Questions for discussions:

1. The accentual structure of English words.

2. Types and degrees of word-stress.

3. Positions, tendencies and functions of word-stress.

Questions to be discussed:

1. How many phonemen may a syllable consist of?

2. What sounds may perform syllables in English?

3. What speech sounds are called syllabic and non-syllabic?

4. What are the main function of the syllable?

Phonemes are seldom pronounced in isolation, they usually occur in sequences. Any speech flow consists of series of peaks and valleys of prominence with the more sonorous phonemes at the peaks and the less sonorous in the valleys. Thus, sound sequences are acoustically broken up into smaller units known as syllables, which are the minimal units of sounding speech.

A syllable may consist of one or a number of phonemes, i.e. it may be formed by any vowel (alone or in combination with consonants) or by a word-final sonorant (/l, m, n, ŋ/) preceded by a consonant, as in /ai/ (I), /a:/ (are), /wi:/ ( we) /æt/ (at), /ten/ (ten), /hot/ (hot), /`æpl/ ( apple), /`ga:dn/ (garden), / stei/ (stay), /ri:dz/ ( reads ), /strict/ (strict), /`beikŋ/ (bacon), etc.

A speech sound which is capable of forming a syllable is called syllabic. It is the most sonorous sound in the syllable and makes up the peak of prominence.

Speech sounds which are not capable of forming a syllable are called non-syllabic. They are the less sonorous sounds of the syllable and make up the valleys of prominence.

Prof. V.AVassilyev defines the syllable as “one or more speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted unit of utterance , which may be a whole word, e.g. /mæn/ (man), or a commonly recognized and separable subdivision of a word, e.g. /`in-gli∫/ (English) or wordform, e.g. /`lei-tә/ (later).

The syllabic structure of words of may be graphically represented by the letter V standing for a vowel sound, and the letter C standing for a consonant sound. The syllabic sonorant is represented by S.

Every syllable has a definite structure. It belongs to one of the following four main types of syllables: V, VC, CV, CVC. They are classified as covered, uncovered, open and closed.

A syllable which begins in a consonant is called uncovered, a syllable which begins in a consonant is called covered. A syllable which ends in a vowe..is called open, a syllable which ends in a consonant is called closed.

So, the main types of syllables may be defined in the following way:

V- uncovered, open; e.g. / / (or), /ia/ (I), /a:/ (are);

VC- uncovered, closed; e.g. /it/ (it), /æd/ (add);

CV- covered, open; e.g. /si:/ (see), /nou/ (no), /mi:/ (me);

CVC- covered, closed; e.g. /kæt∫/ (catch), /pit/ (pit).

There are a great number of variants in the syllabic structure which are formed by increasing the number of consonants in the initial and final position, as in:

VCC (e.g. and, act, oaks, ask, else, and, old, eggs, etc. );

VCCC ( e.g. ends, acts, asks, ants, elks, aunts, angle, etc.);

CCV (e.g. blue, clay, cry, fly, grow, stay, sky, dry, etc.);

CCCV (e.g. spray, straw, screw, scry, sprue, scree, etc.);

CVCC (e.g. cats, goats, pens, child, bolt, fact, rags, etc.);

CVCCC ( e.g. child’s, facts, minds, bulbs, bolts, etc.);

CCVC (e.g. sleep, speak, black, cries, frame, shrew, etc.);

CCVCC (e.g. stoves, placed, flex, gloves, dressed, etc.);

CCVCCC ( e.g. clasps, grasped, sphinx, flanks, scuffles, etc.)

CCCVC (e.g. street, strong, scream, splash, stress, etc.)

CCCVCC (e.g. splint, strikes, screams, streets, splashed, etc.);

CCCVCCC ( e.g. splints, strengths, strands, sprints, etc.);

The most common syllables that sonorants form are of Ş, CŞ and CŞC types. For instance, Ş type: / ‘æp-l/ (apple), / ‘ b٨t-n/ (button), / ‘rið-m/ ( ‘rhythm); CŞ type: / ‘tei-bl/ (table), / ‘ ga:dn/ (garden), / ‘ nou-bl/ (no-ble), / ‘i:tn/ (eaten);

CŞC type: / ‘nei-∫nz/ (nations), / ‘ou-pnz/ (opens), /dik‘tei-∫nz/ (dictations); etc.

Kazakh sonorants are non-syllabic.

There are several theories – which try to explain the mechanism the of syllable formation and syllable division.

The oldest of them in the so-called expiratory theory (also breath-puff, pressure, or’chest theory). According to this theory each syllable corresponds to one expiration. A word consists of аs many syllables as there are such expirations made when the word is uttered. Each syllable begins with a fresh expiration. For instance, the word “forty” has two syllables. According to the expiratory theory there must be two expirations. The point where a new expiration starts indicates the syllabic boundary of the word.

The expiratory theory is strongly criticized here and abroad (by B.I.Zhinkin, O.P. Torsuyev, A.C.Gimson and others). According to the last experimental data more than ten syllables can easily be pronounced during one expiration.

Next appared the so-called sonority theory of the syllable. It was propounded by Otto Jesperson. This theory is nowadays widespread among foreign linguists. The term “sonority” is taken by O.Jesperson as ‘the degree of perceptibility”.

All speech sounds have different inherent sonority. The most sonorous are open back vowel, the least sonorous are the voiceless tope. O.Jesperson classified all speech sounds according to seven levels of sonority:

The sequence of / ‘CVCV/ has a closed syllable and an open one / ‘CVC-V/ if the stressed vowel is a short monophthong, e.g.

/ ‘pit-i/ (pity), / ‘b٨t-∂/ (butter),

/ ‘ mer-i/ (merry), / ‘k p-i/ (copy)

/ ‘æp-l/ (apple), / ‘les-n/ (lesson),

/ ‘ful-i/ (fully), / ‘priz-m/ (prism), etc.

Syllables of this type present a great difficulty to Russian and Kazakh students because in similar Russian and Kazakh words there are two open syllables. In English the intervocalic consonants of this type initially strong while in Russian and Kazakh they are finally strong.

Short and long monophthongs and diphthong make for an open type of syllable if they are unstressed and are separated from the adjacent vowels by only one consonant, e.g.

/ ri:-‘ækt/ (react) / mju:‘- ziәm/ (museum),

/bi-‘gin/ (begim) / :-‘gænik/ (artistic),

/mæ-‘leiz/ (malaise) /a:-‘tistik/ (artistic),

/ә-‘gein/ (again), /nou-‘t :riәs/ (notorious),

/i-vækju-‘ei∫n/ (evacuation),

/Juә-‘reiзjәn/ (Eurasian), etc.

Phonetic and orthographic syllables should not be confused. They sometimes coincide and sometimes do not. For instance, phonetically disyllabic words like “apple”, “higher”, “eaten”, “flower”, “battle”, “fire”, “drizzle”, etc. are treated in writing as monosyllabic words. Whereas orthographically disyllabic words like “type”, “come”, “wrote”, “theme”, “change”, etc. have only one phonetic syllable.

Here are some examples:

/ а:-‘tis-tik / art-ist-ic

/ ‘ drai-vә/ driv-er The syllabic boudary does not coicide

/ ‘ lei-tә/ lat-er

/ ‘ә:-li/ ear-ly

/ ‘ iә-dr٨m/ drum The syllabic boundary coincides

/ ‘leit-li/ late-ly

The phonetic syllable division is governed by the three rules which have been stated above. The orthographic syl­lable division is governed by the morphemic principle, as in: star-less, writ-er, read-ing, do-er, rang-ing, pre-war, dis-­crete, help-less, etc.

The syllabic structure of English performs three main functions:

(1) corstltutlve,

2. distinctive, and

3. recognitive^.

(Compare it with thethree functions of the phonemic struc­ture of English. See Part One).

The syllabic structure fulfils constitutive function because syllables constitute the material forms of all the words, phrases and sentences. The latter cannot exist without syllables. Such words as: /a:/ (are), /о:/ (ore), /ai/ (I), etc., when pro­nounced in isolation are at the same time syllables (and pho­nemes as well).

The distinctive function of the syllabic structure in­cludes differences in both syllable formation and syllable divi­sion. Presence or absence of a syllable in one and the same po­sition, as well as different syllabic boundaries may differen­tiate one word (or phrase, or sentence) from another word (or phrase, or sentence).

Here are some phonological:, oppositions of presence vs. ab­sence of a syllable in the same position in a minimal pair:

/bet/ - /'betә/ (bet - better);

/belt/ - /ә'belt/ (bate - abate);

/dri:m/ - /'dri:mi/ (dream - dreamy);

/sli:p/ - /ә's1i:р/ (sleep - asleep);

/sli:p/ - /'sli:pә/ (sleep - sleeper), etc.

The distinctive function of syllable division may be illus­trated by only one example:

/'nai-treit/ - /'nait-reit/ (nitrate - night-rate).

The number of combinations of words distinguished from each other by different syllabic boundaries is rather considerable:

	a name	an aim
I scream		ice-cream
a nice house		- an ice house
He had a black tie		- He had a blacked eye
not a tall one		- not at all one
I saw her eyes		- I saw her rise
pick it		- picket
a jar		- ajar
that's tough		- that stuff
confined		- can find
a notion		- an ocean
I saw the meat		- I saw them eat, etc.

The recognitive function of the syllabic structure man­ifests itself in the fact that the right syllabic' boundary makes it easier to recognize words, phrases and sentences. Compare the following (Mind that wrong pronunciation produces a phonetic but not a phonological mistake.):

Correct proruncietlon Incorrect pronunciation happy /'hæp-i/ /'hæ-pi/

Stand up! /'staæd'٨p/ /'stæn 'd٨р/

an apple /әn’pl/ /ә’næpl/

at eight /әt 'en t/ /ә'teit/, etc.

The violation of the recognitive function of the syllabic structure results in the following:

1. wrong syllable division produces a strong foreign accent;

2. it produces a comic impression upon an Englishman;

3. it hampers the process of communication

Unstressed vocalism of English

Vocalism - the system of vowels used in a particular language.

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel.

In all languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages which have them) coda. However, some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic l in the English word table [ˈteɪ.bl̩] (the stroke under the l indicates that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables), or the r in Serbian vrt [vr̩t] "garden".

We might note the conflict between the phonetic definition of 'vowel' (a sound produced with no constriction in the vocal tract) and the phonological definition (a sound that forms the peak of a syllable).[1] The approximants [j] and [w] illustrate this conflict: both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but they occur on the edge of syllables, such as at the beginning of the English words 'yes' and 'wet' (which suggests that phonologically they are consonants). The American linguist Kenneth Pike suggested the terms 'vocoid' for a phonetic vowel and 'vowel' for a phonological vowel,[2] so using this terminology, [j] and [w] are classified as vocoids but not vowels.

The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "speaking", because in most languages words and thus speech are not possible without vowels. Vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them.

Articulation

Vowels v • d • e

Close i · y

ɨ · ʉ

ɯ · u

ɪ · ʏ

ɪ̈ · ʊ

ʊ

e · ø

ɘ · ɵ

ɤ · o

ə

ɛ · œ

ɜ · ɞ

ʌ · ɔ

æ

ɐ

a · ɶ

ɑ · ɒ

Near-close

Close-mid

Mid

Open-mid

Near-open

Open

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents

a rounded vowel. Vowel length is indicated by appending ː.

X-rays of Daniel Jones' [i, u, a, ɑ].

The articulatory features that distinguish different vowel sounds are said to determine the vowel's quality. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the common features height (vertical dimension), backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip position). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic IPA vowel diagram on the right. There are however still more possible features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.

Vowel height is named for the vertical position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. In high vowels, such as [i] and [u], the tongue is positioned high in the mouth, whereas in low vowels, such as [a], the tongue is positioned low in the mouth. The IPA prefers the terms close vowel and open vowel, respectively, which describes the jaw as being relatively open or closed. However, vowel height is an acoustic rather than articulatory quality, and is defined today not in terms of tongue height, or jaw openness, but according to the relative frequency of the first formant (F1). The higher the F1 value, the lower (more open) the vowel; height is thus inversely correlated to F1.[3]

The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies seven different vowel heights:

close vowel (high vowel)

near-close vowel

close-mid vowel

mid vowel

open-mid vowel

near-open vowel

open vowel (low vowel)

True mid vowels do not contrast with both close-mid and open-mid in any language, and the letters [e ø ɤ o] are typically used for either close-mid or mid vowels.

Although English contrasts all six contrasting heights in its vowels, these are interdependent with differences in backness, and many are parts of diphthongs. It appears that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters. The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, reported to distinguish four heights (close, close-mid, mid, and near-open) each among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, plus an open central vowel: /i e ɛ̝ æ̝/, /y ø œ̝ɶ̝/, /u o ɔ̝ɒ̝/, /a/. Otherwise, the usual limit on the number of contrasting vowel heights is four.

The parameter of vowel height appears to be the primary feature of vowels cross-linguistically in that all languages use height contrastively. No other parameter, such as front-back or rounded-unrounded (see below), is used in all languages. Some languages have vertical vowel systems in which, at least at a phonemic level, only height is used to distinguish vowels.

Backness

Tongue positions of cardinal front vowels with highest point indicated. The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness

Vowel backness is named for the position of the tongue during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. In front vowels, such as [i], the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as [u], the tongue is positioned towards the back of the mouth. However, vowels are defined as back or front not according to actual articulation, but according to the relative frequency of the second formant (F2). The higher the F2 value, the fronter the vowel; backness is thus inversely correlated to F2.

The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies five different degrees of vowel backness:

front vowel

near-front vowel

central vowel

near-back vowel

back vowel

Although English has vowels at all five degrees of backness, there is no known language that distinguishes all five without additional differences in height or rounding.

Roundedness

Roundedness refers to whether the lips are rounded or not. In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels, and is not distinctive. Usually the higher a back vowel is, the more intense the rounding. However, some languages treat roundedness and backness separately, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), most Uralic languages (Estonian has a rounding contrast for /o/ and front vowels), Turkic languages (with an unrounded /u/), Vietnamese (with back unrounded vowels), and Korean (with a contrast in both front and back vowels).

Nonetheless, even in languages such as German and Vietnamese, there is usually some phonetic correlation between rounding and backness: front rounded vowels tend to be less front than front unrounded vowels, and back unrounded vowels tend to be less back than back rounded vowels. That is, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their typical position.

Different kinds of labialization are also possible. In mid to high rounded back vowels the lips are generally protruded ("pursed") outward, a phenomenon known as exolabial rounding because the insides of the lips are visible, whereas in mid to high rounded front vowels the lips are generally "compressed", with the margins of the lips pulled in and drawn towards each other, a phenomenon known as endolabial rounding. However, not all languages follow this pattern. The Japanese /u/, for example, is an endolabial (compressed) back vowel, and sounds quite different from an English exolabial /u/. Swedish and Norwegian are the only two known languages where this feature is contrastive, having both endo- and exo-labial close front rounded vowels and close central rounded vowels, respectively. In many phonetic treatments, both are considered types of rounding, but some phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of a single phenomenon of rounding, and prefer instead the three independent terms rounded (exolabial), compressed (endolabial), and spread (unrounded).

Nasalization

Nasalization refers to whether some of the air escapes through the nose. In nasal vowels, the velum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. French, Polish and Portuguese contrast nasal and oral vowels.

Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages only have voiced vowels, but several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and devoiced vowels. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. In Japanese and Quebec French, vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced.

Modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, these co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon language, vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In cases like this, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast. This combination of phonetic cues (i.e. phonation, tone, stress) is known as register or register complex.

Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa. The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles the tense/lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. ATR vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract.

Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract

Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages; Sedang uses this contrast, as do the Tungusic languages. Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root, but is acoustically distinct.

A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occurs in the Northeast Caucasian languages and the Khoisan languages. These might be called epiglottalized, since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis.

The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords.

Note that the terms pharyngealized, epiglottalized, strident, and sphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably.

Rhotic vowels

Main article: R-colored vowel

Rhotic vowels are the "R-colored vowels" of English and a few other languages.

Tenseness/checked vowels vs. free vowels

Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of tense vowels as in leap, suit vs. lax vowels as in lip, soot. This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this.

Unlike the other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainly Germanic languages, e.g. English), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g. Spanish) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way. In discourse about the English language, "tense and lax" are often used interchangeably with "long and short", respectively, because the features are concomitant in the common varieties of English. This cannot be applied to all English dialects or other languages.

In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables. Therefore, they are also known as checked vowels, whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable.

Acoustics

Spectrogram of vowels [i, u, ɑ]. [ɑ] is a low vowel, so its F1 value is higher than that of [i] and [u], which are high vowels. [i] is a front vowel, so its F2 is substantially higher than that of [u] and [ɑ], which are back vowels.

The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time.

The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequencies while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen at right: The [i] and [u] have similar low first formants, whereas [ɑ] has a higher formant.

The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear at right, where the front vowel [i] has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so an alternative measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, some people prefer to plot as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.)

In the third edition of his textbook, Peter Ladefoged recommended use of plots of F1 against F2 – F1 to represent vowel quality.[4] However, in the fourth edition, he changed to adopt a simple plot of F1 against F2,[5] and this simple plot of F1 against F2 was maintained for the fifth (and final) edition of the book.[6] Katrina Hayward compares the two types of plots and concludes that plotting of F1 against F2 – F1 "is not very satisfactory because of its effect on the placing of the central vowels",[7] so she also recommends use of a simple plot of F1 against F2. In fact, this kind of plot of F1 against F2 has been used by analysts to show the quality of the vowels in a wide range of languages, including RP British English,[8][9] the Queen's English,[10] American English,[11] Singapore English,[12] Brunei English,[13] North Frisian,[14] Turkish Kabardian,[15] and various indigenous Australian languages.[16]

R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values.

Rounding is generally realized by a complex relationship between F2 and F3 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.

A common mistake is to transcribe full vowels for English unstressed syllables. If you transcribe banana as [bænænæ], you are claiming that all three vowels are identical (except in loudness). Even in the slowest and most careful pronunciations, this isn't true. What symbol should be used instead?

The short, sort of accurate, answer is: all unstressed syllables in English have the "schwa" []. The exceptions are that final unstressed syllables can sometimes have full vowels (e.g., potato) and [i] can often be unstressed even in the middle of words (e.g., radiate).

The longer, more accurate answer relies on the distinction between narrow and broad transcription.

Unstressed vowels in English are quite variable. The same speaker will pronounce the vowel [] in the second syllable of enough much the same way every time, but the schwa in the first syllable can be pronounced very differently on different occasions, sometimes even resembling full vowels like [], [], or [].

But if we are interested in a broad transcription, we will ignore them: we will only want to record those differences in sound which can affect the meaning of a word, and in English none of the variation in the first syllable will cause enough to mean something else. So for a broad transcription we use a single cover symbol for all the variations of the unstressed vowel, namely [].

Schwa and R

In broad transcriptions, Rogers transcribes the "er" sound of words like fur/fir as [], even when this occurs in a stressed syllable. This choice has the initial advantage for many learners that all you have to do is turn the more familiar "er" upside down. It has the disadvantage that it's not an accurate reflection of what the mouth is doing. The consonant [] is made by curling the tongue tip upward. In a word like fur, the tongue tip is already curled up by the end of the [f], usually earlier. There is simply no slice of time between the [f] and the [] that we can call a vowel.

One common solution to this problem is to transcribe the "er" sound with the special IPA symbol []. Unfortunately, there are no special symbols to solve the similar problem with [n], [l], and [m] -- for example, in normal speech there is simply no vowel between the [t] and the [n] of button, despite the usual broad transcription . We will return to this problem later in the course when we discuss "syllabicity". For now, it's easiest to continue using schwas in broad transcriptions of words like these.

A dialect glitch

Many speakers of English have intuitions that there are two different unstressed vowels and changing one for the other can change the meaning of the word.

The classical minimal pair to illustrate this distinction, in dialects that make it, is roses versus Rosa's. You could record a speaker of such a dialect saying roses and Rosa's a hundred times each and plot on a graph the position of the speaker's tongue during the final vowel. There would be a large cloud of different positions for roses and a large cloud of positions for Rosa's -- there would be a large area where the two clouds overlapped, but it would still be clear the clouds had different centres.

If you did the same graph for a speaker of a dialect that doesn't make this distinction (like me), the two clouds would overlap so much that there would be no justification for saying that the two words had different vowels.

In transcribing roses and Rosa's, the difference between narrow and broad transcription is again relevant.

For a narrow transcription of a particular utterance, you would record the unstressed vowel as accurately as possible. If utterance 27 of roses was the same as utterance 83 of Rosa's, the two would be transcribed the same way.

For a broad transcription, you would pay more attention to the central positions of the two clouds, which suggest how the two words are generally pronounced.

For dialects which do not contrast the words, where there is really only one cloud, the same symbol would be used for both words: [ozz].

For dialects which do contrast the two words, where the clouds overlap but have different centres, you would use two different symbols; the usual choices are schwa and barred-i, []: Rosa's [ozz] and roses [ozz].

The transcriptions in the textbook fall somewhere in between. Rogers generally uses schwa for the vowels of unstressed syllables, but occasionally uses [] in words where dialects which make the schwa/barred-i constrast would use barred-i, e.g., relax. (This is not entirely consistent. Even if a speaker does have two clouds for their unstressed vowels, the grounds for identifying the higher cloud with the vowel of hit are no stronger than the grounds for identifying the lower cloud with the vowel of cup.)

In my transcriptions, I will only use [] for neutral unstressed vowels, i.e., for all unstressed vowels that are not full vowels, like the [i] in happy or [o] in potato. On assignments and tests, using schwa in broad transcriptions will always be acceptable. It's also a good habit to get into, as one way of unlearning habits that might carry over from English spelling.

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (also spelled shwa) can mean the following:

An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. Such vowels are often transcribed with the symbol <ə>, regardless of their actual phonetic value.

The mid-central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded) in the middle of the vowel chart, stressed or unstressed. In IPA phonetic transcription, it is written as the phone [ə]. In this case the term mid-central vowel may be used instead of schwa to avoid ambiguity.

The Latin letter ə and the Cyrillic letter ә.

Vowel reduction is the term in phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of vowels, which are related to changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for Creek language[1]), and which are perceived as "weakening".

In phonology, vowel reduction refers to a reduction of the number of distinct vowels, rather than their quality, either over time or when comparing related dialects. In some cases these two concepts may be related. For example, when vowels are phonetically reduced in English, there is also a reduction in the number of vowel contrasts. In other cases, however, phonemic reduction is due to historical vowel mergers (such as the merger of the a vowels in Mary, merry, marry in much of the United States) and has nothing to do with "weakening".

Weakening of vowels

Phonetic reduction most often involves a centralization of the vowel, that is, a reduction in the amount of movement of the tongue in pronouncing the vowel, as with the characteristic change of many unstressed vowels at the ends of English words to something approaching schwa.

Such vowel reduction is one of the sources of distinction between a spoken language and its written counterpart. Vernacular and formal speech often have different levels of vowel reduction, and so the term "vowel reduction" is also applied to differences in a language variety with respect to, e.g., the language standard.

A well-researched type of reduction is that of the neutralization of acoustic distinctions in unstressed vowels, which occurs in many languages. The most common reduced vowel is schwa.

Sound duration is a common factor in reduction: In fast speech, vowels are reduced due to physical limitations of the articulatory organs, e.g., the tongue cannot move to a prototypical position fast or completely enough to produce a full-quality vowel. Compare: clipping (phonetics). Different languages have different types of vowel reduction, and this is one of the difficulties in language acquisition; see, e.g., "Non-native pronunciations of English" and "Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages". Vowel reduction of second language speakers is a separate study.

Some languages, such as Finnish, Hindi, and classical Spanish, are claimed to lack vowel reduction. At the other end of the spectrum, Slovene has a stressed reduced vowel: /e/ appears as schwa [ə] in some reducing environments (such as /er/ when no other vowel is adjacent), even when the syllable is stressed.

Stress-related vowel reduction is a principal factor in the development of Indo-European ablaut, as well as other changes reconstructed by historical linguistics.

Questions to be discussed:

1. What is the vocalism?

2. What can you say about vowel system of English language?

3. Speak about unstressed vowels of English language.

4. What is the vowel reduction?

5. Speak about weakening of vowels.

Vocabulary

1. unstressed ['Λn'strest] – безударный

2. occurrence [ә'kΛr(ә)ns] – местонахождение

3. variation [¸vεәrı'eı∫(ә)n] – изменение, перемена

4. syllable ['sılәbl] – слог

5. identical [aı'dentık(ә)l] – тот же самый, одинаковый

6. constraint [kәn'streınt] – принуждение

7. relevant ['relıvәnt] – уместный, относящийся к делу

8. dissimilation ['dısımıleı∫(ә)n] – диссимиляция

9. dominate ['dmıneıt] – господствовать, доминировать

neutral ['nju:tә] – средний, неопределенный

References

Laver, John (1994) Principles of Phonetics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 269.

Crystal, David (2005) A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Maldern, MA/Oxford: Blackwell, p. 494.

According to Peter Ladefoged, traditional articulatory descriptions such as height and backness "are not entirely satisfactory", and when phoneticians describe a vowel as high or low, they are in fact describing an acoustic quality rather than the actual position of the tongue. Ladefoged, Peter (2006) A Course in Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 189.

Ladefoged, Peter (1993) A Course in Phonetics (Third Edition), Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 197.

Ladefoged, Peter (2001) A Course in Phonetics (Fourth Edition), Fort Worth: Harcourt, p. 177.

Ladefoged, Peter (2006) A Course in Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 189.

Hayward, Katrina (2000) Experimental Phonetics, Harlow, UK: Pearson, p. 160.

Deterding, David (1997) The formants of monophthong vowels in Standard Southern British English Pronunciation, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 27, 47-55.

Hawkins, Sarah and Jonathan Midgley (2005) Formant frequencies of RP monophthongs in four age groups of speakers, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35, 183-199.

Harrington, Jonathan, Sallyanne Palethorpe and Catherine Watson (2005) Deepening or lessening the divide between diphthongs: an analysis of the Queen's annual Christmas broadcasts. In William J. Hardcastle and Janet Mackenzie Beck (eds.) A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 227-261.

Flemming, Edward and Stephanie Johnson (2007) Rosa's roses: reduced vowels in American English, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37, 83-96.

Deterding, David (2003) An instrumental study of the monophthong vowels of Singapore English, English World-Wide, 24, 1–16

Salbrina, Sharbawi (2006) The vowels of Brunei English: an acoustic investigation. English World-Wide, 27, 247-264.

Bohn, Ocke-Schwen (2004) How to organize a fairly large vowel inventory: the vowels of Fering (North Frisian), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34, 161-173.

Gordon, Matthew and Ayla Applebaum (2006) Phonetic structures of Turkish Kabardian, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 36, 159-186.

Fletcher, Janet (2006) Exploring the phonetics of spoken narratives in Australian indigenous languages. In William J. Hardcastle and Janet Mackenzie Beck (eds.) A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 201-226.

Teaching norms of English pronunciation

This paper reports the priorities in English pronunciation

teaching in Indonesian EFL classrooms focusing on the English varieties,

components of pronunciation, and techniques for pronunciation teaching.

The results indicated that (1) international English was valued as a more

appropriate variety for Indonesian learners, (2) and that while depending

on a limited range of rather traditional techniques of pronunciation

instruction, Indonesian EFL teachers valued segmental features more

than suprasegmentalfeatures.

Key words: international English, pronunciation priorities, techniques

for pronunciationteaching

In the two last decades there have been significant changes in the

worldwide political, social, and commercial developments. These changes

have partially influenced the status and roles of English which

consequently need to be re-examined. The

fact that English is regarded as the world’s principal international language

results in the increment of inter-speaker interaction: between native

speakers and non-native speakers and between non-native speakers

The pedagogical implication of this situation is that there is a need to

revise the goals of teaching English for ESL/EFL learners. In pronunciation

teaching, the goal is neither to help learners to attain native-like accents nor

to promote comfortable intelligibility to native speakers, but to ensure

mutual intelligibility among non-native speakers of English. Therefore, in designing a pronunciation teaching model we

should try to identify those phonological and phonetic features that will

affect mutual intelligibility for EIL (English as an International Language)

listeners and subsequently to revise pedagogic measures to facilitate the

accurate production of these features by EIL speakers.

In the context of English language education in Indonesia, however,

pronunciation has not received enough attention. As a result, there is no

systematic clear guideline of pronunciation teaching although English is

one of the important compulsory subjects at secondary schools. Many

Indonesian teachers of English do not know what aspects of English

pronunciation to teach and how to teach them. They are fundamentally not

sure which English variety they should introduce to students in their

classrooms because several English varieties (e.g., American English,

British English, and Australian English) exist throughout Indonesia.

Numerous applied linguists assert that pronunciation teaching

basically includes both segmental and suprasegmental features although

they have set up the priorities differently. In the case of comfortable

intelligibility, for example, pronunciation teaching covers the nature of

speech sound (consonants and vowels), stress, rhythm, intonation, and

connected speech Unlike these

pays more attention to interaction between non-

native speakers of English by formulating Lingua Franca Core (LFC)—

which is crucial to intelligible pronunciation in EIL context—on the basis

of her empirical research. Jenkins argues that the core features of

pronunciation should be (1) consonant inventory with the provisos such as

some substitutions of /θ/ and /ð/ and rhotic ‘r’; (2) additional phonetic

requirements such as aspiration of word-initial voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and

/k/, and shortening of vowel sounds before fortis consonants and

maintaining the length before lenis consonants; (3) consonants clusters

with consideration of omission and addition; (4) vowel sounds; and (5)

production and placement of nuclear stress. Jenkins is also concerned with

certain holistic factors involved in the production of sounds because

“problems in all these articulatory areas have the potential to lead to

pronunciation errors at both segmental and suprasegmental levels, and thus

to affect intelligibility” (p. 157).

Like the priorities of pronunciation, how to teach pronunciation is also

one of the debatable areas in pronunciation teaching. It is accepted as

axiomatic by language teachers that good pronunciation is necessary for

the mastery of a new language. However, exactly how they translate this

idea into the methodologies and techniques for teaching pronunciation is a

question which admits much less clarity and consensus. This situation

makes teachers and researchers investigate better techniques for teaching

pronunciation. Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M.

(1996), for example, recommend numerous techniques for teaching

English pronunciation such as (1) listen and imitate, (2) phonetic training,

(3) minimal pair drills, (4) contextualised minimal pairs, (5) visual aids, (6)

tongue twister, (7) practice of vowels shifts and stress shifts related to

affixation, (8) developmental approximation drills, (9) reading

aloud/recitation, and (10) recordings of learners’ production. These

techniques, of course, have their own strengths and weaknesses. A certain

technique may be worthwhile in a specific situation but cannot be

implemented in other situations. It is unquestionably the teacher is the one

who decides which techniques are more appropriate to learners because

he/she is the only person who knows what is happening in his/her language

classroom.

Apart from what to teach and how to teach, the issue of English variety

has recently emerged in the framework of pronunciation teaching. The

global development of the world has shifted the roles of English and has

subsequently created a new English variety, namely English as an

international language (EIL) (Jenkins, 2000; McKay, 2002). In that way,

not only is English widely spoken by its native speakers, but also by those

whose native language is not English. Such being a case, EIL can exist at

any interactions between the speakers of English who come from different

nationalities or linguistic backgrounds. As insisted by Jenkins (2000), the

main concern should be about non-native speakers of English (NNSs) or

non-bilingual English speakers (NBESs) because these speakers are

regarded as the “most international” group of English speakers. According

to Smith (McKay, 2002), the framework of EIL should be understood in

terms of the relationship between an international language and its culture.

Smith’s assertions are valid for the use of EIL in a global sense (McKay,

2002) on the following conditions: (1) its learners do not need to internalise

the cultural norms of native speakers of that language; (2) the ownership of

an international language becomes ‘de-nationalized’; and (3) the

educational goal of learning that language is to enable learners to

communicate their ideas and cultures to others.

The development of language teaching on other sides of the globe has

a significant influence on English language teaching in Indonesia; as a

result, English curricula have been reformed for better outcomes in the last

three decades. However, many applied linguists and practitioners (e.g.,

Basir, 2002; Soenjono, 2001; Sudiyana, 2005) still claim that not only are

students’ achievement and the results of the national examination at

secondary schools (junior and senior high schools) unsatisfactory, but also

the ability of oral communication is insufficient after completing six-year

instruction of English at junior and senior high schools. In the case of

pronunciation teaching, one of the reasons for this failure is because of the

curriculum itself.

Regarding the philosophical values of the 2004 curriculum, the

adoption of the communicative approach also ends with some complicated

problems, especially related to the main objective of language teaching and

learning. In Indonesia, the main objective of English language education is

to promote discourse competence (i.e., students’ communicative ability,

both in oral and written language in any communicative events). In order to

effectuate the goal, learners also have to learn other competences: actional

competence, linguistic competence, socio-linguistic competence, and

strategic competence. Thus, discourse competence is the final goal of

language learning while the other competences are treated as the supportive

competences but should be firstly acquired (Depdiknas, 2004). However,

practically the treatment of the four competences is not equal. A great

attention is only directed to the actional competence which is promptly

realised into four language skills whereas the other competences are not

sufficiently elaborated. In the case of linguistic competence, for example,

the curriculum just provides its outline—phonology is just divided into

segmental and suprasegmental features—without any further explanation

what to teach and how to deal with these features. This narrow

understanding of communicative ability and lack of real guidelines will

result in ignorance of language components, particularly pronunciation

which is one of the essential keys for retaining Indonesian EFL learners’

intelligibility in oral communication.

Despite uncertain guideline of pronunciation teaching, the school-

based educational system has been implemented in Indonesia so that

teachers of English at school level are able to develop their own teaching

material based on the designated core curriculum. English teachers also

have an opportunity of articulating their own beliefs and assumptions

because they are the only ones who know what happens in their

classrooms. Teachers are definitely positioned not only as the doers of

denominated curriculum but also as decision makers of what they are

doing in language classrooms. This makes a balance of a technology of

language teaching and an ecological perspective on language teaching as

described by Tudor (2001).

Regarding the expectation of English as an international language and

the real condition of what happens to English education in Indonesia, I

decided to conduct a study on Indonesian EFL teachers’ perceptions of the

priorities in pronunciation teaching for Indonesian EFL learners. The

following three research questions were formulated:

(1) What English variety is appropriate for Indonesian EFL learners?

(2) What components of pronunciation are important for Indonesian EFL

learners?

(3) What techniques for teaching pronunciation are appropriate for

Indonesian EFL learners?

METHOD

Participants

A total of 37 Indonesian EFL teachers (25 males and 12 females) of

public junior high schools in Lombok Timur, the province of Nusa

Tenggara Barat, Indonesia, voluntarily participated in the study by using

opportunistic random sampling. The participants were randomly chosen

from all of the public junior high schools with considerations of taking

advantage of the unexpected flexibility such as the participants’ interest in

the topic of the study, education background, and teaching experience.

These participants had different levels of English language education

backgrounds: 11 teachers had Diploma in Education of English Language

Education and 26 teachers had Bachelor of Education in English Language

Education. These teachers had teaching experience of various length: 4

teachers with 1-5 years of teaching experience; 11 teachers with 6-10 years

of teaching experience; 14 teachers with 11-15 years of teaching

experience; and 8 teachers with more than 15 years of teaching experience.

Data Collection explanationThe data of the study was primarily collected by means of a paper-

form questionnaire. The questionnaire included three aspects of pronun-

ciation: (1) the English varieties (Q1) comprising American English,

Australian English, British English, international English, and Indonesian

English; (2) the components of pronunciation (Q2) consisting of accurate

consonants, accurate vowels, prominence (sentence stress), rhythm

patterns, intonation patterns, and word stress; and (3) the techniques for

teaching pronunciation (Q3) being composed of teacher explanation in L1,

sound discrimination, tongue twister, listen-and-repeat, teacher demons-

tration, communicative practice, and drama and role play. The respondents

were required to determine their own perceptions through a five-point

Likert scale. The options of each question were coded from 1 (not

appropriate for Q1; not important for Q2; not effective for Q3) to 5 (very

appropriate for Q1; very important for Q2; and very effective for Q3). The

questionnaire was designed to be anonymous and unregistered so that the

respondents could honestly share their opinion.

To collect data, the master copy of the questionnaire was sent to the

coordinator of this study in Indonesia who helped to collect data. The

master copy of the questionnaire was reprinted and distributed directly (in

person, not by mail) to the respondents of the study. After three weeks, the

distributed questionnaire sheets were collected, packed, and sent back to

the present researcher. The questionnaire sheets were sorted and only the

data of the valid questionnaire sheets were tabulated and analysed.

In addition to the questionnaire, in-depth interview with four teachers

was conducted to explore their views and practices in English

pronunciation teaching in Indonesian EFL classrooms, focusing on the

perceptions of the preferable English varieties for Indonesian EFL learners,

the components of pronunciation, and the techniques for pronunciation

teaching. These four teachers were randomly identified on the basis of their

teaching experience as indicated in the section of Participants. The

interview took about 25 – 30 minutes for each participant.

Data Analysis

The tabulated scores of the English varieties, the components of

pronunciation, and the techniques for teaching pronunciation were

averaged for each item of each question. In order to dichotomize each item

of each question (into an appropriate/inappropriate group for Q1, an

important/unimportant group for Q2, and an effective/ineffective group for

Q3), the calculated mean scores were compared with the median (i.e.,

3.00).

Moedjito, Priorities in English Pronunciation Teaching in EFL Classrooms In order to show the significance level of the difference among the

mean scores, the data were also submitted to analytic statistics. Since

Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests disclosed that the data of each item was not

normally distributed and Levene’s tests revealed that the variances in the

questions were not equal, the data was submitted to Friedman tests to

determine whether there was a significant difference in the mean ranks of

the items for each question. Whenever the Friedman tests determined the

difference in the mean ranks of the items, the data was then submitted to

Wilcoxon signed-rank tests with different significant levels of Bonferroni

correction (the level of significant [normally .05] was divided by the

number of micro questions) to examine which pairs of the means of the

micro questions were statistically significant different.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

English Varieties

Table 1 presents the mean scores of the investigated English varieties

and difference in respondents’ perceptions of appropriateness. Comparing

the mean scores of each English variety with the median, the study showed

that while Indonesian English was considered as an inappropriate model of

English pronunciation, international English was rated as the most

appropriate English variety for Indonesian EFL learners, followed by

American English, British English, and Australian English. A Friedman

test discovered that there was a significant difference in the mean ranks of

the investigated English varietiessigned-rank tests revealed that there was a significant difference in the

means of all the pairs of the English varieties, except for the pair of

American English versus British English, as seen in Table 1. This implies

that international English is more preferable than other English varieties by

Indonesian EFL teachers.

The quantitative analysis is consistently justified by all the interview

teachers’ comments indicating that the new target of spoken English for

Indonesian EFL learners should be international English. They assumed

that not only would oral communication in English between native – non-

native speakers of English increase in the future, but also oral interaction

among non-native speakers. For this reason, two of the interviewees who

had more than ten years of teaching experience, needed a clear guideline of

international communicative competence, especially related to pronuncia-

tion teaching.

The junior teacher, whose teaching experience was less than five

years, insisted on exposing students to several models of English

pronunciation, not only American or British English. This finding is

consonant with the idea of EIL proposed by some applied linguists (e.g.,

Jenkins, 2000; McKay, 2002; Walker, 2001). Conversely, Indonesian

English was rated as the least appropriate model for Indonesian EFL

learners with native Englishes (i.e., American English, British English, and

Australian English) coming between international English and Indonesian

English. Compared with other Asian countries, for example, this finding is

a sharp contrast to the situation in Japan where Japanese English is the

second most preferred model for Japanese EFL learners (Jenkins, 2000).

One most probable reason for the lowest rating of Indonesian English is the

fact that the Indonesian language is not Indonesian EFL learners’ mother

tongue, but their second language. This situation, of course, is different

from that in Japan, where the Japanese language is the first language for the

Japanese learners of English. Thus, it is inevitable that learners’ native

language will interfere with the learning of English pronunciation;

therefore, it is not possible or advisable to eradicate Japanese influence.

This is reflected in their choice of the appropriate models of English

pronunciation.

Components of Pronunciation

Concerning the components of pronunciation, as shown in Table 2, the

participants valued the segmental features (vowels and consonants) more

positively than the suprasegmental ones (prominence, rhythm, intonation,

and word stress). The segmental features were equally rated as the most

important components of pronunciation. Among the suprasegmental

features, the rating of prominence was the highest, followed by intonation

and word stress, while that of rhythm was the lowest. As far as the mean

scores and median comparison are concerned, the finding showed that all

the investigated components of pronunciation were important for

Indonesian EFL learners to study. A Friedman test discovered that there

was a significant difference in the mean ranks of the components of

pronunciation

Wilcoxon signed-rank tests indicated that there was no significant

difference in the means of the pairs of consonants and vowels. Likewise,

there was no significant difference in the means of the pairs of intra-

suprasegmental features, except for the pair of prominence versus rhythm.

Performing a pair wise comparison test of each segmental feature versus

each suprasegmental feature, the result showed that there was a significant

difference in the means of all the pairs, with the exception of the pair of

consonants versus prominence and that of vowels versus prominence.

The main issue of components of pronunciation which emerged from

the interviews was a necessity of the balance treatment of both segmental

and suprsegmental features in pronunciation teaching. All the teachers

agreed that segmental and suprasegmental features should be the priority in

pronunciation teaching. However, when the interviewees were asked a

further question Which segmental and suprasegmental features should be

considered more in pronunciation teaching?, all of them preferred

segmental features (vowels and consonants) as their priority because they

found that there was a significant difference between the system of English

pronunciation and that of learners’ mother tongue (the Sasak language of

Lombok Island, Indonesia). This implies that Indonesian EFL teachers are

still more concerned with the segmental features (consonants and vowels)

than with the suprasegmental ones.

This finding notably contrasts with the present trend of pronunciation

instruction for ESL/EFL learners. Numerous applied linguists (e.g. Bowen,

Madsen, & Hilferty, 1985; Florez, 1998; Wong, 1987) propose the

suprasegmental features as the priority of pronunciation instruction rather

than the segmental features. Bowen, Madsen, & Hilferty (1985) claim that

the priority order of pronunciation teaching should be fluency, stress,

rhythm and intonation, and vowels and consonants. Florez (1998) argues

that the suprasegmental features are more prominent in pronunciation

instruction. Wong (1987) also supports the idea that the most relevant

components of pronunciation which play a greater role in English

communication are rhythm and intonation. In Indonesia context, this

finding is closely related to the remarkable reasons for learners’ difficulty

in English pronunciation: (1) the absence of English sounds in learners’

native language and (2) the different distribution of the same or similar

sounds in the phonetic structure of English and that of their L1 (Moedjito,

2006). Thus, the absence of English sounds and the different distribution of

the same or similar sounds in L1 and L2 prompt Indonesian EFL teachers

to consider consonants and vowels as the priority of pronunciation

instruction in Indonesian classrooms.

However, referring to the mean scores which were all greater than the

median, the present study is consonant with some studies on the

importance of the balance of the segmental and suprasegmental features

(e.g., Jenkins, 2000; Ufomata, 1996). Jenkins (2000) proposes Lingua

Franca Core (LFC) that requires the balance between the segmental

features (consonants, consonant clusters, and vowels) and the supraseg-

mental features (particularly, nuclear stress or prominence). Moreover,

Ufomata (1996) claims that vowels and consonants are the essential

features of pronunciation along with sounds in combination, stress, and

intonation. Taking these figures into consideration, we conclude that onesian EFL teachers qualitatively have the same view of the inclusion

of both segmentals and suprasegmentals of English pronunciation although

they quantitatively have different opinion of these features.

Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation

In terms of the techniques for teaching pronunciation, the participants

rated sound discrimination as the most appropriate technique for teaching

pronunciation, followed by listen-and-repeat, tongue twister, communi-

cative practice, teacher demonstration, teacher explanation, and drama and

role play, as indicated in Table 3.

Concerning the comparison between the mean scores and the median,

the findings discovered that all the investigated techniques for teaching

pronunciation were appropriate for Indonesian EFL learners. A Friedman

test revealed that there was a significant difference in the mean ranks of the

techniques for teaching pronunciation, χ

Wilcoxon signed-rank tests disclosed that there was a significant difference

in the means of the pairs of (1) teacher explanation versus sound

discrimination and teacher explanation versus listen-and-repeat, and (2)

drama and role play versus all the investigated techniques with the

exception of teacher explanation a inappropriate nd teacher demonstration. The finding is

consonant with the proposal of utilising a variety of techniques for teaching

pronunciation proposed by some applied linguists (e.g., Celce-Murcia et

al., 1996; Dalton & Seidlhofer, 1994). However, a careful analysis of

teachers’ perceptions of the investigated techniques for teaching English

pronunciation indicates that the dominant technique is sound

discrimination that typically makes use of minimal pairs.

These statistic findings are also supported by the interview partici-

pants’ comments indicating that sound discrimination should be one of the

essential techniques for teaching pronunciation (c.f. Annual Review of

English Language Education in Japan, 2006). In addition to sound

discrimination, teacher explanation in Indonesian language and teacher

demonstration might be helpful for Indonesian EFL learners. However,

these interview teachers surmised that teachers’ knowledge of pronuncia-

tion might be still a major problem. They presumed that many teachers did

not have sufficient knowledge of pronunciation. Even one teacher said that

she felt uncomfortable to teach pronunciation because of her limited

knowledge of pronunciation. These views indicate that Indonesian EFL

teachers need professional development which provides them with

knowledge of pronunciation as well as skills of how to teach pronunciation

and of how integrate pronunciation in language classrooms.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The present study investigated Indonesian teachers’ perceptions of the

priorities in the teaching of pronunciation for Indonesian EFL learners

focusing on the English varieties, the components of pronunciation, and the

appropriate techniques for teaching pronunciation. Although the study has

revealed some interesting findings, it has its limitations such as the sample

of the study. The number of the teachers who were involved in the study,

especially those who were interviewed, is relatively small. It is not possible

to ascertain how wide-spread these findings are among other teachers.

Nevertheless, considering international English is the most appropriate

variety for Indonesian learners, the study suggests that learners should be

exposed to a more balance treatment of the segmental and suprasegmental

features by using a variety of techniques. However, the fact that practically

teachers do not really know the features of English phonological and

phonetic structures determining intelligible pronunciation still becomes one

the remaining issues. Therefore, further research should be conducted to

investigate which features of English are important for Indonesian EFL

learners and which of these featuresthey should pay more attention to.

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University Press.

Ufomata, T. (1996). Setting priorities in teaching English pronunciation in ESL

contexts. Phonetics and Linguistics. Retrieved May 2, 2004, from

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/ shl9/ufomata/titi.htm

Walker, R. (2001). Pronunciation for international intelligibility. English Teaching

Professional, 21.Retrieved December 11, 2005, from http://www3.telus.

net/linguisticsissues/internationalintelligibility.html

Wong, R. (1987). Teaching pronunciation: Focus on English rhythm and

intonation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-HallRegents.

Consequently-следовательно

Segmental-часть,кусок

propriate-неуместный

explanation-объяснение

Significant—значительный,важный

Influenced-влияние,действие

Comfortable-удобный

Admits-допускать,принимат

Accurate-точный,правилный

Attention-внимание

Aspiration-стремление

LECTURE 4PHONOLOGICAL ASPECT OF SPEECH SOUND

Brainstorming questions

1 What is phonology?

2 What does phonology deal with?

3 What phonological schools do you know?

4 Can you say what is phoneme is?

5 What is an allophone?

Key words: phonology/ phoneme/phonological schools.

Questions for discussion:

5. Phonology as a science

6. Phonology schools

7. Definition of the phoneme

8. Variants of the phoneme (allophones)

Phonology deals with the range and function of sounds in specific languages, and with the rules that determine the types of phonetic relationship that relate and contrast these linguistic units.

D ifferent opinions on the nature of the phoneme

“Mentalist” view of the phoneme: theory. (I.A. Baudouin de Courtney)

The abstractional conception: (Ferdinand de Saussure, L. Hjelmslev)

The physical view : (D.Jones B.Bloch, T.Trager) Ferdinand de Saussure

Minimal sound units : (S. Trubetzkoy, L.Bloomfield , R. Jakobson)

Areal, independent distinctive unit: (L.V.Shcherba V.A.Vassilyev)

Definition of the phoneme

The segmental phoneme is the smallest (i. e. further indivisible into smaller consecutive segments) language unit(sound type) that exists in the speech of all the members of a given language community as such sounds which are capable of distinguishing one word from another word of the same language or one grammatical form of a word from another grammatical form of the same word

T ypes of phonological schools

Moscow

Leningrad

London

American

Prague Linguistic circle

R epresentatives of phonological schools

Moscow: R.A.Avanessov, A.A.Reformatsky N.F.Yakovlev, V.N.Sidorov and others

Leningrad: L.V.Scherba, L.R.Zinder, M.I.Matusevitch, O.I.Dikushina, V.A.Vassilyev, G.P.Torsuev and others

London: D.Jones

American: L.Bloomfield, E.Sapir, Ch.F.Hockett, W.F.Twadell

Prague Linguistic circle: N.S.Trubetskoy, R.Jakobson,

Phonology is the study of the sound system of languages. At one extreme, phonology is concerned with anatomy and physiology- the organs of speech and how we learn to use them. At another extreme, phonology shades into socio-linguistic as we consider social attitudes to features of sound such as accent and intonation. And part of the subject is concerned with finding objective standard ways of recording speech, and representing this symbolically.

The physics and physiology of speech.

Man is distinguished from the other primates by having the apparatus to make sound of speech. Language scientists have very detailed understanding of how the human body produces the sounds of speech. Leaving to one side the vast subject of how we choose particular utterances and identify the sounds we need, we can think rather simply of how we use lungs to breathe out air, produce vibrations in the larynx and then use our tongue, teeth and lips to modify the sounds. Mostly we use air that is moving out of our lungs to speak. We may pause while breathing in, or try to use the ingressive air-but this is likely to produce quit speech, which is unclear to our listeners. In languages other than English, speakers may also use non-pulmonic sound, such as clicks or glottal sounds. In the larynx, the vocal folds set up vibrations in the regressive air. The vibrating air passes through further cavities which can modify the sound and finally air articulated by the passive (immobile) articulators-the hard palate, the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth- and active (mobile) articulators. These are pharynx, the velum (or soft palate), the jaw and lower teeth, the lips and above all, the tongue, this so important and so flexible an organ, that language scientists identify different regions of the tongue by name, as these are associated wit particular sounds.

Working outwards these are:

• the back- opposite the soft palate

• the centre- opposite the meeting point hard and soft palate

• the front- opposite the hard palate

• the blade- the tapering area facing the ridge of teeth

• the tip- the extreme end of the tongue

Speech therapists have a very detailed working knowledge of the physiology of human speech, and of exercises and remedies to overcome difficulties. Some of us encounter in speaking, where these have, physical causes. An understanding of anatomy is also useful to various kinds of expert who train people to use their voices in special or unusual ways.

These would include singing teachers and voice coaches for actors, as well as the even more. Specialized coaches who train actors to produce the speech sounds of hither to unfamiliar varieties of English or other languages.

Phonology as a science

The sounds of a language are organized into a system of contrasts, which are analyzed in terms of phonological units (phonemes, distinctive features) Phonology deals with the range and function of sounds in specific languages, and with the rules that determine the types of phonetic relationship that relate and contrast these linguistic units.

Phoneme theory

In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. It is a sound of language represented (or imagined) without reference to its position in a word or a phrase. A phoneme, therefore, is the conception of a sound in the most neutral form possible and distinguishes between different words or morphemes. Changing an element of a word from one phoneme another produces either a different word or obvious nonsense.

The phoneme can be defined as “ the smallest meaningful physiological unit ofsound”.

The phoneme has mental, physiological, and physical substance: our brain process the sounds; the sounds are produced by the human speech organs; and the sounds are physical entities that can be recorded and measured. For an example of phonemes, consider the English words pat and sat, which appear to differ only in their initial consonants. This difference, known as contractiveness or opposition, is sufficient to distinguish these words, and therefore the p and s sounds are said to be different phonemes in English. A pair of words that are identical except for such a sound are known as a minimal pair; this is the most frequent demonstration that two sounds are separate phonemes.

A phoneme could be thought of as a family related phones, called allophones, that the speakers of a language think of, and hear or see, as being categorically the same and differing only in the phonetic environment in which they occur. In sign languages, the basic movements were formerly called cheremes (or cheiremes), but usage changed to phoneme when it was recognized that the mental abstractions involved are essentially the same as in oral languages. A phonemically “perfect” alphabet is one that has a single symbol for each phoneme.

There are different opinions on the nature of the phoneme and its definitions.

1 I.A. Baudouin de Courtney (1845-1929) defined the phoneme as a physical image of a sound. He originated the so called “mentalist” view of the phoneme theory.

2 The abstractional conception of the phoneme was originated by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1930), the famous Swiss linguist and the Danish linguist L. Hjelmslev (1889-1965). The “abstract” view regards the phoneme independent of the phonetic properties.

3 S. Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), L.Bloomfield (1887-1949), R. Jakobson (1896-1982) viewed the phoneme as the minimal sound units by which meanings may be differentiated. They stated that the features of the phoneme involved in the differentiation of words are called distinctive. They can be found in contrastive sets.

4.The physical view on the phone was originated by D.Jones (1881-1967). He defined the phoneme as a “family” of sounds. The members of the family show phonetic similarity.

This view was shared by the American scientists B.Bloch and T.Trager. They define the phoneme as a class of phonetically similar sounds, contrasting and mutually exclusive with all similar sounds, contrasting and mutually exclusive with all similar classes in the language.

5 The problem of the phoneme can be solved on a “populational basis” (J.A Perry, 1974), that is on the definition of the phoneme as a unit of an idiolect (D.Jones, K.Pike) a dialect (L.Bloomfield), a multidialect- the phoneme is a unit of the English language as a whole (G.Trager, H.Smith), or a “supralect”- the phoneme is a unit of a standard form by which the dialects and idiolects may be compared. (J.A.Perry).

6 L.V.Shcherba (1880-1944) was the first to define the phoneme as a real, independent distinctive unit which manifests itself in the form of allophones. Prof. V.A Vassilyev developed Shcherba’s theory and presented a detailed definition of the phoneme. He writes that a phoneme is a dialectical unity of three aspects:

1.material, real and objective:

2.abstractional and generalized:

3.functional.

It serves to perform the following functions: a) constitutive, b) distinctive,

2. recognitive.

V.A. Vassilyev states that phoneme is material and objective because it really exists in the material form of speech sounds, allophones. It is an objective reality, existing independently from our will, or intention. It is an abstraction, because we make it abstract from concrete realizations for classificatory purposes, it functions to make one word or its grammatical form distinct from the other, it constitutes words and helps to recognize them.

The actual speech sounds pronounced by the speaker or reader are variants, or allophones, of phonemes. Speech sounds which have one or more articulator and therefore acoustic, features in common and at the same time differ from each other in some degree are said to belong to one and the same phoneme, i.e. are variants of one and he same phoneme.

Since every phoneme has several variants, the need arises for their classification. Besides free variants, the following types of allophones are distinguished, although the definition of certain types is rather vague and it is not always clear to which of types certain allophones should be assigned. First, allophones are divided into: principal, or typical, and subsidiary ones. It is necessary to find objective criteria, the application of which by different people would yield the same results. Two such objective criteria may be suggested: (1) the principal or typical variant of the phoneme is free from the influence of neighbouring speech sounds and other purely phonetic factors, such as absence of stress; (2) it is most representative of the phoneme as a whole, in the sense that has the greatest number of articulatory features among all the variants of the phoneme.

The subsidiary variants of a phoneme are subdivided into two groups: (1) combinatory and (2) positional. The boundary line between this two classes is, however, not at all clear-cut.

Combinatory allophones are those which are clearly due to the influence of neighbouring speech sounds (assimilation, adaptation and accommodation) and to the specific way in which adjacent sounds are joined together.

Positional allophones are those which are used in definite positions traditionally, according to the orthoepic norms of the language.

The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called distinctive or relevant. To extract relevant feature of the phoneme we have to oppose it to some other phoneme in the same phonetic context.

If the opposed sounds differ in one articulatory feature and this difference brings about changes in the meaning of the words the contrasting are called relevant. For example: the words port and court differ in one consonant only, that is the word port has the initial consonant [p], and the word court begins with [k]. Both sounds are occlusive and fortis, the only difference being that [p] is labial and [k] is back lingual. Therefore is possible to say that labial and back lingual articulators are relevant in the system of English consonants.

The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive, irrelevant, or redundant; for instance, it is impossible in English to oppose an aspirated [p] to a non-aspirated one in the same phonetic context to distinguish meanings. That is why aspiration is non-distinctive feature of English consonants. As it has been mentioned above any change in the invariant of the phoneme affects the meaning. Anyone, who studies a foreign language makes mistakes in the articulation of particular sounds, L.V. Shcherba classifies the pronunciation errors as phonological and phonetic.

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