Riassunto esame Lingua inglese 1, Prof. Riboni Giorgia, libro consigliato Handbook of a present day english, Pulcini

THE PRONUNCIATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

American English has become more and more important as a variety of English language because of its massive impact on world business and commerce and on the mass media. Differences in pronunciation between British and American English are perhaps more marked than differences in vocabulary and grammar.

6.1 VOWELS

The most important difference between the two phonemic inventories is in the open and back area, namely in the pronunciation and the distribution of the vowels /ɑː ɒ ɔː/.

6.2 DIPHTHONGS

In AmE the diphthongs /ɪə eə ʊə/ are absent due to rhoticity. Instead AmE has pure vowels followed by [r]: /ɪr er ʊr/.

The 1st element of the British diphthong is less central in AmE. Words having a mid, central vowel followed by /r/ have /ʌ/ in BrE and /ɜ/ in AmE – worry ['wʌrɪ] (BrE), ['wɜːɪ] (AmE).

6.3 CONSONANTS

British and American consonants are the same. Differences are found in the phonetic quality of the phoneme /r/ and...

The difference between BrE and AmE is in the pronunciation of the endings -ary, -ery, -ory which are compressed in BrE, whereas they keep a full vowel in AmE – library ['laɪbrəri] (BrE), ['laɪbreri] (AmE).

A comparison between the phonological systems of English and Italian reveals many important differences which generally lead to the characteristic pronunciation errors on the part of Italian students of English.

Italian learners of English will face a hard task when pronouncing English vowels, since there are 11 in English against 7 in Italian. In many cases, where English has two vowels, Italian has one. The Italian speaker will tend to under-differentiate between long and tense / iː / and short and lax / ɪ /, and pronounce them as if they sounded the same – [liv].

Length is an important feature of English vowels. Equally important is laxness, that is, the pronunciation of the six short vowels / ɪ e æ ʌ ɒ ʊ / with little

The effect of prominence is the result of four acoustic components: pitch (altezza), loudness (volume), duration (lunghezza) and quality (qualità).

In phonetic transcription stress is indicated by a vertical line (stress mark) preceding the stressed syllable.

The main stress patterns in English words:

• (strong+weak+weak) e.g. family [fæməli], manager [ˈmænɪdʒə(r)]
• (strong+weak+strong) e.g. telephone [ˈtelɪfəʊn], summertime [ˈsʌmətaɪm]
• (strong+strong+weak) e.g. newspaper [ˈnjuːzpəɪpə(r)], grandmother [ˈɡrændˈmʌðə(r)]
• (weak+strong+weak) e.g. remember [rɪˈmembə(r)], agreement [əˈɡriːmənt]
• (strong+strong+weak) e.g. sensation [senˈseɪʃn], unhealthy [ʌnˈhelθi]
• (strong+weak+strong) e.g. afternoon [aːftə(e)ˈnuːn], understand [ˌʌndə(r)ˈstænd]

In English we find many words with four or more syllables, usually derivatives or compounds.

We must remember that English is Germanic in its origin but a large part of its vocabulary

Derives from Romance and Latin sources.

10. CONNECTED SPEECH

Connected speech impinges upon our ears as a continuum of sound, modulated by intonational contours and rhythmic patterns and of course pauses for breathing and thinking. While in the written language words are separated from one another by spaces, in the spoken language the transition from each sound segment to the next is "smooth".

Phonetic variability in connected speech is caused by three main factors:

• The influence of the phonemic environment
• The rhythmic pattern of the syllable in which each phoneme occurs
• The speed of the utterance

10.1 SIMILITUDE

It involves accommodation in the articulation of a sound segment to an adjacent segment, so that they become similar in some of their characteristics.

Handy []

The pronunciation of [n] and [d] involve the same tongue position (tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge). As you transition from [n] (a nasal) to [d] (a plosive), you don't move the tongue as you

smooth transition across word boundaries, as in how about.

ASSIMILATION

It occurs in the same circumstances as similitude, but is distinguished from it because involves the actual replacement of a sound with another owing to the influence of an adjacent one. This type of assimilation usually occurs at the boundaries between syllables, between words and in compounds. It is referred to as juxtapositional or contextual and must be distinguished from historical assimilation, as well as from similitude.

Historical assimilation occurs in the course of the centuries and explain changes in pronunciation. When speech is slow an emphatic it may not take place. It occurs when sentences are spoken at normal speed (compared to slow or emphatic, where it does not take place) for example:

In voice e.g.: He was sent

• [ ] > [ ] (voiced fricative [z] is devoiced)

In tongue position e.g.: This shop

• [ ] > [ ] (alveolar [s] becomes palato alveolar)

Position of the lip e.g: bad boys

[ ]> [ (Alveolar [d] becomes bilabial [b])

bæd bɔɪz bæb bɔɪz]

Two sound coalesce (blend) into one

e.g.: shut your eyes

[ ]> [ (the clusters [tj] and [dj] become

ʃʌt jɔːʳ aɪz ʌtʃəʳ aɪz]

the affricates [t ] and [d ]

ʃ ʒ

10.4 ELISION

Elision or deletion is the dropping of a sound which once existed (historical elision) or which exist in slow speech (contextual elision). Historical elision is responsible for the loss of the “silent graphemes” (t in castle, k in know...). Like similitude and assimilation, elision is determined by economy in the articulatory effort.

A typical example of elision is the dropping of the < h > in the weak form of grammatical items like he, him...

A particular case of elision in British English is smoothing which is the reduction of the elements of diphthongs and triphthongs.

Assimilation and elision combined together in fluent speech are responsible for pronunciations which sound

extremelyclipped and obscure to foreigner. (What do you want to do?Whatcha wanna do?).→10.5 VOWEL REDUCTION AND WEAK FORMS

Vowel reduction is responsible for remarkable differences between the pronunciation of words in isolation and of the same words in connected speech., although these changes are regular and predictable.

The phenomenon of vowel reduction consists in the reduction to a weak vowel, in general the schwa [ə]. This phenomenon can be observed in morphological changes involving stress shift in which the same syllables are weak or strong depending on whether they're unstressed or stressed.

Vowel reduction is a characteristic of grammatical words such as auxiliaries, modals, personal pronouns, articles, conjunctions and prepositions.

The weak form is used when the word occurs in unstressed position while the strong in an utterance, while the strong form is used when the word is in final position or the speaker wants to attribute a particular emphasis to it.

11. THE RHYTHM OF

CONNECTED SPEECH

We shall consider two important prosodic phenomena which characterize connected speech, i.e rhythm and intonation.

In other words, we perceive the sense of the rhythm which arises out of a feeling of alternation between strong and weak "beats".

We may also notice that the accented syllables are: one-syllable words of major word classes (hard, mine)