Strong and weak forms

Words which bear the major part of information are content / notional words: nouns, adjectives, notional verbs, adverbs, numerals, interrogative and demonstrative pronouns. They have only strong form.

Words without lexical meaning are function words: auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, particles, personal and possessive pronouns. When unstressed in a sentence they are pronounced shorter, weaker, less carefully, very often their pronunciation changed. The function words have two different forms of pronunciation: 1) a full, unreduced version to be found in a dictionary; 2) modified, reduced version used in unstressed position.

Any word, whether lexical or structural, may be specially stressed for the sake of emphasis. It is important to remember that there are certain contexts where only the strong form is acceptable. There are some fairly simple rules:

1. Prepositions: a) at a very end of an intonation group or phrase; b) at the end of intonation group or phrase when they are followed by the unstressed pronoun; c) polysyllabic prepositions followed by a pronoun at the end of a phrase.

2. Auxiliary and modal verbs: a) at a very end of an intonation group or phrase; b) at the beginning of general and alternative questions in careful colloquial style; c) contracted negative forms; d) in short answers to questions; e) Auxiliary verb ‘do’ is stressed in emphatic sentences.

3. The following form words have no weak forms: what, where, which, how, on, in, with, then.

4. The demonstrative pronoun that.

5. The absolute forms of possessive pronouns: mine, yours.

6. Conjunctions are stressed when they are sentence-initial and followed by an unstressed personal pronoun: If she wants.

7. Personal pronouns are stressed when they are connected with a noun by the conjunction ‘and’: Your mother and I.

Unstressed vocalism

Vowels in unstressed position may change in quality and in quantity, or remain unchanged. Vowels in unstressed syllables are perceived as short, weak and indistinct. The peculiarity of the unstressed vocalism in the English language is that vowels in unstressed position may preserve their full (non-reduced) form. As a rule in words of foreign origin (French, Latin, Greek, Spanish etc.) vowels remain unchanged in the unstressed position: paragraph, photograph, city, potato, issue, convoy, survey, tumult.

Phonemic status of the “schwa” vowel

The unstressed syllables are usually associated with the vowels of central or centralized quality [ə], [i], sometimes[υ] and the diphthongs [əυ], [ai]. The major role belongs to the neutral sound [ə], which may alternate with any vowel of full formation.

On the phonological level the question arises about the phonemic status of the neutral vowel whether it is an independent phoneme, or a variant of the phoneme with which it alternates. This question can be explained in terms of the distinctive function of the phoneme. In pairs like I read some book [sʌm] (certain); I read some books [səm] (several). Similar pairs some [sʌm]-some [səm] in which members differ in quality prove an independent phonemic status of the schwa [ə].

The phonological analysis marks the opposition of the neutral sound schwa [ə] to other unstressed vowels. The most common among them being the phoneme [i ]. In the pairs officers-offices and such like the schwa [ə] is phonologically opposed to the phoneme [i] with its own distinctive features capable of differentiating the meaning of lexical units. So the neutral sound schwa [ə] is an independent phoneme.

The problem of the phonemic status of the neutral sound schwa [ə] has a morphological aspect. In English there are numerous alternations of vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables between the derivatives of the same root or different grammatical forms of the same word: man-postman, photo-photographer. The alternated sounds are allophones of one and the same phoneme as they are derivatives of the same lexical units, the same morphemes. Thus the neutral sounds are neutralized allophones of the non-reduced vowels of full formation.

Glossary of phonetic terms

Strong forms – the forms that can be observed in accented words.

Strong vowels in weak positions – vowels the quality of which is not reduced in unstressed position: blackboard.

Weak vowels – the vowels which are shorter and less distinct, sometimes they are reduced to the neutral vowel.

Unit VIII

Intonation

1. Structure of the tone unit.

2. Speech melody.

3. Tones.

4. Heads.

5. Tempo of speech.

6. Rhythm.

7. Sentence stress.

Structure of the tone unit

Though intonation is a feature of the spoken language, it is present in every sentence, in written and oral speech and in inner speech as well.

Intonation implies variations of pitch, force of utterance, tempo and timbre.

Variations of pitch are produced by significant moves of the voice up and down.

The force component of intonation is measured by the degree of loudness of syllables that determines the prominence of words.

The tempo is determined by the rate of speech and the length of pauses.

Timbre is a special colouring of human voice.

The approach to study of intonation is based on two general functions:

1. The Constitutive function – to form sentences.

2. The Distinctive function – to distinguish the communicative type of a sentence, the actual meaning of a sentence, the speaker’s emotions, attitudes.

Intonation is a powerful means of human intercommunication. So the communicative function is the main function of intonation. It is realized in various ways. Intonation serves: a) to structure the information content of a textual unit so as to show which information is given (the theme) and which is new (the rheme); b) to determine the speech function of a phrase, i.e. to indicate whether it is a statement, question, command etc.; с) to convey connotational meanings of ‘attitude’ such as surprise, annoyance, involvement etc.; d) to structure a text; intonation delimitates texts into smaller units and, at the same time, it integrates these smaller constituents forming a complete text; e) to differentiate the meaning of textual units of the same grammatical structure and the same lexical composition, which is the distinctive, or phonological function of intonation; f) to characterize a particular style or variety of oral speech which may be called.

Intonation group or syntagma is a phonetically organized part of utterance or the whole utterance capable of carrying communicative meaning.

Tones are basic elements of intonation. They are divided into: 1. Static (level) tones; 2. Kinetic tones.

Kinetic tones are more significant for the utterance: they give prominence to a word and refer to the total meaning of the utterances.

Each tone group has one or more highlighted (prominent) words. The syllables where the fall or the rise occurs is tonic syllable. The word contains the tonic syllable is tonic word. The tonic word is the most significant word in a tone unit because it conveys new information:

-Can I get some cornflakes?

-Do you want a small or a large packet?

-A small one.

The tone carried the most important word, which is generally the last notional word in the intonation group, is called the nuclear tone. It is usually kinetic and terminal, since it is always the last tone in an intonation group and serves its boundary marker. The term ‘tone’ should be distinguished from the term ‘tune’. Tone is a particular pitch pattern on a syllable used to make semantic distinctions Tune is used to refer to the pitch pattern of the whole intonation group and may comprise several tones. The stressed and unstressed syllables within the tune form several component parts according to their position and function in the tune. The structure of the tone unit can be shown as:

Prehead –>Head –>Nucleus –>Tail

Prehead – unstressed or partially stressed syllables which precede the first full stress.

The head – the stretch of utterance extending from the first stressed syllable up to, but not including, the nuclear syllable.

Nucleus – the syllable bearing the nuclear (terminal) tone.

Tail – unstressed or partially stressed syllables following the nucleus.

The number of the component parts in a tune may vary. The only indispensable element of a tune is a nucleus. Pitch movements together with loudness and the tempo of speech form an intonation pattern (IP) which is the basic unit of intonation. An IP contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables normally preceding or following the nucleus.

Intonation patterns serve to actualize syntagms in oral speech.

The syntagm is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete. Actualized syntagms are called intonation groups.