WEAK FORMS SUMMARY

Peter Roach “A little Encycolpedia of Phonetics”:

Many very common words have not only a strong or full pronunciation, but also one or more
weak forms which are used when the words occur in certain contexts. Often the pronunciation
is so different that if it were heard in isolation it would be impossible to recognize.

Words which have weak forms are function words:

● Conjunctions
● Articles
● Pronouns
● prepositions
● some auxiliary and modal verbs

The strong form of such words is used when:

● The word is being quoted

● It is being contrasted
● It is at the end of a sentence.

Finch and Ortiz “A Course in English Phonetics for Spanish Speakers” Chapter 10:

Gradation is the process of phonemic changes that suffered many strong vowels which were
gradually weakened or elided.

A group of about fifty structural words are also subject to gradation, these are called weak
form words. These present different phonemic patterns depending on accentuation or
prominence, and in some cases, position in the utterance. Weak-form words have one or more
weak-forms, which will always be unaccented or non-prominent in an utterance, and a strong-
form, which will always be accented or prominent. These words are characterized by
obscuration towards a centralized vowel quality and/or elision of a vowel or a consonant.

Peter Roach “English Phonetics and Phonology” Chapter 12:

Words which have both a strong and weak form belong to a category that may be called
function words. They are in certain circumstances pronounced in their strong forms but which
are more frequently pronounced in their weak forms.

The strong form is used in the following cases:

1. When they occur at the end of a sentence.

2. When they are being contrasted with another word.
3. When they are given stress for the purpose of emphasis.
4. When they are being “cited” or “quoted”.

Gimson’s Pronunciation of English Chapter 11:

Lexical words generally have in connected speech the quantitative pattern of their isolate form
and therefore retain some measure of prominence based on the occurrence of a full vowel
even when no pitch prominence is associated with them. Many function words have two or
more qualitative and quantitative patterns according to whether they are unaccented or
accented. As compared with the accented realization of these words (the STRONG forms), the
unaccented WEAK forms of these words show reductions of the length of sounds, obscuration
of vowels towards / ə ɪ ʊ / and the elision of vowels and consonants.

Teaching Weak Forms Liang Wenxia:

Weak form is a common feature of spoken English. English is a stress-timed language, stressed
syllables are equal in timing. In order to fit out our words into this pattern, we tend to
“squash” or compress ither syllables or words occurring between stresses, in order to keep up
with the more or less regular rhythm. Compressing or “weakening” some sounds is necessary
to keep up with the more or less regular rythm of English. A weak form is the pronunciation of
a word or syllable in an unstressed manner. The difference between the two forms can affect
meaning. If a speaker unknowingly uses the strong form instead of the weak form,
misunderstandings can occur.

Teaching weak forms can help students improve their production of spoken English, not
knowing the weak form may inhibit students comprehension of the English spoken by fluent
speakers.

There are three ways in which the strong form is changed into the weak form

1. a vowel