Vowel Reduction

Vowels in unstressed syllables are pronounced less distinctly than those in stressed syllables. It’s possible to speak about three types of vowel reduction:

QUANTITATIVE, QUALITATIVE, COMPLETE (ZERO) REDUCTION.

1. Quantitative reduction results in the change of the length (quantity) of a vowel in an unstressed syllable. It affects long vowels and diphthongs which become half-long or short, e. g.

We have done it. /wi:/-long

We have done it. / - half-long

We did it. // - short

Diphthongs become half-long when followed by an unstressed syllable, or short, when followed by a stressed one, but it is not reflected in transcription, e. g.

I’ve done it.

I have done it.

I did it.

2. Qualitative reduction is connected with the change of the quality of a vowel. There are two types of it.

1. Qualitative soft reduction, resulting in the // phoneme. The letters “e, i, y” correspond to it in spelling: expect, cinema, city, service.

2. Qualitative hard reduction, resulting in the neutral vowel //. The letters “a, o, u” and the suffixes –er, -ar, -or, -ous correspond to it in spelling: famous, pilot, melody, actor, polar.

3. Complete reduction results in a full disappearance of a vowel in an unstressed position. It occurs before the syllabic sonorants /m, n, l/ when they are posttonic and preceded by a consonant: conversation /n/, written /tn/, pencil /sl/ as well as in different //, history //, I’m //, I’ve //.

Full and Reduced Forms

There are some words in English that retain their full forms even when they are unstressed:

1. The following words have no weak forms: ON, WELL, WHAT, THEN.

2. The negative particle ‘not’ is never reduced except when met in contracted forms: can’t, couldn’t etc.: But why not? /nt/ Of course not. /nt/

3. Prepositions in sentence-final or sense-group final positions are so slightly reduced that the quantity of short phonemes is not changed; long vowels become half-long, e. g. What are you thinking of? /v/ What have you done it for? /f/

4. “to have” as a principal verb has no weak form though unstressed in affirmative sentences, e. g. I have a sister. / v  /

Sentence Stress

Sentence stress is a greater prominence given to one or more words in a sentence. In emotionally neutral speech sentence stress is more or less equally distributed among all the notional words of the sentence. The normally accented words are:

1. Nouns.

2. Pronouns: demonstrative, indefinite, interrogative, emphatic, absolute.

3. Notional verbs.

4. Adjectives.

5. Numerals.

6. Interjections.

The unstressed elements as a rule are:

1. Pronouns: personal, possessive, reflexive, relative.

2. Auxiliary verbs.

3. Prepositions.

4. Conjunctions.

5. Articles.

6. Particles.

Sentence stress, to a greater degree, is determined by three factors:

1. By the relative semantic importance of words in the sentence which results in logical stress.

2. By the rhythmical structure of the sentence.

3. By the style of speech.