Phonetics_______2nd Year LMD

Teacher: Mr. Aounali W

LECTURE 8: STRONG AND WEAK FORMS IN SENTENCE STRESS

Many grammatical words in English have two forms when it comes to pronunciation, called
strong and weak forms. The weak forms show reduction of vowels //, // towards // in most
cases. These words belong to the grammatical category, also called function words. For instance:
auxiliary verbs, modals, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, possessive adjectives and articles.

Determiners / Quantifiers

Orthography
A / An
The
Some

Pronouns / Possessive
adjectives

Prepositions / Particles

Orthography
He / His / Him
She / Her
Them
We / Us
You / your
Orthography
As
At
For
From
Of
To / Into
Than
There
Just

Conjunctions

Orthography
And
But
That

Auxiliaries / Modals

Orthography
Am / Are
Be / Been
Can / Could
Do / Does
Have/ Has /Had
Must
Shall / Should
Was / Were

Strong form Weak form

/e/ ; /n/
/i/
/sm/

// ; /n/
// , /i/
/sm/ /sm/

Strong form
/hi/; /hz/; /hm/
/i/ ; /h/
/em/
/wi/ ; /s/
/ju/ ; /j/

Weak form
/hi/, // ; /z/ ; /m/
/i/ ; /h/, //
/m/ /m/
/wi/ ; /s/
/j/ , /j/ ; /j/

Strong form
/z/
/t/
/f/
/frm/
/v/
/tu/ ; /ntu/
/n/
/e/

Weak form
/z/
/t/
/f/
/frm/
/v/
/t/ /t/;/nt/,/nt/
/n/, /n/
//

Strong form
/nd/
/bt/
/t/

Weak form
/nd/ /n/ /nd/, /n/
/bt/
/t/

Strong form

Weak form

/m/ ; //
/bi/ ; /bin/
/kn/ ; /kd/
/du/ ; /dz/
/hv/; /hz/; /hd/
/mst/
/l/ ; /d/
/wz/ ; /w/

/m/ /m/ ; //
/bi/ ; /bn/
/kn/ /kn/ ; /kd/
/d/ ; /dz/
/v/ /v/; /z/;/d/
/mst/ , /ms/
/l/ ; /d/
/wz/ ; /w/

Remark: The function words may be pronounced as strong form when they occur at the end
of the sentence or its emphasized in the sentence.