Degree of completeness:

According to the degree of completeness assimilation can be:

• Complete – two adjoining sounds become alike or merge into one (cupboard – [kabƏd]);

• Incomplete – sounds are affected partially by each other (try – the sonorant [r] is partly devoiced by the voiceless [t]).

3. Degree of stability:

According to the degree of stability assimilation can be:

• Obligatory – can be met in historical words (orchard = ort + yard – [o:tjƏd] – [o:t∫Əd]).

• Non-obligatory – can be met in fluent speech (ten girls - [ten gƏ:lz – teηgƏ:lz]).

Nasal plosion

When a plosive is followed by the syllabic [m] or [n] it has no release of its own, the nasal plosion is produced (garden, kitten, mitten, happen, shipmate).

Lateral plosion

When a plosive is followed by [l] the closure produced for the plosive is released together with the sound [l] (little, cattle, please, candle).

Aspiration

The noise voiceless consonants [p, t, k] are pronounced with aspiration. It is an additional noise created at the moment of moving from a consonant to a vowel. The strongest aspiration is produced before a stressed long vowel or before a diphthong [pi:z, paund, ti:, ko:l]. It is weaker before a short vowel or before unstressed vowel [pit, ka:pit]. Aspiration is absent when [p, t, k] are preceded by [s] or followed by a consonant [spi:k, pli:z, trein, stei, skoti∫].

Palatalization

It is a softening of a consonant produced by raising of a blade towards the hard palate. In English only two sounds are palatalized: [∫] and [ζ].

Syllable structure

A syllable is a speech unit consisting of a sound or a sound sequence one of which is heard to be more prominent than the others.

The most prominent sound being the peak or the nucleus of a syllable is called syllabic.

Syllabic sounds are usually vowels and sonorants.

Syllable division

1. If a stressed vowel is followed by a consonant but not sound [r], this consonant belongs to the next unstressed syllable. Thus a stressed syllable becomes open: stu-dent.

2. If a stressed vowel is followed by the sound [r], a stressed syllable becomes closed: ve-ry, ci-ty, pi-ty, co-py.

3. If a stressed vowel is divided from the next vowel by 2 or more consonants, the first consonant belongs to the first syllable closing it: din-ner, mer-ry.

4. If one of the consonants is a sonorant, a stressed syllable becomes open: ta-ble.

Types of syllables

Stressed syllables can be divided into 4 types:

1. The closed syllable – a stressed vowel is followed by 1 or more consonants and a stressed vowel gives a short sound: cat, pet, not, nut, sit, symbol.

2. The open syllable – a syllable ends in a vowel and a stressed vowel gives an alphabetic sound: me, tidy, note, mute, late.

3. A syllable consisting of a stressed vowel followed by unreadable ‘r’ shows that the vowel is long: a + r = [a:] car, park, o + r = [o:] port, e, i, y, u + r = [Ə:] bird, perfect, Myrtle, burn.

4. A syllable consisting of a stressed vowel followed by ‘re’: i,y + re = [aiƏ] admire, tyre, a + re = [eƏ] bare, fare, care, e + re = [iƏ] here, u + re = [juƏ] pure, cure, o + re = [o:] more, before, pore.

Word stress

There are three degrees of word stress:

• Stressed syllables,

• Half-stressed syllables (secondary stress),

• Unstressed syllables.

Example: _‘organi’zation

Word stress position

1. In words consisting of 2 syllables the first syllable is stressed: office, dinner. Exceptions: begin, return (in these words the first syllable is a prefix which lost its semantic meaning).

2. In words consisting of 3 or more syllables the third syllable from the end is stressed and its vowel is closed: family, experiment. But if this syllable contains sound [u], it becomes open: numeral, musical.

3. Suffixes and endings do not influence on word stress: ‘demonstrate, ;demonstrated, ‘demonstrating.

4. But if a noun is created by adding of suffix ion to a verb, a syllable followed by the suffix is stressed: demons’tration.

5. Compound words are usually single-stressed: ‘blackboard, ‘reading-room, ‘suitcase, ‘raincoat, ‘music-hall.

6. Word stress usually shifts in different parts of speech: