fonologia inglese

Phonetics & phonology

Phonetics

The physical nature of human speech sounds can be categorized into:

• Articulatory phonetics (relates to the speaker)
• Acoustic phonetics (relates to speaker & hearer)
• Auditory phonetics (relates to the hearer)

Phonology

The study of the organisation of sounds in a specific language, focusing on the actual realisation of sounds in a language.

Speech production

Respiratory system

Airflow can be egressive or ingressive, but speech is egressive.

Phonatory system

Phonation involves the different positions of the vocal cords (or vocal folds) in the larynx.

Positions of the glottis:

• Closed (stop)
• Open (voiceless)
• Vibrating (voiced)
• Whisper (no vibration)

Articulators

Difference between consonants and vowels.

Describing consonants

Essential concepts and definitions:

• Grapheme: the letter of the alphabet, a discrete mark in writing or print
• Phoneme: distinctive sound in a language
• Silent graphemes: they have no realisation in speech, only in writing (e.g., /w/ in “wrong” or /l/ in “walk”)
• Homophones: orthographically different, same pronunciations (e.g., aloud / allowed)
• Homographs: orthographically identical, different pronunciation (e.g., tear when you cry / tear when you break)

IPA (International Phonemic Alphabet)

A set of symbols used for representing phonemes/sounds of all languages. Devised in the 19th Century, it is constantly revised (last revision in 2005). The English subset uses slant brackets / /.

Phonetic transcription

Also known as narrow transcription, it represents many phonetic details (identifying the sounds as such).

Phonemic transcription

Also known as broad transcription, it describes sounds that have a distinctive function (meaning).

Segmental phonology

How phonemes combine in a language.

Suprasegmental phonology

Focuses on larger units: syllables, stress, rhythm, and intonation.

Allophones

Different realisations of the same phoneme in different contexts (e.g., clear and dark /l/).

Minimal pairs

Pairs of words that differ in pronunciation only by one phoneme (e.g., kit, cat, cot, caught).

British English subset

There are 43 phonemes in English:

• Vowels (11-12): voiced egressive sounds, no obstruction to airstream.
  • Schwa
• Diphthongs (8): glides from one vowel sound to another.
• Consonants (24): egressive sound accompanied by an obstruction of some kind.

Consonant sounds: Plosive/Stop

Total stricture (closing) → compression → release → post-release.

• Bilabial /p/ /b/
• Alveolar /t/ /d/
• Velar /k/ /g/
• Glottal /ʔ/ (more infrequent)

Voiced vs Voiceless or Fortis vs Lenis.

Consonant sounds: Fricatives

Air escapes through a small passage (hissing sound) → continuant.

• Labiodental /f/ /v/
• Dental / Interdental /θ/ /ð/
• Alveolar /s/ /z/
• Post-alveolar / Palatal /ʃ/ /ʒ/
• Glottal /h/

Consonant sounds: Affricates

Combination of plosive and fricative: /ʧ/ /ʤ/.

Consonant sounds: Nasals

Air escapes through the nose.

• Bilabial /m/
• Alveolar /n/
• Velar /ŋ/

Consonant sounds: l / r

Air passes from the sides of the tongue.

• Lateral / Approximant / l /
• Clear /l/ before vowels (e.g., love)
• Dark /l/ before consonants (e.g., elf)

Allophones in complementary distribution

Articulators approach each other but do not close. The tip of the tongue approaches the alveolar area but does not make contact. Post-alveolar approximant /r/. Considerable difference in accents of English.

Consonant sounds /j/ /w/

Approximants or semi-vowels: Similar to vowels in terms of sound, consonants in terms of distribution (they only appear before vowel phonemes).

• Palatal /j/ year → /ɪə/ year
• Bilabial /w/ war → /wɔː/ war

What is RP?

The quintessential British sound. R.P. stands for Received Pronunciation.

British English textbooks / dictionaries originated in the south-east of England (Oxford / Cambridge Universities). It is/was used in radio and television broadcasts in England (a.k.a. BBC English). During the 19th century, it was called the Queen’s (Victoria) English. It is no longer associated with a region and is used natively by only 3% of the population. Social accent associated with the upper-middle and upper classes. See Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, or all of the villains in Star Wars and Scar in The Lion King.

Unemotional – controlled and clear articulation. Associated in popular culture with the idea of power. Received pronunciation was promoted by pioneering phonetician Alexander Ellis. Educated pronunciation of the metropolis, the court, the pulpit, and the bar (in the sense of law court…).

Travelled to other regions. 20th-century phonetician Daniel Jones (Prof. Higgins in Pygmalion) described it and called it “public school pronunciation”. BBC chose it as the accent that would be understood by as many people as possible.

BBC English?

"Although the BBC does not, and never did, impose pronunciations of its own on English words, the myth of BBC English dies hard. It owed its birth no doubt to the era before the Second World War, when all announcers spoke Received Pronunciation." (Miss G.M. Miller, BBC Pronunciation Unit preface to the BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names, 1971).

English RP vowels

Vowel /vaʊəl/ sounds: airstream escapes from the mouth in an unobstructed manner. Vowel sounds are always voiced (vibration of the vocal folds).

Categorisation criteria:

• Tongue Height: high vs low
• Tongue Position: front vs back
• Lip Rounding: spread vs rounded
• Length: long vs short

Vowel quadrilateral:

Closed – Rounded – Spread – Open.

English RP vowels

Short vowels:

• /ɪ/ as in “pin”, “bit” and “fish”
• /e/ as in “bet”, “men” and “yes”
• /æ/ as in “bat”, “man” and “gas”
• /ʌ/ as in “but”, “some” and “rush”
• /ɒ/ as in “pot”, “gone” and “cross”
• /ʊ/ as in “put”, “pull” and “push”

The Schwa sound /ə/: Central vowel, neutral sound, as in “about”, “oppose” and “perhaps”. The most frequent vowel sound in polysyllabic words. The most important sound in connected speech.

Long vowels:

• /i:/ as in “beat”, “mean” and “peace”
• /ɜː/ as in “bird”, “fern” and “purse” (see hesitation: “er”)
• /ɑː/ as in “card”, “half” and “pass”
• /ɔː/ as in “board”, “torn” and “horse”
• /u:/ as in “food”, “soon” and “lose”

Long vowels and rhoticity

Rhoticity /r/ followed by a vowel sound.

Rhoticity explained: British RP phoneme /r/ occurs ONLY before vowels. It does NOT occur at the end of the word when pronounced in isolation (CF) = Citation Form. Very often, /r/ in the spelling followed by a consonant sound is replaced by a long vowel or a Schwa:

• /kɑː/ car
• /evə/ ever
• /vɜːs/ verse

Minimal pairs

Minimal pairs differ only by one phoneme:

• sit - set – sat
• kit - cat - cot - caught (the spelling may be very different)

Diphthongs in RP

They consist in a movement or glide from one vowel to another. When you pronounce a diphthong, the first part is much longer and stronger than the second part. The total number of diphthongs is 8, even though /ʊə/ is increasingly rare. They can be divided into two types: centring (gliding towards /ə/) and closing (gliding towards /ɪ/ and /ʊ/).

Diphthongs

They are pronounced rapidly and without interruption. They are the 5 closing diphthongs with the Schwa added to them.

What is an accent?

• NOT a dialect: dialect includes vocabulary and grammar.
• A person’s DISTINCTIVE pronunciation which originates in a combination of features: Region, Social background, Educational history, Ethnic or religious affiliation, Personal aspirations.
• No two people have exactly the same accent; it’s like fingerprints, on a grander scale (Crystal: 17).
• An accent is born with us.
• Children copy their parents’ accents or accommodate to them.
• It gets more difficult as we grow up (some consider it impossible).
• Accommodation is a psycholinguistic subconscious trait; when we spend time together, we sound a little bit like one another.

Accents

• In English, you can guess someone’s economic or educational background from the voice alone, without even knowing them.
• This results in:
  • Particular accents belong to particular settings.
  • People accommodate to their surroundings.
  • People speak more than one English; Londoners are said to have an English for home, an English for friends, and another English for work or public domain (Crystal: 38).

English: Estuary English

• It is a mixed accent (London & South-Eastern Counties along the estuary of the River Thames). Created through internal migrations from and to the Greater London area and surrounding counties.
• Features resemble RP, with variations ROSEWARNE (1996).
• London influenced.
• Lots of individual elements.
• Lower-middle class accent.
• Levelled accent.
• /l/ vocalisation / glottal stop / lengthening of final vowels / yod dropping (see “assume”) / Schwa instead of syllabic consonants.

English: Cockney

Traditional Cockney: dialect and slang.

Cockney accent features:

• Glottal stop → bottle → bo/ʔ/le / water → wa/ʔ/er
• /h/ dropping → hill → ill
• Dental/Interdental /θ/ /d/ become /f/ /v/ → thin = fin / than = van
• /l/ vocalization with an exaggerated “ow” sound

Traditional Cockney: dialect and slang.

Cockney accent features:

• Diphthong: /meik/ sounds like /maik/ see Eliza Doolittle “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” (voiceless glottal fricative) /h/ dropping see Eliza.
• Diphthong: /taim/ becomes /toim/
• /r/ in final position becomes very strong Schwa → copper = copp/ə/h/

Shakespeare & RP

In the 18th century (with Garrick), Shakespeare started to be considered a great poet and was included in the canon of English Literature. In later production of his plays, RP was the obvious choice (intellectual, scholarly, upper-class).

Shakespeare’s OP

Over the last 50 years, regional accents have lost a lot of the negative associations (Shakespeare in RP = something for the elites, educated people). “Going to the Globe in 1600 would have been like a trip to the Superbowl” (Crystal: 194).

Accents at the time of Shakespeare

There was no “upper-class accent” in Shakespeare’s time. Londoners at the time were a mix of people coming from different regions (like today). We can reconstruct the accent at the time of Shakespeare from: dictionaries, anecdotal evidence found in books, grammars (Ben Johnson’s), and the spelling of Shakespeare’s plays (see rhymes) → deductions.

Shakespeare’s OP

Original Pronunciation (OP): first used in 2004. To a native speaker’s ear: OP has elements of Irish, Somerset, Scots, Cockney...

Review manner of articulation

Review place of articulation

Grapheme to phoneme

Why is English spelling so weird?

• 600 A.D. Roman alphabet and Anglo-Saxon language (sounds that Latin did not have).
• Pronunciation changed in different areas.
• Printing Press = spread of spellings that printers had decided.
• Changes were still happening: loss of certain sounds (see k in knee and w in wrong).
• Great Vowel Shift (total change in the vowel system) (see boots vs boats).
• 1066 French-speaking Normans brought French to court/Universities.
• So much English spelling is influenced by French.
• Renaissance scholars changed some spellings to display the Latin/Greek roots.
• Borrowings from other languages.

Pronunciation problems for Italian speakers

• Transfer of phonetic features from native language to second/foreign language.
• Long and tense vs short and lax vowel sounds.
• /ɪ/ vs /i:/ → allophone /i/ see live vs leave.
• Because Italian vowels tend to be long and tense and length is not a distinctive feature.
• Some tend to add a “Schwa” to some words ending in consonant (as Italian often ends in vowel sounds).

Pronunciation problems for Italian speakers: consonants

• Lack of aspiration of voiceless plosives in initial position /ph/ /th/ /kh/ as in pot / tea / kind.
• Lack of aspiration of /h/ see heart vs art.
• Allophones:
• /k/ vs /kh/ sky vs kite scan vs cool.
• They are found in different environments and they are mutually exclusive: complementary distribution.
• /inpʊt/ vs /impʊt/ two allophones of the sound /n/.
• But they are not allophones in meat vs neat; they are contrastive (minimal pair).
• Dental fricatives are usually pronounced as the alveolar fricatives or plosives.
• /ð/ vs /d/ see those vs dose.
• /θ/ vs /t/ vs /f/ see think vs tink vs fink.
• Alveolar fricatives /s/ & /z/ in initial position. In English, the grapheme <s> in initial position is always voiced. Italian speakers tend to pronounce the /z/ (voiced) phoneme. See: small, snow, slim, snail, swim...

Inflections

Inflections are often a problem.

<s> inflections

• If the word ends with a voiceless consonant, then the plural <s> will be voiceless too, as in: maps / books / Nick’s.
• If the word ends with a voiced consonant, then the plural <s> will be voiced too, as in: trees / pens / Bob’s.
• If the plural is <es>, the last sound is voiced as it follows a vowel sound, as in: buses / washes / Bruce’s.

<ed> inflections

• If the verb ends in a voiceless consonant, the pronunciation is /t/ as in: asked.
• If the verb ends in a voiced consonant or vowel, the pronunciation is /d/ or /ɪd/ as in: lived & wanted.

-ed endings (and more): listen to: stressed / washed / picked / managed & /s/ /z/ goose’s owner.

The subject’s speech shows the following characteristics:

• Realisation of /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ as [i] and [u] short vowels.
• Realisation of /r/ as vibrant.
• Realisation of /ŋ/ as see diagnosis [ŋg] [verbs ending in –ing, see liking and morning].
• h-dropping, see Harrison.
• Replacement of schwa [ə] with full vowels, see around.
• Replacement of diphthongs with full vowels, see goat / wiped.

Pronunciation in dictionaries

• English dictionaries for native speakers don’t use IPA.
• It is used in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries for learners.
• The use of symbols may diverge: See phoneme /r/ in final position: /dʒɔːr/ vs /dʒɔː(r)/ vs /dʒɔː*/.
• In learner dictionaries, phonetic information is limited.

Pronunciation dictionaries

• Pronunciation dictionaries are exclusively devoted to pronunciation.
• They show inflected forms: see /teɪk/ /teɪkən/ /teɪks/ /’teɪk ɪŋ/ /tʊk/.
• They contain a wide range of proper, geographical, historical, and literary names (e.g., McEwan / Hercules / Norwich / Leicester / eBay).
• They include syllabification, and stress in compound words and phrases.

Pronunciation dictionaries

• They indicate percentages of use of controversial pronunciation:
• Again = 80% of British speakers say /ə’gen/.
• 20% of British speakers say /ə’gein/.
• 97% of American speakers say /ə’gen/.
• 3% of American speakers say /ə’gein/.
• Schedule = 70% of British speakers say /’ʃedjuːl/.
• 30% of British speakers adopt the American pronunciation /’skedjuːl/ (on the rise).
• They give information about problematic areas of pronunciation such as spelling-to-sound equivalence.

Example: Phoneme <b>

• Spelling <b> pronunciation /b/ as in /’beibi/.
• Spelling <bb> pronunciation /b/ as in /’ʃæbi/.
• <b> is silent in two groups of words:
  • Before <t> in doubt, debt, subtle.
  • After <m> at the end of a word or stem, as in climb, lamb, thumb, bomber.

Accent mixture

• It is very rare today to find someone who has lived their whole life in a single place, thus a “pure” accent is really hard to find.
• In 2013, the average UK resident will move house 8 times during a lifetime + television, media, the internet.
• Integration = accommodation.
• Today accents are a mixture of locations, sometimes three or more.