The frameworks of English

Part I: Introduction

1.2 Frameworks and levels

The language is structured in five different levels:

• Lexis, the words of the language;
• Grammar, the way words are combined into texts;
• Discourse, the way sentences are combined into texts;
• Phonology, the sounds and sound patterns of the language;
• Semantics, the study of the meaning.

Meaning operates in a different dimension from the other levels and in conjunction with them all, it operates in all linguistic levels. Furthermore, meaning is often dependent on context. We may not be able to interpret something accurately or appropriately, unless we know the context in which it is spoken or written.

1.3 Speech and writing

Speech is the primary mode of communication. This is because all humans learn to speak as part of their natural biological development. Learning to speak is an instinctive process. By contrast, we have to make a conscious effort if we are to acquire the ability to write our language, and not all language users develop the same facility for doing this. In our society, writing is highly valued. However, other cultures do not depend so heavily on the written language as we do, and there are many people in the world who have not learnt to write.

In addition, there are some lexical and grammatical choices that are more typically selected in informal speech and others that are more likely to be found in writing.

1.4 Which English?

English can take many different forms. For example, the English spoken in America varies in several ways from the English spoken in Britain. Moreover, within Britain, there are many regional variations in the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of English. The variety that linguists use is Standard English and more specifically Standard British English. It is the English of newspapers, of news broadcasting on television and radio, and the English that is used in public documents and in textbooks. It is also the variety of English that foreigners learn.

Standard British English is a dialect. By dialect, we mean the lexis and the grammar of a particular language variety. This is in contrast to accent, which is the pronunciation used. A dialect can be spoken or written.

Part 9: Phonetics and Phonemes

9.1 Phonetics and phonology

Phonetics is the study of sounds of speech. When we talk about speech sounds, we are referring to the individual sounds which make up words. Closely related to phonetics is phonology. Whereas phonetics deals with the physical production and perception of speech, phonology is more concerned with sound systems and patterns. Phonetics and phonology are in contrast to the lexical, grammatical, and discourse structure.

9.2 A representative accent

Linguists have traditionally selected an accent known as Received Pronunciation (RP) to represent British English in opposition to other British accents. The Queen speaks RP, but hers is a variety associated with the aristocracy and with older speakers, which is known as a conservative RP. RP is the pronunciation given in dictionaries.

9.3 Phonemes

On a phonetic level, we can analyse words in terms of distinct, individual sounds. Sometimes a particular sound can be pronounced in different ways depending on the position or context in which it occurs. Example: word initial /l/ in loop is different from word final /l/ in pool. The first is known as clear while the second is known as a dark l.

There is a difference between the underlying "model" sounds which make up words and the surface realisation of these sounds by various speakers. These underlying sounds are phonemes. Phoneme is an abstract concept. The surface forms of the phonemes, which vary depending on the position of a sound or on the speaker’s accent, are allophones. Clear l and dark l are allophones of the phoneme /l/. The complete set of phonemes in a language or in a particular accent of a language is known as a phoneme inventory. English makes up only a proportion of all the possible sounds which occur in human speech. Some languages have fewer phonemes than English, others more.

9.4 The International Phonetic Alphabet

One of the problems of making a transcription is indicating speech sounds clearly to the reader. This problem of there not always being the same correspondence between letters and sounds led a group of linguists concerned with the teaching of foreign languages (the International Phonetic Association) to devise a special alphabet in which one symbol always represents the same sound and in which there was a symbol for every possible sound a language learner might need. This special alphabet is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

9.5 The vocal tract

The vocal tract is where the sounds are produced. It begins at the voice box or larynx and ends at the lips. The larynx is essentially a casing of cartilage rings at the top of the trachea. In the larynx are two important muscles, which can open and close. These are the vocal cords. The space between them is known as the glottis. The section of the vocal tract between the larynx and the uvula is known as the pharynx. Above the pharynx, the vocal tract branches into the nasal cavity and the oral cavity. For the majority of sounds in English, the soft palate (or velum) is raised, blocking off the nasal cavity. However, there are three nasal consonants in English for which the soft palate is lowered allowing air to pass through the nasal cavity. The flow of air is known as the airstream.

9.6 The consonants of English

In phonetics, a consonant involves some kind of narrow, partial, or complete closure in the vocal tract – usually in the mouth. By contrast, a vowel sound involves no closure or contract of this kind and the airstream flows unobstructed out of the mouth.

The English RP is based on a system of 24 consonants. We classify consonants according to three aspects: place of articulation, manner of articulation, presence or absence of voice. A place of articulation is the part of the vocal tract where the complete or partial closure is necessary for a consonant sound is made. The places of articulation of RP are the lips, the upper teeth, the hard ridge behind the upper row of teeth known as the alveolar ridge, the roof of the mouth or hard palate, the soft palate at the back of the mouth (also known as the velum), and the glottis. The parts of the mouth involved in making speech sounds are called articulators. Three parts of the mouth cannot move: the upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, and the hard palate. These are known as passive articulators. The other parts can move and are the active articulators. The tongue is a very important active articulator. It is useful to distinguish the different parts of the tongue: the tip, the blade, the front, and the back.

Identifying the manner of articulation allows us to classify sounds according to what happens to the airstream as it passes through the vocal tract. We can distinguish five types of sounds in terms of manner of articulation. A sound may be a plosive, a nasal, a fricative, an affrication, or an approximant. Because both plosive and nasal involve a complete closure or stopping off of the vocal tract at one of the places of articulation before the release of air, these two types of sounds are collectively known as stops.

9.7 The vowels of English

When we produce vowels, the airstream has a free passage through the mouth. The vowels have been divided into two types: monophthongs and diphthongs. A monophthong is a pure vowel. In other words, when the vowel is spoken in isolation, the position of the mouth remains unchanged. By contrast, a diphthong is a glide from one vowel position towards another.

Vowels are distinct from other sounds in that they do not rely on contact between articulators or on the same degree of closure in the mouth. In addition, a contrast between voiced and voiceless is impossible because all vowels are voiced. However, the classification by place and manner is different. Since there are no contrasts between plosive, nasal, fricative, affricate, and approximant sound. However, we can make a contrast on length. Length is indicated by a modified colon (:) after the vowel in question. Short vowels are always monophthongs while long vowels may be monophthongs or diphthongs. Other two aspects of vowel articulation can be used to complete the classification of vowels: tongue position and lip shape. The label at the top – front, central, and back – refer to the front, central, and back areas of the tongue.

A close vowel will have a relatively small cavity between the tongue and the palate, while an open vowel will have a relatively large one. There are two intermediate measures of tongue height: half-close and half-open.

Part 10: Segmental Phonology

10.4 Syllable structure

Phonotactics is the way phonemes group together in English to form syllables. Central to the structure of a syllable is a vowel. A long monophthong may be a monosyllabic word (are /a:/ for example) as may be a diphthong (ear /ɪə/). By contrast, a single consonant cannot constitute a word. In a monosyllabic word, the vowel may be preceded and succeeded by a consonant or consonants. If, on the other hand, a consonant is preceded and succeeded by a vowel, a disyllabic word results. This suggests that there is a direct relationship between the number of vowels and the number of syllables in a word.

The maximum number of consonants which can begin a syllable in English is three. However, there are restrictions on which consonants can form a cluster of this kind. You won’t be able to find any words beginning with /gdn/ or /ʃph/. All the consonants except /ŋ/ can begin a word in English. They represent a central group known as initial consonants. Any consonants which can precede them are pre-initial consonants and those which can follow are post-initial consonants. The pre-initial consonant can only be /s/ and it can only be followed by nine other consonants: the voiceless plosives /p, t, k/, the voiceless labiodental fricative /f/, a nasal (but not /ŋ/), or an approximant (but not /r/). The plosives and the fricative, which can follow /s/, are all like /s/, voiceless. The post-initial consonants are all approximants.

All the consonants occur alone word-finally with the exception of /h, w, j/. The approximant /r/ does not occur word-finally in RP although it does in rhotic accent. The large group of singly-occurring consonants can be said to fill the final consonant position. Consonants which precede them are pre-final, and those who follow are post-final. In pre-final position, the consonant will be a nasal, the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, or the lateral approximant /l/.

An inflection can be the plural ending for nouns which is articulated as /-s/ or /-z/ depending on whether the final consonant of the noun is voiceless or voiced. The inflection can also be a verb ending, as in raised. Again, whether the final consonant is voiced or voiceless is relevant to the final consonant of the verb in its base form. Some consonant clusters only exist word-finally because they occur as the result of an inflection being added to a noun or a verb.

10.5 The syllable template

It is important to remember that consonants are an optional element of syllables while vowels are obligatory.

A special link can be found between the vowel and the consonants which succeed it. There is, after all, the phenomenon of rhyme. In rhyming pairs such as sad and glad, it is the vowel plus any following consonants which provide the rhyme. In addition, many phonologists have noted a link between the length of the vowel and the consonants which follow it. Short monophthongs have to be followed in RP by one or more consonants, whereas almost all vowels (excepting only /ʊ/ and /ʊə/) can occur without a preceding consonant.

The syllable has been divided into an onset – the opening consonant(s), if present – and a rhyme, which is the obligatory vowel followed by any final consonant. The vowel is termed the peak of the syllable because it is ‘the centre’ of the syllable where the sonority or the volume of the voice is at its greatest. Any consonants which conclude a syllable are known as the coda.

In matters of syllabification – the way in which a word is divided into syllables – we have to be guided by pronunciation. Sometimes, a closing diphthong is followed by a glide towards schwa. This combination is known as a triphthong. Speakers will differ as to whether a triphthong results in one syllable or two (for example, in a word like fire /faɪə/).

Finally, we need to consider syllabic consonants. We have worked on the assumption that a vowel is an obligatory element in a syllable. However, there is one exception on this principle which is found in words of two syllables or more. This is when a nasal or an approximant functions as the peak of the syllable. This occurs when the vowel in the syllable, because it is not stressed, becomes so reduced that it effectively disappears, leaving the coda to function alone as the peak (for example, in the word button /bʌtn/). Syllabic consonants are fairly common in all accents of English, but there are restrictions on when they can occur.

10.6 Connected speech

Phonemes vary when in contact with adjacent phonemes from other words. These variations are the result of connected speech. For example: in next day, it is noticed the /t/ at the end of next was lost before day. The term for this loss of a speech segment is elision. Elision is particularly likely to occur when clusters of consonants form or when identical segments occur in a sequence, and this happens frequently in connected speech. Syllabic consonants are also the result of elision.

In some circumstances, segments may be lost, but it is also common for segments to appear or be added at word boundaries. This phenomenon is known as liaison. In English, the segment which usually appears is /r/. Words which end in /r/ in some accents will not do so in RP. For example, a speaker of a rhotic accent will pronounce four as /fɔr/ whereas an RP speaker will pronounce it /fɔ/. However, when four is followed by a word which begins with a vowel, the /r/ is likely to be pronounced in RP. This occurrence of /r/ is known as linking r. Because the presence of a linking r is so common in English, speakers frequently add /r/ in some constructions. In other words, the /r/ appears at the end of a word which in isolation ends with a vowel but which in connected speech precedes a vowel. For instance, if America is placed before a word beginning with a vowel, such as and in America and Canada, the /r/ emerges to give [amerikə ænd kænədə].

In connected speech, segments can both disappear and appear. In other circumstances, they will become more like the segments which precede or follow them. This phenomenon is known as assimilation. There are three types of assimilation. The first type is anticipatory assimilation. In a phrase such as ‘ten pin bowling’, the /n/ at the end of ten is often pronounced [m] in anticipation of the fact that the following word, pin, begins with the bilabial phoneme /p/. So, the alveolar nasal becomes bilabial like /p/.

Much rarer is the type of assimilation known as perseverative assimilation. This is when a feature of one segment ‘perseveres’ and is found in the following segment. Example: ashtray [æʃtʃreɪ]. Here, the fricative quality of the /ʃ/ at the end of ‘ash’ has been carried over to the /t/ at the beginning of ‘tray’, causing it to surface as /tʃ/.

Finally, there is coalescent assimilation or simply coalescence. This is when two segments merge into one. For example, in connected speech, ‘haven’t you’ is likely to be pronounced [hævəntʃuː] with the /t/ at the end of ‘haven’t’ and the /j/ at the start of ‘you’ being merged to give [tʃ].

Part 12: Variation in English

12.1 Beyond RP and Standard British English

English is characterised not only by the vast number of people who speak it, but also by the extent it is used globally. It is spoken in some capacity by a significant number of people on every inhabited continent. Speakers fall into one of three groups: those who have English as a native language (ENL), those who have it as a second language (ESL), and then the large number of speakers across the world who have learnt English as a foreign language (EFL). In countries where English is an official language, the users are either predominantly native speakers or ESL speakers, or a mixture of both. At least 60 states in the world have English as an official language. In countries such as Australia and the United States of America, English is the only ‘official’ language. In other countries, English is a co-official language, sharing its status with other languages, such as French in Canada or Afrikaans in South Africa. Elsewhere, English may have the status of an official lingua franca (a language used by speakers who do not share a native language). This is the case in India, where the primary official language is Hindi.

Native speakers are characterised by their complete fluency in the language, and it is believed there are at least 350 million of them in the world. With regard to non-native speakers, a further distinction is usually made.