tapsand flapsare clearly separate sounds (phonemes). 7. Approximants

In the production of an approximant, one articulator is close to another, but the vocal tract is not narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is produced. Among the

approximants, we find the RP /j/and /w/, which are also referred to as semi-vowels. The voiceless companion to /j/ is the palatal fricative [c] – the sound which some English

speakers use at the beginning of words like huge and humour.

The nasals, vowels and approximantstogether make up the category of the resonants (or sonorants) in that all are made without friction of total stoppage, depending instead on vocal- fold vibration and resonance.

In broad transcription, this sound is represented as /hj/. It is important, however, to distinguish this sound from the voiceless velar fricative /x/, which is found in the Scots loch (or the German Leipzig and Pfennig).

Intonation in English

Halliday and Greaves[5] have made a detailed case that three types of meanings—textual, interpersonal, and logical—are all in part achieved through intonation. This is done, they have argued, through the choices we make in terms of (i) rising and falling pitch contour, (ii) where we locate that contour as part of a clause, throughout a whole clause, or over more than a single clause; and (iii) the shape of the contour.

According to some accounts, American English pitch has four levels: low (1), middle (2), high (3), and very high (4). Normal conversation is usually at middle or high pitch; low pitch occurs at the end of utterances other than yes-no questions, while high pitch occurs at the end of yes-no questions. Very high pitch is for strong emotion or emphasis.[1]:p.184 Pitch can indicate attitude: for example, Great uttered in isolation can indicate weak emotion (with pitch starting medium and dropping to low), enthusiasm (with pitch starting very high and ending low), or sarcasm (with pitch starting and remaining low).

Declarative sentences show a 2-3-1 pitch pattern. If the last syllable is prominent the final decline in pitch is a glide. For example, in This is fun, this is is at pitch 2, and fun starts at level 3 and glides down to level 1. But if the last prominent syllable is not the last syllable of the utterance, the pitch fall-off is a step. For example, in That can be frustrating, That can be has pitch 2, frus- has level 3, and both syllables of -trating have pitch 1.[1]:p.185 Wh-questions work the same way, as in Who (2) will (2) help (3↘1)? and Who (2) did (3) it (1)?

But if something is left unsaid, the final pitch level 1 is replaced by pitch 2. Thus in John's (2) sick (3↘2) ..., with the speaker indicating more to come, John's has pitch 2 while sick starts at pitch 3 and drops only to pitch 2.

Yes-no questions with a 2↗3 intonation pattern[3] usually have subject-verb inversion, as in Have (2) you (2) got (2) a (2) minute (3, 3)? (Here a 2↗4 contour would show more emotion, while a 1↗2 contour would show uncertainly.) Another example is Has (2) the (2) plane (3) left (3) already (3, 3, 3)?, which, depending on the word to be emphasized, could move the location of the rise, as in Has (2) the (2) plane (2) left (3) already (3, 3, 3)? or Has (2) the (2) plane (2) left (2) already (2, 3, 3)? And for example the latter question could also be framed without subject-verb inversion but with the same pitch contour: The (2) plane (2) has (2) left (2) already (2, 3, 3)?

Tag questions with declarative intent at the end of a declarative statement follow a 3↘1 contour rather than a rising contour, since they are not actually intended as yes-no questions, as in We (2) should (2) visit (3, 1) him (1), shouldn't (3, 1) we (1)? But tag questions exhibiting uncertainty, which are interrogatory in nature, have the usual 2↗3 contour, as in We (2) should (2) visit (3, 1) him (1), shouldn't (3, 3) we (3)?

Questions with or can be ambiguous in English writing with regard to whether they are either-or questions or yes-no questions. But intonation in speech eliminates the ambiguity. For example, Would (2) you (2) like (2) juice (3) or (2) soda (3, 1)? emphasizes juice and soda separately and equally and ends with a decline in pitch, thus indicating that this is not a yes-no question but rather a choice question equivalent to Which would you like: juice or soda? In contrast, Would (2) you (2) like (2) juice (3) or (3) soda (3, 3)? has yes-no intonation and thus is equivalent to Would you like something to drink (such as juice or soda)?

Thus the two basic sentence pitch contours are rising-falling and rising. However, other within-sentence rises and falls result from the placement of prominence on the stressed syllables of certain words.

Note that for declaratives or wh-questions with a final decline, the decline is located as a step-down to the syllable after the last prominently stressed syllable, or as a down-glide on the last syllable itself if it is prominently stressed. But for final rising pitch on yes-no questions, the rise always occurs as an upward step to the last stressed syllable, and the high (3) pitch is retained through the rest of the sentence.

Pitch also plays a role in distinguishing acronyms that might otherwise be mistaken for common words. For example, in the phrase "Nike asks that you play—Participate in the Lives of America's Youth",[6] the acronym play may be pronounced with a high tone to distinguish it from the verb 'play', which would also make sense in this context. Alternatively, each letter could be said individually, so play might become "P-L-A-Y" or "P.L.A.Y.". However, the high tone is only employed for disambiguation and is therefore contrastive intonation rather than true lexical tone.

Dialects of British and Irish English vary substantially,[7] with rises on many statements in urban Belfast, and falls on most questions in urban Leeds. [3]

A phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds which is/are all perceived to have the same function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. For example, the word "sound" has four phonemes: the "s", the vowel diphthong "ou", the "n", and the "d". Note that a phoneme is a feature of pronunciation, not of spelling (which in English sometimes does not relate directly to the phonemes that are present: e.g., "cough" has three phonemes — the initial consonant sound, the monopthong vowel sound "aw", and the final consonant sound "f").

The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by John C. Wells, for example, denotes 24 consonants and 23 vowels used in Received Pronunciation, plus two additional consonants and four additional vowels used in foreign words only. For General American, it provides for 25 consonants and 19 vowels, with one additional consonant and three additional vowels for foreign words. The American Heritage Dictionary, on the other hand, suggests 25 consonants and 18 vowels (including r-colored vowels) for American English, plus one consonant and five vowels for non-English terms

For example, [pʰ] as in pin and [p] as in spin are allophones for the phoneme /p/ in the English language because they cannot distinguish words (in fact, they occur in complementary distribution). English speakers treat them as the same sound, but they are different: the first is aspirated and the second is unaspirated (plain). Plain [p] also occurs as the p in cap [kʰæp], or the second p in paper [pʰeɪ.pɚ]. Chinese languages treat these two phones differently; for example in Mandarin, [p] (written b in Pinyin) and [pʰ] (written p) contrast phonemically.

There are many other allophonic processes in English, like lack of plosion, nasal plosion, partial devoicing of sonorants, complete devoicing of sonorants, partial devoicing of obstruents, lengthening and shortening vowels, and retraction.

1. Aspiration – strong explosion of breath. In English a voiceless plosive that is p, t or k is aspirated whenever it stands as the only consonant at the beginning of the stressed syllable or of the first, stressed or unstressed, syllable in a word.

2. Nasal plosion – In English a plosive (/p, t, k, b, d, ɡ/) has nasal plosion when it is followed by nasal, inside a word or across word boundary.

3. Partial devoicing of sonorants – In English sonorants (/j, w, l, r, m, n, ŋ/) are partially devoiced when they follow a voiceless sound within the same syllable.

4. Complete devoicing of sonorants – In English a sonorant is completely devoiced when it follows an aspirated plosive (/p, t, k/).

5. Partial devoicing of obstruents – In English, a voiced obstruent is partially devoiced next to a pause or next to a voiceless sound, inside a word or across its boundary.

6. Retraction – in English /t, d, n, l/ are retracted before /r/.

Because the choice of allophone is seldom under conscious control, people may not realize they exist. English speakers may be unaware of the differences among six allophones of the phoneme /t/, namely unreleased [ t̚] as in cat, aspirated [tʰ] as in top, glottalized [ʔ] as in button, flapped [ɾ] as in American English water, nasalized flapped as in winter, and none of the above [t] as in stop. However, they may become aware of the differences if, for example, they contrast the pronunciations of the following words:

Night rate: unreleased [ˈnʌɪt̚.ɹʷeɪt̚] (without word space between . and ɹ)

Nitrate: aspirated [ˈnaɪ.tʰɹ̥eɪt̚] or retracted [ˈnaɪ.tʃɹʷeɪt̚]

If a flame is held before the lips while these words are spoken, it flickers more during aspirated nitrate than during unaspirated night rate. The difference can also be felt by holding the hand in front of the lips. For a Mandarin speaker, to whom /t/ and /tʰ/ are separate phonemes, the English distinction is much more obvious than it is to the English speaker who has learned since childhood to ignore it.

Allophones of English /l/ may be noticed if the 'light' [l] of leaf [ˈliːf] is contrasted with the 'dark' [ɫ] of feel [ˈfiːɫ]. Again, this difference is much more obvious to a Turkish speaker, for whom /l/ and /ɫ/ are separate phonemes, than to an English speaker, for whom they are allophones of a single phoneme.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 868