TRANSCRIPTION – the process of writing down spoken language in phonetic symbols

Types of transcription:

1.PHONEMIC – shows only phoneme contrasts

2.PHONETIC – shows small details in persons pronunciation  square brackets

ACCENT vs DIALECT

ACCENT  the pronunciation features of language variety

- dependent on geographical places, social class, age, educational background, etc.

DIALECT  a variety of language which is different from others not just in pronunciation but in e.g.
vocabulary, grammar or word order
- VARIETY – covers all language varieties

RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (RP)

-prestige, social accent

-extremely popular in 20th century

-nicknames – Queen’s, BBC or Oxford English

-high status everywhere in Britain

-nowadays considered old fashioned

NONRECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (NRP)

-lacks obvious local features

-present day variation that can be heard from educated middle and younger generation of speakers in
England – GENERAL AMERICAN

3 levels of stress:

1.PRIMARY STRESS – strongest

2.SECONDARY – less strong than primary, but stronger than the unstressed syllable

3.UNSTRESSED SYLLABLE

STRESS IN WORDS

PITCH – phonetic term of tone

CITATION FORM – words in isolation (no context, nothing preceeds or follows it)

What makes a syllable prominent?

1.loudness – the louder the syllable, the more prominent it will sound

2.lenght
3.pitch

4.quality (of a vowel)

-monosyllable / monosyllabic word – one syllable (dog)

-polysyllable / polysyllabic – two or more syllables (subject)

-pitch – a frequency resulting from vibration of vocal chords

SIMPLE AND COMPLEX WORDS

-SIMPLE – not compared of more than one grammatical unit

-COMPLEX – two major types:

1.made from stem + affix
2.compound words

AFFIXES

-prefixes - before the stem (un + pleasant)

-suffixes – after the stem (help + ful)

-effects on stress:
1. Affix itself receives the primary stress
2.the word is stressed as if the affix wasn’t there
3.stress remains on the stem, but is shifted to a different syllable

Suffixes behave according to one of the three effects

1.Suffixes carrying primary stress (-ese, -ee, -eer, -ette, -esque)

-primary stress on the 1st syllable of the suffix
-if the stem of the word consists of more than 1 syllable there’ll be secondary stress on one of the
syllables of the stem
-this cannot fall on the last syllable of the stem, so if necessary, has to be moved to an earlier syllable

2.Suffixes that don’t affect stress placement:

-able, -age, -ai, -ei, -ful, -ing, -fy, -wise, -ish (ADJ), -like, -less, -ly, -ness, -y

3.suffixes that influence stress in stem (-eous, -graphy, -ie, -ion, -ious, -ty, -ive)

COMPOUND WORDS

Primary stress on the 1st consistuent word

-most familiar type – compound combined of 2 nouns

2nd element carries the primary stress

1.adjectival first element and -ed morpheme (bad-‘tempered)

2.1st element is a number in some form (second-‘class)

3.functioning as adverbs (down-‘grade)

4.function as verbs and have an adverbial 1st element (down-‘grade)

WORD CLASS PAIRS – group of two-syllable words with identical spelling; differ from each other in stress
placement

-primary stress shifts according to the grammatical category

-if these words class pairs belong to a NOUN / ADJECTIVE group – the primary stress will be on the 1 st
syllable

-if these words function as verbs the primary stress will be on the 2 nd syllable

THE NATURE OF THE SYLLABLE

PHONETICALLY
-single vowel in isolation in isolation – apply – a plai

Vowel – centre of the syllable

ONSET – everything that preceeds the center of the syllable

CODA – everything that follows the center of the syllable

MAXIMA ONSET PRINCIPLE – where two syllables are to be divided at, any consonants then should be
attached to the right-hand syllable, not the left, as far as possible

Zero onset – 1st syllable begins with a vowel

Consonant cluster: 2 or more cons together

Zero coda – no final consonants

Final cons – one cons only

Final cluster – pe-final, final, post-final

Strong syllable – the syllabic peak of rhyme is either LONG VOWEL / DIPHTONG or vowel followed by
coda

Weak syllable – syllabic peak is a short vowel and no coda

VOICELESS AND VOICED SOUNDS

P t k s š f č th h
b d g z ž v dž d - + m, n, ng, r, w,l