5. Vowel and consonant adjustments in connected speech: coarticulatory phenomena

Spoken language when analyzed as a continuous sequence, as in normal utterances and conversations, is referred to as connected speech. Its significance lies in important changes that happen to individual sounds, words or phrases under the influence of stress and intonation when they are used in connected speech vs. in isolation.

The ability to produce English with an English-like pattern of stress and rhythm involves stress-timing (= the placement of stress only on selected syllables), which in turn requires speakers to take shortcuts in how they pronounce words. Natural sounding pronunciation in conversational English is achieved through blends, overlapping, reduction and omissions of sounds to accommodate its stress-timed rhythmic pattern, i.e. to squeeze syllables between stressed elements and facilitate their articulation so that the regular timing can be maintained.

Such processes are called coarticulatory/adjustment phenomena and they comprise:

1) change of consonant or vowel quality,

2) loss of consonant or vowels, and even

3) loss of entire syllables

e.g. I must go[məsgəυ] = vowel change and consonant loss

memory ['memrI] = vowel and syllable loss

did you [dIdʒə] = consonant blending and vowel change

actually ['æk∫lI] = consonant blending, vowel and syllable loss

Syllables or words which are articulated precisely are those high in information content, while those which are weakened, shortened, or dropped are predictable and can be guessed from the context.

Sound adjustments in connected speech can be summarized as follows:

	Types of adjustments	Kinds of adjustments
1	Adjustments related to C-C linking	1. Assimilations = modifications of a C under the influence of a neighbouring C.
2	Adjustments related to V-V, C-V, V-C linking	1. Liaison = connecting of the final sound of one word or syllable to the initial sound of the next. 2. Accommodation (adaptation) = modifications of C under the influence of the adjacent V or vice versa: e.g. two — labialized /t/ under the influence of the rounded /u:/; let = more open /e/ after/l/. 3. Glottal stop/hard attack
3	Adjustments related to sound deletion/insertion	1. Elisions (ellipsis or omission) = deletion of a sound in rapid or careless speech. 2. Epenthesis = inserting of a V or C segment within an existing string of segments. 3. Smoothing = a diphthong optionally loses its second element before another vowel, or it is monophthonized: e.g. fire /'faiə - 'faə - f a:/.
4	Adjustments on the syllable level	Compression when two syllables, usually both weak, optionally become one. Applies only to /I/, /υ/, syllabic consonants: /I/ becomes like /j/, e.g. lenient ['li:nIənt] – ['li:njənt], etc.
5	Weakening	Weakforms are alternate forms of words so reduced in their articulation that they consist of a different set of phonemes. Weakforms differ from strongforms by containing a weak vowel resultant from reduction or by elision of one or more of its phonemes, e.g. can [kən], [kn]

THE SYLLABLE AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE WORD. TYPES OF SYLLABLES IN ENGLISH

The central element in the language mechanism is a word. From the point of view of the theory of phonetics, it is important to investigate how words are produced. It has been established that words are articulated in syllables.

In phonetics, the syllable is a group of sounds that are pronounced together. The syllable is one or more speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted unit of utterance which may be a commonly recognized subdivision of a word or the whole of the word.

The problem of the syllabic structure of words has two aspects:

1) syllable formation

2) syllable division/separation

Articulatorily, the syllable is the minimal articulatory unit of the utterance.

Auditorily, the syllable is the smallest unit of perception: the listener identifies the whole of the syllable and after that the sounds which it contains.

Phonologically it is a structural unit which consists of a sequence of one or some phonemes of a language in numbers and arrangements permitted by the given language. Phonologically it performs three functions:

1. The constitutive function: syllables constitute words through the combination of their stress- loudness, duration-length, pitch-tone.

2. The distinctive function: the difference in the place of a syllabic boundary differentiates the meanings of the words and phrases: e.g. a 'name - an 'aim; kids 'kin - kid 'skin; my 'train — might 'rain

3. The identificatory function: the listener can understand the exact meaning of the utterance only when the correct syllabic boundary is perceived: e.g. peace talks—pea stalks

Every language has its own common patterns in which the phonemes are arranged to form syllables.

According to the placement of vowels and consonants the following types of syllables are distinguished:

Placement of VOWELS	Placement of CONSONANTS
open: the V is at the end , such a S is articulated with the opening of the mouth by the end: e.g. they, wri-ter	covered at the beginning: the C is at the beginning of the syllable: e.g. tie
closed: which end in C, at the end of such a S the mouth is closed: e.g. hun-dred, hat	covered at the end: the C is at the end of a S: e.g. on

The presentation of a syllable structure in terms of C and V (canonical forms) gives rather numerous combinations which can be grouped into 4 structural types of syllables:

1. Fully open	V ore, or
2. Fully closed (V between C)	CVC fat CCVC place СVСС fact CCCVCC street CVCCC facts CVCCCC sixths /sIksθs/
3. Covered at the beginning (one C or a sequence of C precede a vowel)	CV too CCV spy CCCV straw
4. Covered at the end (one C or more complete the syllable)	VC on VCC act VCCC acts

Structurally, the commonest types of the syllable in English are VC; CVC.

CV is considered to be the universal structure. CV syllabic types constitute more than half of all structural types in Russian and Ukrainian.

The characteristic feature of English is monosyllabism: it contains between four and five thousand monosyllabic words. Most of the words of old English origin are of one syllable. The limit for the number of syllables in a word in English is 8, e.g. incomprehensibility.

Syllables can be also designated

1) by the position in the word:

from the beginning - INITIAL (початковий), MEDIAL (серединний), FINAL (фінальний/кінцевий) or

from the end - ULTIMATE (останній), PENULTIMATE (передостанній/другий від кінця), ANTEPENULTIMATE (третій від кінця);

2) by the position in relation to stress:

PRETONIC (переднаголошений), TONIC (наголошений), POSTTONIC (післянаголошений)

(Any syllable which is not tonic is ATONIC/ненаголошений).

e.g. tre - men - dous

initial medial final

antepenultimate penultimate ultimate pretonic tonic posttonic

The place of the syllable on the taxonomic scale of the linguistic/language units is not quite clear. On the one hand, the syllable is a unit necessary to explain the mechanism of phoneme realization within a word. On the other hand, it seems to be redundant since the taxonomic scale begins with the phoneme and goes up to the morpheme – word – sentence. In terms of independence and meaningfulness, the syllable is a discrete/independent but meaningless language unit.