Spoken and Written language

Types and styles of pronunciation

Classification of pronunciation variants in English. British and American pronunciation models

Spoken and written language

Outline

Regional and stylistic varieties of English pronunciation

Lecture 2

National and regional pronunciation variants in English.

Components of the phonetic system of language.

Components of phonetic system:

 segmental phonemes

 word stress

 syllabic structure

 intonation

Let us consider the four components of the phonetic system of language.

The first and the basic component of the phonetic structure of language is the system of its segmental phonemes existing in the material form of their allophones. The phonemic component has 3 aspects, or manifestations:

1. the system of its phonemes as discrete isolated units;

2. the distribution of the allophones of the phonemes;

3. the methods of joining speech sounds together in words and at their junction, or the methods of effecting VC, CV, CC, and VV transitions.

The second component is the syllabic structure of words. The syllabic structure has two aspects, which are inseparable from each other: syllable formation and syllable division.

The third component is the accentual structure of words as items of vocabulary (i.e. as pronounced in isolation). The accentual structure of words has three aspects: the physical (acoustic) nature of word accent; the position of the accent in disyllabic and polysyllabic words; the degrees of word accent.

The fourth component of the phonetic system is the intonational structure of utterances. The four components of the phonetic system of language (phonemic, syllabic, accentual and intonational) all constitute its pronunciation (in the broad sense of the term).

http://www.kazedu.kz/referat/169957

We don't need to speak in order to use language. Language can be written,
broadcast from tapes and CDs, and produced by computers in limited ways.
Nevertheless, speech remains the primary way humans encode and broadcast
language. Speaking and writing are different in both origin and practice. Our
ability to use language is as old as humankind is. It reflects the biological and
cognitive modification that has occurred during the evolution of our species.
Writing is the symbolic representation of language by graphic signs. It is
comparatively recent cultural development. Spoken language is acquired without
specific formal instruction, whereas writing must be taught and learned through
deliberate effort. The origins of the written language lie in the spoken language,
not the other way round..

The written form of language is usually a generally accepted standard and is the same throughout the country. But spoken language may vary from place to place. Such distinct forms of language are called dialects! The varieties of the language are conditioned by language communities ranging from small groups to nations. Speaking about the nations we refer to the national variants of the language. According to A.D. Schweitzer national language is a historical category evolving from conditions of economic and political concentration which characterizes the formation of nation. In the case of English there exists a great diversity in the realization of the language and particularly in terms of pronunciation. Though every national variant of English has considerable differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar; they all have much in common which gives us ground to speak of one and the same language — the English language.

Every national variety of language falls into territorial or regional dialects. Dialects are distinguished from each other by differences in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. When we refer to varieties in pronunciation only, we use the term accent. So local accents may have many features of pronunciation in common and are grouped into territorial or area accents. For certain reasons one of the dialects becomes the standard language of the nation and its pronunciation or accent - the standard pronunciation.

The literary spoken form has its national pronunciation standard. A standard may be defined as "a socially accepted variety of language established by a codified norm of correctness" (K. Macanalay). Standard national pronunciation is sometimes called "an orthoepic norm''. Some phoneticians however prefer the term "literary pronunciation".

2. Classification of pronunciation variants in English. British and
American pronunciation models.

Nowadays two main types of English are spoken in the English-speaking world: British English and American English.

According to British dialectologists (P. Trudgill, J. Hannah, A. Hughes and others), the following variants of English are referred to the English-based group: English English, Welsh English, Australian English, New Zealand English; to the American-based group: United States English, Canadian English. Scottish English and Ireland English fall somewhere between the two, being somewhat by themselves.

According to M. Sokolova and others, English English, Welsh English, Scottish English and Northern Irish English should be better combined into the British English subgroup, on the ground of political, geographical, cultural unity which brought more similarities - then differences for those variants of pronunciation.

Teaching practice as well as a pronouncing dictionary must base their
recommendations on one or more models. A pronunciation model is a carefully chosen and defined accent of a language.

In the nineteenth century Received Pronunciation (RP) was a social marker, a prestige accent of an Englishman. "Received" was understood in the sense of "accepted in the best society". The speech of aristocracy and the court phonetically was that of the London area. Then it lost its local characteristics and was finally fixed as a ruling-class accent, often referred to as "King's English". It was also the accent taught at public schools. With the spread of education cultured people not belonging to upper classes were eager to modify their accent in the direction of social standards.

In the first edition of English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917), Daniel Jones defined the type of pronunciation recorded as "Public School Pronunciation" (PSP). He had by 1926, however, abandoned the term PSP in favour of "Received Pronunciation" (RP). The type of speech he had in mind was not restricted to London and the Home Counties, however being characteristic by the nineteenth century of upper-class speech throughout the country. The Editor of the 14^th Edition of the dictionary, A.C. Gimson, commented in 1977 "Such a definition of RP is hardly tenable today". A more broadly-based and accessible model accent for British English is represented in the 15^th (1997) and the16^th (2003) editions – ВВС English. This is the pronunciation of professional speakers employed by the BBC as newsreaders and announcers. Of course, one finds differences between such speakers - they have their own personal characteristics, and an increasing number of broadcasters with Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents are employed. On this ground J.C. Wells (Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3^3rd edition - 2000) considers that the term BBC pronunciation has become less appropriate. According to J.C. Wells, in England and Wales RP is widely regarded as a model for correct pronunciation, particularly for educated formal speech.

ForAmerican English, the selection (in EPD) also follows what is frequently heard from professional voices on national. network news and information programmes. It is similar to what has been termed General American, which refers to a geographically (largely non-coastal) and socially based set of pronunciation features. It is important to note that no single dialect - regional or social - has been singled out as an American standard. Even national media (radio, television, movies, CD-ROM, etc.), with professionally trained voices have speakers with regionally mixed features. However, Network English, in its most colourless form, can be described as a relatively homogeneous dialect that reflects the ongoing development of progressive American dialects. This "dialect" itself contains some variant forms. The variants involve vowels before [r], possible differences in words like cot and caught and some vowels before [l]. It is fully rhotic. These differences largely pass unnoticed by the audiences for Network English, and are also reflective of age differences. What are thought to be the more progressive (used by educated, socially mobile, and younger speakers) variants are considered as first variants. J.C. Wells prefers the term General American. This is what is spoken by the majority of Americans, namely those who do not have a noticeable eastern or southern accent.

3. Types and styles of pronunciation

Styles of speech or pronunciation are those special forms of speech suited to the aim and the contents of the utterance, the circumstances of communication, the character of the audience, etc. As D. Jones points out, a person may pronounce the same word or sequence of words quite differently under different circumstances.

Thus in ordinary conversation the word and is frequently pronounced [n] when unstressed (e.g. in bread and butter ['bredn 'butэ], but in serious conversation the word, even when unstressed, might often be pronounced [ænd]. In other words, all speakers use more than one style of pronunciation, and variations in the pronunciation of speech sounds, words and sentences peculiar to different styles of speech may be called stylistic variations.

Several different styles of pronunciation may be distinguished, although no generally accepted classification of styles of pronunciation has been worked out and the peculiarities of different styles have not yet been sufficiently investigated.

D. Jones distinguishes among different styles of pronunciation the rapid familiar style, the slower colloquial style, the natural style used in addressing a fair-sized audience, the acquired style of the stage, and the acquired style used in singing.

L.V. Shcherba wrote of the need to distinguish a great variety of styles of speech, in accordance with the great variety of different social occasions and situations, but for the sake of simplicity he suggested that only two styles of pronunciation should be distinguished: (1) colloquial style characteristic of people's quiet talk, and (2) full style, which we use when we want to make our speech especially distinct and, for this purpose, clearly articulate all the syllables of each word.

The kind of style used in pronunciation has a definite effect on the phonemic and allophonic composition of words. More deliberate and distinct utterance resultsin the use of full vowel sounds in some of the unstressed syllables. Consonants, too, uttered in formal style, will sometimes disappear in colloquial. It is clear that the chief phonetic characteristics of the colloquial style are various forms of the reduction of speech sounds and various kinds of assimilation. The degree of reduction and assimilation depends on the tempo of speech.

S.M. Gaiduchic distinguishes five phonetic styles: solemn (торжественный), "scientific business (научно-деловой), official business (официально-деловой), everyday (бытовой), and familiar (непринужденный). As we may see the above-mentioned phonetic styles on the whole correlate with functional styles of the language. They are differentiated on the basis of spheres of discourse.

The other way of classifying phonetic styles is suggested by J.A. Dubovsky who discriminates the following five styles: informal ordinary, formal neutral, formal official, informal familiar, and declamatory. The division is based on different degrees of formality or rather familiarity between the speaker and the listener. Within each style subdivisions are observed. M.Sokolova and other's approach is slightly different. When we consider the problem of classifying phonetic styles according to the criteria described above we should distinguish between segmental and suprasegmental level of analysis because some of them (the aim of the utterance, for example) result in variations of mainly suprasegmental level, while others (the formality of situation, for example) reveal segmental varieties. So it seems preferable to consider each level separately until a more adequate system of correlation is found.

The style-differentiating characteristics mentioned above give good grounds for establishing intonational styles. There are five intonational styles singled out mainly according to the purpose of communication and to which we could refer all the main varieties of the texts. They are as follows:

1.Informational style.

2.Academic style (Scientific).

3.Publicistic style.

4.Declamatory style (Artistic).

5.Conversational style (Familiar).

But differentiation of intonation according" to the purpose of communication is not enough; there are other factors that affect intonation in various situations. Besides any style is seldom realized in its pure form.

6/ British and American pronunciation models.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_pronunciation_differences

We use the term ‘accents’ to refer to differences in pronunciations. Pronunciation can vary with cultures, regions and speakers, but there are two major standard varieties in English pronunciation: British English and American English.

Within British English and American English there are also a variety of accents. Some of them have received more attention than others from phoneticians and phonologists. These are Received pronunciation (RP)* and General American (GA).

Differences in pronunciation between American English (AmE) and Brit Engl (BrE) can be divided into:

- Differences in accent (i.e. phoneme inventory and realization). See differences between General American and Received Pronunciation for the standard accents in theUnited States and Britain; for information about other accents see regional accents of English speakers.

- differences in the pronunciation of individual words in the lexicon (i.e. phoneme distribution). In this article, transcriptions use Received Pronunciation (RP) to represent BrE and General American (Gam) and to represent AmE.

Theory on syllable division and formation.

There are different points of view on syllable formation) which aге briefly the following.

“”The most ancient theory states that there are as many syllablies in a word as there are vowels. This theory is primitive and insuffi cient since it does not take into consideration consonants which also can form syllables in some languages, neither does it explain the boundary of syllables.

The expiratory theory states that there are as many syllables in я word as there arc expiration pulses. The borderline between thesyllables is, according to this theory, the moment of the weakest ex piration. This theory is inconsistent because_it_ is quite possiblejo pronounce several syllables in one articulatory effort or expiration,e.g. seeing /’siiirj/.

The sonority theory stales that there are as many syllables in a word as there are peaks of prominence or sonority.

Speech sounds pronounced with uniform force, length and pitch, differ in inherent prominence or sonority. For example, when the Rus sian vowels /а, о, э, у, и/ are pronounced on one and the same level, their acoustic intensity, or sonority is different: the strongest is /a/, then go /о, э, у, и/.

O. Jespersen established the scale of sonority of sounds, that is, the scale of their inherent prominence. According to this scale the most sonorous are back vowels (low, mid, high), then go semi-vowels and sonorants, then - voiced and voiceless consonants.

Intonation and its linguistic function

Intonation is a complex unity of non-segmental, or prosodic features of speech: 1. melody, pitch of the voice; 2. sentence stress; 3. temporal characteristics; 4. rhythm; 5. tamber (voice quality).

Intonation organizes a sentence, determines communicative types of sentences and clauses, divides sentences into intonation groups, gives prominence to words and phrases, expresses contrasts and attitudes.

Functions of intonation.

• Emotional function's most obvious role is to express attitudinal meaning -sarcasm, surprise, shock, anger, interest, and thousands of other semantic nuances.

• Grammatical f-n helps to identify grammatical structure in speech, performing a role similar to punctuation.

• Informational f-n helps draw attention to what meaning is given and what is new in an utterance. The word carrying the most prominent tone in a contour signals the part of an utterance that the speaker is treating as new information.

• Textual f-n helps larger units of meaning than the sentence to contrast and cohere. In radio news-reading, paragraphs of information can be shaped through the use of pitch. In sports commentary, changes in prosody reflect the progress of the action.

• Psychological f-n helps us to organize speech into units that are easier to perceive and memorize. Most people would find a sequence of numbers, for example, difficult to recall. The task is made easier by using intonation to chunk the sequence into two units.

• Indexical f-n, along with other prosodic features, is an important marker of personal or social identity. Lawyers, preachers, newscasters, sports commentators, army sergeants, and several other occupations are readily identified through their distinctive prosody.

most dist feat of AM EN pron

For American English, the selection (in EPD) also follows what is frequently heard from professional voices on national. network news and information programmes. It is similar to what has been termed General American, which refers to a geographically (largely non-coastal) and socially based set of pronunciation features. It is important to note that no single dialect - regional or social - has been singled out as an American standard. Even national media (radio, television, movies, CD-ROM, etc.), with professionally trained voices have speakers with regionally mixed features. However, Network English, in its most colourless form, can be described as a relatively homogeneous dialect that reflects the ongoing development of progressive American dialects. This "dialect" itself contains some variant forms. The variants involve vowels before [r], possible differences in words like cot and caught and some vowels before [l]. It is fully rhotic. These differences largely pass unnoticed by the audiences for Network English, and are also reflective of age differences. What are thought to be the more progressive (used by educated, socially mobile, and younger speakers) variants are considered as first variants. J.C. Wells prefers the term General American. This is what is spoken by the majority of Americans, namely those who do not have a noticeable eastern or southern accent.
The system of consonant phonemes. Problem of affricates

There are some problems of phonological character in the English consonantal system; it is the problem of affricates - their phonological status and their number. The question is: what kind of facts a phonological theory has to explain.

1) Are the English [t?, dж] sounds monophonemic entities or biphonemic combinations (sequences, clusters)?

2) If they are monophonemic, how many phonemes of the same kind exist in English, or, in other words, can such clusters as [tr, dr] and [t?, dр] be considered affricates?

To define it is not an easy matter. One thing is clear: these sounds are complexes because articulatory we can distinguish two elements. Considering phonemic duality of affricates, it is necessary to analyze the relation of affricates to other consonant phonemes to be able to define their status in the system.

The problem of affricates is a point of considerable controversy among phoneticians. According to Russian specialists in English phonetics, there are two affricates in English: [t?, dж]. D. Jones points out there are six of them: [t?, dж], [ts, dz], and [tr, dr]. A.C. Gimson increases their number adding two more affricates: [t?, tр]. Russian phoneticians look at English affricates through the eyes of a phoneme theory, according to which a phoneme has three aspects: articulatory, acoustic and functional, the latter being the most significant one. As to British phoneticians, their primary concern is the articulatory-acoustic unity of these complexes.

Before looking at these complexes from a functional point of view it is necessary to define their articulatory indivisibility.

According to N.S. Trubetzkoy's point of view a sound complex may be considered monophonemic if: a) its elements belong to the same syllable; b) it is produced by one articulatory effort; c) its duration should not exceed normal duration of elements.

prob in syst of vowel ph

The system of vowel phonemes. Problems of diphthongs and vowel length

The following 20 vowel phonemes are distinguished in BBC English (RP): [i:, a:, o:, u:, з:, i, e, ж,?,?, л(типа крышка домика), ə; ei, ai, oi, а?, e?,?ə, iə].

Principles of classification provide the basis for the establishment of the following distinctive oppositions:

1. Stability of articulation

1.1. monophthongs vs. diphthongs

bit - bait, kit - kite, John - join, debt — doubt

1.2. diphthongs vs. diphthongoids

bile - bee, boat — boot, raid - rude

2. Position of the tongue

2.1. horizontal movement of the tongue

a) front vs. centralcab — curb, bed — bird

b) back vs. central pull – pearl, cart - curl, call - curl

2.2. vertical movement of the tongue

a) close (high) vs. mid-open (mid)

bid — bird, week - work

b) open (low) vs. mid-open (mid)

lark - lurk, call — curl, bard-bird

3. Position of the lips rounded vs. unrounded don — darn, pot - part

definition of a diphthong as a single sound is based on the instability of the second element.

D. Jones defines diphthongs as unisyllabic gliding sounds in the articulation of which the organs of speech start from one position and then glide to another position.

In accordance with the principle of structural simplicity and economy American descriptivists liquidated the diphthongs in English as unit phonemes.

Problem of length. There are long vowel phonemes in English and short. However, the length of the vowels is not the only distinctive feature of minimal pairs like Pete -pit, beet - bit, etc. In other words the difference between i: i. u: -? is not only quantitative but also qualitative, which is conditioned by different positions of the bulk of the tongue. For example, in words bead- bid not only the length of the vowels is different but in the [i:] articulation the bulk of the tongue occupies more front and high position then in the articulation of [i].

Qualitative difference is the main relevant feature that serves to differentiate long and short vowel phonemes because quantitative characteristics of long vowels depend on the position they occupy in a word:

(a) they are the longest in the terminal position: bee, bar, her;

(b) they are shorter before voiced consonants: bead, hard, cord;

(c) they are the shortest before voiceless consonants: beet, cart.

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