UNIT-6.

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Maria_Jose_Cuendes

Fonética y Fonología

2º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Humanidades
Universidad de Huelva

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 Unit 6 – Connected Speech
- In spoken discourse, words are not pronounced in an isolated way within the stream
of speech.
- This results from a simple law of economy whereby the organs of speech, instead of
taking a new position of each sound, tend to bring sounds together with the purpose
of saving time and energy.
- In phonological of phonemic transcriptions of texts, aspects of connected speech have
to be included.
- These aspects do not represent allophones but realizations of different phonemes
from the ones expected.
- When transcribing full phrases or sentences, we have to establish the boundaries of
the utterances:
‘Last year | when I was in England | I saw a friend of mine ǁ’
/'lɑːst 'jɪə | 'wen aɪ wəz ɪn 'ɪŋglənd | aɪ sɔː ə frend əv maɪnǁ/
(can we dropped the <t> of last and put together frendəv; to do it easier)
1. ELISION
Phonological process that occurs when under certain circumstances a sound disappears.
- rapid or casual speech
- formal/informal discourse
- principle of economy of effort

- Loss of weak vowel after /p, t, k/: ‘potato, tomato, canary, perhaps, today’
- Weak vowel + /n, l, r/ may become a syllabic consonant: ‘police, tonight, correct’
- Avoidance of complex consonant clusters: ‘George the sixth’s throne’: /sikθs θr/ can
be pronounced /siks θr/
- In clusters of 3 stops or 2 stops plus 1 fricative, the middle stop may disappear: ‘acts,
texts, looked back, scripts, postpone, postman’
- Loss of final /v/ in ‘of’ before a consonant: ‘lots of them’, ‘waste of money’ /əv/ > /ə/
- Contraction of grammatical words: had (‘d), is (‘s), will (‘l), have (‘ve), not (n’t), are
(‘re).
- Other examples: ‘don’t send’, ‘shouldn’t go’, ‘left-hand side’
2. GEMINATION
Phonological process which occurs across the words or in compound words, when the last
consonant in a given word and the first consonant in the following one are the same stop,
fricative or nasal.
- night train /naɪtːreɪn/ vs. night rain /naɪt reɪn/
- bookcase /bʊkːeɪs/
3. R-LINKING
Phonological phenomenon by which an /r/ is inserted in between two words in RP to ease
the transmition between a word and the next one.
The first word ends in <r> (not pronounced in RP) and a simple vowel sound (/ɑː/, /ɔː/,
/ɜː/, /ə/) or a dipthong. The second word begins with a vocalic sound.
The car is /ðə kɑːrɪz/; Peter is /piːtərɪz/; care/caring

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 4. ASSIMILATION
Common phonological process by which adjacent sounds change in order to resemble
each other more closely.
The sounds become more alike either in sonority, place or manner of articulation.
This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds
of the next word before the last sound has been completed.
4.1 PROGRESSIVE, PERSERVATORY, OR LEFT-TO-RIGHT ASSIMILATION
Phonological process by which a preceding sound has an effect on the following one.
Within words, it occurs in past tense/ past participle endings, in 3rd person singular
present tense endings, and in plurals.
Since the voiced or voiceless quality of the stem conditions the output of the
morphological endings.

3rd sp. present tense endings and plurals:

- /s/ after voiceless sounds: ‘eats; drinks; cats; clocks’
- /z/ after voiced sounds: ‘receives; beds; rooms’
- /ɪz/ after fricative and affricate sounds: ‘watches; races; dishes; horses’

Exceptions
- the following -ed words used as adjectives are pronounced with /ɪd/: ‘aged,
dogged, ragged, blessed, learned, wicked, crooked, naked, wretched’
- When used as a real verbs (past simple and past participle), the normal rules
apply.

Connected speech

- bookish style - /bʊkɪʃ staɪ/ > /bʊkɪʃtaɪ/

- What’s the problem? - /wɒt (ɪ)z ðə prɒbləm/ > /wɒtzə prɒbləm/
/wɒt (ɪ)z ðə prɒbləm/ > /wɒts ðə prɒbləm/
- In the end - /ɪn ði end/ > /ɪnniend/
4.2 REGGRESIVE, ANTICIPATORY OR RIGHT-TO-LEFT ASSIMILATION
Phonological process by which the assimilated sound becomes similar or identical to
the following conditioning sound:
- ‘his shoes’, ‘is she?’ - /hɪʃuːz/ /ɪʃiː/
- ‘The sun kissed shore’ - /sʌŋkɪst/
Final /t/ or /d/ + /p, k, b, g/, etc: ‘good boy’, ‘good girl’, ‘at peace’ > first sound and
second merge into a long version of the second sound: /b:/ /g:/ /p:/
4.3 COALESCENT ASSIMILATION
Phonological process by which two adjacent sounds combine to form a new one:
A+B=C. Yod coalescence is a form of coalescent assimilation which takes place when/j/
is preceded by /t/ and /d/:
- ‘This year’ - /ðɪʃɪə/
- ‘These young’ - /ðiːʒʌŋ/
- /t/ + /j/ = /tʃ/: ‘what you?’ /wɒtʃu/; ‘don’t you’ /dəʊntʃu/
- /d/ + /j/ = /dʒ/: ‘could you?’ /kʊdʒu/; ‘education’: ‘do you?’ /dʒu/

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
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