4. Combinations of plosive and fricative consonants.

When a plosive consonant precedes a fricative consonant, in a word or at a junction of words it has its release during the pronunciation of the fricative. This phenomenon is the result of close coarticulation of adjacent consonants in English and is called fricative plosion.

e.g.: wants, lamps, outside.

Alveolar consonants before [θ, δ].

At the junction of the alveolar consonants [t, d, n, l, s, z] and the interdental consonants [θ, δ] regressive assimilation affecting the place of articulation is observed: the alveolar consonants are represented by their dental variants.

e.g.: sixth, in the morning, at the top.

Combinations of consonants with [w].

Consonants preceding [w], especially in a stressed syllable, are lip-rounded (labialized), i.e. regressive assimilation affecting the position of lips takes place: twice, quite, sweet.

When the consonant [w] is preceded by a voiceless consonant there is also some devoicing of the sonorant (progressive assimilation affecting the work of the vocal cords). The devoicing is especially strong after [t, k] in a stressed syllable and is weaker in unstressed syllables and at a syllable or word boundary. Thus in the clusters [tw, kw, sw] double (reciprocal) assimilation takes place: swim, twelve, quick.

5. Two-stress rhythm.

Structures with two stressed syllables only

This is the simplest form of two-stress rhythm. It occurs in utterances consisting of two monosyllabic words or one compound two-syllable word when both the words (or parts of a word) carry equally important information. In this case the first stress is usually static and the second — kinetic (nuclear) or else both stresses can be kinetic (e. g. Fall-Rise Divided).

`Make ˎsure `Come ˎon ̍Up`stair

Structures with two stressed and intervening (промежуточный) unstressed syllables

Each of the two rhythmic groups in such structures has unstressed syllables preceding or/and following the stressed one.

The shortest utterances following this pattern consist of two polysyllabic notional words or (more rarely) one double-stressed word. They are typical of elliptical sentences used as short replies, headlines and titles, interrogative(вопросительный) responses or imperatives.

• Ped̍estrian `Crossing

• ̍Leaving toḿorrow?

• To↷morrow ˇmorning.

Structures with two stressed syllables and intervening unstressed ones

These structures are characteristic of utterances containing two notional words with intervening functional ones. The functional words which occur between the two stressed words can be attached to either of them depending on their grammatical and semantical relations.

• I’ll ̍do it my`self.

• ̍Is he ́really?

• It’s ̍made of ˇcotton.

Structures with two stressed and intervening unstressed syllables in the utterances with more than two notional words

Utterances containing more than two notional words have a two-stress rhythmic structure when only two of the notional words carry important information and receive full-stress prominence. There are often partially stressed syllables in these utterances. They do not form rhythmic-groups of their own but belong to the rhythmic-groups formed by the preceding or the following full stress.

• It’s a ̍modern ·technical `college.

• Could we ̍meet a little ́later?

• I ad̍vise you to ·do it ˇnow.