- •Theoretical english phonetics phonic substance of language and ways of its analysis and description
- •1. Language use in oral verbal communication
- •2. Pronunciation as a way of materializing of oral form of language
- •3. Phonic structure of language and its components
- •4. Units of language vs. Speech
- •5. Phonetics as a science and its branches. Phonetics and phonology
- •Pronunciation varieties/accents of english
- •1. Defining an accent
- •2. Major accents of english
- •1) Southern English or rp/bbc English;
- •2) General American/GenAm or Network English.
- •3. Social shapes of english
- •4. Pronunciation norm and its codification
- •5. Specialist dictionaries of english pronunciation
- •Articulatory and functional aspects of speech sounds
- •1. Aspects of speech sounds
- •2. Speech sounds as articulatory units and the problem of their classification
- •The sounds of English
- •3. The articulatory classification of the english vowels
- •4. The articulatory classification of the english consonants
- •5. Vowel and consonant adjustments in connected speech: coarticulatory phenomena
- •Basic rules of syllabification in english
- •Guidelines for syllabification of syllabic consonants
- •Division into syllables in writing
- •Word stress
- •1. The nature of english word stress
- •2. Types of english word stress
- •3. English word stress functions
- •4. Word accentual paterns. Guidelines to english word stress placement
- •Lexical stress of three-syllable simple words
- •Lexical stress of words of four or more syllables
- •Words with prefixes
- •References
Division into syllables in writing
Phonetic (spoken) syllables must not be confused with orthographic (written) syllables. An orthographic syllable is a group of letters in spelling [Wells 2000:758]. Syllables in writing are also called syllabographs.
When a word is split across two lines of writing, it should be broken at an orthographic syllable boundary. Parts of phonetic and orthographic syllables do not always coincide:
worker /'w3:k.ə/ CVC-V = two phonetic syllables and one syllabograph
A most GENERAL RULE claims that division of words into syllables in writing is based on the morphological principle which demands that the part of a word which is separated should be either a prefix, or a suffix or a root (morphograph), e.g. pic-ture ['pIkt∫ə].
Compound words can be divided according to their meaning: hot - dog; spot-light.
It is not possible to divide a word within a phonetic syllable:
A suffix of TWO syllables such as -ABLE, -ABLY, -FULLY cannot be divided in writing, e.g. reli-able, lov-ably, beauti-fully. If there are two or three consonants before -ING, these consonants may be separated in writing: gras-ping, puz-zling.
With the exception of -LY, a word cannot be divided so that an ending of two letters such as -ED.-ER, -IC begins the next line, e.g. worked, teacher, hectic, BUT: cold-ly, bold-ly.
A word of ONE phonetic syllable, a word of less than FIVE letters cannot be divided into syllabographgs, e.g. piece ['pi:s], time [taIm].
Word stress
1. The nature of english word stress
In disyllabic and polysyllabic words different syllables possess different degrees of special prominence in different positions in relation to the beginning, middle and end of words.
Word stress (WS) can be defined as the singling out of one or more syllables in a word, which is accompanied by the change of the force of utterance, pitch of the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound which is usually a vowel.
The analysis of WS can be carried out according to the following parameters:
1) the nature of English word-stress;
2) its degree and syllabic location;
3) its functions;
4) basic stress patterns of the English words.
Stress can be studied from the point of view of production and of perception. While producing stressed syllables, speakers use more muscular energy than they do for unstressed syllables. From the perceptual point of view, stressed syllables are recognized as stressed because they are more prominent than unstressed syllables. Phoneticians claim that at least four different factors are important in making a syllable prominent:
1) listeners seem to feel stressed syllables louder than unstressed; thus loudness is a component of WS (Peter Roach explains that if one syllable in a sequence of identical syllables, e.g. ba: ba: ba: ba:, is made louder than the others, it will be heard as stressed);
2) if one of the syllables in the above-given ‘nonsense’ word ba: ba: ba: ba: is made longer, that syllable is heard stressed, so the length of the syllables is another important factor in making prominence;
3) every syllable is said on some pitch (related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal cords which is an essential perceptual characteristic of speech). If one syllable is said with high pitch as compared to the others then it will be heard as stressed;
4) a syllable can be heard prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in quality from neighbouring vowels. If one of the vowels in the ‘nonsense word’ is changed, e.g. ba: bi: ba: ba, the ‘odd’ syllable bi: will be heard as stressed.
In sum, pitch, loudness, and duration alone, without the manipulation of phonetic quality, the triplet of phonetic parameters used by most languages that exploit stress as a phonological device.