5. Strong and weak forms. Degrees of reduction.

In English there are certain words which have two forms of pronunciation; strong and weak (full and reduced) forms. These words include form-words and the following pronouns: personal, possessive, reflexive, relative and the indefinite pronouns “some”, denoting indefinite quantity.

These words have strong forms when they are stressed. Each of these words usually has more than one weak form used in unstressed positions. There are three degrees of the reduction of strong forms:

The first degree consists in reducing the length of a vowel without changing its quality (the so-called quantitative reduction), e.g. you [ju:] – [ju.], [ju].

The second degree of reduction consists in changing the quality of a vowel (the so-called qualitative reduction), e.g. for [fo:] – [ ].

The third degree of reduction consists in the omission of a vowel or consonant sound (the so-called zero reduction, or elision), e.g. do [du:] – [d].

6 Sentence stress.

Stress in an isolated word is called word stress, stress in connected speech is termed sentence stress.

In a sentence, semantically more important words are pronounced with greater stress. Sentence stress has two main functions.

Its first function is to single out words in the sentence according to their relative semantic importance. The more important the word is, the stronger is the stress.

The second function of sentence stress is to serve as the basis for the rhythmical structure of the sentence. The rhythm of English speech is constituted by the recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less regular intervals of time and by the alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Sentence stress has its own specific features in every language. A word belonging to one and the same part of speech may be stressed in one language, but unstressed in another. For instance, personal pronouns in the Russian language are usually stressed, whereas in English they are not.

Words which are usually stressed in English unemphatic speech belong to the notional parts of speech, namely: nouns, adjectives, numerals, notional verbs, adverbs, demonstrative, interrogative, emphasizing pronouns and the absolute form of the possessive pronouns, e.g., the words in bold type in the following sentences: Who was that on the phone?

He rang up himself, wanted to speak to you.

However, personal, possessive, reflexive and relative pronouns, which also belong to the notional parts of speech, are usually not stressed.

The other class of words which are usually not stressed in English unemphatic speech are form-words. These are: auxiliary and modal verbs, as well as the verb to be, prepositions, conjunctions, articles and particles.

However, it is necessary to point out, that any word in a sentence may be logically stressed. The semantic factor determines logical stress and, therefore, the “turn of the intonation” which takes place in the stressed syllable of the word with logical stress. A word, which is made prominent by logical stress may stand at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a sense-group, and it is usually the last stressed word in it. Sentence stress on words following logical stress either disappears or becomes weak, e.g.

I can ,do it. ,I can do it.

Questions for self-control:

1. How can the term “ stress” be defined?

2. Are “stress” and “prominence” synonymic terms?

3. What is the accentual structure in English?

4.. What are the accentual tendencies in English?

5. What are the functions of a sentence stress?

Lecture 11.

SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY.

1. Intonation and prosody. Structure and functions.

2. The structural elements of prosody.

3. Intonation patterns.

4. Fundamental intonation patterns and their use.

1. Intonation and prosody. Structure and functions.

After considering the system of English segmental phonemes, the syllabic structure and the accentual structure of English words we are to focus on the topic of particular theoretical and practical interest, i.e. intonation. Intonation is a language universal. There are no languages which are spoken as a monoton, i.e. without any changes of prosodic parameters.

Professor Smirnitsky in his book “Синтаксис английского языка” was the first to suggest that the most universal and significant means of predication is intonation. Hence – the concept of “sentence” and “intonation” are inseparable. Without intonation a word or a group of words usually apprehended by us as a “sentence” is only a potential sentence. In this case it is hardly possible to speak of the intonation of some segment as one particular sound or even such bilateral units as words and word-combinations.

Nowadays in linguistic literature is widely used the term “prosody”, which substituted the term “intonation”.