Unit aims .........................................................................................106
8.1. Definition and components of intonation ............................103
8.2. The tone-unit as the basic unit of intonation........................107
8.3. Tone patterns in English ......................................................109
8.4. Functions of intonation ........................................................111
8.5. Intonation and sentence types ..............................................113
8.5.1. Declaratives..................................................................114
8.5.2. Imperatives and exclamations ......................................114
8.5.3. Questions ......................................................................114
8.6. Contrastive analysis of intonation in English and
Romanian...........................................................................117
Key concepts...........................................................................119
Further reading........................................................................120
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................121
GLOSSARY .......................................................................................125
EXERCISES ......................................................................................205

INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The present course is primarily meant for Romanian

undergraduates that study English. In this course approaches the most
important topics from the fields of phonetics, phonology, orthography
and lexis, focusing on difficulties encountered in the production and
perception of English sounds and in the acquisition of pronunciation
and spelling rules.
Phonetics is the study and description of speech sounds and of the
elements of pronunciation at large, since pronunciation is a complex of
sounds (vowels and consonants), syllables, word accent and intonation.
Phonology studies the way in which phonetic elements function in
a language, the way in which phonemes are organized in a given
language, i.e. their combinatorial possibilities. The phoneme is the
minimal unit in the sound system of a language.
Orthography is very closely connected with phonetics, which in
its turn is connected with lexicology, grammar and stylistics. Because
of the notoriously confusing nature of English spelling, it is particularly
important to think of English pronunciation in terms of phonemes
rather than letters of the alphabet.
Why is this course book significant and useful?
Generally, the theory about speech sounds and how they are used
in language, i.e. phonetics and phonology, who is needed by people
who are going to work with English at an advanced level (teachers
included) and who need a deeper understanding of the principles
regulating the use of sounds in spoken English. Ideally, the teacher and
INTRODUCTION
the learner of a foreign language should be able to recognize and to

produce the sounds of the studied language just like a native speaker.
More specifically, phonetics is important because it formulates the
rules of pronunciation for separate sounds and sound combinations.
Thus, through the system of reading rules, phonetics helps to pronounce
correctly singular and plural forms of nouns, the past tense and past
participle forms of English regular verbs.
Secondly, through its intonation component, phonetics can serve
to single out the logical predicate of a sentence to show that an
affirmative sentence is a question, etc.
Thirdly, through the right placement of stress we can distinguish
certain nouns from verbs (e.g. object - object), homonymous words
and word groups (e.g. blackbird - black bird).
Course Purposes
After completing this course you will be able to:
- recognize and produce the sounds of English just like a native

speaker
- be aware of and explain the phonetic and phonological
phenomena that occur in connected speech
- use stress and intonation patters correctly in English
- understand the complex relationship between pronunciation,
spelling and vocabulary.
Course Book Design
The first unit of the course is concerned with defining phonetics

and phonology, explaining the connection of phonetics with other

INTRODUCTION
branches of science, introducing the symbols used for teaching the

pronunciation of English and identifying the main types of English
standard pronunciation.
The second unit of this course is concerned with the description of
English vowels and their classification. This unit also deals with the
diphthongs of English. It is important to understand the main features
of the vowels in order to pronounce them correctly.
Just like the second unit, the third unit deals with the description
of the English consonants, their manner of articulation, their place of
articulation and their main features.
As an important purpose of this course is to explain how English
is pronounced in the accents normally chosen as the standards for
people learning English, the fourth unit is devoted to discriminating
British English from American English in terms of pronunciation,
spelling and vocabulary.
The fifth unit looks more closely at the connection between
pronunciation and spelling in English and shows that, because of the
etymological nature of English orthography, learners of English have to
cope with the discrepancies between spelling and present-day
pronunciation.
Although English spelling is not a reliable indicator of
pronunciation, the chapter presents some pronunciation patterns and
markers that can still be found.
The sixth unit deals with speech sounds as they occur in normal,
connected speech, i.e. sounds that are not isolated, fixed and
unchangeable, but units that undergo modifications and affect one
another. This unit explains phonetic phenomena that occur in casual
speech: linking and intrusive /r/, assimilation, elision, etc. As it is
practically impossible to speak English fluently unless the phenomenon
of function word reduction is properly understood and applied, the unit
ends with the use of the strong and weak forms of function
(grammatical) words (articles, auxiliaries, modals, pronouns,
conjunctions and prepositions).

INTRODUCTION
The seventh unit focuses on larger units of speech such as the

syllable and on aspects of speech such as stress. While Romanian is a
syllable-timed language (a language which has each syllable
pronounced with roughly the same duration), English is a stressed-
timed language (a language which has the stressed syllables occurring
at regular intervals). This unit also highlights the connection between
phonology and lexicology.
The eighth unit discusses English as an intonation language by
considering tone patterns in English, functions of intonation and the
link between intonation and sentence types. The final goal of the unit is
to make Romanian learners of English avoid transferring intonation
patterns from the mother tongue in the foreign language.
Each of the units presented above starts with unit aims and ends
with an outline of the main issues discussed in the chapter, a list of key
concepts meant as a check list for revising the main notions before
going on, and a brief section called further reading.
Each new technical term that is introduced in the course is printed
in bold type and followed by an asterisk (*), meaning that the term will
be explained in the glossary at the end of the book.
The course book closes with three appendices containing a list of
symbols used (Appendix 1), a complete glossary of technical terms
(Appendix 2), and a set of exercises suitable for each unit (Appendix 3).

THE PHONEMIC SYSTEM OF ENGLISH
UNIT 1
Unit outline
Unit aims
1.1 Phonetics and phonology
1.2 The connection of phonetics and phonology

with non-linguistic and linguistic sciences
1.3 The importance of phonetic studies
1.4 Phonetic symbols and types of transcription
1.5 Types of standard pronunciation

1.5.1 Received Pronunciation
1.5.2 General American
1.5.3. Non-Regional Pronunciation
Conclusions
Key concepts
Further reading

Unit aims
After you have completed the study of this unit you should be able to:
define phonetics
explain the connection of phonetics with other
branches of science
point out the importance of phonetics for a teacher of a
foreign language
recognize the symbols used for teaching the
pronunciation of English
identify the main type of English standard
pronunciation.
1.1. Phonetics and phonology
Definition of phonetics
Phonetics is the science which studies the sounds used in
speech and provides methods for their description, classification and
transcription*. (Crystal D., 1992: 259).
Speech sounds* can be analysed from several points of view:
a. acoustic
b. articulatory
c. auditory
d. functional.
Types of phonetics
a. The acoustic aspect falls under the scope of what is
commonly called acoustic phonetics* which studies the physical
(acoustic) properties of speech sounds as transmitted between the
mouth and the ear.
b. The articulatory aspect of speech sound is analysed by the
branch called articulatory phonetics which deals with speech sounds
from the point of view of their production, i.e. what organs are used to
produce them and what precise movements they perform in order to
articulate them.

c. Auditory phonetics* studies speech sounds from the point of

view of their perception, i.e. the perceptual response to speech sounds
as mediated by the ear, the auditory nerve and the brain.
d. Functional phonetics or phonology investigates the functional
aspect of sounds, accent*, syllable and intonation.
Definition of phonology
While phonetics studies speech sounds as sounds, in all their
complexity and diversity, independent of their role in language,
phonology studies speech sounds, as these are categorised by speakers
of a given language; its study unit is called phoneme. The actually
pronounced speech sounds are called variants or allophones* of
phonemes.
In standard British English, there are 44 different categories of
speech sounds called phonemes. Phonemes are said to differ from each
other in terms of certain distinctive features* such as voice, nasality,
etc. Phonologists study both phonemes (vowels* and consonants*) and
prosody* (stress and intonation) as subsystems of a spoken language.
Branches of phonology
The study of speech into distinctive units or phonemes is called
segmental* phonology, whereas the analysis of prosodic and
paralinguistic features in connected utterances of speech is called non-
segmental/ suprasegmental phonology*.
1.2. The connection of phonetics and phonology with non-linguistic

and linguistic sciences
The connection with grammar

Phonetics is connected with non-linguistic sciences such as
anatomy, acoustics and physiology. For example, sounds can be
described with reference to anatomical places of articulation (dental*,
palatal*), to their physical structure (the frequency and amplitude
characteristics of the sound waves) and are articulated by our organs of
speech.
Phonetics is connected with grammar because, through the system

or reading rules, it helps to pronounce the singular and plural forms of
nouns correctly, the singular third form of verbs, the past tense forms
and past participles of English regular verbs.
The study of the phonological, i.e. sound structure of morphemes
is called morphophonology*. In many languages, English included,
there are phonological rules which can only be described with reference
to morphological structure. Thus, the morpheme s can be pronounced
/iz/ (e.g. peaches, judges), /z/ (e.g. apples, rides) or /s/ (e.g. maps,
lacks) depending on the final consonant* of the base form of the verb to
which it is attached.
One of the most important phonetic phenomena - sound
interchange - is another manifestation of the connection of phonetics
with grammar. For instance, this connection can be noticed in the
category of NUMBER. Thus, the interchange / f-v /, /s-z /, /-/ helps
to distinguish singular and plural forms of such nouns as: calf-calves,
house - houses, mouth - mouths, etc.
Vowel interchange helps to discriminate the singular and the
plural of nouns of foreign origin: basis bases /beisis - beisi:z / and
also of irregular nouns such as man - men /mn - men/.
Vowel interchange is connected with the TENSE forms of
irregular verbs, for instance: sing - sang - sung.
Lexicology, semantics, stylistics and pragmatics

Phonetics is also connected with lexicology and semantics.
Homographs* can be differentiated only due to pronunciation because
they are identical in spelling:
bow /bu/ - bow /bau/
lead /li:d / - lead /led/
row /ru/ - row /rau/
tear /te/ - tear /ti/
wind /wind / - wind /waind/
Phonetics is connected with stylistics through repetition of words,
phrases and sounds, lying at the basis of rhyme, alliteration*, etc.
The connection with the other linguistic branches (i.e. semantics,
pragmatics) is obvious due the role played by accent, stress and

intonation in the act of communication. For example, the position of

word accent in units higher than a word may have far - reaching
semantic consequences. If we consider compounds such as blackbird,
yellow-hammer, blue-stocking, cheap-jack (in which the stress falls on
the first syllable) and phrases containing apparently the same words
blackbird, yellowhammer, bluestocking, cheapjack (in which the stress
falls on the second syllable) we notice that the difference in stress
engenders differences in meaning.
1.3. The importance of phonetic studies
Let's think first!
Before reading the next section, think of the importance of

phonetics for the foreign language teacher and write down your ideas
in the space provided below. Your answer should not be longer than
two paragraphs.
The connection of phonetics with linguistic sciences (grammar,

lexicology, stylistics, semantics and pragmatics) points to its
importance from both a theoretical and a practical point of view.
Theoretically, a complete understanding and description of a language
is not possible without a description of its sound structure and system.
For instance, the loss of inflections in English is a grammatical
phenomenon which has phonetic causes, i.e. the strong dynamic stress
on the first syllable of words resulted in the reduction, weakening and
loss of the final unstressed syllable.
Practically, knowledge of phonetics is indispensable in the study
and teaching of foreign languages. The teacher and the learner of a
foreign language should ideally be able to recognize and produce the
sounds of the studied language just like a native speaker.
1.4. Phonetic symbols and types of transcription
The International Phonetic Alphabet

To describe the sounds of English (or of any other language) one
cannot depend on the spelling of the words. The most accurate method
of representing sounds is through the International Phonetic

Alphabet* (IPA) developed by the International Phonetic Association
in 1888; this can be used to symbolize the sounds found in all
languages.
The symbols are based on the Roman alphabet, with further
symbols created by inverting or reversing Roman letters or taken from
the Greek alphabet. The main characters are supplemented when
necessary by diacritics.
The International Phonetic Alphabet is less used in North America
than elsewhere, but it is widely used as a pronunciation aid for EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) and ESL (English as a Second
Language), especially by British publishers and increasingly in British
dictionaries of English.
The broad/phonemic/phonological transcription
When the sounds of a language are represented without going

into any details about variations, the method of
broad/phonemic/phonological transcription is used. For example, in
English, the /t/ phoneme is represented by this symbol in all situations,
regardless of the fact that the phoneme is realized by various
allophones, e.g. being aspirated* in a stressed initial position (time)
and unaspirated* after s (stay), and ignoring also the fact that it may
not always have alveolar* articulation.
A broad phonemic transcription is generally felt to be simplest to
use, but knowledge of the allophonic systems of the language is needed
if such a transcription is to be read aloud, with approximate accuracy.
The narrow/allophonic/phonetic transcription

Variations may be represented by what is known as
narrow//phonetic/allophonic i.e. a transcription which mirrors all that
is known about a sound in a given environment.
The large number of diacritics makes it possible to mark minute
shades of sound.
Conventionally, the narrow transcription* is given between square
brackets, while the broad transcription* uses slashes (slant lines).

Let's think first!
Look at the table below and consider the difference in number

between the phonemes of English and those of Romanian. Which
sounds do you think are found in English but not in Romanian?
Language Consonants Vowel Total

English 24 20 44
Romania 22 7 29
The English phonemic system

According to traditional phonological theories, the minimal unit in
the sound system* of a language is the phoneme. Each language
operates with a relatively small number of phonemes (Japanese has
about 20 phonemes, Romanian has 29 and English has 44); no two
languages have the same phonemic system. The English phonemic
system contains 24 consonants* and 20 vowels, while Romanian has 22
consonants and 7 vowels.
The symbols used for teaching the pronunciation of English are
the following:
Symbols Examples
Symbols for
vowels and [i:] Pete [pi:t]
diphthongs [] pit [pt]
[e] pet [pet]
[] pat [pt]
[:] part [p:t]
[] pot [pt]
[:] port [p:t]
[] put [put]
[u:] pool [pu:l]
[] pun [pn]
[:] perm [p:m]

[] parade [preid]
[ei] pain [pein]

[ai] pine [pain]
[] point [pint]
[au] pouch [paut]
[u] poach [put]
[i] peer [pi]
[] pair [p]
[u] poor [pu]
[p] appear [pi]
Symbols for [b] bubble [bbl]
consonants [t] attend [tend]
[d] hiding [haidi]
[k] conquer [kank]
[g] begin [bigin]
[f] offer [f]
[v] Cover [kv]
[s] Assist [sist]
[z] Razor [reiz]
[] Ether [i:]
[] mother [m]
[] nation [nein]
[] measure [me]
[t] cheese [ti:z]
[d] joke [duk]
[s] summer [sm]
[n] any [eni]
[] finger [fig]
[l] palace [plis]
[r] caress [kres]
[w] queen [kwi:n]
[j] yes [jes]

1.5. Types of standard pronunciation
1.5.1. Received Pronunciation* (RP)
Definition
RP(Received Pronunciation) is the name for the accent generally
associated with educated British English and used as the pronunciation
model for teaching it to foreign learners.
Origin
Received Pronunciation originates from the prestige accent of the
Court, well established in England by the 17th century. During the First
World War, Daniel Jones (1917) called it PSP (Public School
Pronunciation) because it was most usually heard in everyday speech in
the families of Southern English persons who had been educated at the
great public boarding-schools.
Who uses RP?

RP is the pronunciation used by national announcers and
presenters on the BBC since its founding in the 1920s because it was
the form of pronunciation most likely to be nationally understood and
to attract least regional criticism hence the association of RP with the
phrase BBC English*.
Is RP still popular on radio and television?

However in the 1970s-1980s there has been a move towards
modified regional accent among announcers and presenters and towards
distinct (but generally modified) regional accents among presenters on
popular radio channels and meteorologists and sports commentators on
television. In spite of the regionally marked forms of accent that can be
heard on some channels, RP remains the reference norm that is used for
the descriptions of other varieties of English.
Why are there differences in pronunciation?

Differences in pronunciation result from various factors such
geographical origin, ones age and sex, social class, educational
background, occupation and personality. In addition, Roach (1994: 190)
mentions situation factors such as the social relationship between
speaker and hearer, whether one is speaking publicly or privately and

the purposes for which one is using language.
RP and EFL teaching

RP is the accent that foreign learners of English are expected to
learn for the sake of convenience and simplicity; learners of English
need to be aware of the fact that this style/accent/variety is far from
being the only one they can meet. In practice, EFL teachers should do
their best to expose their pupils to other varieties. Actually, in EFL
teaching RP competes more and more with GA (General American*).
1.5.2. General American (GA)
Definition
An accent of English used in the United States that lacks the
especially marked regional characteristics of the north-east (New
England, New York State) and the south-east (the Southern States).
As a concept, GA corresponds to the laymans perception of an
American accent without marked regional characteristics. It is
sometimes referred to as Network English being the variety most
acceptable on the television networks covering the whole United States.
(Wells, 1981: 471).
1.5.3. British Non-Regional Pronunciation
A term that has been created in the late 20 th century, While

traditional RP is associated with upper class or upper-middle-class,
NRP is (just like General American) much more democratic and free
from class divisions. Yet, this is still a standard, which excludes using
other accents that are present all around the world, such as Australian
English, Scottish English or Hiberno-English.
Conclusions
This unit has introduced some major issues meant to underline the
idea that an understanding of the principles of phonetics is a necessary
basis for the study of other branches of linguistics, in the sense that
many language phenomena can be explained only in terms of phonetics.

Therefore, phonetics is equally necessary in the theoretical and
practical study of language.
The difference between phonemes and allophones or in other
words, between phonology and phonetics is so important that we also
note this difference in transcription: phonetic (or narrow transcription)
for which we use square brackets and phonological (phonemic, broad
transcription) for which we use slashes.
Phonemic variants or allophones are very important for language
learning and language teaching because they are pronounced in actual
speech and though their mispronunciation does not influence the
meaning of the words, their misuse makes a persons speech sound
foreign.
Because spelling is not a faithful representation of language, it is
useful to have a set of special symbols whose values are generally
agreed upon. This is the function of the phonetic symbols of the
International Phonetic Alphabet.
English is the national language in many countries, including the
United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland, and South
Africa. There are great differences in the pronunciation of English in
these countries and even within the same country one may hear
different pronunciations. From this variety of pronunciations, for
practical purposes, it has been necessary to choose those which are best
suited for learning and using English, i.e. Received Pronunciation and
General American.
Key concepts
The following key concepts have been introduced in this unit. Use
this list and others found at the end of each chapter as a checklist to
make sure that you are familiar with each before going on.
acoustic phonetics
allophone
articulatory phonetics
auditory phonetics

broad transcription
functional phonetics or phonology
General American
Morphophonology
narrow transcription
phoneme
phonemic system
Received Pronunciation
Segmental phonology
Suprasegmental phonology
the International Phonetic Alphabet
Further reading
1. Finch, Geoffrey. 2000. Linguistic Terms and Concepts.

Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 33-77.
2. Roach, Peter. 1994. English Phonetics and Phonology.
A Practical Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 3-47.
3. Dan Mateescu, 2003, English Phonetics and Phonological
Theory, Editura Universitii din Bucureti.
4. Peter Ladefoget, 2010, A course in Phonetics 6th edition,
Wadsworth Publishing.

THE ENGLISH VOWELS PHONEMES
UNIT 2
Unit outline
Unit aims
2.1. The classification of speech sounds
2.2 Classification of English Vowels
2.3 The Cardinal Vowel Charts
2.4 The description and distribution of English

monophthongs and diphthongs
2.4.1. English front vowels
2.4.2 English back vowels
2.4.3 English central vowels
2.5. Diphthongs
Conclusions
Key concepts
Further reading
Answers to SAQs

Unit aims
After you have completed the study of this unit you should be able
to:
define and recognize vowels
classify English vowels according to several criteria
define diphthongs
2.1. The classification of speech sounds
The speech sounds are generally divided into vowels and

consonants. However, a scientific study of the sounds reveals that it is
not so easy to define exactly what vowels or consonants mean. The
usual definition of vowels is sounds in which there is no obstruction to
the flow of air (airstream) as it passes from the larynx to the lips. All
the other sounds are considered to be consonants.
This classification was not thought to be a good one, from the
phonological point of view. There are many cases where the decision is
not easy to make. Some English sounds that we think of as consonants
such as "h" from the beginning of "hay" do not really obstruct the
airstream more than other vowels do. Another problem is that different
languages have different ways of dividing their sounds into vowels and
consonants. For example, the sound "r" at the beginning of the word
"red" in English is a consonant, but in some dialects of Chinese "r" is
treated as a vowel.
There are many interesting theoretical problems connected with
the vowel-consonant distinction, but for the rest of the course it will be
assumed that the sounds are clearly divided into vowels and
consonants.
2.2. Classification of English Vowels
In establishing the vowels system of a language, several

dimensions of classification may be used:
The position of the soft palate
For the production of the English vowels the soft palate is always
raised, so that the airstream goes out through the mouth. Consequently,
all English vowels are oral. Although English has no distinct nasal
vowels (like French or Portuguese), there are instances in which
nasalization is heard on English vowels due to the influence of adjacent
nasal consonant such as/ m, n, /. For instance, the phoneme // in mat
or hat is partially nasalized.
The position of the lips

The lips may be spread as they are for /i:, i, e, , , :, :, / or
rounded as they are for /u:, u, :, /. Roundness decreases with the
degree of opening of vowel. One can notice, for instance, the "close
rounding" of /u/ and the more "open rounding" of /:/. the opposition
rounded/unrounded is obvious in pairs such as don-darn, pot-part.
The part of the tongue which is raised
According to this criterion the English vowels are grouped into:
a) front vowels (made by raising the front of the tongue): /i:, i, e,
/
b) central vowels (made by raising the top part of the tongue,
between front and back): /:, /
c) back vowels (articulated with the back part of the tongue):
/u:,u, :, , :/
The degree of opening
According to the degree of opening between the raised part of the
tongue and the palate, the English vowels can be divided in:
a) close: made with the tongue in the highest position possible
without causing audible friction, as in the articulation of: /i:, i, u, u:/
b) mid-open (also half-open): articulated with the tongue in a
medium position as for /e, , , :/. In the pairs bid-bird, put-port,
week-work the close vowels /i, u, i:/ are opposed to the mid-open vowel
/:/
c) open vowels, made with the tongue in the lowest possible
position as for /, , , :/

In the pairs lack-luck, bard-bird, call-curl, the mid-open vowel
/:/ is opposed to the open-vowel /,:/
Length (also called quantity)
According to length, vowels are subdivided into long /i:, :, u:, :,
:/ and short /i, e, , , , u/.
Vowel length depends on the position of the vowel in the word or
utterance. For example, the long vowels are fully long when situated in
final position (as in be, tea, car) or when followed by a voiced
consonant ( as in cab, badge).
The length of vowels is considerably reduced when they are
followed by a voiceless consonant: e.g.: // in map, cat, lack, patch.
Tenseness (tension) refers to the overall muscular effort used
in producing the sound. It is the long vowel that require such an effort
whereas the short vowels do not. That is why they are called lax. The
opposition tense-lax is a distinctive feature of English vowels.
Stability of articulation
The criterion provides the basis for the opposition monophthong
(simple vowel)- diphthong (complex vowel). Out of twenty vowels
existing in English, twelve are monophthongs /i:, i, e, , :, , , , , /
and eight are diphthongs / ei, ai, i, u, au, i, e, u/. Monophthongs
are characterized by a relative stability of articulation because they do
not imply transitional sounds or glides such as /i/ in /ei, ai, i/.
In the articulation of diphthongs there is always a significant
change from one vowel quality to another. For instance, in the
articulation of the diphthong/ei/ the movement of the tongue is from a
more open to a more close position.
The full formation of /i/ is not accomplished. Diphthongs are
sometimes referred to as "gliding vowels". They consist of two
elements: a nucleus and a glide. In English there are three glides: /i/: /ei,
ai, i/ two glides to /u/ : /u, au/ and three glides to // : /i, e, u/.
2.3. English Primary and Secondary Vowel Charts
The reference system for vowels is based on the concept of

Cardinal Vowels (CVs), devised by Daniel Jones (1881-1967). Jones

proposed a set of 8 reference vowels. A set of Secondary Cardinal
Vowels with the same tongue positions but opposite values of lip
rounding are also proposed, so that front rounded and back unrounded
vowels can be referenced. The primary and secondary cardinal vowel
categories provide a suitable framework for comparison for many
languages. Note that the Cardinal Vowels are not the vowels of any
language but reference points for the comparison of the vowel qualities
of particular languages.
2.4. The description and distribution of English monophthongs and

diphthongs
Many contemporary studies follow Chomsky and Halle (The

Sound Pattern of English, 1968) in postulating the fact that the main
distinction between vowels and consonants consists in the fact that
while we utter a vowel the outgoing airstream does not meet any major
obstacle or constriction in its way from the lungs out of the mouth, and
the articulation of the sound allows spontaneous voicing, while the
articulation of a consonant always involves some kind of blocking of
the airstream.
We have to notice that five of the vowels are produced with spread
lips and are unrounded, while three of the back vowels are rounded
vowels.
If we modify the feature rounded for all the eight vowels and
pronounce the first five with rounded lips and the last three with spread
lips we obtain the secondary cardinal vowel chart.
If in English (and Romanian actually) the features front and
unrounded always go together, this is not the case of all languages,
French and German having each a number of front unrounded vowels.
Having established the vowel chart as a basic system of reference
we can now proceed to a brief description of the vowel phonemes of
English and their distribution.
The English simple ("pure") vowels or monophthongs

2.4.1. English front vowels
There are four front vowel phoneme in English /i:, i, e, /.

/i:/ is a close (high) long, tense, unrounded vowel. The duration of
/i:/ can be compared to the Romanian vowel in plural noun like "genii".
The vowel is distributed in all three basic positions: word-initial
position east; word-medial position dean and word-final position sea.
/i/ this is more retracted front vowel. It is a short, lax, unrounded
vowel, its length varying according to the nature of the following
consonant. It is distributed in all three basic positions: initial, medial
and final: ink, kill, aptly. The vowel is spelt i (ill, tick) or y (syntax,
party)
/e/ this is a short, lax, unrounded vowel whose degree of openness
is intermediate between cardinal half-close and half-open. It is a
common vowel in English, distributed in initial position end or medial
position tell. It never occurs in word-final position as it is normally
reduced to /i/ or //. The vowel is spelt e in words like elf, fell or ea in
words like hear or bread.
// is the lowest front vowel of English. It is a short, lax,
unrounded vowel, a little higher than the cardinal vowel in English, and
contrary to the perception of many foreign learners of English, it is a
short, not a long vowel. The basic difference between this vowel and
the preceding one is the degree of opening // being lower. The vowel
is distributed in syllable-initial, medial and final position (e.g. ant, cat,
rapid) but not in word final position.
2.4.2. English back vowels
There are five back vowels phonemes in standard English: /a:, :,

u:, , /.
/a:/ in RP does not coincide with cardinal vowel 5 //. It is more

advanced, low, long, tense, unrounded vowel. It is distributed in all
three positions: are, cart, far. It is normally spelt by the letter a
followed by a silent. It is often followed by a silent l in words like
palm, calm, balm. Sometimes f or ff can follow: after, staff, or ss in
words like pass, class, mass, or th in word-final position in words like
path, bath, Math.
// is a genuine back vowel in RP. It is short, lax, open and
slightly rounded. It is only distributed in initial and medial position, e.g.
on, pot and never in final position. In some varieties of American
English it is still open and a little bit fronted, coming very close to /a:/,
so that it's often difficult to distinguish pot from part. The vowel is
usually spelt o. Other spellings are possible: ou, aand au in cases like
cough, want, laurel.
/:/ is closer and longer than //. It is a long, tense vowel, more
rounded that //, the degree of aperture being between open and half-
open. The vowel is distributed in all three basic positions, e.g. awful,
caught, August, taught. It is usually spelt au or aw in words like awl,
drawn, taught. The sequence or is also read /:/ if it occurs in final
position or is followed by either a consonant or a silent e, e.g. for, sore,
port.
// is a short, lax, rounded vowel which is closer to /:/, its degree
of aperture being a little bit higher than the cardinal half-close. The
vowel never occurs in initial position. The usual spelling for // is the
letter u in words like push, pull, put. In a few words double oo is the
spelling for the sound, followed by k- look, book, or by t- foot, or by
d- wood, stood
/u:/ is the highest back vowel of English. It is a long, tense,
rounded vowel. It occurs in all three basic positions, oomph, ooze,
rude, crew, taboo. The sound in usually spelt u or oo: rule, root, taboo.
We can easily notice that all English front vowels are unrounded,
while the back ones display different degrees of roundness. This means
that only primary cardinal vowel chart is relevant for English, as there
are no front rounded vowels or back unrounded vowels in English, at
least in RP1.
1,
2003

2.4.3. English central vowels: [, :, , ].
Central vowels can be much harder for second language learners

to identify because were essentially talking about a single sound. The
difference is where that sound is located in a particular word, and
whether or not it has stress.
English central vowels. There are three central vowel phonemes in
English: [], [] and [:].
//is a central half-open, short, lax, unrounded vowel. It is the
lowest standard English vowel and is distributed in word-initial and
medial position: utter, subtle. It never occurs in word or syllable-final
position. It is usually spelt either u: under, but, or o: come, front, honey;
in a number of words it is spelt ou: courage, southern, rough, tough,
and exceptionally oo in blood and flood and oe in does
// is the commonest English vowel. It is a central, mid, lax, unrounded

vowel the schwa mentioned before for the pronunciation of which
the tongue adopts the neutral position in relation to which all the other
articulatory positions can be described. The vowel freely occurs in all
basic positions, but only in unstressed syllables: aside, collide, rather.
Its pronunciation doesnt normally raise any problem for a Romanian
speaker
of English.
/:/ is a central, mid, long, tense central vowel. It is the tense

counterpart of the schwa and since it only occurs in stressed syllables,
in complementary distribution with the preceding vowel. It is
distributed in all three basic positions, very often in monosyllabic
words: err, first, curtain, fur, refer. It is commonly spelt ir, ur, er, or
yr in final position or followed by a consonant or ear when followed by
a consonant: bird, burn, fern, myrtle, learn. Other spellings include our
in words like courtesy, journal, journey, scourge, and, exceptionally, o
in colonel.

2.5. Diphthongs
BBC pronunciation has a larger number of diphthongs, sounds

which consists of a movement or glide from one vowel to another. A
vowel which remains constant and does not glide is called a pure
vowel. In terms of length, diphthongs are like long vowels described
above. The most important thing to remember about diphthongs id that
the first part is much longer and stronger than the second part.
Diphthongs have already been described as sequences of two
vowels pronounced together, the two vocalic elements being members
of the same syllable. We have shown that it is often difficult to
distinguish a genuine diphthong from a sequence of a vowel and a
semivowel, that we can often pronounce diphthongs and even long
vowels as such sequences and it is often the shorter duration of the less
prominent vowel in the diphthong that transforms it into a semivocalic
element.
Classification of English diphthongs

According to the position of the more prominent element in the
diphthong we have already divided diphthongs into falling diphthongs
if the prominent element comes first and rising diphthongs if the
less prominent element comes first. All English diphthongs belong to
the first category, as it has already been pointed out.
Diphthongs can then be opening diphthongs if the degree of
aperture increases with the glide or closing diphthongs if the less
prominent vowel is closer than the first. We can also differentiate
between wide diphthongs those in which the glide implies a more
radical movement of the speech organs and narrow diphthongs if the
two vocalic elements occupy neighboring positions on the vowel chart.
There are also centring diphthongs if the glide is from a marginal
vowel in the vowel chart either back or front - to a central vowel.
Narrow diphthongs are characterized by a less marked movement
of the speech organs: /ei, u, i, e, u/.
In terms of the degree of pening of the nucleus, diphthongs are
grouped as closing and opening. When the nucleus of the glide is a
more open vowel than that of the glide, the diphthongs is a closing one
/ei, ai, au, u/, when the nucleus is closer than the glide, the diphthongs
is an opening one / i, e, u/.
2.5.1. Glides to /i/: /ei, ai, i/
The phoneme /ei/ is a narrow, closing, falling diphthong. It

occurs in all three basic positions: initial position in words like ages,
eight, April, medial-position in pain, shade, taste and final- position
say, they, stay. It can be spelt a: ace, lace; ai: aid, maid; ay: aye, clay;
ei: eight, reign, ey: they, grey, ea: break, steak. The diphthong also
occurs in a small number of French loan words ending in et or : ballet,
bouquet, chalet, caf, fianc, attach, resum.
The phoneme /i/ is a wide, closing, falling diphthong. It occurs

in all three basic positions: initial position in words like oil, oyster,
medial-position in voice, coin and final- position noise, enjoy. It can be
spelt oi: oil, toil or oy: oyster, Boyle, coy.
The phoneme /ai/ is a wide, closing, falling diphthong. It occurs

in all three basic positions: initial position in words like island, ice,
medial-position in bike, mind, sight, height and final- position pie, sty,
lie. It can be spelt i as in ice, dime, loci, or y a in cry, dyke, fly, or ie as
in die, lie, pie, or in inflected forms: spies, spied; ye as in dye, fye; ei as
in height, either, neither; and, exceptionally uy in buy, guy.
2.5.2. Glides to /u/: /u, au/
The phoneme /u/ is a narrow, closing, falling diphthong. The

diphthong occurs initially in over, old, owner, medially in bone, boat,
groan and finally no, window, snow. It has various spellings: o: old,
sold, no; oa: oak,
roast, oe: toe, ow: own, known, row; ou: poultry, dough; eau:
beau, bureau,
and, exceptionally, au: gauche; oo: brooch; ew: sew; oh: oh.

The phoneme / au/ is a wide, closing, falling diphthong. It occurs
in all three basic positions: initial position in words like owl, outside,
medial-position in found, about, hours, mountain and final- position
now, how, cow, bough, allow. It can be spelt by ou: oust, doubt, plough,
or ow: owl, howl, how.
2.5.3. Glides to // : /i, e, u/
The phoneme /i/ is a narrow, opening, centring diphthong. The

diphthong occurs initially in ear, era, medially in beard, cheers, nearly,
period and finally dear, idea, here. There are several possible spellings
for the diphthong: eer as in deer, peer or career; ea(r) as in ear, weary,
idea, tear (n. lacrim), beard, eir as in weird, ier as in fierce or
pierce, ere as in here or mere.
The phoneme / e/ is a narrow, opening, centring diphthong. This

diphthong occurs in initial position in words like air, aerial, heir, it
occurs in medial position in words like careful, upstairs, shared and in
final position in words like fair, mare, where, there.
The phoneme / u/ is a narrow, opening, centring diphthong. In

a number of cases we can have the spelling ou: our, gourd, bourse. The
diphthong can also occur in words where the suffix er is attached to a
base ending in [(j)] fewer, newer, chewer, doer, pursuer.
Here are the English diphthongs distributed contrastively in the
same context:
a) centring diphthongs: beer, bear , boor, boar
b) diphthongs to []: buy , boy, bay
c) diphthongs to []: bow, beau, bow, bough
2.5.4. English triphthongs. The very existence of triphthongs in

present-day English is a controversial problem. There is hardly any
phonetic evidence for the surival of the respective structures at least in
RP. The controversial sequences occur w before the rhotic r when the
non-centrig diphthongs are followed by schwa. Triphthongs are
composed of: closing diphthongs + // for example the diphthongs /e/
/a/ /i/ // /a/ + // in words like: layer, liar, royal, lower, hour.

As Roca and Johnson point out (1999: 200-201), the actual
pronunciation of these vocalic sequences tends either to break them into
the diphthong and the following simple vowel (schwa) - e.g buyer, or to
reduce the diphthong to a simple vowel followed by schwa e.g. buyer.
Key concepts
Front vowels
Back vowels
Diphthongs
Triphthongs
Further reading
1. Chioran, Dumitru. 1978. English Phonetics and Phonology.

Bucureti: Editura didactic i Pedagogic.
2. Chioran, Dumitru and Hortensia Prlog. 1989. Ghid de
pronunie a limbii engleze. Bucureti: Editura stiintific i
enciclopedic.
3. Chioran Dumitru, Augerot, James and Hortensia Prlog. 1984.
The Sounds of English and Romanian. Bucureti: Bucharest
University Press.
4. Chioran, Dumitru and Lucreia Petri. 1977. Workbook in
English Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureti: Editura didactic
i pedagogic.
5. Chioran, Dumitru and Hortensia Prlog. 1989. Ghid de
pronunie a limbii engleze, Bucureti: Editura didactic i
pedagogic.

THE ENGLISH CONSONANT PHONEMES
UNIT 3
Unit outline
Unit aims
3.1 Classification of English Consonants
3.2 The plosive consonants

3.3. The affricate consonants
3.4 The fricative consonants
3.5 The nasal consonants
3.6. The liquid consonants
3.7. The semi-vowels
Conclusions
Key concepts
Further reading

Unit aims
to:
Identify and classify English consonants according to several
criteria
Recognize the graphic equivalents of the consonants
The English Consonant Phonemes
Phonetically, consonants are made by a closure or narrowing in

the vocal tract so that the airflow is either completely blocked or so
restricted that audible friction is produced. Phonologically, consonants
are those units which function at the margins of syllables either singly
or in clusters. According to Daniel Jones consonants include "All
sounds which are not voiced, all sounds in the production of which the
air has an impeded passage through the mouth, all sounds in the
production of which the air does not pass through the mouth, all sounds
in which there is audible friction."
3.1. Classification of English consonants
According to the manner of articulation or the type of closure

made by the vocal organs, consonants may be classified as:
- plosives /p, b, t, d, k, g/
- affricates / t, d/
-fricatives /f, v, , , s, z, , , h/
-nasals /m, n, /
- laterals /l/
-flap/rolls/trills /r/
-semivowels (semiconsonants) /w, j/
From the point of view of their place of articulation, consonants

may be:
- bilabial /p, b, m, w/
- labio-dental / f, v/
- dental / , /
- alveolar /s, z, t, d, n, l, r/
-palatal- alveolar / , , t, d/
- palatal /j/
- velar /k, g, /
- glottah /h/
3.2. The plosive consonants
The plosive consonants, also called occlusives or stops, /p, b, t, d,

k, g/ are produced with a complete closure followed by a sudden
release, the result being and explosion.
There are six plosives arranged in pairs /p,b/, /t, d/, /k, g/. In terms
of place of articulation /p,b/ are bilabial, /t, d/ are alveolar and /k, g/ are
velar. In the articulation of /p, t, k/ the vocal cord do not vibrate,
therefore they are voiceless. The other plosives /b, d, g/ are voiced. In
English it is the voiceless consonants /p, t, k/ which tend to be produced
with fortis articulation, their voiced counterparts /b, d, g/ being lenis i.e.
produced with less muscular energy.
Another phonetic characteristic of the plosive consonants is
aspiration. Thus, voiceless plosives are strongly aspirated when
followed by a stressed vowel: power, talk, cool. Aspiration is totally
lost when voiceless plosives are preceded by /s/: speak, state, school.
The same happens when plosives occur in front of unaccented vowels
carpets, wanted, speaker.
Aspiration also does not take place when the plosives are followed
by /l, r, w, j/: please, price, computer. The result is the devoicing of
these consonants under the influence of voiceless /p/.
The phonetic values of occlusives depends on the phonetic
environment and accents. Here are the main positional variants of
plosive consonants in minimal pairs.
- voiceless aspirated versus voiced, unaspirated
pack /phk/- back /bk/
touch / tt/- Dutch /dt/
coast /khust/- ghost /gust/
- voiceless, weakly released versus fully voiced and completely
unreleased when in medial position:
Harper /ha:p/- harbor /ha:b/
Staple /steipl/- stable /steibl/
Canter /knt/- candour /knd/
Echo /eku/- ego /egu/
- voiceless, unaspirated, fortis, in final position versus partially
devoiced, lenis, in final position
Rope /rup/- robe /rub/
Cup /kp/- cub /kb/
Sat /st/- sad /sd/
Butt /bt/- bud /bd/
Leak /li:k/- league /li:g/
Graphic equivalents of the plosive consonants
There are instances when the letters corresponding to the plosives

consonants are not produced. The letter p is silent before n, s or t in
initial position: pneumonia /nju:'munia/, psalm /sa:m/, Ptolomy
/tlmi/.
/b/ is not pronounced after m or before t: lamb /lm/, comb
/kum/, bomb /bm/, doubt/daut/, subtle /stl/. The letter t is not
pronounced in the following graphic contexts: -stle (castle, whistle,
hustle), -sten (listen, fasten), -stm (Christmas).
3.3. The affricate consonants /, d/
Affricates are identified by the combination of plosion and friction

in their production. They are therefore intermediate sounds between
plosives and fricatives. From a phonetic point of view, in English there
are eight sequences of sounds that can be considered affricatives:
// - // : chin gin; breeches bridges; rich ridge.
/tr/ - /dr/ : tray dry; entry Anrdew.
/ts/ - dz/ : cats cads
/t/- /d/ : eight width

Since not all the above sounds can occur unrestrictedly in all the
basic positions and in many words or utterances is it only the phonemes
// and // that are usually treated as affricates. Phonologically there is a
difference of opinion as to whether those with a restricted distribution
could be identified as affricate phonemes.
The phoneme // is palato-aveolar, fortis, voiceless where as //
is palato-alveolar and voiced. The two affricates do not have important
allophones (they remain quite constant irrespective of their position in a
word or utterance).
Comparing the English // and // with their corresponding
Romanian sounds // and // one can notice that Romanian sounds can
be followed by other vowel sounds as well: chance /a:ns/, chubby
/bi/, chest /est/, chap /p/, choose /u:z/, chop /p/, church
/:/. This difference explains the palatizing tendency of Romanian
students of English when producing the English affricates // and //:
chance /a:ns/, chubby /bi/, chest /iest/, cheap /iep/, choose
/iu:z/, chop /p/, church /:/. Such tendency should be eliminated
by those who endeavour to speak English without any foreign accent.
3.4. The fricative consonants

/f, v, , , s, z, , , h/
Fricatives are sounds made when two organs comes so close

together that the air moving between them produces audible frictions.
There is no complete closure between the organs (in which case a
plosive articulation would be produced) there is simply a stricture or
narrowing.
There are nine fricative sounds in English / f, v, , , s, z, ,
, h / which can be grouped in pairs according to such criteria as place
of articulation, force of articulation, voicing.
The phonemes /f/ and /v/.
The phonemes /f/ and /v/ are labio-dental; /f/ is voiceless and fortis
while /v/ is voiced and lenis:
feel /fi:l/ - veal /vi:l/
few /fju:/ - view /vju:/
leaf /li:f/ - leave /li:v/
staff /sta:f/ - starve /sta:v/
The phonemes // and // are interdental; // is voiceless and
fortis whereas // is voiced and lenis:
thigh /ai/ - thy /ai/
ether /i:/ - either /ai/ or /i:/
wreath /ri:/ - wreathe /ri:/
Since there are no corresponding Romanian sounds for the English
fricatives // and // a number of difficulties may arise when acquiring
the right quality of these sounds. Some Romanian students of English
may mistake them for other fricatives such as /s z/, /f v/ or for the
dental Romanian phonemes /t d/.
The necessity of avoiding this tendency is obvious especially

when mispronunciation entails a chance of meaning:
thing /i/ - sing /si/
three /ri:/ - tree /tri:/
three /ri:/ - free /fri:/
with /wi/ - whizz /wiz/
they /ei/ - day /dei/
clothe /klu/ - clove /kluv/
Both // and // are represented in spelling by the diagraph th . An
accurate pronunciation of words containing this diagraph requires
knowledge of the etymology of those words and of their grammatical
status. Thus, initial th is pronounced // in the functional words (the
definite article, a few prepositions and conjunctions, pronouns,
adverbs):
The, they, there, that, therefore.

In words belonging to the main parts of speech category th is
pronounced // irrespective of etymology; thing, thank, thin,
thoroughly, therapy.
In medial position th is pronounced // in words of Germanic
origin (father, gather, weather) and // in words of non Germanic
origin (anthem, ethics, enthusiasm).
In final position th is usually pronounced // :
- in nouns and adjectives: warmth
- when the diagraph is preceded by a consonant: health
- when th is preceded by orthographic r: birth, earth,
In final position th is pronounced //
- in verbs: bathe
- when the diagraph is followed by silent e : breath.
The phonemes /s/ and /z/

Like /f/ and /v/, these fricative consonants do not present
difficulties for Romanian students of English because they are quite
similar to their Romanian counterparts.
The phoneme /s/ is alveolar, fortis, voiceless and occur in all the
basic positions: say, concert, ice, /s/ is not pronounced in the word
isle/ail/, island /ailnd/, aisle /ail/, and in French borrowings: corps
/kps/, chamois /mi/, debris /debri/.

The phoneme /z/ is an alveolar, lenis, voiced, fricative consonant.
/z/ is pronounced when spelt:
- z: zeal, puzzle
- s: if followed by vowels or voiced consonants: houses,
husband,
- ss: dessert /diz:t/, dissolve/dizlv/, possess /pzes/
- x: xenophobia, example
The phonemes // and //

The phoneme // is a palate-aveolar, lenis and voiced. They can be
contrasted in these pairs:
dilution / dilu:n/ - desilusion /dilu:n/

pressure / pre/ - pleasure / ple/
Confucian /knfiu:n/ - confusion /knfju:n/
Unlike the phoneme // which occurs in all the basic positions

(sugar, mission, brush), the phoneme // has a restricted distribution: if
does not occur initially. Here is a sentence containing words with // in
medial and final position:
e.g. Such an unusual decision affected his prestige.
/s n njuul disin fectid hiz presti/
// in final position occurs in new borrowings from French:

prestige, beige, rouge, garage, massage, camouflage.
The phoneme /h/ is a glottal, laryngeal, fortis, voiceless, fricative

consonant. It has no voiced counterpart. The phoneme /h/ occurs only
before vowels: heat, hedge, hand, heart, ahead, anyhow, behave,
inhibit, subhuman. Form a phonological and distributional poin of view
it could be treated as a semivowel. However, in terms of phonetics,
given its audible friction, it is grouped together with the fricatives. The
English /h/ is quite different from the Romanian /h/ in that the latter is
more velar than glottal. That is why it is advisable for Romanian
students of English to avoid using any velar friction in the production
of the English /h/.
The phoneme /h/ is often omitted in normal speech, especially in
form words: he, her, have, has:
I could have a hit het.
/ai kud v hit: :/.
The letter h is not pronounced when initial in words such as hour,
honest, honour, heir or when in medial position, after x (exhaust, exibit)
or when preceded by r (rhapsody, rhetoric).
3.5. The nasal consonants /m, n, /
In the production of nasals the air-stream escapes freely through

the nose, the vocal cords are in a state of vibration and the articulatory
organs are quite lax. The three nasal sounds /m,n,/ are produced by
means of a complete in one of the three main areas of the mouth:
bilabial /m/, alveolar /n/ and velar //.
When in final position and preceded by a consonant, the English
nasal have a syllabic function:
Cotton /ktn/, button / btn/, bacon /beikn/, rhythm / rim/, sicken
/sik/.

The phoneme /m/ is a bilabial, voiced, lenis, nasal consonant. It
may occur in initial (manner, master), medial (amount, comparable)
and final position (sum, film). This consonant is considerably devoiced
when preceded by a voiceless consonant: Smith /smi/, small /sm:l/.
/m/ becomes labio-dental when followed by the labio-dental
consonants /f, v/: comfort /k mft/, circumvent /s:kmvent/.
Syllabic /m/ occurs finally and is preceded by another consonant:
bottom /btm/, prism /prizm/.
/m/ can be spelt as m (mayor), mm (summer) or mb (comb). Initial
m followed by nis silent: pneumonic /njumnik/.
The phoneme /n/ is an alveolar, voiced, lenis, nasal consonant.
Like /m/ it is partially devoiced when preceded by /s/ (sneeze) and
becomes labio-dental when it is followed by /f, v/ : infinite, invite. In
final position /n/ may be assimilated by a following bilabial or velar
consonant. In these cases the allophones of /n/ are actually the other
nasal phonemes /m/ and //: ten boys /tembiz/, ten girls /teg:lz/. Its
graphic equivalents are n (cotton) and nn (dinner). /n/ is silent when
preceded by /m/ damn /dm/, autumnal /tmnl/.
The phoneme // is velar, voiced, nasal consonant. It occurs only
- medially:
hanged /hd/, amongst /mst/, wings /wiz/
- finally:
bring/ bri/, winning /wini/, hang / h/.
Some variants of // involve the position of the lips which may be
spread in sing /si/, and slightly rounded in song /s/. Other
allophones involve the actual place of articulation: advanced (when
preceded by a front vowel) - young /j/, sing /si/, and back (when
preceded by a back vowel), long /l/.
// may be as ng (rang /r/) or nk (ink /ink/). The difficulties
Romanian have when pronouncing the English // are considerably
reduced when this nasal consonant is followed by a velar such as /k/ or
/g/: bank /bk/, English / igli/. When followed by other consonants
or when it occurs in final or intervocalic position, the English velar
nasal // is not properly articulated by Romanians. Therefore due
attention should be paid to the articulation of this velar nasal sound.

3.6. The liquid consonants /l, r/
The apico-aveolar sounds /l/ and /r/ are usually referred to as

liquid consonants.
The phoneme /l/ is also called lateral because its manner of
articulation implies a lateral release. The main allophones of the
phoneme/l/ are:
- clear [l] always followed by a vowel: like, leave, lonely, list,
million.
- dark [l] occurs in final position, before a consonant or after a
consonant: fill, mild, people. Dark [l] may have a syllabic function
when situated in final position or in final clusters preceded by a
consonant: apple, table, middle, uncle.
Romanian students of English do not have difficulties with clear
[l] as it is similar to the Romanian corresponding sound. Dark [l] is a
difficult sound because there is no such sound in Romanian. An easy
way of learning to produce it consists in placing the tip of the tongue
against the alveolar ridge (as for the production of clear [l] and trying to
pronounce the vowel [u] without lip rounding.
Other variants of the /l/ phoneme may be voiced as in lady, pool,
or voiceless as in play where the /l/ has been devoiced due to the
influence of the preceding voiceless consonant.
/l/ is silent in the following digraphs:
- al: calf, half
- oul: could, would
- alk: chalk, talk
- olk: folk, yolk
- alm: calm, balm
It is also silent in some proper names such as Faulkner /f:kn/,
Lincon / li/ , Malmesbury / mmzbri/.
The phoneme /r/ may be describe as a voiced, post-alveolar,
frictionless continuant. (i.e. sound produced with an incomplete closure
of thwe vocal tract). This type of /r/ which, according to Gimson, is the
most common in English, is from a phonetic point of view, a vowel-like
sound. It is only from a phonological point of view that it is considered
consonant. It occurs before a vowel and occupies a non-central position
in the syllable.
Variants. When /r/ is preceded by /t, d/ (e.g. trace, bedroom, drive)
it acquires friction so that sequences /dr/ and /tr/ may by treated as
affricates. When preceded by /p, t, k/, /r/ is completely devoiced: pray,
proud, tray, front, cry.
It is partially devoiced after any other voiceless fortis consonants:
three, thread, fret, shine, shrew.
The alveolar tap [r] occurs in intervocalic position: around, bury,
very, period. It is articulated with a single tap made by the tip of the
tongue on the alveolar ridge.
The lingual roll [r] or rolled lingual [r] is very similar to the
Romanian /r/ sound. It consists of a rapid succession of taps made by
the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge. It is characteristic of Scottish
English and Northern English. Its use is considered a sign of elevated
speech.
A rolled uvular /r/ noted /R/ and a fricative uvular /r/ transcribed /
/ are used in the North-East of England and sometimes in Scotland.
In standard British English /r/ is never pronounced in final
position (far, car, mare, here, purr).
The only instance when /r/ is retained in pronunciation in word
final position is at word boundaries when the following word begins
with a vowel: far, away. More and more, near it, poor Emmy, their
eyes, aware of it. This type of /r/ is called linking [r]*.
Intrusive occurs [r] by analogy with linking [r]: the idea of it /i
aidirvit/, the love of it /lvrit/, the law of this /l:rvis/.
In American English /r/ is a retroflex sound in which the tongue
tip is curled upward and backward the hard palate. It has a syllabic
function when situated in final position or final cluster: bird, harbour.
With some American speakers /r/ in intervocalic position is
accompanied by a bilabial element: very /vewri/, merry /mewri/.
In Romanian /r/ is a vibrated dental sound. In other to avoid the
foreign accent when producing it, Romanian learners should start
either from a vowel like /:/ or from /w/ and place the tip of the tongue
behind the alveolar ridge and then curl it slightly backwards, trying to
articulate the /r/ sound.
3.7. The semi-vowels /j, w/
The phonemes /j/ and /w/ function as consonants (they cannot be

used as the nucleus of a syllable) but lack the phonetic characteristics
normally associated with consonants (such as friction or closure).
Instead their quality is that of vowels.
Both sounds occur at the margins of a syllable. The consonantic
nature of these sounds is also proved by the fact that no liking [r] is
inserted before a semivowel: for you /f:ju:/, higher wages
//haiweiiz/.
The phoneme /j/ is unrounded, palatal, voiced, devoicing takes
place:
pupil /pju:pl/, tune / tju:n/, cube / kju:b/.
/j/ is fully voiced after lenis consonants: argue /a:gju/, beauty
/bju:ti/, endure /endju:/
In present day English there is a tendency to replace /ju/by/u/
(Nicolescu 1977):
a) after initial /l/ : lunatic, lute
b) after medial /l/ preceded by an unstressed vowel:
absolutely, pollution, revolutionary
c) after /s/ : suit, consumer, Sue
d) after /z/: presumably, resume
e) after // : enthusiastic.
In rapid speech /tj, dj, sj, zj/ are pronounced /, , /: mature,
education, issue, visual.
The phoneme /w/ is rounded labio-velar, semi-vowel.
It occurs in initial (warm, one, world, water) and in medial
position (reward, highway, sweet).
Its allophones n=may be identified to the nature of the vowels
following /w/ and of the consonants preceding it.
A more closely rounded /w/ occurs when it is followed by /u/:
wool, womb, warp. A less close /w/ is heard when followed by
unrounded vowels: wind, twenty, tweed. A devoiced /w/ is perceived
when preceded by fortis, voiceless consonants: twin, unward, quiet.
When its devoicing is complete, the sound is accompanied by friction.
This variant noted / / is used in Scotland, the Northern parts of England
and in America: its graphic equivalent is wh: which, when, what, where.
The letter w is not pronounced in words like two, answer, sword,
who, whole.
/w/ is also silent when followed by /r/: wrist, write, wrong,
Greenwich, Norwich.
Romanian students usually do not have difficulties in pronouncing
the English semivowels /j/ and /w/ as in Romanian there are sound
resembling them: iarna, iute, ieire, oarb, oaste, oare.
Key concepts
plosives
affricates
fricatives
nasals
laterals
flap/rolls/trills
semivowels (semiconsonants)
bilabial
labio-dental
dental
alveolar
palatal- alveolar
palatal
velar
glottal
Further reading:
1. Mateescu, D., 2003, English Phonetics and Phonological

Theory, Bucureti, Editura Universitii.
2. Chitoran Dumitru, 1978, English Phonetics and Phonology,
Bucureti, Ed. Didactic i Pedagogic.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH
UNIT 4
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN

ENGLISH
Unit outline
Unit aims
4.1 Pronunciation differences

4.1.1 The vowel system
4.1.2 The consonant system
4.2 Differences in spelling

4.2.1 Phonetic spelling tendencies
4.2.2 The omission of superfluous letters in American
English
4.3 Lexical differences in main subject areas

4.3.1 People and their immediate environment
4.3.2 Human interaction and communication
4.3.3 Social institutions
4.3.4 Natural environment
Conclusions
Key concepts
Further reading
Unit aims
to:
discriminate British English from American English in terms
of pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary
avoid a potential source of confusion caused by some lexical
items in the two varieties of English
try to develop a consistent way of speaking and writing in
English
English in the USA differs considerably from British English.

Pronunciation is the most striking difference but there are also a
number of differences in vocabulary and grammar as well as slight
differences in spelling.
Let's think first!
Before continuing to read this unit, think of which variety of

English you tend to pronounce. Note down some of the distinguishing
features you are aware of and compare them with the information
given in the section below.
4.1. Pronunciation differences
4.1.1. The vowel system
American drawl
Some Americans are noted for their drawl, i.e. a lengthening of
stressed vowels; this is especially characteristic of Southern
pronunciation.
In contrast with the drawled nature of the way many Americans
speak is the so-called clipped diction of British English. This is

accounted for by the greater tension and lesser degree of lengthening in

stressed vowels.
The American drawl has to do with a less effortful way of
producing sounds and is an aspect of informality of American English
(Kovecses, 2000: 241)
American nasality
Vowels are often nasalized* in American English (the American
nasality or nasal twang*) especially by speakers from the Middle
West. The nasal quality of American vowels is explained by the longer
duration* of the nasalized portion of a vowel following a nasal
consonant
Many British people pronounce /a:/ in some words where
Americans pronounce / /, when this vowel is followed by fricatives*
such as /f/, //, /s/; therefore, the pronunciation with // before the
fricatives /f, s, / and before the nasals* /m/, /n/ is typical of American
English:
British English American English Examples
/:/+ /f/, //, /s/ // + /f /, / /, /s/ laugh, after, bath,

math, ask,
/:/+ /n/, /m/ //+/n/, /m/ chance, example
The vowel / / is pronounced without lip-rounding and sounds

like /:/ in American English: stop, body, common, novel, problem:
British American Examples
English English
// // Tom, dollar, lot,
hot, box, rock,
dog, frog, crop,
body, conflict,
novel

The Americans have a tendency to pronounce // instead of /i/ in

unstressed syllables:
British English American Examples

English
/i/ // minute,
started,
greatest
The reduction of diphthongs* to simple vowels
In British English, words like home, no, are pronounced with the
diphthong /u/ while in American English the diphthong* is reduced to
//, especially in unstressed final position (in very casual or informal
speech): potato, tomato, fellow, window, piano, mellow, etc. This points
to the well known American tendency towards simplification. The
same tendency can be noticed in the reduction of /ai/ to /a:/ and of /ei/
to //.
Similarly, the semi-vowel /j/ is dropped into /u/ when preceded by
/t/ or /d/, a characteristic which shows that the Americans pronounce
the words almost the same way as they are written:
/u/ // potato, tomato,

fellow
/ai/ /:/ fire, buyer, tired, five
/ei/ date, fate, great
/t/, /d/ or /n/ /t/, /d/ or /n/ student, tulip,

+/j/+/u/ +/u/ during, numerous
4.1.2 The consonant system
The flap*
In British English /t/ remains unvoiced* between two vowels or
between a vowel and a voiced* consonant but in American English
intervocalic* /t/ is very close to /d/. This type of sound is called the
flap because the tongue flaps against the alveolar ridge. In many areas
of the United States, where it can be heard, the flap* makes words such
as matter and madder, writer and rider, latter and ladder, whiter and
wider sound nearly or exactly the same:
Intervocalic Intervocalic voiced /t/, writer,

unvoiced /t/| resembling /d/ latter,
whiter
Post-nasal /t/
A well known distinguishing feature of American pronunciation is
complete disappearance or voicing of /t/ in post-nasal position that is
after a nasal consonant. Cases in point are winter, pronounced as
winner, enter as enner and intercity as innercity, in which the voiceless
consonant /t/ is pronounced as voiced /d/.
Further, /t/ and /d/ may be dropped altogether in casual speech
after nasals: twenty /tweni/, candidate, /kn,deit/, understand
/;nrstnd/
Rhotacity
In standard British English /r/ is only pronounced before a vowel.
In American English /r/ is pronounced in all positions in a word and it
changes the quality* of a vowel that comes after it. So, words like turn
and offer sound very different in British and American speech.
Consequently, American English is considered to be a rhotic*
accent of English, one in which /r/ is pronounced in post-vocalic (e.g.
bird) and final position (e.g. car). Pronouncing /r/ is the norm in the
Northern, Midland, and Western dialect region, that is, the greatest part
of the country. Exceptions to this are New England and New York,
which although geographically belonging to the North, do not
pronounce the /r/ in a post-vocalic position and at the end of words.
Word stress
Word stress tends to fall on the first syllable in American English:
princess, address, research, entire, museum, resource:
second syllable is first syllable is princess,

stressed stressed address,
research, entire,
museum,
resource
Most of the disyllabic verbs ending in -ate have the stress on the
first syllable: dictate, frustrate, migrate, vibrate. As for the borrowings,
they keep their original stress in American English: barrage, bouquet,
chalet, caf, gourmet, pt, ballet. In words that have three syllables,
Americans emphasize the ending: secretary, dictionary, laboratory,
conservatory, inflammatory.
Let's think first!
Before moving on to differences in spelling, look at the way

some words are spelt in the two standards of English:
British English American English
1. labour 1. labor
2. centre 2. center
3. hospitalised 3. hospitalized
4.2. Differences in spelling
American spelling, in the majority of cases is simpler and

consistently shorter than British spelling. The process of simplification
in spelling started with the spelling reforms at the end of the eighteenth
century, when big names including Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster
and Mark Twain attempted at changing the complicated system of

English.
4.2.1. Phonetic spelling tendencies
The change from -re to -er

American spelling closely follows the sequence in which the
sounds are actually pronounced, namely it tends to have what is called
phonetic spelling.
For example, when we pronounce words like theatre (BE) -
theater (AmE), centre (BE) - center (AmE) fibre (BE)- fiber (AmE)
and litre (BE)- liter (AmE) the sequence of the final sounds is /t(r)/.
Notice that in the British spelling the sequence of the actual sounds,
/+r/, is reversed, yielding -re in writing.
The shift from -ce to -se

Another best known case of change related to the phonetic
spelling reforms proposed by Webster in 1788, and subsequently
preserved in American spelling is the shift from -ce to -se, as in
defense, pretense, offense, license.
The change from ise to -ize

Both the ending -ise and -ize are pronounced with a /z/ sound. As
the letter z is a more conventional representation of the sound /z/ than
the letter /s/, American English favours the spelling -ize as in analyze,
paralyze.
4.2.2. The omission of superfluous letters in American English
A faithful orthographic representation of the pronunciation of

words implies the omission of letters that are believed to be
superfluous, e.g. silent* letters.
The shift from -ll to -l, and from -mme to -m

Words that normally have -ll in British English are spelled with -l
in American English: counsel(l), wol(l)en, trave(l)led, fue(l)led.

Similarly, -mme in British English turns into -m in American

English: program(me), kilogram(me).
The shift from our to -or

In British English words ending in -our end in -or in American
English, e.g. colour /color, flavour/flavor, humour/humor,
labour/labor.
The shift from -AmE, -oe to -e

British English seems to have retained both -ae and -oe spellings
in addition to the -e spellings in words like mediaeval, foetus,
paediatrician, oesophagus, manoeuvre, anaemia, amoeba. American
English seems to prefer the simplified -e spellings in these cases. Thus,
in American English, the usual spellings of these words are medieval,
fetus, pediatrician, esophagus, maneuver, anemia and ameba.
4.3. Lexical differences in main subject areas
The main causes of the vocabulary differences between British

and American English are related to social and cultural
developments, technology and linguistic processes. The range of
lexical differences can be suggested by the large number of lexical
entries marked as Americanisms in Websters New World
Dictionary, i.e. 11,000 items, out of which 4,000 items belong to
ordinary vocabulary.
Concerning the subject areas which provide most of the lexical
differences, Kovecses (2000: 148) mentions the central theme of
people and their immediate environment; slightly removed from this
central theme we have the theme human interaction and
communication; next we can set up the theme social institutions and
finally, the theme of natural environment.
4.3.1. People and their immediate environment
This theme includes the subcategories household and building,

clothing, food and shopping:
British American
ground floor first floor

Building lift elevator
and tap faucet
household flat (rented) apartment
cupboard closet
flat (owned) condominium
dustbin trashcan
garden yard
Clothes dinner jacket tuxedo

trousers pants
underpants shorts
waistcoat vest
plimsolls sneakers
Food tin can

sweets candy
chips
French fries
jam jelly
biscuit cookie
bilberry blueberry
maize corn
crisps potato chips
polka dots chocolate chips
flan fruit pie
Shopping bill check

queue line
shop assistant sales clerk
supplies goods

4.3.2. Human interaction and communication
This subject area involves such subcategories as travel and

accommodation, personal communication (telephone and post) and
transportation (car, train, road).
luggage baggage
Accommodation
left luggage office baggage room
and travel receptionist desk clerk
to book to make reservations
timetable schedule
toilet(s) restroom
return ticket round trip ticket single
ticket one way ticket
post code zip code
Telephone ring up call up
and post postman mailman
office parcel package
car park parking lot

Road, traffic pavement sidewalk
and motorway freeway
transportation roundabout traffic circle
taxi/cab cab/taxi
traffic lights stop lights
high street main street
underground subway
coach bus
tram street car
sledge sled

4.3.3. Social institutions
This theme contains such subcategories as school and education,

business and banking, as well as media and entertainment.
School lecturer instructor
senior lecturer assistant professor
and
reader associate professor
education
professor
(full) professor
hall of residence dormitory
mark grade
postgraduate graduate
secondary school high school
university college/university
maths math
current account checking account

Business deposit account
and savings account
finance shares stocks
note bill
booking office ticket office

Entertainment film/movie movie
cinema movie theater
interval intermission
4.3.4. Natural environment
The subcategories of plants and animals can be viewed as parts of

this theme:

Plants maize corn

and animals insect bug
ladybird ladybug
cock rooster
Alsatian German shepherd
Conclusions
Speakers of American English have developed a form of
communication that requires less attention and effort. This is reflected
by the casual nature of their way of speaking, generally characterized
by nasalizing and drawing out certain vowels. In contrast with this, the
British way of speaking has a so called clipped nature.
Unlike British English, American English discloses a tendency
towards simplification proved by (1) the reduction of certain
diphthongs* to simple vowels and (2) the elimination of some
unnecessary letters in spelling.
American spelling differs from British spelling in that the former
usually tries to correspond more closely to pronunciation (showing a
tendency towards phonetic spelling) while the latter preserves its
etymological spelling.
British and American vocabularies also reveal differences related
to general themes such as (1) people and their immediate environment
(2) human interaction and communication (3) social institutions and (4)
natural environment.
Key concepts
American drawl
American nasality
Flap
phonetic spelling
postnasal /t/
rhotacity

Further reading
1. Iarovici, Edith. 1994. Engleza American. Bucureti: Editura

Teora, pp.99-111
2. Kovecses, Zoltan. 2000. American English. An Introduction.
Ontario: Broad View Press, pp.139-155, 240-247
3. Neagu Mariana. 2001. Variety and Style in English. Buzu:
Alpha, pp. 123-148.

PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING
UNIT 5
Unit outline
Unit aims
5.1 The spelling of consonants
5.2 Vowel markers
5.3 Keeping a spelling constant
5.4 Silent letters
5.5 Homographs and homophones
5.6 Pronunciation and etymology
Conclusions
Key concepts
Further reading

Unit aims
to:
discriminate words or parts of words that are spelled exactly the
same way but which are pronounced entirely differently.
acquire the markers, pronunciation patterns and spelling rules
provided in the unit
Ideally, the spelling system should closely reflect pronunciation,
as is the case in Romanian, but not in English, which nevertheless
presents many regularities between sound and written symbol. The
problem in English is twofold each sound is represented by more than
one letter or by sequences of letters, and any letters represents more
than one sound, or it may not represent any sound at all.
Let's think first!

What group of letters corresponds to the / / sound? Think of
words such as ship, passion, ration, Asian, conscious, Confucian,
issue, machine and luxury.
5.1. The spelling of consonants
Consonants with a single spelling

Most consonants, at least some of the time, may have a single-
letter 'alphabetic' spelling: <b, d, f, g, h, j, 1, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, y, z>;
/k/ has a choice of <c> or <k>. But there is often 'divergence', where
one speech-sound has several different spellings and spelling may stand
for different speech-sounds.
Consonants with multiple letter spelling

In spite of the available single-letter spelling <f>, the consonant at
the beginning of foot has more complex spellings in physics, enough,
offer. The <s> in easy represents /z/, the in quick represents /w/
and the <f> in of represents /v/. The consonant at the beginning of yet,

yellow can also be found as part of the vowel spelt <u(e)> in cue, cute,
pure.
The most divergent consonant is /k/, which has different spellings
in cool, chemistry, sack, accolade, chukker, key, quay, quite, and as
part of the /ks/ in axe.
Six consonants do not have a single-letter-spelling of their own
and require at least two letters, such as <th>, <sh> or <ch>. These are
the consonants found in the middle of the following words: method,
bother, wishing, measure, patches and the consonant represented by
<ng> in singer when no actual /gl is pronounced.
The main cause responsible for the departure of English spelling

from the phonemic principle* is that conservative principles in
orthography cannot keep pace with the phonetic changes in the
language.
5.2. Vowel markers
Five pairs of vowels can have single-letter spellings: <a> in scrap,

scraping, <e> in met, meter, in pip, piper, <o> in cop, coping, 
in rub, ruby. There is also <y> in cryptic, cry, which duplicates the 
spellings. The examples given in each pair represent a 'short' and a
'long' vowel or diphthong.
For this letter-sharing to work, 'markers' are needed in some
contexts to tell you which value the letter has.
Final silent -e
To get the long value of <a> in a single-syllable word, you have to
add a marker <-e>, as in scrape. The <-e> in bathe, breathe, loathe,
wreathe not only marks the vowel as long but also marks the last
consonant as 'voiced' rather than the 'voiceless'* one in bath, breath,
loath, wreath. Other examples are lathe, lithe, swathe. Mouth and
smooth used as verbs lack this marking.
The marker <-e> in browse, copse, lapse, please, tease, tense is
used to prevent confusion with the plural forms brows, cops, laps,

pleas, teas, tens. It marks the browse group as single units and as such
is called 'lexical <-e>'.
The double consonant rule
To get the short value before a suffix beginning with a vowel
like <-ing>, you double a final consonant letter, as in scrapping.
Therefore, the double consonant rule says that a final consonant in
a stressed syllable must be doubled to preserve the short pronunciation
of the vowel when followed by a syllable beginning with a vowel.
Note, for example, the difference in length between / u/ in the
pair hopping - hoping.
The y to i rule
This rule states that final y preceded by a consonant becomes -i
before a suffix (e.g. ed, -s) not beginning with i (e.g. -ing):
try tried, tries hurry hurries, hurried
but
try trying hurry hurrying
Let's think first!
Do you believe it would be a good idea if English spelling

represented pronunciation more closely? Before you read the section
below, think of possible disadvantages if English spelling were 100%
phonemic.
5.3. Keeping a spelling constant
The morphological principle

English spelling is based not only on the etymological principle*
but also on the morphological principle, according to which spelling
has to preserve unchanged the graphic form of every meaningful part of

the word (morpheme) even its actual pronunciation changes, which

happens when the given morpheme is combined with some other
morphemes.
Well-known examples are the grammatical (bound) morphemes -s
and -ed. For instance, the three homonymic morphemes representing
(1) the third person singular present tense -(e)s, (2) the possessive case
of nouns s and (3) the plural of nouns -(e)s may have three
pronunciations, each depending on the phonetic environment:
/z/ when preceded by a vowel or a voiced consonant: stays, kills.
/s/ after a voiceless* consonant: takes.
/iz/ after consonants such as /s, z,t,d/: sneezes, washes, watch, etc.
The verbal ending -ed sounds quite different in wished, begged,

and wanted. If you think that they would be better spelt phonetically as
* <wisht>, ' <begd>, you are losing the advantage of a constant -
spelling for the regular past-tense ending. Therefore, -ed is pronounced:
/d/ after vowels and voiced consonants: opened
/t/ after voiceless* consonants: worked
/id/ after /t/, /d/: wanted, divided
Phonemic variation in derivatives

The morphological principle is also of great help in the case of
derivatives. For example, one may think it awkward to have Is/ spelt
differently in sent and cent. That may be, but the <c> spelling of both
/k/ in electric and Is/ in electricity keeps the spelling of that unit
constant.
Another good example of this principle is provided by the long
and short pronunciations of single vowel letters seen in word pairs such
as:
atrocious - atrocity
female - feminine
omen - omenous
austere - austerity
grateful - gratitude
reside residual
chaste - chastity
legal - legislate
sole - solitude
crime - criminal
mine - mineral
supreme - supremacy
In these pairs the basic long vowel is shortened when it comes
three syllables from the end of the word.
5.4. Silent letters
Silent g, w, h and k
Keeping a constant spelling may involve the use of so-called
'silent' letters. The <g> does not represent /g/ in sign, but it does in
derived forms resignation, signal, signature, signify. Similarly we have
malign and malignant. Changing to "<sine>, "<maline> would spoil the
visual link. Should we keep the <w> of two because twenty, twin,
between are remotely related? Should shepherd be re-spelt as *
<sheppard>, a regularized spelling when used as a name?
On the other hand the <g> of gnarled, gnat, gnash, gnaw, gnome
and the <k> of knee, knife, knight, knock, know, knuckle are quite
empty letters. They are the debris of history and are never pronounced
in any derived word (except for acknowledge). It would be no loss to
change to "<naded>, '"<nab, *<nife>, "<nuckle>, etc.
Other markers
Some marking is needed to sort out the two distinct consonants
represented by <g>. Before <a, o, u> we have /g/, as in gap, got, gum
and the consonant spelt <j> in jam before <i, e> in gin, gem. The
problem is that there are some exceptions with /g/ before <i, e>: gear,
geese, get, giddy, gild, gilt, gimmick, girl, give. Some words however
have used the letter as a marker for /g/ in guess, guest, guide, guild,
guilt, guise, guitar. Its use is not very consistent, since guard,
guarantee do not need any marker (e.g. garden).

5.5. Homographs and homophones
Definition
Words spelt the same but pronounced differently are called
homographs*: <minute> may be an adjective (a really minute insect)
or a noun (half a minute). A minute steak has to be interpreted by the
reader: either a very small steak or one cooked for a minute.
Words pronounced the same but spelt differently are called
homophones*: <vain>, <vane>, <vein>, or <foul>, <fowl> or
<meat>, <meet>, <mete>, <waste>, <waist>, <ware>, <were>,
<rain>, <reign>. These variant vowel spellings clearly make it harder
for the writer, but it is often claimed that such divergence is not always
a bad thing for the reader, since different words should look different
on the printed page.
Even so, a good number of words are both homographs* and
homophones: sounding the same and looking the same. These are
sometimes called homonyms. For instance, hamper represents two
completely different unrelated words: either 'a basket' or 'to hinder'.
Quarry means either 'a stone quarry or 'a hunted animal'.
5.6. Pronunciation and etymology
French loans
The Old English of the Anglo-Saxons has given the English their
basic stock of words: life, death, earth, heaven, sun, moon, day, night,
black, white, broad, narrow, teach, learn, seek, find, eat, drink, food,
meat, fire, wood, tree, eye, knee, hand, foot and so on.
Words borrowed from French have sometimes been altered by
anxious academics looking beyond the French spelling to the distant
Latin original. The words debt, doubt, were medieval borrowings of
French delle 'debt', doute 'doubt' without a . The 'silent' was
inserted in the sixteenth century to resemble the original Latin debitum,
dubitare, and to draw attention to the shared meaning of related English
words derived from the same roots, such as debit, dubitative.
The <c> spelling of the early French loan grocer is a regular
English spelling (racer, slicer), so why not have gross spelt: <groce>
on the lines of race, truce, slice? As it is, gross is the only English
word in which <oss> does not sound as it does in boss, cross, doss,
dross, floss. Ironically, the regular <groce> was a common medieval
spelling that did not survive.
Since medieval times English has adopted cultural loanwords from
French. The early ones included attach, certain, chance, conquer, cour-
age, language, money, place, pleasant, royal, strange, sure, tender,
value, and even a word as common now as very, which at first meant
true'. Modern loanwords from French come with their present French
spelling and a close approximation to French pronunciation: collage,
entourage, rage, piquant, pirouette.
Latin and Greek loans

Technical terms for use in science are often derived from Latin or
Greek. For example, aqueduct, subaquatic are Latinate counterparts in
meaning to ordinary English waterway, underwater. Similarly, Greek
elements make up scientific terms such as photosynthesis, polyglot,
pyromania. The <-rrh(o)ea> of diarrhoea ('through-How') recurs in
other Greek-based words such as catarrh ('down-flow'), seborrhoea
('grease-flow').
Scientists have to learn a mini-language of such elements. When
such terms escape into common use they often cause spelling problems
for the ordinary person. That leaves a whole array of loanwords that are
variously exotic': kayak is from Eskimo, felucca is from Arabic by way
of Italian. The now familiar tobacco comes from Arawak, an
American-Indian language.
These various subsystems are often marked by their own peculiar
spelling correspondences. If you know a yucca to be an exotic plant,
you will not spell it *yuker. The <ch> of chief, an early French loan,
has the same sound as in native cheap, cheese. The modern loan chef
retains its present French value of <ch> (like the <sh> of shop), as do
chauffeur, charade. The spelling is not altered to * <shef>. This same
<ch> will also spell /k/ in Greek-based words such as character,
chemist, synchronic. Similarly, <ph> is a (Greek' spelling for If I, as in
diaphragm, philosophy, phobia, symphony.
Borrowing foreign spellings along with foreign loanwords is not
the only way of doing it. In Swedish, for example, foreign loans are

usually spelt with ordinary Swedish spelling. So French loans coiffure,

pirouette are spell in Swedish as <koaffyr> and <piruett.
Final silent e and lexical e
In English a final silent e is said to make a vowel long and the last
consonant voiced, whereas absence of this silent e makes the vowel of
the word short and the last consonant voiceless: bath - bathe, breath -
breathe.
The short pronunciation of a vowel is maintained before adding a
suffix if the final consonant is doubled: hopping hoping, scrapping
scraping.
English orthography transparently connects words related in form
and meaning. For example, a regular pattern of alternation of long and
short vowels is noticed when endings are added to stems: mine -
mineral, supreme supremacy.
Conclusions
Key concepts
double consonant rule

etymological principle
final silent e lexical e
homograph
homonym
homophone
morphological principle
phonemic principle
silent letter
vowel marker

Further reading
1. Carney Edward, 1998. English Spelling is Kattastroffic. In

Bauer Laurie and Peter Trudgil. eds. Language Myths. London:
Penguin Books, pp. 32-41.
2. Dobo Daniela, 2001. A Handbook of English Phonetics and
Phonology. Iai: Casa Editorial Demiurg, pp. 174-196.
3. Makarenko, Tatiana, 1998. Contemporary English Phonetics.
Cluj: Editura Echinox, pp. 32-45.

ASPECTS OF CONNECTED SPEECH
UNIT 6
Unit outline
Unit aims
6.1 Linking /r/ and intrusive /r/
6.2 Assimilation
6.2.1 Regressive assimilation
6.2.2 Progressive assimilation
6.2.3 Reciprocal assimilation
6.2.4 Obligatory and non-obligatory assimilation
6.3 Elision
6.3.1 Vowel elision
6.3.2 Consonant elision
6.4 Strong and weak forms of function words

6.4.1 Uses of weak forms
6.4.2 Uses of strong forms
Conclusions
Key concepts
Further reading

Unit aims
to:
explain the phonetic phenomena that occur in casual speech.
i.e. assimilation*, elision*, etc
distinguish carefully between cases when function words* are
in focal and non-focal positions
use the strong and weak forms* of function words properly,
thus avoiding an unnatural, visibly foreign pronunciation (that
can be a potential barrier to fluency and a source of
misunderstanding)
discriminate careful, standard speech from rapid, non-standard
speech pronunciations
distinguish British from American pronunciation variants
produce casual pronunciations of frequent sound sequences
Normal speech cannot be imagined to be spoken one word at a

time, with pauses* corresponding to the spaces of the written
language. Spoken language is a continuous sequence in which each
separate unit of sound is not pronounced in isolation but as part of a
larger unit. In this process, sounds undergo modifications due to the
transition* from one sound unit to another.
6.1. Linking r* and intrusive /r/*
Linking /r/
Although British speakers pronounce car without the final r, the r
often does emerge if the following word begins with a vowel. Linking
/r/ is the phoneme /r/ in word final position which is pronounced when
the next word begins with a vowel. In standard RP a written word-final
r is not pronounced before a pause* or a following consonant sound.
Compare, for example, the car is there with the car was there. In the
first example the r is pronounced and gets attached to the following
syllable. This is the linking /r/. Further occurrences of linking /r/ can be
found in: Here it is, Far away or theyre at home.
Intrusive /r/
There are instances when the presence of an intervocalic /r/ is not
orthographically justified, as in law and order /l:r nd ':d/. This
inserted /r/ between two words or syllables in sequence, where the first
ends in a vowel sound and the second begins with one, and which has
no correspondent r in spelling is called intrusive /r/.
Intrusive /r/ is much criticized, but is quite commonly heard in
standard RP and other non-rhotic accents. It occurs after the vowels,
e.g.:
//: idea (r) of it, umbrella (r) organization
//: law (r) and order
//: grandpa (r) is ill
// a milieu (r) in which
Both linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ are used in non-rhotic accents to
prevent the vowels of two adjacent syllables to directly succeed one
another. By adding an /r/ the utterance* gains in fluidity. (Meyer, 2002:
91)
6.2. Assimilation
The effect on a speech sound of the articulation of other adjacent

sounds is called assimilation. This is a common feature of speech,
though one that many native speakers are unaware of. Assimilation
varies according to speaking rate and style; it is more likely to be found
in rapid, casual speech and less likely, in slow, careful speech. In every
assimilation process we distinguish between assimilating and
assimilated* phonemes.
6.2.1. Regressive assimilation
Types of assimilation
Assimilation is regressive when the preceding sound is influenced
by the immediately following one. Regressive assimilation or
assimilation of place (Roach, 1994:124) is most clearly noticeable in

some cases where a final consonant with alveolar place of articulation
(e.g. /t/, /d/) is followed by an initial consonant with a place of
articulation* that is not alveolar. For instance, the final consonant in
that /t / is alveolar /t/. In rapid, casual speech, the /t/ will become /p/
before a bilabial* consonant (e.g. /p/, /b/) as in that person /p p3:sn /,
the /d/ will become /b/ as in good people /gub pi:pl/, etc.
As a conclusion, we can state that the final alveolars /t,d/ can be
replaced by a) velars (e.g. broadcast /br:g k:st/ and b) bilabials (e.g.
wood pecker / wu:b pek:/.
6.2.2. Progressive assimilation*
A reverse type of assimilation (progressive assimilation) is found

when a sound is changed by the influence of a previous one.
For instance, the third person singular -s suffix, the -s plural suffix
and the 's possessive suffix, are pronounced /s/ if the preceding
consonant is fortis* (voiceless) and /z / if the preceding consonant is
lenis* (voiced): jumps /dmps/ cats kts/, Pat s /pts vs. runs
/rnz/, dogs /dgz/, Pam s /pmz/.
The pronunciation of the endings s and -ed

Progressive assimilation is an established and regular feature of
the ending s of verbs and nouns, which usually has a voiced /z/ sound
(or /z/ after all sibilants*) but after voiceless sounds other than sibilants
is /s/ (e.g. taps tabs, hats - heeds, docks - dogs, griefs - grieves).
Similarly, the past tense ed ending /d/ or /d/ is devoiced* to a /t/
sound after a voiceless consonant other than /t/ itself: roped, lacked,
roofed, pushed versus robed, lagged, grooved, hated, headed, etc.
6.2.3. Reciprocal assimilation
Assimilation is reciprocal (double) when both sounds (the

assimilating and the assimilated one) undergo changes. In twice /w /
becomes partly devoiced under the influence of /t/, while /t/ is rounded
because of /w/.
A particular type of double assimilation is coalescence* in which

two adjacent phonemes mix to such an extent that a third phoneme
emerges. Historically this has occurred in words like soldier, picture, or
fissure, where the reconstructable earlier pronunciation /sldjr/,
/pktu:r/, /fsju:r/ has become /suldjr/, /pktu:/, /f/.
In current colloquial English, similar assimilation occurs in
phrases such as What dyou want? or Could you?. This coalescent*
assimilation is also known as coalescence or palatalization*.
6.2.4. Obligatory and non-obligatory assimilation
Synchronic assimilation may be obligatory (or established) and

accidental (or non-obligatory).
Certain occurrences of assimilation are obligatory in the sense that
they represent the norm in the language. Here are such instances:
- unaspiratedness* of /p, t, k/ after /s/ : speak, stake, school

- devoicing* of /l, r, w, j/ after voiceless plosives*: close, from
- devoicing of /m, n/ after /s/: smile, snake
- rounding of preceding consonants by /w/: twenty
Non-obligatory assimilation may be illustrated by these

pronunciations:
give me /givmi:/ or /gimmi/

did you /didju:/ or /diddju:/
let me /letmi/ or / lemmi/
was sure /wzu/ or /w u/
You need to be aware of the phenomenon of assimilation in order

to understand colloquial English and to make a proper use of
assimilated* variants just like English speakers do.

6.3. Elision
Elision is usually referred to as the omission of a sound (sounds)

in connected speech*. This phenomenon occurs when sounds occur in
clusters which are difficult to pronounce (e.g. last month, cost price,
next shop, landscape) or when they appear in unstressed syllables(e.g.
round the corner, night time, handbag). Elision may involve both
vowels and consonants
Like assimilation, elision is typical of rapid, casual speech, and it
can be historical* and contextual or synchronic*. For foreign learners
of English it is important to know 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.
6.3.1. Vowel elision
Elision of schwa* //
Elision of vowels takes place in unstressed syllables. The common
vowels which are usually omitted are / / and /i/.
// (schwa*) may be lost in an initial unstressed syllable when the
next vowel in the word is stressed as in correct /krekt/.
The consonant which usually follows schwa can be /l/ as in police
/plis/, buffalo /bflu/, /r/ as in history /histri/, temporary /temprri/,
reference /refrns/, or /n/ as in reasonable.
In British English the elision of schwa is firmly established in
many words ending in -ory (territory) -ery (nursery), -ary (customary),
-ury, -ily, and adverbs ending in -fully, e.g. carefully.
Elision of /i/
/i/ may be lost in such words as geography /dgrfi/, university
/ju:ni'vsiti/.

6.3.2. Consonant elision
Elision of /t/ and /d/

The consonants that are most likely to be elided are /t/ and /d/
occurring medially in consonant clusters*: /t/ in past tense, left luggage,
I want to leave, /d/ ruined the market, failed test, They`ve got to know.
The elision of /t/ occurs when /t/ follows a fortis consonant and
precedes any consonant (e.g., mostly, exactly, first time /f:s taim/).
The dropping of /d/ occurs when /d/ follows any consonant and
precedes any consonant (e.g. handsome, handbag, friendship)
Final /d/ of the grammatical word and can be omitted before
vowels as well as consonants (e.g. ham and / n / eggs).
Elision of /k/, //, //

/k/ is deleted only in a few forms, e.g. extraordinary /istrdnri/,
expected /ispektid/, excursion /isk:n/.
Elision also affects /l/ in rapid speech, when preceded by /:/ and
followed by a consonant: alright, already.
/, / are omitted in clusters which are difficult to pronounce:
sixth, months, twelfths, clothes.
Elision of /v/ and /h/

/v/ is deleted in a piece of paper, as a matter of fact, three of the
websites.
/h/ is deleted in We ought to visit him. I think he would have told
her.
In rhetorical terms, the removal of an element from the beginning
of a word is known as aphaeresis (I' ve); the loss of a sound or letter in
word-medial position as called syncope (eer instead of ever) and in
word-final position apocope (snakes and /n/ ladders).
The silent letters of English are cases of historical elision.
Nowadays there is a tendency for some historical elisions and
assimilations to revert back to the original forms as a result of the
influence of spelling. Thus in modern Non-Regional Pronunciation
(NRP) English /t/ is frequently pronounced in often.

6.4. Strong and weak forms of function words
A phonological phenomenon which is characteristic of the English

language and has no equivalent in Romanian is the existence of two
possible pronunciations for the grammatical function) words. Thus,
about sixty words including articles, auxiliaries, modals, pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions adverbs, pronominal adjectives, may display
two forms: a strong one, when they occur in accented (focal) position
and a weak one, when they are unaccented (in a non-focal position).
Disadvantages of using only strong forms*
It is possible to use only strong forms in speaking and some
foreigners do this. Usually they can still be understood by other
speakers of English, but it is important to learn how weak forms are
used. There are two main reasons: first, most native speakers of English
find an all-strong-form pronunciation unnatural and foreign-
sounding, something that most learners would wish to avoid.
Second, and more importantly, speakers who are not familiar with
the use of weak forms are likely to have difficulty in understanding
speakers who do use weak forms; since practically all native speakers
of British English use them, learners of the language need to learn
about these weak forms to help them to understand what they hear
(Roach, 1994:102).
6.4.1. Uses of weak forms
Conjunctions and prepositions

The most frequently used form is the weak one. Several words in
English have more than one weak form: and /nd/ can be /nd/, /n/,
/n/: fish and chips, food and drink.
Prepositions are used with their weak form whenever they carry
no accent:
for is pronounced /f / when the word which follows begins
with a consonant (They called John for me) and /fr/ when it
starts with a vowel.
from /frm/ becomes /frm/ in: from time to time, we walked
from school to school
of has the weak form /v/ in: a cup of tea, the end of the road.
Auxiliaries
Auxiliaries and modals are usually pronounced in their weak form:
am pronounced /m, m/: I'm in a hurry /aim in hri/

are pronounced /:, r /: When are they coming /wen ei
kmi/
does pronounced /dz, z, s/: What does it mean? /wat dz it
'mi:n/
have pronounced /hv, v, v/: Where have you been? /we v ju
bin/
was pronounced /wz/ : He was seen by everybody /hi wz si:n
bai evri bdi /
were pronounced /w/ + consonant: Where were they working?
/we w ei w3:ki/
will pronounced /l/: I think I'll stop here /ai ik ail stp hi/
Modals
could pronounced /kd/: He could have been more helpful /hi

kd v bin m: helpful/
should pronounced /d/: They should come earlier /ei d
km 3:li/
must pronounced /mst/: I must answer that letter /ai mst ans
t let/.
Weak forms of modal verbs are more often used in colloquial

speech than strong forms.
6.4.2. Uses of strong forms
In general, function words are used in their strong (unreduced)

form when they are uttered in isolation and for reasons of contrast
(when emphasis is implied).
Prepositions
Prepositions are used in their accented form when they are situated
at the end of sentences or sense groups:
at /t/: He was being laughed at.

for /f:/: I was called for at ten.
of /v/: What is it made of?
to /tu/: Who are you talking to?
The strong or weak forms of prepositions may be used when they

occur before unstressed pronouns: He was unknown to me.
/hi wz nnun t/tu: mi/.
Auxiliaries and modals

The strong forms of auxiliary and modal verbs are used when they
act as main verb substitutes:
does pronounced /dz/: Of course, he does.

should pronounced /ud/: Yes, I should.
can pronounced /kn/: Of course, he can.
must pronounced / mst / yes, I must.
The strong form of modals is also compulsory when they are used
in the negative contracted form. Compare:
You can do it /ju kn du: it/
with
You cant do it /ju k:nt du: it/
The modal verb have is always used in its strong form, /hv/:
I have to leave now.

There adverb and empty pronoun (in there is/are)
As for there, it is pronounced /e(r)/ when it is a demonstrative

(Don't go there) and /(r)/ in the verbal phrase there is, there are
(There aren't any flowers).
That (demonstrative and conjunction)

The demonstrative that is pronounced /t/ when it is a
conjunction or a relative pronoun: I hope that he will. Its strong form
/t/ is used when it is a demonstrative: I don't like that book.
Conclusions
Connected speech causes individual words to be adapted in
various ways. Linking elements may have to be added between words
ending and beginning with a vowel, elision may be needed, and
especially consonants may be adapted to each other, which is known
assimilation.
Many function words (e.g. articles, auxiliaries, modals, pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions) change in quality and/or quantity according
to whether they are unstressed (as is usual) or stressed (in special
situations or when in isolation).
The tendency to weaken vowels towards schwa in conversational
English may be to be a difficult aspect of English to learn for most non-
native speakers, partly because of an over-reliance on spelling as a
guide to pronunciation.
Key concepts
accidental assimilation
intrusive /r/
linking /r/
obligatory assimilation
progressive assimilation
reciprocal assimilation
regressive assimilation
consonant elision
strong form
vowel elision
weak form
Further reading
1. Chioran, Dumitru i Hortensia Prlog. 1989. Ghid de pronunie

a limbii engleze. Bucureti: Editura tiinific i enciclopedic,
pp. 140-147
2. Meyer, Paul Georg et al. 2002. Synchronic English Linguistics.
An Introduction. Tubingen: Gunter NarrVerlag Tubingen, p.
87-91
3. Prlog, Hortensia. 1997. English Phonetics and Phonology.
Bucureti: Editura ALL, pp. 114-119.

SYLLABLES AND STRESS IN ENGLISH
UNIT 7
Unit outline
Unit aims
7.1 The nature of the syllable
7.2 The structure of the English syllable
7.3 Types of syllable
7.4 The nature of stress
7.5 Primary and secondary stress
7.6 Stress and vowels
7.7 Predicting stress in derivatives

7.7.1 Strong suffixes
7.7.2 Weak suffixes
7.7.3 Prefixes
7.8 Stress in compounds
7.9 Rhythm and its influence on word stress
7.10 Stress shift and semantic implications

Summary
Key concepts
Further reading

Unit aims
to:
use stress correctly in English noun-verb pairs
explain the correlation between stress and the phonetic duration
of vowels
show how the pronunciation of words changes when certain
affixes are added
discriminate stress placement in compound words from stress
placement in corresponding noun phrases
distinguish the rhythm of English, a stressed-time language,
from the rhythm of Romanian, a syllable-timed language.
As pointed out in a previous chapter, in spoken language it is
unusual to find isolated sounds, because sounds string together to form
larger units. Thus, sounds group themselves to form syllables, syllables
will form words, words will form phrases and phrases will form
sentences.
7.1. The English syllable
7.1.1. The nature of the syllable
What is a syllable?
Physiologically, the syllable corresponds to one chest pulse
resulting from the movement of the intercostal muscles.
Phonologically, the syllable is the lowest phonological unit into which
phonemes are combined. A syllable may be defined as a unit of
pronunciation which consists of a vocalic sound either alone or
surrounded by consonants (one or more) arranged in a certain sequence.
7.1.2. The structure of the English syllable
In structural terms, syllables must contain a vowel or vowel-like

sound. Syllables are constructed according to the principle of sonority.
The sonority theory holds that there are as many syllables in a word as
there are peaks of prominence or sonority.
The sonority peak is preceded or followed by a sequence of
segments with progressively decreasing sonority values. The most
sonorant* sounds are vowels, then semi-vowels*, liquids* /l, r/, nasals
/m, n, /, voiced consonants /b, d, g, v, , z, d, / Consonants which
act like vowels are called syllabic consonants*.
The syllabic nucleus

The centre of a syllable (the syllabic nucleus) is defined as the
place where sonority is greatest. This central segment of a syllable,
also called its peak, is compulsory. Some monosyllabic words consist
of the central segments only: err, are, awe, ear, oh, I, eye. In English,
the vowels /e/, / /, //, // do not occur in final position and /u/ does
not occur in initial position.
The sounds which can serve as peaks in English are all the vowels
and /m, n, I, r/ when situated in final position, e.g.: rhythm, button,
bottle.
The basic (C) V (C) structure of the syllable can be expanded by
additions of initial and final segments.
The onset
In addition to the nucleus, syllables may have one, two or three
consonants preceding them. This initial segment of a syllable is called
the onset and is optional. It may have the structure C- (tea), CC-
(three), CCC- (straw).
The coda
The final segment is called coda and may consist of:
a single consonant (-c) as in egg, it, of, art
two consonants (-cc) as in east, beans, cast
three consonants (-ccc) as in asked, ants, aunts
four consonants (-cccc) as in attempts, instincts.
The English consonants, /r/ (in British English) / /, /h/, can never
end a syllable. The generalized formula that can be ultimately reached
is CCC V CCCC (strengths). The group of consonants in final and

initial positions are called clusters. Final clusters in English are much
more complex than initial ones. While Romanian employs more
consonant clusters than English in initial position, English is far richer
in such clusters in final position.
English consonant clusters in final position express different
grammatical categories such as NUMBER (texts), TENSE (mixed,
breathes) or indicate PART OF SPEECH such as nouns (depth, width),
verbs (deepen, harden), etc.
7.1.3. Types of syllable
A study of the syllable in English and Romanian involves a

distinction between open and closed syllables.
The open syllable

A syllable is open / free / unchecked when it ends in a vowel, i.e.
it is of the type V, CV, e.g.: oh, no, tea, do, raw. While Romanian is a
language in which free syllables predominate (nu, sta, spre, pui),
English is a language of the checked-syllable type (shirt, failed, smoke,
drive)
The closed syllable

A syllable is closed / checked when it ends in a consonant, i.e. it
is of the type VC, CVC: art, ought, I'd, it, keep, sheep, cheap.
7.2. Stress in English
7.2.1. The nature of stress
Definition of stress
Stress is defined as the perceived prominence of one or more

syllabic elements over others in a word. It is an aspect of the
suprasegmental phonology of English and it can be a property of

syllables (word stress*) or of larger utterances (sentence or syntactic

stress*).
Stress can be considered from both the point of view of the
speaker and of the hearer. To the latter, stressed syllables appear to be
louder than unstressed syllables, whereas for the speaker, stressed
syllables give the impression of being produced with greater effort.
Stress is thus both a phenomenon of perception and a phenomenon of
production.
Following Roach (1994:86) we can maintain that stress is a
combination of loudness* (i.e. the degree of force with which a sound
or a syllable is uttered), pitch* i.e. the relative height of the tone* with
which it is pronounced), quality (i.e. vowels are more prominent than
consonants; among the vowels the more open ones are the more
prominent) and quantity (i.e. long vowels and diphthongs will always
render the syllable prominent).
In English, all these factors, i.e. loudness (intensity)*, pitch,
quality and quantity (duration), are associated with prominence.
Accordingly, the English stressed syllable especially its nucleus,
tends to have a greater degree of length, loudness and pitch associated
with it. It therefore tends to be much longer, much louder and either
much higher or much lower in pitch i.e. to be the locus of a dramatic
pitch change in comparison to the surrounding context than the
unstressed syllable.
Stress shift* in noun-verb pairs
Like the segmental* phonemes, stress has a distinctive function

since it can signal differences in meaning. For instance, comparing the
verb record as in Im going to record the tune and the noun record as
in Ive got a record the contrast in word accent between the verb and
the noun is made by the syllables differing in loudness, pitch, quality
and quantity.
Generally, these four variables work together in combination,
though syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only
one or two of them. Experimental work has shown that the strongest
effect is produced by pitch and length: loudness and quality have much
less effect. The four variables will also be found in the notion of
sentence or syntactic stress.
Place of accent and types of languages
According to the place within a word where stress falls, languages
have been grouped into:
free-accent languages in which stress may fall on any syllable

(e.g. English, Romanian, Russian).
fixed-accent languages in which stress is tied to a particular
place in all the words. For example, in Czech, Slovak,
Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish, stress regularly falls on the
first syllable, in French, Armenian and Turkish it is commonly
on the last syllable and in Italian, Welsh and Polish, it is on the
last but one syllable.
7.2.2. Primary and secondary stress
Monosyllabic and polysyllabic words

When they are pronounced singly, all monosyllabic words carry
what is called primary stress*, the strongest type of stress. In
dictionaries, it is represented in transcription with a high mark or
superscript ().
Polysyllabic words, those which consist of more than one syllable,
all have one primary stressed syllable - just like monosyllabic words.
But in addition, they also have a secondary*-stressed syllable and/or
syllables with no stress. In the examples below primary stressed
syllables are marked with a superscript while secondary stressed
syllables are marked with a subscript:
- two syllable: ,an ti que, cot ton
- three syllables: ,mag a zine, inn o ,cence
- four syllables: re mar ka ble, ,cir cu la tion
The English secondary stress
English differs from Romanian as regards the use of secondary

accent in polysyllabic words. A word like university /univ:siti/ has a
secondary* accent in English which is absent in the Romanian

universitate /universitate/. The secondary stress precedes the primary
stress, but it may also follow it: granddaughter /grn,d:t/.
Is English primary stress predictable?

In English, which is free-accent language, stress is more
unpredictable than in Romanian; while in Romanian stress generally
falls on one of the last three syllables of a word (e.g. dezirabil,
acceptabil, admirabil, preferabil) in English words (e.g. desirable,
acceptable, admirable, preferable) there is no such regularity.
Words with the same number of syllables may have different
accentual* patterns as in amateur /mt/, illicit /ilisit/, cigarette
/,sigret/. This is why the unpredictability of primary stress is one of
the significant difficulties foreign learners of English have to cope with.
English and American patterns
In American English the secondary stress is used more frequently

than in British English. Verbs ending in -ate have a secondary stress on
the suffix in order to render the contrast with the corresponding
adjectives more evident.
BE AmE
alternate /':ltneit/ alternate /':lt,neit/
moderate /m:dreit/ moderate /m:d,reit/
Verbs ending in -ment have a secondary stress on the suffix in

order to differenciate them from the nouns having the same suffix.
BE AmE
ornament /:nment/ ornament /:rn,ment/
supplement /spliment/ supplement /spl,ment/
Some disyllabic words have a secondary stress while the same

words in British English have not: contract /k:nt,rkt/, syntax
/sin,tks/.

This secondary stress may be explained by an association with the

corresponding verbs which have their second syllable stressed.
In longer words ending in -ary, -ery, -ory, Americans use a
secondary stress on these suffixes.
BE AmE
dictionary /diknri/ dictionary /dikn,eri/
7.2.3. Stress and vowels
The unstressed (reduced) schwa vowel

In English, there is an important relationship between vowels and
stress. Some vowels occur mainly in stressed syllables, others may
occur in both stressed and unstressed syllables. One unstressed vowel,
// or schwa appears only in unstressed syllables: better, about,
confusion. It can be observed in pairs of related words that show
different stress placement such as considerate /knsidert/ versus
consideration /knsidrein/. Note that the fourth vowel, which is
unstressed in the word considerate, is pronounced //. But when the
same vowel is stressed, as in consideration, it is pronounced as /ei/.
The reduction or weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables is a
fundamental and very important phenomenon in English. A change of
stress in a word, perhaps as a result of adding a certain ending (called
strong suffix) may have a significant effect on pronunciation.
Similarly, if we add -y to photograph /futgr:f/, stress changes and
with it the quality of all the vowels: e.g. photography /ftgrfi/, i.e the
first vowel is pronounced /u/ when stressed and // when unstressed.
Stressed, full vowels are longer

In conclusion, we can say that vowels in stressed or stressable
syllables (i.e. the full vowels) are significantly longer than those in
unstressed syllables (the reduced vowels). Failure to use correct
reduced vowels in unstressable syllables may result in severe problems
of rhythm* which make the whole stream of speech difficult to
understand.

7.2.4. Some word stress guidelines
Despite the fact that English words have a variety of different

stress patterns, a number of regular principles can help us to determine
where the stressed syllables are likely to occur (Taylor, 1996: 49).
Therefore stress in English may not be fixed, but it is to a certain extent
predictable.
The first principle states that two stressed syllables do not
normally occur next to each other in a single word (this does not apply
in words containing prefixes such as re-, un- as in unknown, for
instance).
The second principle is that certain endings partly determine the
place of stressed syllables in words. From the point of view of their
influence on the position of the accent in the word, suffixes can be
grouped into strong and weak.
7.2.5. Stress on syllable preceding ending
The suffixes ion and -ic

Strong endings affect the stress pattern of a word; this class of
endings include -ion, -ic, -ity, -ial, etc. If we compare fascinate or
fascinating with fascination we can see that the -ion suffix has attracted
the stress to the syllable preceding it. Similarly, the -ic suffix almost
always attracts a stress to the preceding syllable as we can see if we
compare linguist with linguistic, telephone with telephonic. The ending
ical behaves like -ic: mechanical, methodical.
Other strong endings which attract stress to the syllable

immediately preceding the ending are:
noun-forming suffixes:-ity (stupidity, university, nationality), -

ety (variety, anxiety, society), -ian ( phonetician, comedian, librarian
adjective forming suffixes: -ial (remedial, official, industrial), -
ious (superstitious, ostentatious, suspicious)
-eous (adventageous, simultaneous, erroneous)

verb forming suffixes: -ify (exemplify, identify, personify), -efy

(stupefy, liquefy)
In Romanian, suffixes also tend to attract stress onto themselves

and accordingly towards the final syllables of the derived words, e.g.
bietan, aluni, atrgator, muncitor, romnesc.
Stress on ending itselt

Some derivational morphemes (suffixes) attract the primary stress
onto themselves in loan words that preserve their original accentual*
structure:
-ee: employee, addressee, trainee, trustee, invitee

-eer: engineer, profiteer, mountaineer, volunteer
-ette: silhouette, casette, kitchinette, suffragette
-et: castanet, quartet, clarinet, minaret
-oo: shampoo, tattoo, kangaroo, taboo, bamboo,
-oon: ballon, cartoon, lagoon, saloon, typhoon
-ique: technique, antique, physique, unique
-esque: picturesque, burlesque, grotesque, arabesque
Weak suffixes
Suffixes that do not influence the position of word accent are

called weak suffixes. Examples of weak endings are -ing (fascinate
fascinating), -ed (expect expected), -ness (kind kindness), -ship
(friend friendship), -able (honour honourable), ful (beauty-
beautiful), -al (propose - proposal), -hood (mother - motherhood), -
ment (develop - development), -er/or (teach - teacher), -ly
(beautiful - beautifully), -ist (organ - organist), -ous (scandal -
scandalous), -dom (wise - wisdom),- less (child - childless).

Prefixes
In English, prefixes which are very productive and have quite an

obvious meaning of their own (e.g. mis-, over-, under-, un-) almost
always carry a secondary accent: e.g. misrepresent /,misreprizent/,
overestimate /,uvrestmeit/.
The main difference between English and Romanian is that while
English prefixes are stressable, Romanian prefixes, in most cases, are
not stressable unless this is required by necessities of emphasis or
contrast, e.g. a mbrca, a dezbrca.
7.2.6. Stress guidelines for compounds
Initial element stress (IES) and Final Element Stress (FES)

In most instances it is the first syllable in a compound which
carries the 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: typewriter, car-ferry, sunrise,
suitcase, tea-cup.
A rather large class of compound words whose first element is
stressed is represented by nouns made up of a gerund and a noun:
booking-office, mowing machine, reading-lamp, sleeping-pill,
gaming-house, swimming-pool, walking stick, dining-room, eating
house, fishing-rod, running shoes, washing machine. As can be
noticed, IES applies when an activity is aided by the object. Unlike IES,
FES applies when a compound suggests a characteristic of the object:
leading article, running water.
There are compound words that have a primary stress on the first
element and a secondary stress on the second element: gun-fire
/gn,fai/, granddaughter /grn,d:t/. In this group are included the
compounds made up of two nouns, the second being derived with the
suffix -er, denoting occupations: grave-digger, /greiv,dig/, peace-
maker /pi:s,meik/, Wall Streeter (person professionally employed on
Wall Street) /w:l stri:t:/.

Primary stress on the second element

There are many compounds whose first element has a secondary
accent while the primary accent falls on the second element: handmade
/,hndmeid/, headmaster /,hedma:st/, clearcut /,klikt/.
Unlike compounds made up of two nouns which have the stress on
the first element, compounds with an adjectival first element and the -
ed morpheme at the end receive primary stress on the second element:
bad-tempered, half-timbered, heavy-handed.
Compounds made of a numeral and a noun also tend to have final
stress: three-wheeler, second-class, five-finger. Compounds
functioning as adverbs are usually final-stressed: head-first, North-
East, down stream.
Compounds functioning as verbs and having an adverbial first
element take final stress: down-grade, back-pedal, ill-treat.
Primary stress on each element

Some compound words made up of words considered equally
important or having five or more than five syllables, may take two
primary accents: self-determination /selfdi,tminein/, queen mother
/kwi:nm/.
7.2.7. Sentence stress- the basis of rhythm in English
The English language has quite a regular pattern of stressed and

unstressed syllables in other words, the rhythm is regular (Roach,
1994: 69). This is why English compound words with two equally
strong stresses when used in isolation (e.g. good-looking) tend to lose
one of the stresses in connected speech when either preceded or
followed by a stressed word (e.g. The girl is good-looking).
English has a stressed-time rhythm
In English, the stressed syllables in connected speech tend to occur

at roughly regular intervals. The more unstressed syllables there are
after a stress, the quicker they must be pronounced. The time taken by
the pronunciation of an utterance depends primarily on the number of
stressed syllables. This is known as stress-timed rhythm. For example,
each of the following phrases has an extra syllable, but in each phrase

there is only one stressed syllable; all phrases are said in the same
amount of time:
read
reading
reading it
he was reading
he was reading it
Romanian has a syllable-timed rhythm

In Romanian, the length of an utterance depends on the total
number of syllables; the syllables of an utterance are spoken with the
same amount of time allotted to each of them, irrespective of whether
they are stressed or not.
Therefore, the Romanian learner of English has to be careful not
to pronounce the unstressed syllables with the same force and in the
same time which is allotted to the stressed ones.
Another issue foreign learners of English should be aware of is
that stress position may vary because not all speakers of RP agree on
the placement of stress in some words. A well-known example is
controversy which is pronounced by some speakers as /kntrv:si/
and by others as /kntrvsi/. Other different possibilities he mentions
are ice-cream /aiskri:m/ or /aiskri:m/and formidable /f:midbl/ or
/fmidbl/.
7.2.8. Stress shift and semantic implications
Compounds and noun phrases

Most English compounds are single stressed, that is the main
lexical item goes on the first element. Alternative terms for single
stressed are front stressed and early stresses: bedtime, grassland,
wheelbarrow, keyboard, highlight. Open compounds (two-word
compounds) are written as two separate words, even though the main
stress is still on the first element of the compound: credit card, bus
ticket, running shoe, high school. An open compound can be
misleading because it may look like a phrase consisting of adjective
plus noun.
The distinctive function of stress and the far-reaching effects of

changing the accent pattern in English are obvious if we consider some
compounds and their corresponding noun phrases:
Compounds Noun phrases
bookworm (person who book worm (insect) reads a lot )
crosswords (puzzle) cross words (words showing anger)
pighead (stubborn) pig head (head of a pig)
blackshirt (fascist thug) black shirt (a shirt that is black).
In the compounds, the accent falls on the first element while in the
noun phrases the primary stress is on the second element. In general,
the accentuation of the compound words made up of an adjective as the
first element differs from that of corresponding noun phrases made up
of an adjective and a noun: the former have the primary stress on the
first element and possibly a secondary stress on the second element,
while the latter have their primary stress on the second element and a
secondary stress on the first element: hotbed /htbed/ vs hot bed / ht
bed/. Some English compounds are double-stressed also called late-
stressed or end-stressed. Their main lexical stress is on their second
element. They are usually shown in dictionaries with a secondary stress
mark followed by a primary stress mark: Christmas Eve, Town Hall,
,gold ring, ,ham sandwich
The distribution of stresses in units higher than the word also may
have far-reaching semantic implications:
An 'English, teacher (one who teaches English)

An ,English' teacher (one who is English)
A 'toy, factory (produces toys)
A ,toy' factory (a model of a factory used as a toy)
Utterances
The accentual pattern of whole utterances is, to a certain extent,
comparable to that of polysyllabic words. The basic difference between
the accentuation of isolated words and that of longer utterances is the
following: while isolated words have a single accentual pattern there
are more possible patterns for the latter.

Therefore, larger utterances allow for more changes of pattern

than isolated words. The choice of the word to be stressed depends on
the speaker's will and the meaning (s)he wishes to convey:
I've got a red coat. (not a green one)

I've got a red coat. (not a red hat)
A venit naintea voastr. (he came to meet you)
A venit naintea voastr. (he arrived before you)
As a rule, full-meaning words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

always carry an accent while grammatical words (auxiliaries, modals,
pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) do not, unless the sentence
requires it.
Conclusions
English derivational suffixes can be grouped into strong and weak.

The former group includes endings that (1) cause stress to fall upon a
preceding syllable (e.g. -ion, -ic, -ity, -ial) (2) attract stress upon
themselves (e. g. -ee, -eer, -oo, -oon, -ette, -esque).
English prefixes that may have a meaning of their own are
completely fused with the root to which they are attached so the word is
no longer felt as a derivative and is treated as a single word. Prefixes of
this kind (e.g. mis-, over-, under-, un-) normally carry a secondary
stress.
Some word pairs, involving two different parts of speech, are
distinguished by stress: Export rose in the second quarter vs. We still
need to export more and They have a green house, but not a
greenhouse.
In connected speech, stress is more variable than in isolated
words; the choice of the word to be stressed depends on the speaker's
will and the meaning (s)he wishes to convey.
English is a language that distinguishes very clearly between
stressed and unstressed syllables; what is very important to note is that
in English, the recurrence of stressed syllables at regular intervals gives

speech its rhythmical qualities which are quite different from those with
which other languages, Romanian included, are spoken.
Key concepts
closed/checked syllable
coda
fixed accent-language
free accent-language
loudness
nucleus
onset
open/free/unchecked syllable
pitch
primary stress
quality
quantity
rhythm
secondary stress
stress
strong suffix
syllabic consonant
syllable
vowel reduction
weak suffix
Further reading
1. Chioran, Dumitru and Petri, Lucreia. 1977. Workbook in

English Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureti: Editura Didactic
i Pedagogic, pp.130-138, pp. 161-166.
2. Goglniceanu, Clina. 1993. The English Phonetics and
Phonology. Iai: Editura Fundaiei "Chemarea", pp. 105-114.

ENGLISH AS AN INTONATION LANGUAGE
UNIT 8
Unit outline
Unit aims
8.1 Definition and components of intonation
8.2 The tone unit as a basic unit of intonation
8.3 Tone-patterns in English
8.4 Functions of intonation
8.5 Intonation and sentence types

8.5.1 Declaratives
8.5.2 Imperatives and exclamations
8.5.3 Questions
8.6 Contrastive analysis of intonation in English

and Romanian
Conclusions
Key concepts
Further reading

Unit aims
to:
avoid transferring intonation patterns by realizing that the

shapes of the English tunes differ from the normal tunes of
Romanian.
practise English intonation patterns that occur with a variety of
sentence types.
distinguish between isolated sentences, which generally can
take several intonation contours, and the intonation* of ongoing
discourse, in which case only one intonation contour is
generally appropriate.
apply English intonation patterns over short exchanges and
longer stretches of discourse that resemble authentic
conversation.
8.1. Definition and components of intonation
Intonation* is a term used in the study of suprasegmental

phonology. In a narrow sense, intonation refers to the fluctuations in
pitch level (i.e. the height on which sounds are pronounced) and pitch
direction (i.e. the point towards which the movement in pitch takes
place). In a wider sense, intonation includes other prosodic* elements
such as loudness*, tempo of speech, rhythm. The most important of all
components of intonation is pitch.
Pitch is also a component of accent. Pitch consists of pronouncing
a syllable on a higher pitch level than the others, or in giving that
syllable a certain melodic shape: a falling one, a rising one, or a
combination of the two. In acoustic terms it means the number of
vibrations per second of the vocal cords*. Pitch contrasts are more
easily perceived with voiced sounds.
Tone languages and intonation languages

Languages where word meanings or grammatical categories (such
as TENSE) are dependent on pitch level are known as tone languages.
Many languages of South-East Asia (Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese),

Africa (particularly those in the South and West) and a considerable
number of Amerindian languages are tone languages.
In Chinese the pitch variations are carried by the syllable as a
phonetic unit so that by varying the pitch of individual syllables,
differences in meaning are obtained. For example, the word han may
mean 1) foolish, 2) cold, 3) rare (when pronounced in a falling-rising
tone), 4) perspiration.
Languages where pitch conveys meaning not at lexical item level
but at the phrasal or clausal level are called intonation languages.
Virtually all European and Middle Eastern languages are intonation
languages.
In general, if learners speak an intonation language* as their first
language, it is assumed that they will learn the intonation of another
language more easily than will someone who speaks a tone language as
their first language or vice versa. However, just because two languages
happen to be intonation languages does not mean that their utterance-
level pitch patterns will be the same. They rarely are. For, example,
while English uses up to four pitch levels, Spanish uses only two or at
most three with the result that Spanish speakers seem to have a
somewhat flat intonation in English which signals disinterest to English
speakers. (Celce-Murcia Marianne and Elite Olshtain. 2000. Discourse
and Context in Language Teaching, p. 33)
8.2. The tone-unit as the basic unit of intonation
The presence of an intonation group boundary can occasionally be

crucial for meaning. For instance, compare the answers to the following
question: Do you really what to leave home? a)I don`t know. b)I don`t.
No. .Variations of pitch occur in chunks of speech called tone units. A
tone-unit* is the phonological unit greater in size than the syllable, and
it is the basic unit of intonation. In its smallest form a 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. For example, both you and
is it you may be regarded as tone units; the former is a one-syllable
utterance which carries a tone* while the latter is an utterance of three

syllables in which only the third one carries a tone. A syllable which
carries a tone is called a tonic syllable* or nucleus*.
The conventional structure of the tone unit
Conventionally, the structure of a tone-unit/intonation pattern or
tune* is made up of the following components:
- a nucleus or tonic syllable (an obligatory element) is the most
prominent of the stressed syllables in an intonation group.
- a pre-nuclear component part (non-obligatory) consisting of an
optional head (that part of a tune starting with the first accented
syllable and continuing up to the nucleus) and a pre-head* (all the
unaccented syllables before a head).
- a post-nuclear part (optional) - called tail which usually
consists of the unstressed syllables after the nucleus.
Sometimes a tail can contain stressed words but without pitch

change as in Well, say something, then!
The tone-unit structure can be summarized as follows:
(pre-head) (head) nucleus (tail)

(Ph) (H) N (T)
The following examples illustrate various structures of intonation
patterns:
There's / nothing I can do / about it /

Ph H N T
It's im / po / ssible for me to do it.
Ph N T
This was more than I had expected.
Ph N T
Isn't she pretty?
N T
The choice of the nucleus in an utterance depends on the speech

situation. The shift in nucleus location is accompanied by a change in
meaning.

a) Tom sells 'cars. (This is his job)

b) Tom 'sells cars. (He doesn't make or buy them)
c) 'Tom sells cars. (It is Tom, not another person who sells cars).
8.3. Tone patterns in English
The study of the notions of tone and intonation in English involves

the introduction of the following basic tones: fall*, rise, fall-rise*, rise-
fall and level.
The falling or fall pattern

A falling pitch usually called a fall* is one that goes from a
higher pitch to a lower one:
This tone is usually regarded as more or less neutral. The fall* is

usually associated with an impression of finality, with ending a
conversation. For instance, in a dialogue between speakers A and B,
one possible reply from B would be YES \ implying the question is
answered and that there is nothing more to be said:
A: Do you know John Smith?
B: YES
The rising or rise pattern

In the case of the rise pattern, the pitch of the voice starts
relatively low and then moves upward. The rising tone or rise conveys
an impression that something more is to follow. If in the dialogue above
B's reply were YES /, this means that B invites A to continue with what
he/she intends to say about John Smith after establishing that B knows
him:

A: Do you know John Smith?
B: YES, (or YES /).
The fall-rise tone

The fall-rise is a tone in which the pitch of the voice starts
relatively high and then moves first downwards and then upwards
again. The fall-rise tone is used a lot in English, and it usually indicates
doubt, correction or reservation (polite disagreement). In the example
below, B's reply should be taken to mean that he/she would not
completely agree with what A said:
A: Did you know she quitted?
B: Its POSSIBLE
The rise-fall tone:
The rise-fall is the least common tone in which there is a pitch

movement from mid to high to low. The rise-fall tone is used to convey
rather strong feelings of disapproval, arrogance, mockery, approval,
self-satisfaction, confidence, or surprise:
A: Do you like this?
B: DE LIGHTFUL!
Note that the rise part of the tone takes place on the first tonic
syllable and the fall part on the second:
e.g. NO ONE, NO SIR
The level tone
The level tone almost always conveys a feeling of saying

something routine, uninteresting or boring. For instance, a student's

answering yes when his/her name was called by the teacher uses a level
tone.
A: John Smith?
B: YES.
In a one-syllable utterance, the single syllable must have one of

the five tones presented briefly above. In a tone unit of more than one
syllable, the tonic syllable must have one of those tones. When a tonic
syllable is followed by a tail, that tail continues and completes the tone
begun on the tonic syllable.
8.4. Functions of intonation
In communication, intonation may perform several functions:
The accentual function

The accentual function is expressed by the accent component of
intonation. In the literature, it is also called the focusing (or
informational) function: we use it to bring some parts of the message
into focus and leave other parts out of focus.
This function is closely connected to the primary accent carried by
the most prominent word in an utterance.
In these sentences, the nuclear or tonic stress* falls on the last
important lexical item:
He must 'come,
Put the book in the 'box,
John and Mary must 'do, it.
The attitudinal function

The attitudinal function is used to show our attitudes and emotion.
It expresses the connection between tones and attitudes (e.g. joy, anger,
irony, indignation, surprise, incredulity, arrogance). The tones which
are significantly attitudinally marked are the fall-rise and the rise-fall.

This function is superimposed on the accentual function and cannot be

clearly separated from it.
John 'and Mary must do it (not only John)

'He must come (not she)
Put the book 'in the box (not on the box)
An attitude that is expressed could be an attitude towards the

listener, towards what is being said or towards some external event or
situation.
The low-fall and the high-rise have a strengthening function.
These tones tend to emphasize or exaggerate a speaker`s basic attitude.
To the foreign learner of English who wants to learn "correct
intonation" a few generalisations can be made:
- finality or definiteness is expressed by the fall tone:
That is the end of the news.

I'm absolutely certain.
Stop talking.
- encouraging is expressed by the rise tone:

It won't hurt.
uncertainty, doubt or request are expressed by the fall-rise:
You may be right.
Will you lend it to me.
surprise is expressed by the rise fall:

-
All of them
However, linking tones with attitudes remains a difficult task,

especially because the same intonation pattern can accompany different
attitudes depending on the nature of the utterance and the context in
which it is used. For example, the rise-fall followed by a fall is used in

utterance 1 to accompany exasperation and in utterance 2 to accompany

delight.
(1) If you opened your EYES youd SEE it.
(2) Im delighted to SAY youve WON it.
Actually, the rise-fall pattern is generally considered an emphatic

tone which accompanies utterances that show strong feelings.
The grammatical function

The relationship between grammar and intonation takes the form
of correspondences between certain grammatical structures and certain
intonation patterns. In other words, certain grammatical structures have
the tendency to go with certain intonation patterns. We use intonation
to distinguish clause types such are question versus statement and to
disambiguate various grammatically ambiguous structures.
8.5. Intonation and sentence types
From a grammatical point of view, what is relevant for intonation

analysis is not the number of words in an utterance but the syntactic
structures they form and the grammatical categories to which they
belong.
The intonational pattern used should make clear the difference

between (a) restrictive and (b) non-restrictive relative clauses; (a)
implies that only some Conservatives like the proposal, while (b)
implies that all the Conservatives like it.
An instance where a given intonation pattern is associated with a
certain grammatical structure is represented by complex sentences.
Subordinate clauses usually end in a rising tune especially when
initial in the sentence:

By the time he gets there, it will be much too late.
If I can get a job, I'll pay it back at once.
8.5.1. Declaratives
Most English declarative sentences, in their neutral, unmarked

version, take rise-fall intonation contour and the tonic stress on the last
lexically important word in the utterance:
I have to leave.
Ill give it to John.
8.5.2. Imperatives and exclamations
Like declaratives, imperatives (often referred to as commands or

requests when viewed pragmatically) generally have rising-falling
intonation, but they are often more forceful or affectively loaded than
declarative sentences:
Write more POEMS!
Like declaratives and imperatives, exclamations also exhibit

rising-falling intonation, but they sometimes give prominence to two
constituents rather than one:
WHAT a perFORmance!
8.5.3. Questions
YES/NO questions
Neutral or unmarked YES/NO questions (i.e. questions that
involve the inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb or the
addition of do as the auxiliary in sentences that have no lexical
auxiliary verb) generally follow the rising intonation. Different

realizations of the rising contour are possible depending on which
constituent of the utterance is being emphasized:
Does John write POEMS? (emphasis on poems )

Does JOHN write poems? (emphasis on John).
WH-questions
Neutral or unmarked WH-questions (i.e. questions where the
constituent being questioned appears in the form of a wh-word (what,
who, when, where, etc) are accompanied by the rising-falling
intonation. Again, different realizations of the contour depend on which
constituent of the utterance is in focus:
What does John WRITE? (focus on the result/product)
What does JOHN write? (focus on agent).
Such rising-falling intonation surprises some non-native speakers

of English, who assume that all questions, regardless of type, should be
spoken with rising intonation.
Question tags
As question tags are used most frequently to seek confirmation or
to make a point, the (pitch) contour which usually accompanies them in
English is the rising-falling pattern:
Its a nice DAY, IS nt it?
People are worried about eCONomy, are nt they?
This is a problem for non-native speakers as many of them speak

native languages where all question tags have rising intonation
regardless of discourse function. The solution proposed by discourse
analysts is this:

Students must learn that in English the speaker has a choice

between using a tag to confirm an assumption (using the rising-falling
pattern) or to ask an informal type of yes/no question (using rising
intonation). (Celce-Murcia and Olshtein, 2000: 42)
The intonation of question-tags is often quoted as a case of a

difference in meaning due to the difference between falling and rising
tone. When the question-tag has a falling tone, like in (1) the
implication is that the speaker is certain that the information is correct,
and he simply expects the listener to provide confirmation. The rising
tone of the question-tag indicates a lesser degree of certainty so that the
question-tag functions more like a request for information as in (2):
(1) They are coming on Tuesday, arent they?
(2) They are coming on Tuesday, arent they?

Alternative questions
True alternative questions generally show a rise on the first part, a
pause* and then a rise-fall* on the second part:
Would you like JUICE or COFfee?
Sometimes question-like utterances are not actually questions but

statements or exclamations. One can distinguish between them by
means of the intonation pattern that is used:
Isn't she cute? (question)
Isn't she cute! (exclamation).
The discourse function

Intonation may be studied in relation with discourse in terms of
attention focussing, i.e. the use of intonation to focus the listener's
attention on aspects of the message that are most important.

For example, the tone chosen can indicate whether the tone-unit in
which it occurs is being used to present new information or to refer to
information which is felt to be already possessed by speaker or listener.
Thus, in a sentence like / Since the last time we met / when we had
that huge dinner / I've been on a diet / the first two units present
information which is relevant to what the speaker is saying but which is
not something new and unknown to the listener. The new information is
present in the final tone-unit.
Researchers have shown that words expressing old or given
information are generally spoken with weak stress and low* pitch
whereas words expressing new information are spoken with strong
stress and high pitch. For example, in the conversational exchange
given below, whatever information is new, tends to receive special
prosodic attention, namely the word is stressed and receives high pitch:
A: Ive lost an umBRELla.
B: A LAdys umbrella?
A: YES. With STARS on it. GREEN stars.
8.6. Contrastive analysis of intonation in English and Romanian
Starting from the rule of compensation at work in language, one

can notice that the more rigid or fixed a grammatical structure, the
richer the use of intonation.
Since English has a more rigid word order than Romanian, it has a
relatively free placement of stress, depending on what part of the
utterance the speaker wants to render more prominent:
JOE Callaher left home yesterday. (not George, the baker)

Joe CALLAHER left home yesterday. (not Joe Smith)
Joe Callaher LEFT home yesterday. (not came home yesterday)
Joe Callaher left HOME yesterday. (not the hospital)

Joe Callaher left home YESTERDAY. (not last week)
Both in English and Romanian there are rising and falling tunes.
While a fall-rise seems to operate in both languages, the rise-fall is
peculiar to English only and consequently difficult to acquire by
Romanian learners:
Isn't it awful!
Human attitudes indicated by intonation are expressed roughly by

the same patterns in both languages. An area of contrast between the
intonation patterns of the two languages refers to the way in which they
correlate with grammatical structures.
Romanian and English show an important contrast in relation to
the use of intonation in interrogative sentences; while in Romanian the
use of a rising tune is the only formal means of signalling the
interrogative nature of a sentence, in English a similar change in tune
normally accompanies other changes in the structure of an affirmative
sentence in order to function as a question:
A plecat la mare. (statement)

A plecat la mare? (question)
He has left for the seaside. (statement)
Has he left for the seaside? (question)
There are instances in which connotative shades of meanings are

expressed:
- by specific intonational contours in English:
You know how he is.
Wouldn't it be better to postpone our departure?
- by lexical devices in Romanian (e.g. doar, oare)

Il stii doar cum e el.
N-ar fi mai bine oare s amnm plecarea?

Since English is a language with a fairly strict word order, it will

be more difficult to use word order alone as a device of emphasising
certain parts of the utterance. In Romanian, one can arrange the
sentence components more freely and they do not have to resort very
often to prosodic features.
Conclusions
Effective oral communication in English requires control of
prosody perhaps as much as (if not more than) control of the target
language vowel and consonant sounds.
The choice of the nucleus in an utterance depends on the speech
situation. The shift in nucleus location is accompanied by a change in
meaning.
The attitudinal use of intonation is something that is best acquired
through talking with and listening to English speakers.
At discourse level, the general pragmatic strategy used by English
speakers is to emphasis new information and de-emphasis old or shared
information.
The connection between intonation and grammar can be seen in
the associations between intonation patterns and various types of
sentences. Thus, a falling pattern is appropriate for statements, wh-
questions, commands and exclamations, while a rising pattern is
associated with yes / no questions and requests.
Intonation must be learnt and taught not on the basis of isolated
sentences or tone-units but within their linguistic and situational context.
Key concepts
accentual function
attitudinal function
discourse function
fall
fall-rise
functions of intonation
grammatical function
head
level

loudness
pitch
pre-head
rhythm
rise
rise-fall
tail
tone language
tone unit/intonation pattern/tune
tonic syllable/nucleus
Further reading
1. Celce-Murcia M. and Olshtain, E.. 2000. Discourse and Context

in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 30-50
2. Thorne, S. 1997. Mastering Advanced English Language,
London: Macmillan, pp. 48 72.
3. Rogers, H.. 2000. The Sounds of Language. An Introduction to
Phonetics. Harlow Essex: Pearson Education Ltd., pp. 96-108.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bibliography
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Course for Teachers of English. Iai: Polirom.
2. Bejan N. and Elena Croitoru. 1979. Contemporary English
Language. Galati: Tipografia Universitii, pp. 3-59.
3. Carney Edward. 1998. English Spelling is Kattastroffic. In Bauer
Laurie and Peter Trudgil. (eds.) Language Myths. London: Penguin
Books, pp. 32 41.
4. Celce-Murcia Marianne and Elite Olshtain. 2000. Discourse and
Context in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 30-50.
5. Chioran, Dumitru. 1978. English Phonetics and Phonology.
Bucureti: Editura didactic i Pedagogic.
6. Chioran, Dumitru and Hortensia Prlog. 1989. Ghid de pronunie a
limbii engleze. Bucureti: Editura stiintific i enciclopedic.
7. Chioran Dumitru, Augerot, James and Hortensia Prlog. 1984. The
Sounds of English and Romanian. Bucureti: Bucharest University
Press.
8. Chioran, Dumitru and Lucreia Petri. 1977. Workbook in English
Phonetics and Phonology. Bucureti: Editura didactic i
pedagogic.
9. Chioran, Dumitru and Hortensia Prlog. 1989. Ghid de pronunie a
limbii engleze, Bucureti: Editura didactic i pedagogic
10. Crystal, David 1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics,
Oxford: Blackwell.
11. Dauer, Rebecca. 1993. Accurate English. A Complete Course in
Pronunciation. New Jersey: Printice Hall.
12. Dima, Gabriela. 1996. Outlines of English Phonetics and
Phonology. With Pronunciation Drills for Learners of English.
Brila: Evrika.
13. Dirven, Rene and Marjolin Verspoor. 1998. Cognitive Exploration
of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Bejamins, pp. 107-137.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
14. Dobo Daniela. 2001. A Handbook of English Phonetics and

Phonology. Iai: Casa Editorial Demiurg.
15. Finch, Geoffrey. 2000. Linguistic Terms and Concepts. Palgrave
Macmillan, 33 - 77.
16. Goglniceanu, Clina. 1993. The English Phonetics and
Phonology. Iai: Editura Fundaiei "Chemarea"
17. Hulban, H., Lctuu T., Goglniceanu, T. C. 1983. Competen i
performan, exerciii i teste de limba englez. Bucureti: Editura
stiinific i enciclopedic.
18. Iarovici, Edith. 1994. Engleza American. Bucureti: Editura
Teora, pp.99 111.
19. Ilovici, Edith. 1972. Indreptar de ortografie i punctuaie a limbii
engleze. Cu exercii practice. Bucureti: Editura didactic i
pedagogic.
20. Jones, Daniel. 1963. [1956] Everymans English Pronouncing
Dictionary, 11th Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
21. Knowles, G. 1987. Patterns of Spoken English. London: Longman
Group Ltd.
22. Kovecses, Zoltan. 2000. American English. An Introduction.
Ontario: Broad View Press
23. Leontyeva, S. F. 1988. A Theoretical Course of English Phonetics,
Moscow.
24. Malcolm Mann and Steve Taylore-Knowles. 2003. Skills for First
Certificate. Listening and Speaking. Oxford: Macmillan
25. Makarenko, Tatiana. 1998. Contemporary English Phonetics. Cluj:
Editura Echinox.
26. Martin Hegwins, Mateescu Dan. 2003. Pronunciation Practice
Activities Book and Audio CD Pack: A Resource Book for
Teaching English Pronunciation (Cambridge Handbooks for
Language Teachers),
27. Matthews, P.H. 1997. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics.
Oxford: Oxford University Press
28. Meyer, Paul Georg et al. 2002. Synchronic English Linguistics. An
Introduction. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag Tubingen, pp. 56-94
(Chapter 2 Phonetics and Phonology)

BIBLIOGRAPHY
29. Mc Carthy, Michael and Felicity ODell. 1994. English

Vocabulary in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
30. Neagu Mariana. 1997. English Phonetics and Phonology: A
Coursebook. Braila: Editura Evrika.
31. Neagu Mariana. 2000. Language, Culture and Civilization.
English In and Outside the British Isles. Galai: Editura Fundaiei
Dunrea de Jos. pp.106-124.
32. Neagu Mariana. 2001. Variety and Style in English. Buzu: Alpha.
pp. 123-148.
33. Nicolescu, Adrian. 1977. Tendine n engleza britanic
contemporan. Bucureti: Editura Universitii Bucureti
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University Press, pp.29-52

GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY
Glossary
accent
This word is used (rather confusingly) in two
different senses: (1) accent may refer to
prominence given to a syllable, usually by the
use of pitch. For example, in the word 'potato'
the middle syllable is the most prominent; if
you say the word on its own you will probably
produce a fall in pitch on the middle syllable,
making that syllable accented. In this sense,
accent is distinguished from the more general
term stress, which is more often used to refer
to all sorts of prominence (including
prominence resulting from increased loudness,
length or sound quality), or to refer to the effort
made by the speaker in producing a stressed
syllable. (2) accent also refers to a particular
way of pronouncing: for example, you might
find a number of English speakers who all
share the same grammar and vocabulary, but
pronounce what they say with different accents
such as Scots, Cockney or RECEIVED
PRONUNCIATION (BBC accent). The
word accent in this sense is distinguished from
dialect, which usually refers to a variety of a
language that differs from other varieties in
grammar and/or vocabulary.

GLOSSARY
accentual
Relating to phonetic, accent, particularly in
the sense of word stress (rather than nuclear
pitch).
acoustic phonetics
That branch of phonetics concerned with the
way in which the air vibrates as sounds pass
from speaker to listener.
Acoustic phonetics involves the measuring
of sounds with instruments and electronic
equipment that then present the information
in visual form.
affricate
A consonant sound that combines the
articulatory characteristics of a PLOSIVE
and a FRICATIVE; there is a complete
closure in the vocal tract so that the
following release is a plosive, but the release
is slow enough for there to be accompanying
friction. A speech sound consisting in a stop
and a fricative.
Two affricates are recognized in Standard
English: /tf/, the voiceless sound heard at the
beginning and end of church, in the middle
of feature, and at the end of catch; and, the
voiced sound at the beginning of gin and
jam, the middle of soldier, and the end of
judge.
air-stream
All speech sounds are made by making air
move. Usually the air is moved outwards
from the body, creating an egressive
GLOSSARY
airstream; more rarely speech sounds are

made by drawing air into the body - an
ingressive airstream. The most common way
of moving air is by compression of the lungs
so that the air is expelled through the vocal
tract. This is called a pulmonic airstream
(usually an egressive pulmonic one, but
occasionally speech is produced while
breathing in). Others are the glottalic
(produced by the larynx, with closed vocal
folds; it is moved up and down like the
plunger of a bicycle pump) and the velaric
(where the back of the tongue is pressed
against the soft palate, or velum, making an
air-tight seal, and then drawn backwards or
forwards to produce an airstream). Ingressive
glottalic consonants (often called implosives)
and egressive ones (ejectives) are found in
many non-European languages; click sounds
(ingressive velaric) are much rarer, but occur
in a number of southern African languages
such as Hottentot, Xhosa and Zulu. Speakers
of other languages, including English, use
click sounds for non-linguistic
communication, as in the case of the "tut-tut"
(American "tsk-tsk") sound of disapproval.
alliteration
The repetition of the same sound in initial
position in a sequence of words.
allophone
Any of the variants in which an idealized
phoneme is actually realized. Many
allophones, that are actual articulations, are

GLOSSARY
possible for any phoneme of a language,

depending on individual peoples
pronunciation, but the main allophones of
any particular language are conditioned by
their relationship to the surrounding sounds.
Thus in standard English, the phoneme has a
CLEAR sound when it precedes a vowel (as
in listen or fall in); a somewhat DEVOICED
sound when preceded by word-finally after a
vowel (as in fall down) or when it is syllabic
(as in muddle).
allophonic
Of or pertaining to an allophone.
alveolar
Pronounced with the constriction of the tip or
blade of the tongue against the alveolar
ridge. The main alveolar in English are t
and d (often dental consonants in other
languages), which are alveolar plosives; n
an alveolar nasal; and s and z, which
are alveolar fricatives. The actual articulation
of these alveolar phonemes is affected by
adjacent sounds so that not all their
allophones are in fact alveolar.
apical
Made with the apex (tongue tip).
The tip of the tongue is not normally
involved in the formation of English speech
sounds, though it is used in the articulation
of a trilled /r/.
approximant
A sound made with an unimpeded airflow;
contrasted with STOP and FRICATIVE.
GLOSSARY
Phoneticians group speech sounds in

different ways. Approximant is used as a
general term covering sounds made in
various manners of articulation.
articulation
The physical production of speech sounds.
Speech sounds are described in terms of both
their PLACE and their MANNER of
articulation. According to PLACE of
articulation, consonants may be bilabial,
labio-dental, dental, alveolar, palato-
alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal. From the
point of view of their MANNER of
articulation, consonants are classified as
plosives, affricates, fricatives, nasals,
laterals, flaps and semivowels.
articulator
Any vocal organ, moving or not, involved in
the production of speech sounds.
articulatory phonetics
The branch of phonetics concerned with the

ways in which speech sounds are physically
articulated.
aspirated
Articulated with an audible release of air
(contrasted with UNASPIRATED).
Aspirated and voiceless articulations often
occur together, but are distinct phenomena.
Voiced and voiceless refer to the state of the
vocal cords throughout the articulation of a
GLOSSARY
phoneme; aspirated and unaspirated refer to

the final release stage of plosion.
aspiration
Articulation accompanied by an audible
release of air.
The fortis consonants /p, t, k /, when
occurring initially in an accented syllable,
are accompanied by aspiration, i.e. there is a
voiceless interval of strongly expelled breath
between the release of the plosive and the
onset of a following vowel. When /l, r, w, j/
follow /p, t, k/ in such position, the aspiration
is manifested in the devoicing of /l, r, w, j /,
e.g. please, pray, try, clean, twice, quick,
pew, tune, queue.
assimilate
Make or become more similar in articulation
(to an adjacent sound) (cause to) undergo
assimilation. For example, in the word
Tuesday the opening sequence /tj/ can readily
assimilate to /t/, in Did you? /dj/ to /d/ and
in What you? /tj/ to /t/.
assimilated
A speech sound which undergoes
assimilation.
assimilating
A speech sound that changes one feature
(e.g. voicing, labialization) of a neighbouring
sound.

GLOSSARY
assimilation
The effect on a speech sound of the
articulation of other adjacent sounds; a kind
of COARTICULATION. This is a common
feature of speech, though one that many
native speakers are unaware of. In
anticipatory assimilation (or regressive
assimilation), the sound is influenced in its
articulation by the following sound and not
pronounced as it would be in isolation. For
example, in some peoples pronunciation of
width the voiced /d/ has been assimilated to
/t/ by the following voiceless // and in some
peoples pronunciation of length, the velar
// has been assimilated to /n/ by the
following dental //.
In current speech, assimilation frequently
occurs across word boundaries, as when that
case becomes /k kes/ or this shop
becomes / p/ or ten more becomes /tem
m:/
A reverse type of assimilation (progressive
assimilation) is found when a sound is
changed by the influence of a previous one.
This is an established and regular feature of
the ending s of verbs and nouns, which
usually has a voiced /z/ sound (or /z/ after
all sibilants) but after voiceless sounds other
than sibilants is /s/ (e.g. taps, hats, docks,
griefs, Keiths; compare tabs, heeds, dogs,
grieves, youths, eyes, seems, runs, dolls,
pieces, daisies). Similarly, the past tense /ed/
GLOSSARY
ending /d/ or /d/ is devoiced to a /t/ sound

after a voiceless consonant other than t
itself (roped, lacked, busses, roofed, pushed
versus robed, lagged, buzzed, grooved,
rouged, hated, headed).
auditory
When the analysis of speech is carried out by
the listener's ear, the analysis is said to be an
auditory one, and when the listener's brain
receives information from the ears it is said to
be receiving auditory information. In practical
phonetics, great importance has been given to
auditory training: this is sometimes known as
ear-training, but in fact it is the brain and not
the ear that is trained. With expert teaching and
regular practice it is possible to learn to make
much more precise and reliable discriminations
among speech sounds than untrained people
are capable of. Although the analysis of speech
sounds by the trained expert can be carried out
entirely auditorily, in most cases the analyst
also tries to make the sound (particularly when
working face to face with a native speaker of
the language or dialect), and the proper name
for this analysis is then auditory-kinaesthetic.
auditory phonetics
The study of speech sounds from the point of
view of the listener, concerned with the way
the ears and brain process and perceive
speech sounds reaching them.
back
Of speech sound: made in the back part of
the mouth.

GLOSSARY
Vowel sounds are traditionally classified into

BACK, CENTRAL and FRONT vowels, the
back vowels being made with the tongue
humped towards the back of the mouth.
BBC English
Standard English, as supposedly spoken by
professional BBC broadcasters.
In its early days, the British Broadcasting
Corporation encouraged a standard non-
regional educated accent among its
broadcasters. BBC English is now only one
accent heard from newsreaders, announcers
and other programme presenters.
BBC Pronunciation
The British Broadcasting Corporation is looked
up to by many people in Britain and abroad as
a custodian of good English; this attitude is
normally only in respect of certain
broadcasters who represent the "official" voice
of the Corporation, such as newsreaders and
announcers, and does not apply to the
"unofficial" voices of people such as disc-
jockeys and chat-show presenters (who may
speak as they please). The high status given to
the BBC's voices relates both to pronunciation
and to grammar, and there are listeners who
write angry letters to the BBC or the Radio
Times to complain about "incorrect"
pronunciations such as "loranorder" for "law
and order". Although the attitude that the BBC
has a responsibility to preserve some
GLOSSARY
imaginary pure form of English for posterity is

extreme, there is much to be said for using the
"official" BBC accent as a standard for foreign
learners wishing to acquire an English accent.
The old standard "RP" is based on a very old-
fashioned view of the language; the present-
day BBC accent is easily accessible and easy
to record and examine. It is relatively free from
class-based associations and it is available
throughout the world on the Overseas Service
of the BBC. The BBC nowadays uses quite a
large number of speakers from Celtic countries
(particularly Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and
the description of "BBC Pronunciation" should
not be treated as including such speakers.
The Corporation has its own
Pronunciation Unit, but contrary to some
people's belief its function is more to advise on
the pronunciation of foreign words and of
obscure British names than to monitor
pronunciation standards. Broadcasters are not
under any obligation to consult the Unit, and in
addition, the BBC now obliges broadcasters to
pay for consulting it.
bilabial
Pronounced with the constriction of the two
lips.
The English bilabials are /p/, /b/, and /m/, as
in pan, ban and man.

GLOSSARY
bilateral
With the air released around both sides of the
tongue.
A bilateral articulation is the normal
articulation of LATERAL sounds English. It
contrasts with unilateral articulation, by
which the air, unusually, is released around
one side only.
binary
Designating or relating to a pair o features in
language which are mutually exclusive, or
the opposition between them.
The contrasts between nasal and non-nasal or
voiced and voiceless articulation are said to
be binary oppositions or binary features.
Such features are sometimes marked with a
plus or minus sign. Thus /p/ is characterized
as [-voice] and /b/ as [+voice].
blade
The tapering section of the front of the
tongue, immediately behind the tip. In
describing how speech sounds are articulated
it is useful to label the speech organs in some
detail. Tip, blade and sides (rims) of the
tongue articulate with the teeth in making the
English /th/ sounds, // as in theatre and // as
in then.
Consonants primarily involving the blade of
the tongue are /t/, /d/, and /z/.

GLOSSARY
broad transcription
A systematic method of representing in a
rather general way (normally using the
symbols of the International Phonetic
Alphabet) how spoken language sounds. A
broad (phonemic) transcription is generally
felt to be the simplest to use, but a
knowledge of the allophonic system of the
languages is needed if such transcription is to
be read aloud with even approximate
accuracy. A phonetic transcription omitting
details that are judged to be inessential;
hence identical with, or close to, a
representation of phonemes.
cardinal vowel chart

One of a standard set of 18 vowels, devised
by the phonetician Daniel Jones (1881
1967) as a basis for describing the vowels of
any language. The system is mainly
physiological. The vowels are described
primarily in terms of tongue position, and the
amount of lip-rounding is specified. There
are 8 primary vowels: 4 front vowels,
defined according to the height of the front
of the tongue and 4 back vowels*, where the
height of the back of the tongue is relevant.
The 8 secondary cardinal vowels have the
same tongue positions, but the lip-rounding
or lip-spreading is different. Two further
vowels are identified as depending on the
center of the tongue being raised.
GLOSSARY
central vowel
A vowel made with the center of the tongue
raised towards the middle of the roof of the
mouth, where the hard and soft palates meet.
In standard English (PR) the central vowels
are:
/ / the sound in hut, come, blood;
/:/ the sound in bird, nurse, worm;
// the sound at the beginning of ago and the
end of mother;
// the sound in foot, put, wolf, could.
centring diphthong
A a diphthong that moves towards a central
position for its second element. Contrasted
with CLOSING DIPHTHONG.
Standard RP has 3 centring diphthongs:
// as in dear, here, idea;
// as in tour, during;
/e/ as in fair, whare, stare.
close
Of a vowel: made with the tongue high in the
mouth; contrasted with OPEN.
In English /:/ as in feet or sea is a fairly
close front vowel, and /u:/ as in food, group,
move is a close back vowel. Close vowels are
sometimes called high vowels.

GLOSSARY
closing diphthong
A diphthong which glides towards a closer
sound.
This includes all the diphthongs ending in //
and //, and contrasts with CENTRING
DIPHTHONG.
closure
A closing of the air passage by some part of
the vocal organs in the production of certain
speech sounds, also called constriction.
A complete closure is a feature of plosives,
affricates and nasal. Most other consonants
are produced with incomplete or partial
closure
coalescence
A process whereby two separate speech
sounds merge to form a single new phoneme.
(Also called coalescent assimilation or
reciprocal assimilation).
coalescent
Participating in or resulting from
coalescence.
These terms are particularly applied to the
process (yod coalescence) in which /t/, /d/,
/s/, /z/, merge with /j/ and become /t/, /d/,
//, // respectively.
In present day speech coalescent variants are
heard in certain words, e.g. intuition
/ntju:()n/ or /ntu:()n/, grandeur
/grndj/ or /grnd/, duel /dju:l/ or
/du:l/, please you /pli:j/ and across word
boundaries, e.g. /kdu:/ as an alternative to
/kdju:/ for Could you?

GLOSSARY
Except where historically established,

coalescence tends to be regarded as
colloquial or non-standard.
coarticulation
Coarticulation is a phenomenon closely related
to assimilation; the major difference is that
assimilation is used as a name for the process
whereby one sound becomes like another
neighbouring sound, while coarticulation,
though it refers to a similar process, is
concerned with articulatory explanations for
why the assimilation occurs, and considers
cases where the changes may occur over a
number of segments.
cognitive phonology
Cognitive phonology is a part of cognitive

grammar. Phonological constructions state
constraints across, as well as within, levels of
the phonology. The levels are minimal:
morphemic, phonemic, and phonetic levels.
Any adequate theory phonology will need
such levels. Because environments in
constructions can be stated at any level, there
is no need for rule ordering or cycles. One of
the attractions of cognitive phonology is that,
since it is part of cognitive grammar, other
aspects of the grammar are directly
accessible. Since cognitive grammars
characterize correlations across various
GLOSSARY
dimensions of structure, correlations between

the phonology and various aspects of syntax,
semantics and pragmatics are directly
statable.
Another major advantage is that the
constructions that make up a grammar can be
used directly in models of cognitive
processing. Moreover, the same constructions
can be used in generations and recognition,
since there is no directionality in their
formulation. The rules of generative
phonology cannot be used in models of
cognitive processing at allthey were not
intended to be so used; and the intermediate
stages of derivations in generative phonology
could never occur as cognitively real
representations in any processing model.
Cognitive phonology has other attractive
features. First, connectionist foundations
allow for a theory of defaults and default
overrides in terms of levels of connection
strengths. Second, the Elsewhere Principle is
an automatic consequence of a connectionist
framework. Within a connectionist
framework, a combination of more specific
and more general pattern can be learned only
by having the more specific patterns have
higher connection strengths. Thus the
Elsewhere Condition is automatic, and
amounts to a special case of default.

GLOSSARY
complementary distribution
Two sounds are in complementary
distribution if they never occur in the same
context. A good example is provided by the
allophones of the / l / phoneme in BBC
English: there is a voiceless allophone [ lh]
when / l / occurs after / p /, / t / or / k / at the
beginning of a syllable, "clear l" which occurs
before vowels and "dark l" which occurs
elsewhere (i.e. before consonants or a pause).
Leaving aside less noticeable allophonic
variation, these three allophones together
account for practically all the different ways in
which the / l / phoneme is realised; since each
of them has its own specific context in which it
occurs, and does not occur in the contexts in
which the others occur, we can say that each is
in complementary distribution with the others.
connected speech
Speech without pauses between words.
In normal speech several words are usually
run together in a single TONE UNIT. This
affects the pronunciation of speech sounds,
and results in words being said differently
from the way they would be said in isolation.
consonant
A speech sound that is characterized by
constriction in some part of the mouth and is
accompanied by audible friction.

GLOSSARY
The commonly accepted use of the term

consonant is potentially ambiguous. Most
consonants are defined in articulatory terms,
but also share the linguistic or phonological
characteristics of being marginal to a
syllable. Some speech sounds, however,
overlap the two categories of vowel and
consonant. Southern British /l/ and /r/ have
vowel-like articulations, but are usually
syllable-marginal; /m/ and /n/ can be either
marginal (e.g. man) or syllabic (e.g.
frighten); /w/ and /j/ (the initial sounds in wet
and yet) are phonetically vowel-like but
phonologically consonant-like are classified
as SEMI-VOWELS (or semi-consonants).
There are 22 consonants in standard English
(RP): 6 PLOSIVES; 9 FRICATIVES;
2 AFFRICATES; 3 NASALS; 1 LABIAL;
1 FRICTIONLESS CONTINUANT.
consonant cluster
A series of consonants, occurring at the
beginning or end of a syllable and
pronounced together without any intervening
vowels. Also called consonant sequence.
English has some quite complicated
consonant clusters. Initial clusters can have
up to 3 consonants, if the cluster begins with
s (e.g. spread, splendid, street, squint
/skwnt/.
Two-consonants clusters are much more
usual, but only some combinations can
GLOSSARY
occur. Initial clusters are heard in beauty

/bju:t/, quite /kwat/, shred /red/, through
/ ru:/, view /vju:/.
Final clusters can contain as many as 4
consonants, because of inflectional endings,
e.g. texts /teksts/, twelfths /twelfs/, glimpsed
/glmpst/.
content word A word generally stressed which carries a high

information load; for example: nouns, main
verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
cluster
In some languages (including English) we can
find several consonant phonemes in a
sequence, with no vowel sound between them:
for example, the word 'stray' /stre/ begins with
three consonants, and 'sixths' ends with four.
Sequences of two or more consonants within
the same syllable are often called consonant
clusters. It is not usual to refer to vowel
clusters.
continuant
A speech sound made without a complete
closure of the vocal organs.
All vowels are by this definition among the
continuants, but use of the term is often
restricted to the classification of sounds with
a consonantal role. The continuants of
English therefore include the fricatives, the
lateral /l/, the semi-vowels and /r/ - i.e., all
the consonants except the plosives and
GLOSSARY
affricates, which involve total closure (the

nasal may or may not be included).
contrastive stress
Stress used to avoid a misinterpretation.
dental
Produced with the constriction of the tongue
against the teeth.
A consonant made with the tongue coming in
contact with the teeth.
The English dental consonants are the
voiceless fricative // as in thick and thin and
the voiced fricative // as in this, them.
devoicing
A devoiced sound is one which would
normally be expected to be voiced but which is
pronounced without voice in a particular
context: for example, the / l / in 'blade' / bled /
is usually voiced, but in 'played' / pled / the / l /
is usually voiceless because of the preceding
voiceless plosive. The notion of devoicing
leads to a rather confusing use of phonetic
symbols in cases where there are separate
symbols for voiced and voiceless pairs of
sounds: a devoiced / d / can be symbolised by
adding a diacritic that indicates lack of voice -
[ d ], but one is then left in doubt as to what
the difference is between this sound and [ t ].
The usual reason for doing this is to leave the
symbol looking like the phoneme it represents.

GLOSSARY
dialect
It is usual to distinguish between
dialect and accent. Both terms are used to
identify different varieties of a particular
language, but the word 'accent' is used for
varieties which differ from each other only in
matters of pronunciation while 'dialect' also
covers differences in such things as vocabulary
and grammar; for example: Cockney (London),
Scouse (Liverpool).
denasalization
Change or process by which a sound is no
longer nasal or nasalized.
devoiced
English voiced sounds are often partly
devoiced under the influence of surrounding
sounds. Thus the voiced plosives /b/, /d/, and
/g/ are normally devoiced or may even be
completely voiceless in word-final position.
Similarly, voiced fricatives tend to be partly
devoiced except when occurring between
voiced sounds; and /l/, /r/, /w/ and /j/ are
usually devoiced when following initial
voiceless sounds, as in please, tray, twice,
queue /kju:/.
digraph
A group of 2 letters representing one sound,
as ph in phone, or ey in key.

GLOSSARY
diphthong
A vowel that changes its quality within the
same single syllable. (Also called gliding
vowel).
The English diphthongs in modern standard
RP are:
- 3 that glide towards an // sound from
different starting points:
/e/ as in day, late, rain, weigh, hey, great;
/a/ as in time, cry, high, height, die, dye,
aisle, eider;
// as in boy, voice;
- 2 that glides towards /u/:
/u/ as in so, road, toe, soul, know;
/au/ as in house, now;
- 3 that glides towards //:
/e/ as in care, wear, their, there;
/u/ as in pure, during, tourist;
// as in dear, here, weird, idea.
A diphthong gliding to a closer sound (i.e.
one ending in // or // in English) is called a
CLOSING DIHPTHONG; a diphthong
finishing at /e/ is called CENTRING
DIPHTHONG.
distinctive feature
A characteristic of a speech sound within the
phonology of the language that distinguishes
it from another speech sound.
For example, the set of sounds /p/, /t/, /t/
can be distinguished from the set /b/, /d/, /d/
and /z/ by the feature [+/-voiced]. Other
distinctive features of the English consonants
GLOSSARY
refer to orality (-nasal) / nasality (+nasal),

plosiveness, labiality, etc.
distribution
The set of contexts in which a linguistic unit
characteristically occurs.
Every speech sound and every word or
phrase is limited in some way as to the
contexts in which it can occur, and the set of
such contexts is its distribution. Thus the
English phoneme /p/ can occur in initial
consonants clusters such as /pl/ (e.g. please),
/pr/ (e.g. praise) and /pj/ (e.g. pew), but not is
in /pf/ or /pw/.
duration
The linguistic length of a speech sound, as
perceived by the listener.
elision
The omission of a speech sound or syllable.
Two broad types of elision may be
distinguished:
(a) elided word forms that are long-
established, where the spelling frequently
reflects the earlier, fuller pronunciation;
(b) forms heard today in colloquial or rapid
speech but where unelided forms are also
current.
Long-established elisions include the
reduction of some consonants clusters
initially: gnome, knight, wrong; medially:
listen, whistle, sandwich; and finally: hymn,
lamb along with the loss of vowels and

GLOSSARY
syllables, as in Gloucester, Salisbury,

Wednesday.
In present-day speech, consonants within
clusters often undergo elision (e.g. facts,
handbag, twelfth), but elision of weak
vowels is particularly frequent, with the
result that whole syllables may be lost:
fact(o)ry, cam(e)ra, nat(u)ral, batch(e)lor,
fam(i)ly, med(i)cine,
p(o)lice, Febr(uar)ry.
emphatic stress
Stress used to draw attention to a word or
utterance. For example, in the utterance
Mary has two cars, by placing extra stress on
two, a speaker can express surprise or
definiteness.
Estuary English
Many learners of English have been
given the impression that this is a new accent
of English. In reality, there is no such accent,
and the term should be used with care. The
idea originates from the sociolinguistic
observation that some people in public life who
would previously have been expected to speak
with a BBC (or RP) accent now find it
acceptable to speak with some characteristics
of the accents of the London area (the Estuary
referred to is the Thames estuary), such as
glottal stops, which would in earlier times have
caused comment or disapproval.

GLOSSARY
fall
(n) In the intonation of a syllable or longer
utterance, a nuclear pitch change from
(relatively) high to (relatively low);
contrasted with a RISE.
Phoneticians distinguished various kinds of
falls, such as the high fall [ ], starting near
the normal high limit of the voice and the
low fall[], with a lower start
falling
Of a diphthong: having most of the length
and stress in the first part of the glide. In
English diphthongs, the stress-pulse is a
decrescendo one, starting rather strong and
then fading away. A decrescendo diphthong
like this is often called a falling diphthong
because of the fact that the stress falls away
from a peak near the beginning of the
diphthong.
Most English diphthongs are normally
articulated in this way, and falling
diphthongs is the normal label.
fall-rise
A tone in which the pitch moves from high
to low to mid, graphically represented [ ]
This tone is frequently heard in RP English.
It has various conversational functions, but
often suggests reservation or only partial
agreement (yes, but)
A: Did you enjoy the film? B: Yes

GLOSSARY
fixed stress
The regular occurrence of stress on the same
syllable in each word of a language
contrasted with FREE stress.
English is not a fixed-stress language and in
this, it contrasts with some languages where
the stress is fairly predictable. For example,
in Polish, polysyllabic words are usually
stressed on the penultimate syllable.
However, the stress in individual words in
English is largely fixed so that deviant
stressing can lead to misunderstanding or
incomprehension (e.g. Contrast im portant
and impotent).
flap
A consonant sound in which flexible speech
organ makes a momentary contact with a
firmer surface.
This is a manner of articulation. In British
English the voiced frictionless continuant /r/
is sometimes replaced by an alveolar flap [],
with the tip of the tongue articulating against
the alveolar ridge. This sound is commonly
used in American English where t or d occur
between vowels so that the t and d may
sound identical, as in latter and ladder.
flapping
A process in which a dental or alveolar
consonant is changed into a FLAP, that is a
sound articulated with the tip of the tongue
placed against the alveolar ridge.

GLOSSARY
fortis
A consonant sound made with relatively
strong breath force.
In English the voiceless plosives and
fricatives (/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /s/, etc.) tend to be
made with stronger muscular effort and
breath, force than their voiced counterparts.
Such consonants are therefore said to be
fortis consonants and to be pronounced with
a fortis articulation.
free variation
The possibility of substituting one phoneme
for another without causing any change of
meaning. Sounds which contrast with each
other in such a way that meaning is affected
(i.e., distinct phonemes) cannot normally be
interchanged. But in some words two
normally contrasting phonemes are both
acceptable and are therefore said to be in free
variation.
Among British speakers, a majority are said
to prefer the word ate to be pronounced /et/
to rhyme with met, but a large minority
favour the pronunciation/eit/ like eight. The
two pronunciations are there in free
variation.
fricative
A consonant sound articulated by two speech
organs coming so close together that it is
pronounced with audible friction.
A fricative (sometimes called friction
consonant) may be voiceless or voiced.
GLOSSARY
There are four pairs of voiceless and voiced

fricatives in RP, plus the voiceless /h/.The
pairs are: /f/-/v/, //-//, /s/-/z/, //- //.
frictionless continuant
A continuant speech sound lacking friction.
A frictionless continuant is neither a fricative
nor a stop. In a very broad use, the term
could be applied to vowels. Among
consonants, several phonemes in RP can be
so labelled:
The nasals/m/, /n/, and //
The lateral /l/
The semi-vowels /w/ and /j/
front
(n.) The forward part of the tongue (but not
the tip).
(adj.) Related to the front part of the mouth
Standard RP English distinguishes 4 front
vowels, so called because they are articulated
with the front part of the tongue higher than
any other part: /i, /.
function word
A word generally unstressed that expresses a
primarily grammatical relation; for example
prepositions, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions,
articles, pronouns.

GLOSSARY
General American (GA)

An accent of English used in the United
States that lacks the marked regional
characteristics of the north-east (New
England, New York State) and the south-east
(the Southern States). It corresponds to the
laymans perception of an American accent
without marked regional characteristics. It is
sometimes referred to as Network English,
being the variety most acceptable on the
television networks covering the whole
United States.
generative phonology
A theory about the sound system of
language, developed as a major part of
generative grammar.
Instead of treating phonetics as a separate,
almost independent, layer of language,
generative phonology seeks to show, for
example, that stress patterns depend on
knowledge of syntax, and at word level to
explain relationships difficult to account for
in a strictly phoneme-based analysis.
glide
A gradually changing speech sound made in
passing from one position of speech organs
to another.
glottal
Produced with the constriction of the glottis,
i.e. the space between the vocal cords. For
GLOSSARY
example, /h/ in hay. The /h/ sound of English

is made in the glottis and is commonly
classified as a voiceless glottal fricative.
Some speakers use a voiced variant of this
sound when it occurs between voiced
sounds, e.g. in words such as perhaps, ahoy,
ahead. Whispered speech is also produced
with considerably narrowed glottis.
glottal stop
One of the functions of a closure of the
vocal folds is to produce a consonant. In a true
glottal stop there is complete obstruction to the
passage of air, and the result is a period of
silence. The phonetic symbol for a glottal stop
is [ ' ]. In casual speech it often happens that a
speaker aims to produce a complete glottal stop
but instead makes a low-pitched creak-like
sound. Glottal stops are found as consonant
phonemes in some languages (e.g. Arabic);
elsewhere they are used to mark the beginning
of a word if the first phoneme in that word is a
vowel (this is found in German). Glottal stops
are found in many accents of English, it is
found in many urban accents, notably London
(Cockney), Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and
others, and is increasingly accepted among
relatively highly-educated young people.
glottis
The opening between the vocal cords at the
upper end of the windpipe.

GLOSSARY
grapheme
A written symbol made up of one or more
letters that represents a phoneme, as f, ph and
gh for the phoneme /f/. In a phonological
orthography a grapheme corresponds to one
phoneme. In spelling systems that are non-
phonemic, such as the spellings used most
widely for written English, multiple
graphemes may represent a single phoneme.
half-close
Of a vowel; articulated in the second highest
of the 4 levels of tongue position, i.e.
CLOSE, HALF-CLOSE, HALF OPEN AND
OPEN.
In RP, the front vowel /i/ as in sit, symbol,
pretty, build, women, is slightly higher than
half close as is the vowel // heard in put,
woman, good and could.
The front vowel /e/, the vowel of bed, head,
many, friend, and bury, lies somewhere in
between half-close and half-open, as also(in
RP) does the back vowel /*:/ of horse, saw,
ought, all, door.
half-open
Of a vowel: articulated with the tongue
above open(low) position, but lower, than
half-close according to the cardinal vowel
system.
The English central vowel // of sun, son,
country, blood, and does is articulated
somewhere near a half-open position. The

GLOSSARY
front vowel //, as in cat, plait, lies

somewhere between half-open and full-open
in RP.
haplology
The omission of a sound sequence
(especially a syllable) when followed by
another similar sound or sequence, as when
fifth is pronounced /fi/ rather than /fif/,
library as /laibri/ or /laibrri/ or
deteriorate as /ditrrieit/ rather than
/ditiri,reit/.
The phenomenon is more often dealt with
today under the more general concept of
ELISION.
head
The pre-nuclear part of an intonation pattern
starting from and including the first accented
syllable and extending to the nucleus e.g. I
thought it was awful.
hard palate
The part of the roof of the mouth lying
behind the ALVEOLAR ridge but in front of
the soft palate (or VELUM.)
The term is used in articulatory phonetics to
classify consonant sounds.
height
The degree of elevation of the tongue
towards the roof of the mouth, as one of the

GLOSSARY
several features determining the articulation

of vowels.
In the cardinal vowel system, the height of
the tongue is described in terms of four
equidistant levels. When part of the tongue is
raised as near to the roof of the mouth as
possible without friction(which would make
sound a consonant) it is a High (or Close)
position, with resulting height or close
vowels; when the whole tongue is lowered,
LOW (or OPEN)vowels are produced.
Between these two extremes are tongue
heights called HALF-CLOSE and HALF-
OPEN.
heterophone
(syn. homograph) A word having a different
sound from another which is spelt the same.
Since a certain similarity is the reason for
considering two words together as some sort
of pair e.g. lead (cause to go) and lead
(metal) or row (a quarrel), and row (a line of
things next to each other) an alternative term
would be HOMOGRAPH, or - more loosely
- HOMONYM.
hiatus
(Chiefly in historical linguistics). A break
between two vowels coming together in
different syllables, as in: cooperate,
Goyaesque, guffawing, realing.

GLOSSARY
high
1. Of a vowel: produced with (part of) the
tongue raised relatively close to the roof of
the mouth. The term is used in the
articulatory description of the vowels. Thus
/I:/ as in heat is a HIGH(or CLOSE) front
vowel, in contrast to LOW (or OPEN) // as
in hat.
2. (In intonation) Of pitch: produced by
relatively rapid vibrations of the vocal cords,
as in a high level pitch
high-fall
A tone which starts near the highest pitch of
the individual speakers voice and glides to
the lowest or a swoop down fall from high to
low, graphically represented [`]
high-rise
A tone in which the voice raises from a
medium to a high pitch, graphically
represented [].
historical elision
Elision that took place at an earlier stage in the
history of the language, for example silent
letter of English l (talk), b (comb), g (gnome),
w(wrong), k (knee)
homograph
A word that is spelt the same (Greek homos
same) as another but has a different
meaning and origin. Another term,
emphasizing the different pronunciation is

GLOSSARY
HETEROPHONE: sow bury seed, sow

female pig
homophone
(syn. heterograph) A word that is
pronounced the same as another.
The term is usually used of partial
HOMONYMS which are distinguished by
both meaning and spelling. Another term,
emphasizing the difference of spelling is
heterograph. Examples are: feat feet; no
know; none nun; stare stair.
Some English pairs are homophones in some
accents but not in others, e.g.: saw sore;
pore - pour, wine - whine. If in fact the two
words in a pair are both pronounced and
spelt the same, the usual term is
HOMONYM.
homophone
A word that has the same pronunciation as
another, but is different in meaning and
origin. If the spelling is also different, then it
is referred to as HETEROGRAPH: buy, by,
Bye.
initial
In phonology, word-or syllable - initial
contrasts with MEDIAL and FINAL
position, since the position of a phoneme
conditions its pronunciation. See
ALLOPHONE. Among English phonemes,
/h/ can only be syllable-(or word)- initial.
The Scottish, Irish and General American
pronunciation of wh- in many words is
GLOSSARY
actually the sequence /hw/, as in when

/hwen/, /hwen/.
intensity
The amount of energy used in the production
of a speech sound. Intensity is a measurable
physical phenomenon. The vibrating vocal
cords set of patterns of air vibrations that can
be objectively measured. Intensity is related
to LOUDNESS, but is not the same.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Alphabetic system of notation based on
the Latin alphabet. It contains symbols that
represent phonemes of any language.
The official phonetic transcription system of

The International Phonetic Association. This
system of written symbols is designed to
enable the speech sounds of any language to
be consistently represented. Both the
alphabet and the association are abbreviated
IPA.
intervocalic
Between two vowels. The pronunciation of a
consonant, when it occurs between two
vowels, may differ from its pronunciation in
other contexts. For example the voiced
plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) will probably be fully
voiced in this position but are not always so
in other contexts.
intonation
The pitch variations and patterns in spoken
language.
GLOSSARY
Intonation plays a part in speech not unlike

punctuation in the written language
intonation language
Language where pitch conveys meaning at
the phrasal or clausal level (e.g. English,
Japanese)
intrusive /r/
The pronunciation of an /r/ sound between
two words or syllables in sequence, where
the first ends in a vowel sound, and the
second begins with one and where there is no
/r/ in the spelling. Intrusive /r/ is much
criticized but is quite commonly heard in
standard RP and other NON-RHOTIC
accents. It occurs after the vowels / , :, :,
:/ e.g.// umbrella-r-organization, /:/, a
milieu-r-in which, /:/ grandpa-r-is
ill,/:/law-r and order
juncture
The transition between two words or
syllables and the phonetic features that mark
it.
labial
A speech sound involving the active use of
one or both lips. The term is a rather general
one. The lips are of course passively
involved in all speech sounds, but the term

GLOSSARY
labial is confined to those in which one or

both lips actually contribute to the
articulation. English labial consonants are
usually more specifically described as
bilabial or labio-dental. With respect to
vowels, the position of the lips is usually
described in terms of lip-rounding or lip-
spreading.
labialize
Accompany (a speech sound) with lip-
rounding, particularly where this is an
unusual (and optional) feature. The term is
applied particularly where an articulation
involves an unusual degree of lip-rounding
which is not a requirement of the phonology.
For example, speakers of standard RP
English commonly labialize /r/ if the
following vowel has some lip-rounding, e.g.
in rude or roar; it is far less usual to labialize
/r/ before unrounded vowels (e.g. in rat,
right). The pronunciation of /r/ with no lip-
rounding, and with no articulation of the
forward part of the tongue, leads to the
noticeable substitution of a /w/ sound.
labio-dental
Pronounced with the constriction of the
lower lip against the upper front teeth.
English has two labio-dental phonemes, the
voiceless and voiced pair of fricatives: /f/ as
in fine, photograph, enough; /v/ as in vine,
GLOSSARY
nephew, of. Other phonemes sometimes have

a labio-dental realization as a result of
assimilation. For example, the bilabial stops
/p/ and /b/ can become labio-dental under the
influence of a following labio-dental sound
(e.g. in hopeful, observe).
labio-velar
A speech sound articulated at the velum and
accompanied by some lip-rounding. The
English sounds /w/, as in won, one, why,
quick, suite, is classified as a labio-velar
semivowel.
larynx
The hollow muscular organ situated in the
upper part of the trachea (the windpipe).
lateral
Produced by a deformation of the tongue so
that the air stream flows over its size, as in
[l] in low. In RP there is a single lateral
phoneme, /l/ which is usually voiced and
non-fricative. The tip of the tongue
articulates with the centre of the alveolar
ridge, and air escapes at the side. Being a
continuant, /l/ has some vowel-like qualities
and is often syllabic (e.g. in apple, final,
camel). It is, however, normally classified as
a consonant.
lateral plosion
Release of a stop consonant at the side of the
tongue. (Also called lateral release). When
GLOSSARY
English /t/ or /d/ is followed by /l/, as in

cattle, muddle, the alveolar stop can be
released laterally instead of the usual way.
This is known as a lateral plosion.
lax
Articulated with less effort than is normal:
contrasted with tense. Lax voice and tense
voice are used by some phoneticians as
middle terms among several others to
describe different degrees of glottal stricture.
Lax and tense are among the BINARY
contrasts held in one theory of phonology to
be among features of vowels.
lexical stress
Type of stress which refers to the accentual
patterns of words. It is also called word
stress or word accent.
lenis
A consonant sound made with relatively
weak breath force. In English, voiced
plosives and fricatives (e.g. /b/, /d/, //) tend
to be made with less muscular effort and less
breath force than their voiceless counterparts.
They are therefore called lenis consonants
level (tone)
Tone characterized by no pitch movement
that is produced with an unchanging pitch
level

GLOSSARY
In the description of English intonation it is

also necessary to recognise the existence of
level tone: as a simple demonstration,
consider various common one-syllable
utterances such as 'well', 'yes', 'no', 'some'.
Most English speakers seem to be able to
recognise a level-tone pronunciation as
something different from the various
moving-tone possibilities such as fall, rise,
fall-rise etc., and to ascribe some sort of
meaning to it (usually with some feeling of
boredom, hesitation or lack or surprise).
linking /r/
The pronunciation of a written word-final r
as /r/ when the next word begins with a
vowel. In standard RP a written word-final r
is not pronounced before a pause or a
fallowing consonant sound. However it is
usually pronounced when the following word
begins with a vowel (as in Here it is or far
away).
lip position
The configuration of the lips during the
articulation of a speech sound. Each English
vowel has its own characteristic lip position,
and these are variously described. One
binary distinction is between rounded and
unrounded. Other terms used are spread,
neutral, close-rounded and open-rounded.
English /i:/ (as in bead) is usually said with
lip-spreading; /a:/ (as in hard) is pronounced

GLOSSARY
with the lips neutrally open; while /u:/ (as in

boot) is a rounded vowel, said with lip-
rounding.
liquid
A cover term for /l/ and /r/ in English.
loudness
A perceptual category, along with pitch,
sound quality, and length, in terms of which
speech sounds are heard. Loudness is
primarily related to intensity, but the two are
to be distinguished. Intensity is the speakers
physical effort used in producing a speech
sound and is objectively measurable.
Loudness is a matter of the listeners
perception which is affected by factors such
as pitch of voice and length.
low
Low fall or [ ] low rise or [].
1. Of a vowel: produced with the tongue
raised only a small degree towards the roof
of the mouth. Also called OPEN. Contrasted
with HIGH (or CLOSE). The sound // as in
RP hat is a low front vowel, and /a:/ as in
hard and /i:/ heat is a low back vowel.
2. (In intonation) Of pitch: produced by
relatively slow vibrations of the vocal cords.
A low fall glides from a mid pitch to the
lowest pitch of the speakers voice, while a
low rise extends from a low pitch to
somewhere about the middle range.
manner of articulation
GLOSSARY
The method by which a speech sound is

made, described in terms of the degree or
type of closure of the speech organs.
Manner of articulation, along with PLACE
OF ARTICULATION, forms a major part of
the framework used in describing the
production of speech sounds, particularly
consonants. According to the manner of
articulation or the type of closure made by
the vocal organs, consonants may be
classified as: PLOSIVES, AFFRICATES,
FRICATIVES, NASALS, LATERALS,
FLAPS and SEMIVOWELS.
minimal pair
Two words that sound alike in all but one
feature, e.g. bin versus fin.
monophthong
A vowel in which there is no change in the
position of the vocal organs during
articulation. English monophthongs are
usually referred to as PURE VOWELS.
monophthongize
Change in vowel quality from a diphthong to
a monophthong.
mora
A unit used in the study of quantity and
RHYTHM in speech. In this study it is
traditional to make use of the concept of the
SYLLABLE. However, the syllable is made
GLOSSARY
to play a lot of different roles in language

description: in phonology we often use the
syllable as the basic framework for
describing how vowels and consonants can
combine in a particular language, and most
of the time it does not seem to matter that
we use the same unit to be the thing that we
count when we are looking for beats in
verse or rhythmical speech. Traditionally,
the syllable has also been viewed as an
ARTICULATORY unit consisting (in its
ideal form) of a movement from a relatively
closed VOCAL TRACT to a relatively open
vocal tract and back to a relatively closed
one.
morphophonology
The study of the permitted combinations of
phonemes within morphemes and of the
phonemic variation which phonemes
undergo in combination with one another.
mutation
(Especially in historical linguistics) A
change in a phoneme in a particular word
context under the influence of adjacent
sounds.
In the history of English, the most important
form of mutation was i-mutation (or i/j-
mutation umlaut). In English, the results of
this mutation can be seen in

GLOSSARY
(a) the plurals of seven nouns (foot, goose,

louse, man, mouse, tooth, woman) which are
sometimes called mutation plurals.
(b) The comparative and superlative elder,
eldest
(c) Derivate verbs such as bleed (beside
blood), fill (beside full), heal (beside whole)
etc.
(d) Derivate nouns such as breadth (beside
broad), length (beside long), filth (beside
foul), etc.
This cannot be considered to have a live
functional role in modern English, however.
narrow transcription
A method of representing the sounds of
spoken language in fine detail. Contrasted
with Broad Transcription. A narrow
transcription gives a much more accurate
indication of actual speech sounds but more
symbols and diacritics. The word tall in a
broad transcription could appear as /t:l/. A
narrow transcription would show, for
example, that the th is aspirated and that the
/l/ is dark.
nasal
A speech sound made with an audible
escape of air through the nose while the soft
palate is lowered. English has three nasals,
all of which are consonant phonemes:
bilabial /m/ as in more, whim, alveolar /n/ as
in no, win, velar // represented by ng in

GLOSSARY
wing and n in wink (and never world-initial

in English).
nasalize
Articulate with the air escaping through the
nose rather than, as would be usual, through
the mouth.
nasalization
English vowels can become nasalized under
the influence of adjoining nasal consonants,
e.g. in manning or meaning.
nasal plosion
Or nasal release refers to the release of a
normally oral plosive through the nose,
usually under the influence of a following
nasal. Thus nasal plosion may sometimes be
heard in such words as: one-upmanship,
submerge, cotton, not now, wooden.
nasal twang
A colloquial term used for the accent of an
individual speaker in which sounds are more
nasal than in the average speakers voice.
neutral
Of the position of the lips: neither SPREAD
nor ROUNDED. The term is often used in
describing the articulation of vowels.
Although vowel quality is largely dependent
on the height of the tongue, vowel sounds are
affected by lip position. Spread and neutral
are sometimes lumped together as
unrounded, but the two may be
distinguished. Compare the typically spread

GLOSSARY
lips required for English /i:/ in meet, seed

with the more neutral li position in mat or
sad.
nucleus
The obligatory element of an intonation
pattern consisting of the accented syllable of
the most important word in an utterance.
Nucleuses are analyzed into various types
such as fall, rise , fall-rise, rise-fall , and
these are further distinguished as high fall,
low fall, etc. In a clause or sentence said
unemphatically, the nucleus (nuclear pitch)
occurs on the last accented syllable.(e.g.
what are you doing?)
NPR- British Non-Regional Pronunciation
A term that has been created in the late 20th
century. While traditional RP is associated
with upper class or upper-middle-class, NRP
is (just like General American) much more
democratic and free from class divisions. Yet,
this is still a standard, which excludes using
other accents that are present all around the
world, such as Australian English, Scottish
English or Hiberno-English. (Collins 2008:
200).
onomatopoea
The formation of the word with sounds
imitative of the thing which they refer to: the
use of such a word e.g. cuckoo, cock-a-
doodle-do, neigh, miaow.
The term is sometimes extended to cover
words in which a sound is felt to be
GLOSSARY
appropriate to some aspect of meaning,

although the words do not necessarily denote
sounds or sources of sound. The combination
sl- often occurring in words with unpleasant
connotations, is sometimes cited as an
example of such secondary onomatopoeia
(e.g. slag, slattern, slaver, sleazy, slime, slop,
sluggard, slurp, slut). Other terms for
onomatopoeia are PHONAESTHESIA and
SOUND SYMBOLISM.
onset
This term is used in the analysis of
SYLLABLE structure (and occasionally in
other areas); generally it refers to the first part
of a syllable. In English this may be zero
(when no CONSONANT precedes the
VOWEL in a syllable), one consonant, or two,
or three. There are many restrictions on what
clusters of consonants may occur in onsets: for
example, if an English syllable has a three-
consonant onset, the first consonant must be / s
/ and the last one must be one of / l r w j /.
open
a) Of a vowel: made with the tongue low in
the mouth, and the mouth somewhat open.
(Also called LOW). Contrasted with
CLOSE.
English RP // as in hat is the most open
front vowel; /a:/ as in father, car, heart,
clerk, half, is the most open back vowel.
Compare HALF-OPEN.
b) of a syllable

GLOSSARY
oral
Of a speech sound: articulated with the
velum raised. All normal English sounds,
except for the three nasal consonants, have
oral escape or release that is, the air is
expelled through the mouth, and there is no
nasal resonance.
organ of speech
A part of the mouth and adjoining organs
involved in the production of speech sounds:
e.g. the lips, alveolar ridge, soft palate,
larynx, etc.
palatal
Produced with constriction of the front of the
tongue against the hard palate, as for /j/ in
ewe. The term tends to be restricted to
consonants. British (RP)English has one
distinctly palatal phoneme, the sound /j/
which is heard at the beginning of yes/jes/ or
useful /ju:sf()l/ and before the vowel in cure
/kj/ .This sound is commonly classified as
a SEMI-VOWEL, approximant or
frictionless continuant rather than as a full
consonant.
palatalization
A rather common process in which the
phoneme /j/ causes a preceding phoneme to
be articulated in the palatal region.
Palatalization may occur across word
boundaries or within a word: /d/+/j/ ->
/d/(e.g. did you); /t/+ /j/ -> /t/ (e.g. hit you);
GLOSSARY
/z/+ /j/ -> // (e.g. please you); /s/ /+ /j/ -> //

(e.g. issue).
palatalize
Make (a sound) palatal by articulating it with
the FRONT of the tongue raised towards the
hard palate. Use of this term is mainly
confined to secondary articulations, that is, to
speech sounds where this articulatory feature
is secondary to the position of the speech
organs. This is in fact an essential part of
four English phonemes which also have an
alveolar articulation. (i.e. /d, t, z, s/)
palate
The roof of the mouth. In the articulatory
description of speech sounds the upper
surface of the mouth behind the alveolar
ridge is divided into the bony HARD
PALATE and the soft palate or VELUM.
palato-alveolar
Designating a speech-sound in which the TIP
(or TIP and BLADE) of the tongue
articulates with the alveolar ridge, while at
the same time the FRONT of the tongue (the
part behind the tip and the blade) is raised
towards the hard palate.
English has two pairs of palato-alveolar
consonants consisting of one voiced and one
voiceless consonant each.
- the palato-alveolar affricates: /t/ as in
church, nature
GLOSSARY
/d/ as in judge, general

- the palato-alveolar fricatives: // as in shop,
machine, sugar
// as in prestige.
pause
A break in speaking.
Connected speech is more of a continuum
than written language suggests by its spaces
between words. Pauses do however occur in
speech; obviously for breathing and also for
communicative reasons at grammatical
boundaries. Various efforts have been made
to incorporate an analysis of pauses into a
theory of speech.
peak
In the phonological study of the syllable it is
now conventional to give names to its different
components. The centre of the syllable is its
peak; this is normally a vowel, but it is
possible for a consonant to act as a peak
instead.
phoneme
This is the fundamental unit of phonology,
which has been defined and used in many
different ways during this century. Virtually all
theories of phonology hold that spoken
language can be broken down into a string of
sound units (phonemes), and that each
language has a small, relatively fixed set of
these phonemes.

GLOSSARY
phonemic principle
Principle that points to a direct letter-to-

phoneme correspondence as in fog, got, did,
pen, fit, lest, etc.
phonetics
Phonetics is the scientific study of speech. It has
a long history, going back certainly to well over
two thousand years ago. The central concerns in
phonetics are the discovery of how speech
sounds are produced, how they are used in
spoken language, how we can record speech
sounds with written symbols and how we hear
and recognise different sounds. In the first of
these areas, when we study the production of
speech sounds we can observe what speakers do
(ARTICULATORY observation) and we can try
to feel what is going on inside our vocal tract
(KINAESTHETIC observation). The second area
is where phonetics overlaps with phonology:
usually in phonetics we are only interested in
sounds that are used in meaningful speech, and
phoneticians are interested in discovering the
range and variety of sounds used in this way in
all the known languages of the world. This is
sometimes known as linguistic phonetics.
Thirdly, there has always been a need for agreed
conventions for using phonetic symbols that
represent speech sounds; the International
Phonetic Association has played a very important
role in this. Finally, the auditory aspect of speech
is very important: the ear is capable of making
fine discrimination between different sounds, and
GLOSSARY
sometimes it is not possible to define in

articulatory terms precisely what the difference
is. A good example of this is in vowel
classification: while it is important to know the
position and shape of the tongue and lips, it is
often very important to have been trained in an
agreed set of standard auditory qualities that
vowels can be reliably related to (see
CARDINAL VOWEL; other important branches
of phonetics are EXPERIMENTAL,
INSTRUMENTAL AND ACOUSTIC). (Roach:
2002)
phonotactics
That part of phonology which comprises or
deals with the rules governing the possible
phoneme sequence of a particular language.
pitch
The relative height of the tone with which a
sound or syllable is pronounced.
Acoustically, the height of the human voice
depends on the rapidity of the vibrations of
the vocal cords.
Various typical pitch changes/pitch patterns
or tones have been identified, e.g. fall, rise
and level.
In tone languages, identical syllables with
different patterns or tones form words with
totally different meanings. In non-tone
languages (e.g. English and most other
European languages), basic word meaning is
not affected by pitch variations (though
emotional attitudes may be distinguished)
GLOSSARY
and intonation patterns are studied over

sequences of words.
place of articulation.
(A part of) one of the vocal organs primarily
involved in the production of a particular
speech sound. Place of articulation, along
with MANNER of articulation, is a major
part of the framework for describing the
production of speech sounds, especially. For
this purpose, the vocal organs are
diagrammatically divided up and the places
labeled, as BILABIAL, LABIO-DENTAL,
ALVEOLAR, PALATAL VELAR, UVULAR,
PHARYNGEAL, and GLOTTAL. Place of
articulation is less satisfactory as a
parameter for vowels, which are more
dependent on tongue-height, lip-rounding,
etc.
plosion
Sudden expulsion of air as the final stage of
a PLOSIVE; the release stage.
plosive
(A consonant sound) that has total closure at
some place in the vocal organs, followed by
a `hold` or compression stage and a third and
final release stage. (Also called stop or stop
consonant) The English plosives consist of
three pairs of sounds (each pair a
GLOSSARY
corresponding voiceless and voiced sound):

/p/ and /b/ as in poor ,bore, tap, tab (bilabial
plosives) /t/ and /d/ as in true, drew; cat, cad
(alveolar plosives) /k/ and /g/ as in cold,
gold; whack, wag (velar plosives).
postvocalic
Of a consonant: occurring after a vowel. The
articulation of a phoneme is affected by its
phonetic context, which may condition the
use of different allophones. Thus in RP, a
postvocalic /l/ followed by silence or another
consonant is always dark.
prehead
That part of a tone (tone unit) consisting of
the unaccented syllables before the head e.g.
I thought it was awful.
primary stress
The principal stress in a word. Primary stress
(or primary accent) (marked with a superior
vertical bar preceding the relevant syllable [']
contrasts with secondary stress (marked with
an inferior vertical bar [,] and even tertiary
stress. The difference can be heard in long
words, (e.g. polytechnic, appetizing) which
have their own basic patterns, even though
the pattern may be modified by the overall
intonation of the utterance in which it occurs.
Primary stress is always on a syllable where
pitch change can potentially occur.
GLOSSARY
progressive assimilation
Assimilation in which elements are changed
to match features of elements that precede
them: e.g. the ending s is voiced /z/ in
words like sees /si:z/, but in writes or weeps
it is assimilated to the preceding voiceless
consonant: /raits/, /wi:ps/.
prominence
The perceived importance or conspicuousness
of speech sounds. What the listener perceives
as `loudness` may be due to other factors,
such as stress, pitch, phoneme quality and
duration rather than simply greater volume
sound.
prosodic
Of phonetic features: extending beyond
individual phonemes. (Also called
suprasegmental).
prosody
A phonological feature having as its domain
more than one segment.
Prosodies, in some models, seem to be
synonymous with the class of supra-
segmental features such as intonation, stress,
and juncture.

GLOSSARY
pure vowel
A vowel made without a glide: contrasted
with DIPHTONG.
It is not in fact possible for a vowel to be
held without any movement for the speech
organs involved, but some vowels change
relatively little during articulation.
English (RP) has twelve pure vowels:
/i:/ see, me, wheat, piece, machine,
/I/ fit, pretty, private, build,
/e/ bed, head, many,
// pan, plain,
/:/ far, bath, heart, clerk, calm, aunt,
// dog, what, cough, sausage,
/:/ force, saw, bought, daughter,
/u:/ food, who, soup, rude, blue, chew,
// put, woman, good, could,
// hut, son, enough, blood, does,
/:/ bird, earn, turn, word, journal,
// [always unstressed] ago, mother,
quality
The distinguished characteristic(s) of a
sound.
The distinctive features of a sound, which
make it recognizable as a particular
phoneme, constitute its sound quality, which
is distinct from such features as length, pitch
or loudness. Hence the difference between
two phonemes (e.g. between the vowels of

GLOSSARY
pat and part) can be said to be a

QUALITATIVE difference.
quantity
The relative time taken in the articulation of
speech sounds. This is length as perceived by
the listener.
Received Pronunciation
The pronunciation of that variety of British
English widely considered to be least
regional, being originally used by educated
speakers in southern England. (Also called
Received Standard English. Abbreviated
RP). The use of Received in the context of
pronunciation variety was initiated by the
phonetician A. J. Ellis (1869); the term
Received Pronunciation was given
pedagogical and quasi-academic status in the
studies and dictionaries of the phonetician
Daniel Jones (1881-1967). Compare with
Non-Regional Pronunciation.
resonance
Transmission of air vibration in the vocal
tract. The significance of this term is that
resonance at different frequencies in the
vocal tract help give speech sounds, and
particularly vowels, their distinct and
characteristic patterns.

GLOSSARY
retroflex
Articulated with the tip of the tongue turned
back behind the alveolar ridge. A retroflex
articulation is characteristic of the
pronunciation of the phoneme /r/ in many
accents of English (e.g. in Ireland), though
not generally in RP. In some rhotic accents
(that is where a postvocalic /r/ is pronounced
in such words as birth, heard, term)
anticipatory retroflexion may affect the
vowel, making it an r-coloured vowel.
Alternatively, such words may be articulated
with a single vowel sound. Retroflexed /t/
and /d/ are characteristic of the pronunciation
of some Indian speakers.
reversal
A slip of the tongue in which two words or
two phonetic segments are interchanged.
rhotic
Designating a pronunciation in which the
consonant sound /r/ has not been lost before
another consonant or a pause. (Also called
r-pronouncing, r-full). In Scottish, Irish,
General American and a number of regional
English accents /r/ is pronounced before a
consonant (as in bird, are fine) and in final
position before a pause (e.g. Thats not fair!).

GLOSSARY
rhythm
The pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables in language.
rim
The edge of the tongue, in particular the
sides (excluding the tip). The term is used in
describing the pronunciation of the lateral /l/.
rise
In the intonation of a syllable or longer
utterance, a nuclear pitch change from
relatively low to relatively high. Various
kinds of rise are distinguished, such as the
low rise [,], starting near the bottom of an
individual speakers pitch range and the high
rise [`], starting higher and, of course, going
higher still.
rise-fall
A tone in which the pitch moves from mid to
high to low graphically represented [^]. This
tone often conveys feelings of surprise,
approval or disapproval.
rising
Of a diphthong having most of the length and
stress, the greater prominence on the second
element. This type of diphthong is unusual in
English.

GLOSSARY
roll
An articulation characterized by a series of
rapid closure or taps of the tongue (or the
uvula) (also called trill). Articulate (the
sound /r/) with a roll. The /r/ phoneme,
normally, a frictionless continuant in RP, is
sometimes pronounced with a lingual roll
(rapid taps of the tongue against the back of
the tongue).
schwa
The name of the most frequent vowel
phoneme in English, the weak unstressed
vowel // that frequently occurs in small
function words like the, and and for,
especially in running speech.
secondary
Designating the next most important stress
after the primary stress.
secondary stress
Type of stress that involves less energy and
is heard as less loud. than primary stress:
microcomputer/maIkrkm,pju:t/
(primary, secondary), anti-aircraft
/;ntiekr:ft/ (secondary, primary)
segment
The term is particularly used in descriptions
of speech and the analysis of a language into
phonemes.

GLOSSARY
segmental
Referring to phonemes, i.e. consonants and
vowels
semi-vowel
A speech sound produced in the same way as
a vowel but unable to form a syllable on its
own, as /w/ in way. A sound which is
phonetically vowel-like because it is a glide
but phonologically consonant-like in being
marginal to a syllable. In English, the
phonemes /j/ as in you, use, view, and /w/ as
in way, suave, choir, are semi-vowels.
sentence stress
Type of stress which refers to the way in
which some words in an utterance are
stressed and others not. In general, lexical
words (nouns, verbs, etc) are stressed, and
form words (articles, prepositions, etc.) are
not. Strictly speaking, this kind of stress is
not a characteristic of the sentence but of the
tone unit.
sibilant
(A speech sound) made with a hissing effect.
Sibilant describes an auditory quality, a
hissing perceived by the listener. In English,
four fricatives phonemes are sibilants: /z/ as
in zoo, rise, dessert // as in ship, chute,
issue, ocean; // as in genre, mirage, vision,
leisure plus the AFFRICATES /t/ and /d/.
They contrast with non-sibilant fricatives.
GLOSSARY
silent
Designating a letter in the written form of a
word which is not sounded in speech.
Given the vagaries of English spelling, many
letters could be said to be silent in certain
conditions. The term however tends to be
applied particularly to silent e, as in done,
infinite, corpse, have (although in many
cases, such as hope, rate as compared with
hop, rat. Final e in fact indicates the
pronunciation of the preceding vowel - it is
childrens magic e.
sonorant
(A sound) produced with the vocal organs so
positioned that spontaneous voicing is
possible; a vowel, a glide, or a liquid or nasal
consonant.
sound symbolism
A (fancied) representative relationship
between the sound making up a word and its
meaning. Various kinds of sound and
meaning correlations are said to exist;
specialized terms include
ONOMATOPOEIA (e.g. chiffchaff- warbler
whose song alternates a higher and a lower
note) ICONICITY, PHONASTHESIA, etc.
sound system
The phonemic system of a language. The
sound system of English consists of 44
phonemes (24 consonants and 20 vowel)
GLOSSARY
speech chain
The series of links between speaker and
listener. The speech chain, beginning with
the speakers brain and ending with the
listeners brain, is of considerable interest to
phoneticians. What happens in the brains of
listener and speaker are the most difficult
parts to understand, but considerable
progress has been made with the
intermediate stages.
speech organ
Any part of the mouth, nose, throat, etc.
involved in the pronunciation of speech
sounds. Hence the lips, alveolar ridge, soft
palate, larynx, and so on, are all referred to
as speech organs and are sometimes
distinguished as ARTICULATORS.
speech sound
An elementary sound occurring in a
language, considered phonetically without
regard to the oppositions and combinations
in which it may occur (which are the concern
of phonology)
spelling pronunciation
The pronunciation of a word according to its
written form, for example met, in, on.

GLOSSARY
stress
The accent or emphasis on a syllable
generally produced by higher pitch and
greater intensity or voice; stress is classified
as primary, secondary, tertiary or weak or
depending in its relative intensity.
The terms stress and accent are often used
interchangeable, but some phoneticians use
these terms more precisely, relating stress to
the energy involved in the production of
speech.
Acoustically, stress is perceived as involving
greater loudness and greater force than the
ordinary syllable pulse (or chest pulse)
Lexical stress (also called word stress or
word accent) refers to the stress (or accent)
patterns of words. In English, these are for
the most part fixed for each word, though the
stress occurs on different syllables in
different words, e.g. yesterday, tomorrow,
understand.
Tertiary stress is recognized by some
phoneticians.
Sentence stress refers to the way in which
some words in an utterance are stressed, and
others are not. In general, lexical words
(nouns, verbs, etc) are stressed, and form
words (articles, etc) are not. Tonic stress is
stress on the NUCLEUS (also called nucleus
stress)

GLOSSARY
stressed syllable
A syllable that sounds louder, has clearer
vowels, begins with stronger consonants, and
may be longer than other syllables in a word
or phrase; changes in pitch often occur on
stressed syllables.
stress shift
A phenomenon of connected speech. Words
containing secondary stress may change their
stress patterns, as in The princess but the
,Princess Royal ,number thirteen but
,thirteen people.
stress-timed
Of a language: having the stressed syllables
occurring at regular intervals, irrespective of
how many unstressed syllables there may be.
English is predominantly stress-timed, in
contrast to syllable-timed languages (such as
French) in which the syllable occurs at more
or less regular intervals. Thus, in the
sentence, Both of them are mine, the
unstressed syllables (of them are) are
compressed with vowel weakening (/v m
/), while the monosyllable mine takes
roughly as much time as the preceding Both
of them are. This does not mean that all
sequences containing one stress are of
absolutely equal length, but the rhythms of
stress-timed and syllable-timed languages are
noticeably different.
GLOSSARY
strong
Having some prominence of phonetic
quality. Contrasted with WEAK.
STRONG FORM: the form of a FORM
WORD that contains a strong vowel. Many
FORM WORDS (or GRAMMATICAL
words) have two pronunciations: a strong
form and a weak form. The strong form,
containing a strong vowel, is used when the
word is spoken in isolation or occurs in a
prominent position (e.g. at the end of a
sentence) or is stressed for emphasis.
strong vowel
A stressed vowel or any instance of a vowel
that retains the same quality in unstressed
position as it has when stressed (contrasted
with WEAK vowel)
All vowels in stressed syllables are clearly
identifiable and therefore strong.
suprasegmental
Designating a feature of intonation extending
beyond the phoneme. Contrasted with
SEGMENTAL. Features of intonation such
as pitch, stress and juncture are
suprasegmental.
syllabic
Relating to or constituting a syllable. In some
phonetic analyses, syllabic and non-syllabic
are contrasted features, particular in relation

GLOSSARY
to those consonants which can be

pronounced as separate syllables.
syllabic consonant
Consonant which has a syllabic function,
such as /m/ in the pronunciation of mm, /n/ as
in button and /l/ as in apple. Some
phoneticians describe these sounds as
actually having an extremely weak // in
front of them. In rhotic accents such as
American English, /r/ also sometimes has a
syllabic function, for example in words such
as metre, where the final syllable in a non-
rhotic accent would be //.
syllabification
The division of a word into syllables.
Phonetic syllabification and orthographic
syllabification do not necessarily correspond.
For example, the word syllable itself is
phonetically a three-syllable word, but when
written across two lines it could only
reasonably be split at one place, i.e. as syll-
able.
syllable
A unit of pronunciation forming the whole or
part of a word and having one vowel
phoneme (a pure vowel, a diphthong, or a
syllabic consonant), often with one or more
consonants before and after it (up to three
consonants before and up to four after it).

GLOSSARY
syllable-timed
Of a language: having each syllable
pronounced with roughly the same duration.
Romanian is considered to be syllable-timed,
whereas English is STRESSED-TIMED, but
these are tendencies rather than absolute
distinctions.
synchronic elision
A term used to refer to instances of elision
taking place in present-day English.
tail
That part of tune unit that comes after the
nucleus and consists of stressed or unstressed
syllables. E.g. Isn't she pretty?
A tail can contain stressed words (but
without pitch change). e.g. Well, 'say
something, then.
tone
The way in which pitch is used in language,
a distinctive pitch or pitch contour. In
languages such as English, objective word
meanings are not affected by intonation,
although different tones can convey different
attitudes. Thus, All right with differing
intonation can convey grudging acquiescence,
enthusiastic agreement, a question, sarcastic
disagreement and so on.

GLOSSARY
tone unit
The basic unit of intonation. It is also called
intonation pattern. A tone unit/group must
contain a nuclear tone (a nucleus), that is
marked by pitch change. Optionally, it may
contain a pre-head and/or a head before the
nucleus and a final tail, e.g. Ive ,just ,told
you.
tonic stress
Stress on the nucleus. It is also called
nucleus stress.
tonic syllable
A particularly prominent syllable in an
utterance which is prominent not only
because it is stressed, but because it carries a
change of pitch, usually a fall or rise (or
more complicated variant) but occasionally a
level pitch. A tonic syllable forms the
nucleus of a tone unit.
tongue
The principal organ of speech. The tongue is
involved in some way in the production of
most speech sounds and therefore figures in
articulatory descriptions.
Vowel articulations are described in terms of
tongue HEIGHT and whether the FRONT or
BACK or CENTRE of tongue is highest.

GLOSSARY
transcription
The representation of spoken language in
phonetic symbols.
The aim of transcription is to indicate speech
sounds consistently. But transcription also
makes it possible to represent the
assimilation and elision of actual speech and
(if required) the idiosyncrasies of an
individual's speech on a particular occasion.
The most widely used script (or
NOTATION) is the International Phonetic
Alphabet, usually with adaptation according
to the level of accuracy required and
according to the particular purpose of the
transcription. Transcriptions are primarily
PHONETIC or PHONEMIC. A phonetic
transcription aims to represent actual speech
sounds objectively and accurately, according
to articulatory and auditory criteria. A high
degree of accuracy can be achieved with
special additional symbols if necessary and
diacritics indicating such things as aspiration
or the nasalization of vowels. A very detailed
transcription is a NARROW transcription;
one with few details is BROAD.
transition
A glide from one sound to another. A
technical term used to describe, for example,
a plosive (or stop) consonant in terms of
three stages: the closing stage, the hold stage
and the release (or explosion) stage. In the
GLOSSARY
first stage, a transition (or non-glide) may

link the preceding sound to the beginning of
the plosive, and in the final stage another
transition (this time an off-glide) may link
the plosive to the following sound.
triphthong
A vowel sound in which the vocal organs
move from one position through a second to
a third. There are no triphthongs among the
English phonemes, but such sounds occur
when a closing diphthong is followed by //.
At least, they theoretically occur in a careful
pronunciation of such words as: player
/pleI/, shire /aI/, royal /roIl/, slower
/sl/, hour /a/ However, the glides
between the elements of such triphthongs
may be very slight, and the sounds actually
articulated and heard are often more like
diphthongs or even single long vowels.
trisyllabic
Having three syllables. As with the related
terms, MONOSYLLABIC and DISYLLABIC,
the term is particularly used with reference to
adjectives and adverbs. Trisyllabic or longer
adjectives and adverbs have to take
periphrastic comparison. (e.g. more delicious,
most extraordinary, more hastily).
tune
The pitch pattern heard over a whole tune unit.
With an utterance consisting of a single
syllable (e.g. Yes!), tune and tone unit are the

GLOSSARY
same, so the terms may be confused. A tune,

however, depends on the overall pitch
pattern and the height of any prehead or head
(i.e. whether this is high or low).
unaspirated
Articulated without an audible release of air.
For example, the English plosives /p/, /t/, /k/
have little or no aspiration when occurring
initially in unstressed syllables (e.g.
permission), when preceded by s- (e.g.
story) or in final position, i.e. followed by
silence (e.g. Bad luck!).
unmarked
Not marked. E.g. voiceless [t] in German is
unmarked ([- voice]) in opposition to voiced
[d] ([+ voice]); singular book is unmarked ([-
plural]) in opposition to plural books ([+
plural]).
unrounded
(Vowel, consonant) produced either without
rounding of the lips or specifically with the
lips spread: e.g. the [b] and [u] of bin, as
opposed to both the [b] and the [u] of book.
unstressed syllable
A syllable that tends to be weaker, shorter
and more reduced than a stressed syllable in
a word or phrase; major pitch changes do not
begin on unstressed syllables.

GLOSSARY
unvoiced
Voiceless, especially as the result of
devoicing.
unilateral
Of articulation with the air released (rather
unusually) around only one side of tongue.
Contrasted with BILATERAL.
utterance
A stretch of spoken language which is often
preceded by silence and followed by silence
or a change of speaker. It is often used as an
alternative to sentence in conversation
analysis since it is difficult to apply the
traditional characteristics of a written
sentence to spoken language.
utterance and utterance meaning

Anything spoken on a specific occasion.
Often opposed to sentence: e.g. the words
Come here!, spoken by a specific speaker
at a specific time, from an utterance which is
one instance of a sentence Come here!
Hence utterance meaning, as the meaning
of something as spoken on a specific
occasion, vs. sentence meaning, as the
meaning that a sentence is said to have
independently of any such occasion.
uvula

GLOSSARY
velar
Sound formed using the soft palate (or
velum) and the back of the tongue like /k/ in
kick, // (velar) in tongue and /g/ in get.
velarization
The addition of a secondary, velar
articulation to a speech sound.
Secondary articulation in which the back of
the tongue is raised towards the soft palate
(velum). E.g. an l at the end of a word is
velarized ([l]) in many forms of English.
velarize
To add a secondary, velar articulation to a
speech sound. The so-called dark l allophone
of the English /l/ is a velarized sound,
articulated with the back of the tongue raised
towards the velum.
velum
The soft palate. The velum is the back part of
the roof of the mouth, lying behind the bony
hard palate, with the uvula at its own back
extremity. The velum is raised for oral
sounds, and, lower for nasal sounds.
vibration
See vocal cords.
vocal cords
Two folds of muscle and connective tissue
situated in the larynx, which are opened and
closed during the production of speech. (Also
vocal folds).
GLOSSARY
The main function of the vocal cords in the

production of speech is to vibrate and produce
VOICED sounds. This happens when they are
held closely enough together for them to
vibrate when subjected to air pressure from
the lungs. When the cords are held rather
wider apart they do not vibrate, and
VOICELESS sounds are produced or a
GLOTTAL STOP.
vocalic
Vowel-like, designating a sound produced
with a comparatively free passage of air (i.e.
with no major obstruction).
vocal tract
1. The whole of the air passage above the
LARYNX, including the ORAL tract (the
mouth pharyngeal area and the NASAL tract
(the air passage through the nose when the
soft palate lowered).
2. The entire area involved in the production
of speech sounds, including the larynx,
trachea, lungs.
voiced
A speech sound made with the vocal cords
vibrating.
In standard English, all the vowels are
voiced, as are thirteen /b, d, g, v, z, , , d,
m, n, , l, r/ of the consonants and the semi-
vowels.

GLOSSARY
voiceless
A speech sound made without vibration of the
vocal cords.
There are nine voiceless phonemes in
standard English, all of them consonants./p, t,
k, f, s, , , t, h/
voicing
A feature of vowels by some consonants
produced by vibration of the vocal cords as in
zip versus sip. Although voicing is part of the
description of all vowel phonemes in English
and of a majority of consonants, the amount
of voicing in the production of a particular
phoneme, in a particular utterance, may be
affected by phonological context.
vowel
A speech sound produced with the vocal tract
quite open. Vowels typically function as the
nucleus of a syllable.
vowel height
One of the main parameters in the
classification of vowels. In the system of
cardinal vowels, a close vowel is described as
one produced with the highest point of the
tongue as close as possible to the roof of the
mouth. An open vowel is one produced with
the highest point of the tongue as far away as
possible from the roof of the mouth; close-
mid (or half-close) and open-mid (or half-

GLOSSARY
open) represent intermediate points, perceived

as auditorily equidistant, between these.
Alternatively, close vowels are high, open
vowels are low, and a vowel at an
intermediate point is mid.
vowel quality
The characteristics that distinguishes one
vowel from another. The auditory character of
a vowel as determined by the posture of the
vocal organs above the larynx. Thus the
quality of [a] remains the same, whether it is
produced loudly or softly, or with a high pitch
or a low pitch. But its quality is different from
that of [i], which is produced with the lower
jaw and tongue much closer to the roof of the
mouth or that of nasal [], in which the
passage through the nose are open.
vowel quantity
Length as a feature of a vowel articulation.
weak
Of the phonetic quality: obscures, lacking
prominence. Contrasted with strong
weak form
The pronunciation of a form word
(grammatical word) when unaccented and in a
non-prominent position. As grammatical
words usually receive little stress or
prominence. Their weak forms (containing
weak vowels) are their usual pronunciation.
GLOSSARY
Common words having weak forms are:

(determiners) a, an, the, some (auxiliaries)
am, are, be, been, is, was, were, can, could,
do, does, had, has, have, must, shall, should,
will, would; (nouns) saint, Sir; (prepositions)
at, for, from, of, to; (pronouns) he, her, him,
his, me, she, them, us, we, who, you, your;
(conjunctions and adverbs) and, but, as, not,
than, that, there.
word stress
Stress that is intrinsic to a word, as opposed to
sentence stress. The term lexical stress may
be used of stress associated with a unit of a
lexicon, as opposed to morphological stress
determined e.g. by a specific affix.

EXERCISES

EXERCISES
EXERCISES
Exercise 1
Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that studies the production,
transmission and perception of ..sounds.
a) Pronounced
b) Speech
c) Written
Exercise 2
Articulatory phonetics studies theof speech sounds.
a) Production
b) Articulation
c) Manner of articulation
Exercise 3
Write the symbols for the vowels in these words:
a) bread b) rough c) foot
d) cough e) mat f) friend

Describe the first three vowels you identified.
Exercise 4
Read aloud the following sentences in which /i:/ and /i/ occur
frequently. Refer to the diagraphs corresponding to /i:/ and /i/:
a) Each people is free and equal.
b) Reach for the key and bring us some tea.
c) Jean will receive her degreein free weeks.
d) Bills sister is ill.
e) Give it to Syd!
f) No weather is ill if the wind is still.
EXERCISES
Exercise 5
Read aloud the following sentences and then write down their
phonemic transcription. Pay attention to the pronunciation of // and
/e/:
a) Ann had a black hand-bag.
b) He came back, hat in hand.
c) She used to give him a pack in the morning.
d) Teds guests left at seven.
e) It is good to have some friends both in heaven and in hell.
f) The weather will get better by the end of the September.
Exercise 6
Read aloud the following words and pay attention to the length
variations of the sound /a:/ when final or when followed by a voiced
consonant, and when followed by a voiceless consonant: car, starve,
lard, tornado, part, staff, lark, tomato, cart.
Exercise 7
Read aloud the following sentences and then write their corresponding
phonemic transcription:
a) Sunday comes before Monday.
b) The sun comes up earlier during the summer months.
c) I dont think he can putt with his club.
Exercise 8
What is a minimal pair? Give examples of minimal pairs.
Exercise 9
A minimal pair is a pair of two words that differ in only one
a) Word
EXERCISES
b) Sound
c) Letter
Exercise 10
A phonetic variant of a phoneme is called . .
a) Morpheme
b) Allophone
c) Allomorph
Exercise 11
Practice the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between /:/
and /a:/ :
bird bard; purt part ;heard hard ;curt cart ;curd cart ;hurt -
heart; burn barn; dirt dart.
Exercise 12
Give the phonemic transcription of the following words and pay
attention to the way the vowel // is rendered in spelling, and to its
distribution in the words:
sorry; yacht ; gone; shone; because;

cauliflower; laurel; knowledge; Gloucester.
Exercise 13
Read aloud and then transcribe these words phonemically:
worm warm; burn borne; firm form ; word ward ;
sir saw; fir four ; err or; turn torn; were war.
Exercise 14
corresponding phonemic transcription:
a) Dont pour the coffee on the floor!
b) He ought to talk more, dont you think so?
c) They called the doctor when their daughter caught a cold.

EXERCISES
Exercise 15
Name some distinctive features of the English consonants.
Exercise 16
Name some distinctive features of the English vowels.
Exercise 17
What are the main characteristics of the distinctive features?
Exercise 18
Identify the /u/ or /u:/ sound in the following words:
good, wood, pudding, shook, foot, rule, rook, push, brute, suit, soot,
tooth, bush, dew, looting, brew, neutral, truth, clue, pew,
move, full, pool, wooed.
Exercise 19
Give the phonemic transcription of the word which does not belong
with the group, and write the symbol which represents the sound the
other four have in common:
1) sheep, sleep, read, seize, Leicester;
2) sit, ink, first, list, quick;
3) pet, thread, leaf, guess, said;
4) essence, deadly, bury, burn, friend;
5) sad, plait, maid, ladder, rack;
6) rather, armada, carnation, heart, heat;
7) horse, small, party, poured, raw;
8) office, frock, roll, box, sod;
9) look, moon, foot, full, push;
10) turn, worm, warm, berth, stir.
Exercise 20
Give examples of long-short vowel contrasts:

EXERCISES
a) /i:/ - /i/
b) /a:/ - //
c) // - /:/
d) /u/ - /u:/
e) /e/ - //
f) // - /:/
Exercise 21
Write the symbols for the vowels in these words:
a) calf
b) cool
c) team
Describe the long vowels in English.
Exercise 22
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.
Exercise 23
Read aloud the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between
the central vowels:
stuck stark stirk; mull marl Merle;
come calm Curme; fussed fast first.
Exercise 24
Describe the back vowels in the following sentences and explain the
difficulties encountered by Romanian learners of English in acquiring
their pronunciation:
a) Tom called Sue at once to tell her the good news.
EXERCISES
b) The doctors concluded that his heart trouble was only a

minor one.
Exercise 25
Give the phonemic transcription of the words containing the diphthong
/ei/ and refer to the way the diphthong is rendered in spelling:
1) The train in Spain stays mainly in the plain.
2) James came by plane on a rainy day.
3) The name of the famous painter appeared in the newspaper

today.
4) Dont lay the table too late, please!
Exercise 26
Pick up the words containing the diphthong /ai/ in the poem Fire
and Ice by Robert Frost:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what Ive tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I had enough to hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Exercise 27
corresponding phonemic transcription. Pay attention to the way the
diphthong /i/ is rendered in spelling:
1) Avoid annoying the boy.
2) They enjoyed the voyage on the sea.

EXERCISES
3) Roys enjoying his toys.
4) Boiling oil is a hard toil.
Exercise 28
Practice /ai/, /ei/, /i/ in the following words:
lied laid Loyd; bay buy boy; fail file foil;
ale isle oil; paint pint point.
Exercise 29
Read the following sentences in which the diphthongs /ai/, /ei/, /i/,
occur frequently:
1) I like boiled rice and soy sauce.
2) Haste makes waste.
3) A stitch in time saves nine.
4) Strike the iron while its hot.
Exercise 30
Describe the diphthongs you can identify in the following words:
tone, style, out, way, beer, coil, hair, why, they,
Exercise 31
Write the symbols for the diphthongs in these words:
a) tone b) out c) beer

d) style e) way f) hair
Describe the first three diphthongs you identified.
Exercise 32
Describe the diphthongs you can identify in these words:
a) coil;
b) hair
c) why
EXERCISES
d) they
Exercise 33
Read the following sentences paying attention to the italic words:
1) The man makes the house, the woman makes the home.
2) They noted they would come to a naught.
3) She had to go to phone him.
4) The policeman caught the thief who had stolen the coat.
5) She couldnt sew because of the cold.
6) You must see Shaws show tonight.
7) I bought a beauty soap.
Exercise 34
Practice the contrast /au/ - /u/ in the following minimal pairs:
bout boat; cowed code; drown drone; out - oat; flout

float; gout goat;
loud load; how hoe; now know; sow so; fowl foal;
ground groaned.
Exercise 35
Practice the diphthong /i/ in the following sentences:
1) King Lear, Shakespeares hero, drew tears from his

audience.
2) He was fiercely cheered and left the theatre nearly in tears.
3) Who comes here?
A Grenadier.
4) What does he want?
A pot of beer.
Exercise 36
Read the following sentences in which the diphthong /e/ occurs
frequently:

EXERCISES
1) Take this chair upstairs.

2) Marys hair is always combed with care.
3) The mayor had nothing to declare.
4) He could barely spare the money for the fare.
Exercise 37
Read the following minimal pairs based on the contrast between /e/
and /i/ :
chair cheer; dare dear; hair here; mare mere; tear tear;
pair peer; rare rear;
stare steer; bare beer; share shear; fare fear; spare
spear.
Exercise 38
Give the phonemic transcription of the following words and pay
attention to the way the diphthongs /i/, /e/ and /u/ are rendered in
spelling:
1) ear heir moor

2) here hair tour
3) dear care poor
4) near wear doer
Exercise 39
Read the following groups of the words and note the cases where the
same spelling has different pronunciations:
1) appear, spear, clear; 4) fear, feast, feather;

2) bread, earth, ear; 5) pound, bought, count;
3) leather, lean, least; 6) show, bow, flower.
Exercise 40
Read the following Christmas carols and group the words they contain
according to the vowel or diphthong they have in medial positions:
EXERCISES
Little Town of Bethlehem
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting Light.
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above,

While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together proclaim the holy birth
And praises sing to God the King and peace to men on earth.
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still the dear Christ enters in.
Away in a Manger
Away in a manger, no crib for a bed

The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.
The stars in the sky look down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
The cattle are lowing, the Baby awakes,

But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.
I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.
Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay

Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care
And take us to heaven to live with Thee there.

EXERCISES
Exercise 41
Practice the contrast /p/ - /b/ in the following minimal pairs:
pace base, pack back, pact backed, pad bad, pail bail, pair
bear, pall ball, palm balm,
pan ban, pang bang.
Exercise 42
Read the following pairs of sentences whose difference in meaning is
based on the contrast between /p/ and /b/ :
1) She was well robed 2) Its in her lap. 3) Its so rapid.
She was well roped. Its in her lab. Its so rabid.
4) This is a good buy. 5) Hes a man who always appreciates a fine pun.
This is a good pie. Hes a man who always appreciates a fine bun.
Exercise 43
Give the phonemic transcription of the endings ed and -d in these
words:
happened, handed, proved, typed, breathed, bruised, checked, amazed,
patched, pasted.
Exercise 44
Give examples of words beginning with a plosive where it is:
- Aspirated
- Unaspirated
Exercise 45
Read and give the phonemic transcription of the following sentences in
which the sound /k/ and /g/ occur frequently:
1) Clara thinks she can come next week.

EXERCISES
2) Kate asked me to come to dinner.

3) Dont forget to close the gate.
4) How long ago did you give it to Gloria?
Exercise 46
Practice the fricative /f/ and /v/ in the following minimal pairs;
feel veal; few view; fan van; fat vat; fail veil; leaf
leave; reef reave; proof prove; belief believe; staff starve.
Exercise 47
Identify the fricatives in the following words. Describe them.
a) breath b) method c) lesser d) washing e) rouge
Exercise 48
State which of the words have // :
a) sooth b) clothes c) with d) worthy e) wealthy
Exercise 49
Read The Lords Prayer and pick up the words containing fricatives:
Our Father which are in heaven,

hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debtors.
And lead us into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Exercise 50
Practice // and /0/ in the following phrases:

EXERCISES
1) those theme 4) either this or that

2) with feathers 5) without mother and father
3) those baths
Exercise 51
Notice the pronunciation of the letter s in the following words:
aisle, viscount, chamois, isle, debris, demesne, island, rendezvous,

seat, essence.
Exercise 52
Read and give the phonemic transcription of the following words:
Pay attention to their endings:
deals, queens, limbs, bridges, breaks, as, races, blesses, arrives,

chiefs, bottoms, codes, articles, advises, cars, armies, judges, woods,
youths, appears, prizes.
Exercise 53
Read aloud the following sentences with words containing the
contrastive sounds // and // :
1) The shoes shown at the national exhibition were highly

appreciated.
2) These shirts will shrink in the wash.
3) Occasionally he gave us the illusion of precision.
4) He made a casual remark upon the unusual division of the
money.
Exercise 54
Read the following anecdote and pay attention to the words which have
or should have the /h/ sound:
Mr. Hatch, Mrs. Hatch and their daughter Helen were going by
train to Harwich. When the train started, Mr. Hatch settled down to

EXERCISES
read his paper, while Mrs. Hatch and Helen chatted. After they had
been travelling for half an hour, Mrs. Hatch started to unpack the
basket of food she had brought with her for the journey. Unwrapping a
packet of sandwiches, Mrs. Hatch turned to Helen and asked:
Will you ave am or beef, elen?
It isnt am, Mum, Its am, protested Helen.
This exchange attracted the attention of Mr. Hatch, who turned with a
wink to his neighbour, and remarked:
You know, they both think theyre saying am.
Exercise 55
/n/, // and /k/ :
win wing wink; sin sing sink; thin thing think; ran
rang rank,
sun sung sunk; ban bang bank.
Exercise 56
Distinguish /n/, // and /k/ in the following sentences:
1) She ran to ring the bell.

2) They say shes kin to the king.
3) The frost was pinching my chin.
4) Come am and get along.
5) A pilot must win his wing.
6) What is he doing with the ink?
7) They sang and the ship sank.
8) Are you ordering drinks?
9) I think the thing is impossible.
10) The flowers are dropping their pink petals.
Exercise 57
State which consonants are silent:
a) exhaust b) shepherd c) heirloom d) limb e) gnarl

f) Thames g) tomb h) hustle i) isle

EXERCISES
Exercise 58
Identify the type of /l/ in the following:
a) loose b) help c) lie d) belt
Exercise 59
Contrast /l/ and /r/ in the following pairs of words:
rid lid, grow glow, arrive alive, rate late, pirate

pilot, praise plays, brush blush,
grew glue, fry fly, breeding bleeding.
Exercise 60
Write down the phonemic transcription of the following sentences in
which /w/ occurs frequently:
1) Walter wouldnt be able to wait for us in Washington.
2) There can be no question about its quality.
3) We were aware that his wound was worse.
4) I was bewildered by the wickedness of Woody, the
woodpecker.
Exercise 61
/w/ and /j/ :
wet yet, what yacht, woo you, were year, worn

yawn, wield yield,
wall yawl, whelp yelp, whale yale, woke yoke.
Exercise 62
Give the phonemic transcription of the following words:
Pay attention to the way the semivowel /j/ is rendered in spelling:
yet, opinion, use, few, yard, righteous, Luke, feud, yacht,

hideous, huge, beauty.

EXERCISES
Exercise 63
What type of assimilation is illustrated by the following groups of
words:
a) What you want? c) In case you want?

b) Would you? d) Has your car come?
Exercise 64
Find the possible elision of consonants in the following words and
phrases:
a) handbag b) cost price c) landscape d) next shop e) night

time
Exercise 65
Read the following phrases and sentences and use the weak forms of
the conjunction and:
a) fish and chips; b) food and drink; c) cut and dried;

d) birds and animals; e) we sang and dance; f) I saw Helen and
Nick and Bob.
Exercise 66
Give the phonetic transcription of the following phrases and sentences,
knowing that there is pronounced
/e (r)/ when it is a demonstrative, and /(r)/ in the verbal phrase
there is, there are:
a) dont go there
b) over there
c) There arent any flowers
d) There is a dog in the house, isnt there?
e) Try to go here and there.
f) Is there any butter?

EXERCISES
Exercise 67
Use the strong or the weak form of that in the following phrases and
sentences. When it is demonstrative that is pronounced /t/ or /t/,
when it is a conjunction or a relative pronoun it is pronounced /t/ :
a) that one
b) He said that he did not like that.
c) We dreamt of that far away world.
d) You shouldnt say that.
e) The car that is broken belongs to their firm.
f) Whats that for?
Exercise 68
Give the phonetic transcription of the following examples. Notice that
do is pronounced /du/ or /du:/ when it is notional verb:
a) What can I do for you? d) He understood to do it again.
b) Do you know him? e) Which book do they need?
c) How do you do? f) I do try to cook your lunch.
Exercise 69
Give the phonetic transcription of the following sentences. Notice that
must is pronounced /mst/ or /ms(t)/ when it shows obligation and
only /mst/ to denote supposition:
a) You must be tired. d) They must obey the rules.

b) Of course we must try. e) He must buy it and so must I.
c) You must have met him in England. f) We must learn it by heart.
Exercise 70
Transcribe the following sentences and underline the transcript for the
weak form words:
1) I want her to park that car over there.

2) Of all the proposals, the one that you made is the silliest.
3) Jane and Bill could have driven them to and from the party.
4) To come to the point, what shall we do for the rest of the week?

EXERCISES
5) Has anyone got an idea where it come from?

6) Pedestrian must always use the crossing provided for them.
7) Each one was a perfect example of the art that had been
developed there.
Exercise 71
Transcribe the following words:
a) bake b) bored c) goat
Exercise 72
Transcribe the following words phonetically:
a) sofa b) square c) verse

d) bought e) steering d) nineteen
Exercise 73
Analyze the structure of these one-syllable words:
a) splash b) cramped c) texts
Exercise 74
Divide these words into phonetic syllables:
comfortable, cottage, orchard, ground, kitchen, study, several,

upstairs, nursery, furniture, own, September, Wednesday.
Exercise 75
Divide the following words into graphic syllables and explain your
division of each word by reference to the main rules:
parents, speaking, disappear, cabbage, beer, housework, lately,

ninety, note-book,
photograph, ahead, walked, platinum, possible.
EXERCISES
Exercise 76
Give examples of words in which:
a) the first segment is absent;
b) the last segment is absent.
Exercise 77
Analyze the structure of these one-syllable English words:
a) squealed b) eight c) ranged
Exercise 78
What syllable is stressed in this words? Transcribe the words
phonemically.
a) escort (v) b) export (n) c) insult (n)

d) object (n) e) perfect (v) f) permit (n)
Exercise 79
Write the following words in phonemic transcription including the
stress:
a) shop-fitter b) Javanese c) anti-clockwise
d) open-ended e) birth-mark f) confirmation
Exercise 80
Transcribe phonemically and mark the stress on the following words:
a) protect b) clamber c) festoon

d) detest e) bellow f) menace
Exercise 81
Give examples of suffixes which:
a) carry the stress of the word;
b) do not change the stress of the word;
c) move the stress of the word .

EXERCISES
Exercise 82
Give the phonetic transcription if the following words and see how the
suffix influences the position of accent:
a) possibility b) ambiguous c) departmental d) cigarette

e) childish f) kindness g) banality h) acceptable
i) merciful j) referee
Exercise 83
Give the phonetics transcription of the following words and indicate the
accentual pattern of each word when it functions as a verb or as a noun
or adjective:
a) accent b) project c) transfer d) suspect

e) extract f) discount g) attribute h) perfect
i) convert j) converse k) frequent l) survey
m) desert n) prospect
Exercise 84
Give the phonetics transcription of the following words and indicate the
pronunciation of the endings -ate when the word functions as verb or
as a noun or adjective:
a) animate b) degenerate c) precipitate d) desolate e) approximate

f) advocate g) predicate h) subordinate i) alternate j) initiate
Exercise 85
Give the phonetic transcription of the following words to illustrate the
accentual pattern used in British English and in American English:
a) compliment b) adversary c) stationary d) communicative

e) ceremony f) moderate g) January h) territory
i) milkman j) secretary

EXERCISES
Exercise 86
Transcribe phonemically and underline the linking consonants:
a) her eyes b) her nose c) your uncle

d) your friend e) for Alan f) for Mike
Exercise 87
Transcribe phonemically and mark the stress on the following
compound words:
a) loudspeaker b) typewriter c) car-ferry
d) bad-tempered e) sun-rise f) headquarters
Exercise 88
Transcribe these sentences phonemically:
a) A particular problem of the boat was a leak.

b) Finally she arrived at a harbor at the edge of the mountains.
Exercise 89
Transcribe phonemically and mark the stress on the following words:
a) language b) captain c) career d) paper

e) jonquil f) injury g) event h) connection
Exercise 90
Transcribe the following words phonemically:
a) fishes b) shaver c) sixth d) these

e) achieves f) others g) measure h) ahead
Exercise 91
Give the phonemic transcription of these words:
a) partake b) book c) stalk

d) appeared e) guard f) bough

EXERCISES
Exercise 92
Transcribe phonemically:
a) Opening the bottle presented no difficulty.

b) There is no alternative to the Governments proposal.
Exercise 93
Write down the letters that are not sounded in the following words:
comb, indict, raspberry, parliament, half, know, listen,

depot, viscount,
Impugn, almond, furlough, solemn.
Exercise 94
Write one sentences using both of the words corresponding to the
phonemic transcription:
a) /e/ b) /its/ c) /prktis/ d) /greit/ e) /wain/

f) /sait/ g) /prei/ h) /reiz/
Exercise 95
Write the plural of the following nouns and give their phonemic
transcription:
a) plane b) wife c) apple d) month e) handkerchief

f) match g) series h) deer i) louse j) toothbrush
Exercise 96
Indicate the spelling and pronunciation of the main forms of the
following verbs:
a) carry b) lie c) fly d) hit e) hold

f) let g) see h) shine i) rise

EXERCISES
Exercise 97
Read and translate the following sentences:
1) They were wearing red caps.

2) The red caps had a busy day yesterday.
3) I wonder whether I could sleep in a hot bed.
4) They say the place was a hotbed of vice.
5) He is wearing a blue-jacket.
6) He is a blue-jacket and seem to enjoy it.
7) He lost his briefcase full of documents.
8) That was an unexpectedly brief case.
Exercise 98
Answer these questions:
a) What syllables in the utterance belong to a pre-head?

b) What is a head?
c) What syllables correspond to a tail?
Exercise 99
Point out the tonic syllables in these utterances:
1. She is one of our best students.

2. Thats it.
3. Its going to be rather difficult.
4. So we did.
5. You must join us.
Exercise 100
Analyses tone-unit components in the following utterances:
1. Give me those.
2. Bill called to give me those.
3. In an hour.

EXERCISES
4. In a little less than an hour

5. Look at it.
6. What did you say?
7. Both of them were here.
Exercise 101
Expand the following tonic syllables by adding the number of extra
syllables specified in brackets:
a) go (2) c) hear (1)

b) buy (3) d) talk (2)
Exercise 102
Add as many stressed syllables to make heads as indicated by the
number in brackets:
a) (2) dark c) (3) train

b) (1) step d) (2) hot

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CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH LANGUAGE

English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 1

English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 3

Toate drepturile asupra prezentei ediii aparin

Nicio parte din acest volum nu poate fi copiat fr acordul scris al

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naionale a Romniei

4 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 5

6 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 7

English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 9

The present course is primarily meant for Romanian

Why is this course book significant and useful?

the learner of a foreign language should be able to recognize and to

After completing this course you will be able to:

- recognize and produce the sounds of English just like a native

Course Book Design

The first unit of the course is concerned with defining phonetics

12 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

branches of science, introducing the symbols used for teaching the

English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 13

The seventh unit focuses on larger units of speech such as the

14 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

THE PHONEMIC SYSTEM OF ENGLISH

1.1 Phonetics and phonology

1.2 The connection of phonetics and phonology

1.3 The importance of phonetic studies

1.4 Phonetic symbols and types of transcription

1.5 Types of standard pronunciation

English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary 17

1.1. Phonetics and phonology

18 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

c. Auditory phonetics* studies speech sounds from the point of

1.2. The connection of phonetics and phonology with non-linguistic

The connection with grammar

Phonetics is connected with grammar because, through the system

Lexicology, semantics, stylistics and pragmatics

20 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

intonation in the act of communication. For example, the position of

1.3. The importance of phonetic studies

Let's think first!

Before reading the next section, think of the importance of

The connection of phonetics with linguistic sciences (grammar,

1.4. Phonetic symbols and types of transcription

The International Phonetic Alphabet

of representing sounds is through the International Phonetic

The broad/phonemic/phonological transcription

When the sounds of a language are represented without going

The narrow/allophonic/phonetic transcription

22 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

Let's think first!

Look at the table below and consider the difference in number

Language Consonants Vowel Total

The English phonemic system

[:] perm [p:m]

[ei] pain [pein]

24 English Contemporary Language. Phonetics, Spelling and Vocabulary

1.5. Types of standard pronunciation

1.5.1. Received Pronunciation* (RP)

Who uses RP?

Is RP still popular on radio and television?

Why are there differences in pronunciation?