9.

SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA INGLESA III: ACENTO, RITMO Y

ENTONACIÓN. COMPARACIÓN CON EL SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA O
LENGUAS OFICIALES DE LA COMUNIDAD AUTÓNOMA CORRESPONDIENTE.
It is a fact that the study of the English phonological system is of great importance to
master all aspects of language. Before starting with the description of the English
vowels, it is worth mentioning some key concepts in the study of phonetics and
phonology.
Jakobson and Halle, in their book “Fundamentals of English” (1956) see phonetics as
the study of the way that sounds are produced and perceived. In other words, phonetics
refers to the study of the positions and movements of the organs of speech. It deals with
the characteristics of sounds rather than their functions. Phonetics can be further
divided into , or . The articulatory phonetics deals
with the of sounds; the auditory phonetics deals with their and
the acoustic phonetics deals with the of sounds.

On the other hand, they describe phonology from a mental or linguistic approach. It is
the study of the concrete characteristics within the context of a specific language, which
is studied in relation to its functional behaviour.
To explain the relationship between the two terms, it is worth mentioning Kenneth
Pike’s quote: “Phonetics gathers the raw materials. Phonemics cooks it” (1944). In
other words, phonetics studies speech in general and provides the general material:
speech sounds and suprasegmental information, whereas phonology (phonemics in the
quotation) uses the material to discover patterns, rules and to investigate the principles
governing the sound systems of particular languages.
At a segmental level, a phonetician would study the characteristics of a specific sound
while a phonologist would ask what the function of that specific sound is within a specific
language. For instance: a phonetic study would describe the sound [Ө] as a voiceless,
dental fricative, and a phonologist would specify that this sound does exist in English but
it isn’t used in German or in Catalan.
The depends on three main factors: the origin and direction of
the airflow, the position of the vocal cords and the position of the articulators. If the
resultant sound belongs to a specific language, it is called SPEECH SOUND. They are the
product of human anatomy and physiology.

The production of a sound starts with an energy, produced by the LUNGS in the form of
a stream of air. This is called pulmonic air and it is also done when breathing. To speak,
however, we change our normal pattern of breathing, making the exhalation become
much longer than the inhalation.

The air, coming from the lungs, moves along the TRACHEA into the THROAT. On the way,
it passes the LARYNX. Its function is to modify the airflow to produce an acoustic signal.
The air passes between the VOCAL FOLDS or CORDS. Their most important effect is the
production of audible vibration, known as voice. If they are opened, there is no vibration
between them, so the sounds produced are known as voiceless. In English, only some
consonants are voiceless. An example could be /p/, /t/, /k/ or /h/. If they are closed,
there is a vibration and so they produce voiced sounds. In English, all vowels are voiced
and some consonants such as /b/, /d/, /g/ /m/, too. The opening between the vocal
cords is called the GLOTTIS.

Once the air passes through the trachea and the glottis it enters the VOCAL TRACK. It is
the main component where we articulate speech sounds. The airstream is affected by
mobile organs or (Knight, 2002): the lower lip which is
involved in rounded vowels, the tongue which is involved in the production of all vowels
and most consonants, the glottis with which we produce phonation and some specific
consonants and the uvula which is actively involved in some consonants such as the
uvular trill.
The active articulators are supported by the . which are involved in the
production of speech sounds but do not move. They are the upper lip, the palate and
the teeth. The palate is the roof of the mouth and it separates the oral and the nasal
cavities. it is divided into three parts: the soft palate, which is used to produce some
vowels, the hard palate and the alveolar ridge.
Beyond the segmental analysis, there are some important aspects that contribute to the
understanding of English. These are the suprasegmental characteristics. They apply to
all varieties and they involve more than one sound. It must be borne in mind that the
suprasegmental characteristics carry more meaning than the segmental ones. For
instance, a mistake in pronunciation of a segmental sound can lead to a minor problem
of understanding, ham /hӕm/ and jam /Ʒӕm/ being a good example of that. However,
a mistake at the suprasegmental level can be more serious, as it can be interpreted as
rude or impolite.
There are two types of suprasegmental features: the predictable ones, like stress,
rhythm and adjustments and those sensitive to the discourse features, like prominence
and intonation. However, the most important ones are stress and pitch.
Stress is, according to Celce-Murcia, the characteristic by which certain syllables of a
word are more prominent than others. It is defined as the force with which the syllable
is structured. It generally means a greater amount of energy and it refers to the length
of the vowel, its quality or a pitch change. It allows to tap up the rhythm of the syllables.
There are three levels of stress: the primary stress, which is also known as the tonic or
nuclear accent, the secondary stress, known as the pretoric accent and the tertiary
stress, most commonly known as unstressed syllables.
The placement of the stress in a word influences the understanding. This influence can
be set in three different ways: Firstly, lexical stress, which refers to the fact that the
place of the stress within a word can lead to a change of meaning or word class. For
instance, the word “present”, when it has the nucleus on the first syllable [‘presƏnt] it is
a noun whereas when it has the stress on the second syllable [pr I’sent], it is a verb.
Secondly, the shift stress, which refers to the fact that the stress pattern is dependent
on the syntactic environment. For instance, in the words Chinese, Thirteen or Unhappy
found in isolation, the stress is in the last syllable for Chinese and Thirteen and in the
second syllable for Unhappy: [ʧaɪˈniːz] [θɜːˈtiːn] and [ʌnˈhæpi]; while if they belong to a
constituent as in “A Chinese boy”, “an unhappy feeling” or “ a thirteen-year-old girl” the
stress switches and the syllable that originally carried it becomes unstressed: [ə ‘ʧaɪniːz
bɔɪ], [ən ‘ʌnhæpi ˈfiːlɪŋ] and [ə ˈθɜːtiːn-jɪər-əʊld gɜːl]. In short, we can affirm that when these
words are used as an attribute, the stress is on the first syllable, while when they are
used predicatively, the stress is on the second one.
Lastly, weakening is one of the most characteristic features of English Phonology. It is
defined as the centralization of vowels to Schwa /Ə/. It basically happens in
monosyllabic function words such as to, there or for. They all have a strong form, when
they are in a stressed position and a weak form or a syllabic consonant when they are in
an unstressed position. Here are some examples of the process of weakening in context:
“There were rather a lot of them”. If we read this sentence at normal speech, we can
see that there are five weak forms: “there” “were” “a” “of” “them”. In all these cases,
the vowels are either centralised to [Ə] or eliminated: [ðə wə ˈrɑːðər ə lɒt əv ðəm]
This is another good example to see the difference between a stressed form and an
unstressed one. In this case, the same word “there” is found in a weak and in a strong
position in the same sentence: “Why was there nobody there to meet them?” The first
there is weak, together with was, to and them, while the second there is strong: [waɪ
wəz ðeə ˈnəʊbədi ‘ðeə tə miːt ðəm]

There are some orthographic considerations regarding stress. The primary stress will be
found in vocalic groups if they are diphthongs or triphthongs and there will be at least
two syllables between the primary and the secondary stress in the same word. Besides,
when two accents meet in the same word, the first one will be the secondary stress and
the second one will be the primary. Finally, when the primary stress is preceded by
several secondary stresses, the nearest is weaker than the rest.
The mother tonge intonation is learned in the first stage of language acquisition and
becomes automatic after this period. Because of this, second language speakers will
generalize its rules over the foreign language, opening possibilities for
miscommunication or sometimes unintelligibility. There are some differences in stress
between English, Catalan and Spanish, because English is a tone language. Therefore, an
incorrect stress placement can lead to misunderstandings. Spanish and Catalan are
syllable-timed languages. When Spanish or Catalan speakers transfer the intonation
patterns of their mother tongues into English, the result may sometimes be barely
comprehensible to native English speakers. This is because the meaning or information
usually conveyed in English by the combination of stress, pitch and rhythm in a sentence
is flattened or evened out by the Spanish or Catalan learners. The most frequent error
for Spanish speaker is to generalize the falling English contour without noticing the
pragmatic use of it. Second language learners need to know the different prosodic
elements in English, so they can understand them, and later on generate the appropriate
utterance, depending on the meaning that the speech is intended for.
The main problem for our learners is hearing and predicting where the stress falls
because English has no accent marks or predictable patterns. Therefore, it is a must for
the teacher to show how native speakers highlight stress, with length, volume and pitch
and to show how they produce unstressed syllables, highlighting the concept of vowel
reduction (Schwa).
Regarding rhythm, it involves knowing stress patterns of individual words. English is a
stress—timed language, which means that the length of an utterance depends on the
number of stresses and not on the number of syllables, like Catalan or Spanish.
Therefore, sentence stress implies various stresses elements in a sentence. The rhythm
is the union of word stress and sentence stress and it is a regular, patterned beat of
stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses.
Generally speaking, content words are stressed and function words are unstressed;
Besides, those words which show previously mentioned information are also often
unstressed. When teaching English as a second or foreign language, it is necessary and
highly recommendable to compare the phonological systems of the student’s mother
tongue. In our case, the richness of having two different mother tongues, Catalan and
Spanish, helps the learners acquire a foreign language more easily. However, the
differences between stress-timed languages and syllable-timed languages is an
important issue in the acquisition of a foreign language; and, as such, it must be
considered and taught in class from the very beginning, by means of real, context-linked
materials.
Bibliography
BOWEN, D. A comparison of the intonation patterns of English and Spanish. 1956.
Carr, P. English Phonetics and Phonology: An Introduction (2012)
CELCE-MURCIA, M.; BRINTON, D. M.; GOODWIN, J. Teaching pronunciation: A reference
for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. 1996.
CHELA-FLORES, B.; CHELA-FLORES, G. Intonation and sentence focus in English and
Spanish: Implications for teaching. 2003.
Estebas, E. Teach Yourself English Pronunciation (2009)
Gimson, An introduction to the pronunciation of English (1980)
Hogg, R & Denison, D. A history of the English Language. (2008)
Jakobson and Halle, Fundamentals of English (1956)
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