- •The subject-matter of phonetics, its practical aims.
- •Verbal communication - the central notion of phonetics. Stages of speech production proce.Ss
- •Branches of phonetics.
- •Articulatory classification of the English vowels.
- •Articulatory classification of the English consonants
- •The phoneme theory as the basis of phonology.
- •The functions of the phoneme.
- •The phonemic inventory of the English language.
- •Modification of sounds in connected speech.
- •Assimilation
- •The notion of elision.
- •Linking and intrusive r
- •Intrusive r
- •The notion of accommodation.
- •Reduction and its types.
- •16. The syllable formation theories.
- •17. Syllabification
- •18. Functios of the syllable.
- •19. Types of English word stress.
- •Word stress tendencies.
- •Functions of word stress.
- •General notion of prosody.
- •Intonation as a complex unity of prosodic features.
- •Sentense stress in English.
- •The main functions of intonation.
- •The components of the intonation group.
- •The nuclear tones and their meanings.
- •Rhythm.
Rhythm.
Rhythm is the regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. It^is' so'typical of an English phrase that the incorrect rhythm betrays the non-English origin of the speaker even in cases of "correct" pronunciation.
The'phenomenon of rhythm is closely connected with the phonetic nature of stress.
The units of the rhythmical structure of an utterance are stress groups от rhythmic groups. The perception of boundaries between rhythmic groups is associated with the stressed syllables or peaks of prominence.
Unstressed syllables have a tendency to cling to the preceding stressed syllables — enclitics, or to the following stressed syllables — proclitics. In English, as a rule, initial unstressed syllables cling to the following stressed syllables, non-initial unstressed syllables are enclitics:
Each sense-group of the sentence is pronounced at approximately the same period of time, unstressed syllables are pronounced more
rapidly: the greater the number of unstressed syllables, the quicker they are pronounced. Proclitics are pronounced faster than enclitics. Rhythm is connected with sentence stress. Under the influence of rhythm words which are normally pronounced with two equally strong stresses may lose one of them, or may have their word stress realized differently, e. g.
'Picca'dilly—-'Piccadilly 'Circus—'close to Picca'dilly
In linguistics, rhythm or isochrony is one of the three aspects of prosody, along with stress and intonation. Languages can be categorized according to whether they are syllable-timed or stress-timed. Speakers of syllable-timed languages such as Spanish and Cantonese put roughly equal time on each syllable; in contrast, speakers of stressed-timed languages such as English and Mandarin Chinese put roughly equal time lags between stressed syllables, with the timing of the unstressed syllables in between them being adjusted to accommodate the stress timing.
Narmour[32] describes three categories of prosodic rules which create rhythmic successions which are additive (same duration repeated), cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short). Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with openness or tension, while additive rhythms are open-ended and repetitive. Richard Middleton[33] points out this method cannot account for syncopation and suggests the concept of transformation.