1. Suprasegmental features: general characteristics.

Provide
examples.
*segmental features: associated with consonants or vowels – suprasegmental features:
associated with larger units such as syllable, word and utterance*

Stress

Stress is prominence given to a certain syllable in a word, or to a certain word in a phrase

or sentence. What are the characteristics of stressed syllables that enable us to identify them?
There are two different ways of approaching this question. We can study stress from the
points of view of production and of perception. The production of stress is generally believed
to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed syllables.
From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables have one characteristic in common,
and that is prominence.

e.g. a'baut

'aupan

Rhythm

The notion of rhythm involves some noticeable event happening at regular intervals of
time. English speech is rhythmical and that rhythm is detectable in the regular occurrence of
stressed syllables. (Roach)

e.g. ‘Walk | ‘down the | ‘path to the | ‘end of the ca | ‘nal.

Rhythm is traditionally conceived as the way in which accented and unnacented

syllables follow each other in an utterance. (Finch)

*elements which tend to occur regularly in an utterance:

the syllable (in Spanish); the accented syllable (in English)*

Intonation (suprasegmental features or prosody)

WELLS: Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation, we study how the
pitch of the voice rises and falls and how speakers use this pitch variation to convey
meaning. It also involves the study of stress and rhythm. If we had no intonation, our
speech would be monotonous.

The study of intonation is useful for the learners of English in order to they can
recognize and reproduce the consonant and vowel sounds.

2. Stress. Elements that produce prominence. Level of stress. Provide

examples.
Stress

Stress is prominence given to a certain syllable in a word, or to a certain word in a

phrase or sentence. What are the characteristics of stressed syllables that enable us to identify
them? There are two different ways of approaching this question. We can study stress from
the points of view of production and of perception. The production of stress is generally
believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed
syllables. From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables have one characteristic in
common, and that is prominence.

e.g. a'baut

'aupan

Elements that produce prominence

Stressed syllables are recognised as stressed because they are more prominent than
unstressed syllables. What makes a syllable prominent? At least four different factors are
important:

- Loudness: Most people seem to feel that stressed syllables are louder than unstressed
Syllables. In a sequence of identical syllables,if one syllable is made louder than the others, it
will be heard as stressed.
e.g. ba:ba:ba:ba:
- Length: If one of the syllables in our word is made longer than the others, there is
quite a strong tendency for that syllable to be heard as stressed.
e.g. ba:ba:ba:ba:
- Pitch of the voice: pitch in speech is closely related to the frequency of vibration of
the vocal folds and to the musical notion of low- and Sigh-pitched notes. It is essentially a
perceptual characteristic of speech. If one syllable of our “nonsense word” is said with a pitch
that is noticeably different from that of the others, this will have a strong tendency to produce
the effect of prominence.
e.g. For example, if all syllables are said with low pitch except for one said with high pitch,
then the high-pitched syllable will be heard as stressed and the others as unstressed.
- Quality: A syllable will tend to be prominent if it contains a vowel that is different
in quality from neighbouring vowels. If we change one of the vowels in our word the “odd”
syllable will tend to be heard as stressed.
e.g. ba:bi:ba:ba:
So, prominence is produced by four main factors: loudness, length, pitch and quality.
Generally, these four factors work together in combination, although syllables
may sometimes be made prominent by means of only one or two of them.

Levels of stress
There are two different level of stress:
1) Primary stress: a stronger type of stress that results from the pitch movement or tone.
Usually represented with a high mark.
e.g. photo’graphy
2) Secondary stress: a type of stress weaker that the primary. Usually represented with a
high mark.
e.g. ,photo’graphy
This also implies a third level which can be called unstressed and is regarder as beig the
absence of any recognizable amount of prominence.

3. Stress. Free accent (stress). Accent in connected speech. Stress in

simple words and in complex words. Stress shift. Provide examples.
Stress
 Stress is prominence given to a certain syllable in a word, or to a certain word in a
phrase or sentence. What are the characteristics of stressed syllables that enable us to identify
them? There are two different ways of approaching this question. We can study stress from
the points of view of production and of perception. The production of stress is generally
believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed
syllables. From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables have one characteristic in
common, and that is prominence.

e.g. a'baut

'aupan

Free accent

According to the mobility of the primary accent, English and Spanish have free accent.
The place of the accent is variable and the accentuation rules – with their exceptions – have to
be learned in order to know which syllables to accentuate.

Accent in connected speech

In connected speech we make some words stand out with respect to others, according
to the amount of information the carry. In general, content words are likely to be accented in
an utterance: nouns, principal verbs, adjectives and adverbs. On the other hand, structural
words tend to be unaccented: auxiliary verbs, personal, reflexive and relative pronouns,
prepositions, articles, possessive adjectives and conjunctions. (exceptions: demonstrative and
possessive pronouns, interrogative words, and negative anomalous finites).

A more complex ser of modification occurs in order to satisfy English rhythm and usage,
and to convey different meanings.

- Rhythmical modifications: English rhythm requires accented syllables to be separated by

unaccented ones.

1. In sequences of three content words, the second one tends to lose its accent it if has
not more than two syllables. e.g. a ´nice old \chair
2. Phrasal verbs that can take a direct object adopt different accentual patterns,
depending on the position and the nature of the object. e.g. ‘come \in
3. Many double-accented compounds and some simple words may lose the accent
which is closset to another accent in the utterance. e.g. ‘during the week\end
4. Less frequently single-accented words may suffer this rhythmical modification. e.g.
he ‘eats in ex\cess
a. Only a small number of single-accented simple words suffer rhythmical
modifications.
b. All double-accented words, both simple and compound, may be affected by these
modifications.
c. Single-accented compound words do not undergo rhythmical modifications.

- Accentuation and usage

1. In announcemets the accent tends to fall on the noun about which something is
being said, rather than on the following content word. e.g. There are `no \buses today
2. Set phrases may take their own particular accentual pattern. e.g. The ‘new ‘play
brought the \house on fire.
 3. The word street is unaccented when it forms par of a place name. e.g. \Oxford
Street.
4.Nouns used in a wide, inspecific sense, are normally unaccented. e.g. We have ‘lived
in \several places.

- Emphatic and contrastive patterns: special meaning can be conveyed by varying the rule of
accentuation of content and structural words.

1. Structural words may be accented for purposes of emphasis. e.g. You were ‘driving \fast-

2. When an e3xplicit contras is expressed, the elements which are in opposition attract the
accent, leaving the repeated elements unaccented. e.g. I ‘did not ‘say Oxford \Streeet, I said
Oxford \Road.

Stress in simple words

Nouns tend to be stressed nearer the beginning (unless the first syllable is weak and the
second syllable is strong). e.g. di’van – ba’loon

Verbs have the tendency to be stressed nearer the end of the word. e.g. ‘enter – ‘envy

Adjectives have the generally tendency o be stressed on the first syllable (unless it is weak) e.g.
‘insolent – ‘opportune

Stress in complex words

Affixes

- Suffixes -carrying the primary stress themselves e.g. ‘mountain – ,mountai’neer

Affixes - that do not affect stress placement e.g. ‘comfort – ‘comfortable
- that influence stress in the stem e.g. ad’vantage – ,advan’tageous

Compound words

Its main characteristic is that it can be analyzed into two words, both of which can exist
independently as English words.
As far as stress is concerned, the question is quite simple. When is primary stress placed on the
first constituent word of the compound and when on the second? Both patterns are found. A
few rules can be given.
Perhaps the most familiar type of compound is the one which combines two nouns
and which normally has the stress on the first element, as in:
‘typewriter’ 'taipraita
‘car ferry’ 'kaiferi
‘sunrise’ 'sAnraiz
‘suitcase’ 'suitkeis
‘teacup’ 'tiikAp
A number of compounds receive stress instead on the second element. The first words
in such compounds often have secondary stress. For example, compounds with an adjectival
first element and the -ed morpheme at the end have this pattern (given in
spelling only):
.bad- 'tempered
.half- 'timbered
.heavy- 'handed
Compounds in which the first element is a number in some form also tend to have final
stress:
.three- 'wheeler
.second-'class
.five-'finger
Compounds functioning as adverbs are usually final-stressed:
.head'first
.North-'East
.down'stream
Finally, compounds which function as verbs and have an adverbial first element take
final stress:
.down'grade
.back-'pedal
.ill-'treat

Stress shift (Tendency to avoid stress on adjacent syllables by moving one stress to another
syllable)

It is widely claimed that English speech tends towards a regular alternation between stronger
and weaker, and tends to adjust stress levels to bring this about. The effect is particularly
noticeable in cases such as the following, which all show the effect of what is called stress-
shift. In brief, it seems that stresses are altered according to context.

compact (adjective) kam'paekt but compact disk 'kompaekt 'disk

thirteen 03i'ti:n but thirteenth place '03:ti:n0 'pleis

Westminster west'minsta but Westminster Abbey ' Westminster 'aebi

4. Rhythm. English and Spanish rhythm. Stress timed and syllable

timed rhythm. Pause. Teaching rhythm.
Rhythm

The notion of rhythm involves some noticeable event happening at regular intervals of
time. English speech is rhythmical and that rhythm is detectable in the regular occurrence of
stressed syllables. (Roach)

e.g. ‘Walk | ‘down the | ‘path to the | ‘end of the ca | ‘nal.

Rhythm is traditionally conceived as the way in which accented and unnacented

syllables follow each other in an utterance. (Finch)

*elements which tend to occur regularly in an utterance:

the syllable (in Spanish); the accented syllable (in English)*

English and Spanish rhythm

In English we cannot find every single syllable accented. The accented syllables are
separated from each other by equal units of time, or in more technical terms, that the
rhythmic beats are isochronous. It is therefore more exact to say that English rhythm shows a
tendency towards isochrony.

In Spanish share some characteristics with English. The same type of words are liable
to be accented. This leads to easily identifiable rhythmic groups, each one containing an
accented syllable with or without unaccented ones.
 One of the differences between English a Spanish rhythm lies in the fact that Spanish
vowel weakening in terms of quality and quantity is very slight compared with English. Besides,
in Spanish polysyllabic words, which may take extra stresses apart from those that would
normally occur in the citation form, thus producing an effecter or emphatic rhythm.

Stress timed and syllable timed rhythm

- Stress timed: (English) the accented syllables tend to occur at fairly regular intervals.
When two accented syllables are separated by unaccented ones, these tend to be
compressed and quickened, so that the time between each beat will be approximately
the same as the time taken by two consecutive accented syllables.
- Syllable timed rhythm: (Spanish) it is the syllables, either accented or unaccented,
which tend to occur at more or less regular intervals. The time to produce time
utterances will be proportionated to the number of syllables it contains.

Pause (a break in speaking; may consists of a silence or some kind of a sound)

- Predictable: those required for the speaker to take breath or for the separation of
grammatical units (will coincide with rhythmic group boundaries).
- Unpredictable: those produced by hesitations, false starts, etc., may occur at any place
in the utterance.

Teaching rhythm

Features of English rhythm can be tackled from two angles. Firstly, students should
previously have drilled and mastered step by step each one of the component elements.
Secondly, they should have been exposed to the language as a whole form in order to be
accustomed to its overall auditory effect.

Accentuation is perhaps the most important prerequisite. A good technique to learn to

control timing are exercise in which students have to repeat an utterance with different
rhythmic pattern. It is difficult to Spanish speakers because of the lack of non-prominent
syllables in their language.

Not only reading aloud is indispensable but also a good organization into rhythmic groups
and correct placing of pauses.

5. Features of connected speech. Assimilation. Elision. Linking.

Intrusive ”r”. Lengthening. Provide examples.
In looking at connected speech it is useful to bear in mind the difference between the way
humans speaks and what would be found in “mechanical speech”.

Assimilation

In cases where we find a phoneme realized differently as a result of being near some
other phoneme belonging to a neighboring word, we call this difference an instance of
assimilation. Assimilation is something which varies according to speaking rate and style. (it is
more likely to be found in rapid, casual speech and less likely in slow, careful speech).

Assimilation could be regressive (the phoneme that comes first is affected by the one
that comes after it) or progressive (the phonemes that comes first is affected by the one that
comes before).
 We can also identify:

- Coalescent assimilation: a final t, d (alveolar, plosive) and initial j (semi vowel, palatal,
approximant) following often combine to form t͡ ʃ, d͡ ʒ. (palato – alveolar, affricate).
- Assimilation of place:
It is most crearly observable in some cases where a final consonant with
alveolar place of articulation is followed by an initial consonant with a place of
articulation is not alveolar.
e.g. the t will come p before a bilabial consonant as in “that person”
e.g. before a dental consonant, t will chanche to a dental losive as in “that thing”
e.g. before a velar consonan, the t will become k as in “that case”

In similar contexts d would become b, d and g, respectively. e.g. good boy, bad
thing, card game.

In similar contexts n would become m, n and ŋ, respectively. e.g. green paper,

fine thought, ten girls.

Then, s becomes ʃ, and z becomes ʒ when followed by ʃ or j. e.g. this shoe,

those years.

- Assimilation of manner: we find a progressive assimilation of manner, when a word

initial ð follows a plosive or nasal at the end of a preceding word. e.g. in the, get them
*dentalazation: occurs when the tongue tip is brought into contact with the back of
the upper incisors during articulation of certain consonant*
- Assimilation of voice: there is a progressive assimilation of voice with the suffixes s, z;
when 1. a verb carries a third person singular “s” suffix, 2. a noun carries an “s” plural
suffix 3. If carries an “’s” possessive suffix, that suffix will be pronounced as s if the
preceding consonant is fortis (voiceless: las cuerdas no vibran) e.g. cats and as z if the
preceding consonant is lenis (voiced: las cuerdas vocales vibran) e.g. dogz

Elision

The nature of elision may be stated quite simply: under certain circumstances sounds
disappear, and is typical of rapid speech.

We can apply elision in cases of:

- Loss of a weak vowel after p, t, k. e.g. in potato, tomato, today, the vowel in the first
syllable may disappear.
- Weak vowel + n, l, r becomes syllabic consonant. e.g. tonight, police
- Avoidance of a complex consonant clusters. In cases of three plosives or two plosives +
a fricative, the middle plosive disappear. e.g. acts, looked back, scripts
- Loss of final v in “of” before consonants. e.g. lots of them, waste of money

Linking

“r” when the spelling form of a word suggest a final r, and a word beginning with a
vowel follows, the usual pronunciation is to pronounce with r. e.g. here are, four eggs

“j”
 “w”

Intrusive ”r”

Speakers often use r in a similar way to link words ending with a vowel, even when
there is no “justification” from the spellin. e.g. “mediaR event” (a, ia, o:, a: + vowel sound)

Lengthening

- Gemination: when there are two same consonants following to each other we can
apply a linking called gemination, lengthening that consonant. e.g. “big girls” [g:]
- Re-syllabification: when there is a consonant following a vowel sound, we can apply a
linking called re-syllabification, joining the consonant with the vowel. e.g. “left arm”.

6. Intonation. Form and function of intonation. Tones. Tone

languages. Provide examples.
Intonation (suprasegmental features or prosody)
*sounds of the language: segmental features*

WELLS: Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation, we study how the
pitch of the voice rises and falls and how speakers use this pitch variation to convey
meaning. It also involves the study of stress and rhythm. If we had no intonation, our
speech would be monotonous.

The study of intonation is useful for the learners of English in order to they can
recognize and reproduce the consonant and vowel sounds.

Form and function of intonation

FORM: The shortest piece of speech: the single syllable. A continuous piece of speech
beginning and ending with a clear pause: an utterance
FUNCTION: A one syllable word can be said with either a level tone or a moving tone.
If you tray saying “yes” or “no” with a level tone (steady tone) you may find the result does
not sound natural and in English moving tones are more common. Then, if you want to say
“yes” or “no” in a definite, final manner, you probably use a falling tone, which descends
from a higher to a lower pitch. But, if you want to say “yes?” or “no?” as questioning you
may say it with a rising, a movement from a lower pitch to a higher one.
Tones and tone languages
There are three simple possibilities of tone for intonation.
LEVEL _yes _no
FALLING \yes \no
 RISING /yes /no
There are many languages in which the tone can determine the meaning of the word,
and changing from one to another can completely change the meaning or grammatical
categorization. In other words, a tone language is a language in which variations in pitch
distinguish different words. e.g. many dialects in Cinese, in Kono -b3ŋ (uncle) _b3ŋ
(greedy)

7. Intonation. The tone-unit. Provide examples.

Intonation (suprasegmental features or prosody)

WELLS: Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation, we study
how the pitch of the voice rises and falls and how speakers use this pitch variation to
convey meaning. It also involves the study of stress and rhythm. If we had no
intonation, our speech would be monotonous.
The study of intonation is useful for the learners of English in order to they can
recognize and reproduce the consonant and vowel sounds.

The tone-unit

For purposes of analyzing intonation, a unit grater in size than the syllable is needed,
and this unit is called the tone unit; in its smallest form the tone-unit may consist of only one
syllable. In other words, is the minimal unit which can carry intonation. Besides, it is wrong to
say that is always composed for more than one syllable.

The components of the tone-units are:

THE HEAD: all this part of a tone-unit that extends from the first stressed syllable up to
(but not included) the tonic syllable.

*the tonic syllable is the syllable which carries the tone (it can also be called the nucleus)*

THE PRE-HEAD: composed of all the unstressed syllables in a tone-unit preceding the
first stresses syllable. It can be found 1. When there is a head and 2. When there is no head.

THE TAIL: is any syllable between the tonic syllable and the end of the tone-unit.

e.g. *with a head* in an hour ‘give me (head) \that (nucleus) money (tail)

* without head* in an (pre-head) \hour (nucleus)

8. Intonation. Functions of intonation. Provide examples.

Paralinguistic features.

Intonation (suprasegmental features or prosody)

WELLS: Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation, we study

how the pitch of the voice rises and falls and how speakers use this pitch variation to
convey meaning. It also involves the study of stress and rhythm. If we had no
intonation, our speech would be monotonous.
The study of intonation is useful for the learners of English in order to they can
recognize and reproduce the consonant and vowel sounds.
 Functions of intonation
ATTITUDINAL FUNCTION
Enables to express emotions and attitudes as we speak, and this adds a special meaning if
we are angry, happy, grateful, bored and so on.
e.g.
Fall: definiteness as in “Stop \talking”
Rise: yes/no question as in “is it /over?
listing as in “/red, /brow, /green or \blue
more to follow as in “I went to the /shopping…”
Fall-rise: doubts as in “Its vpossible”
Requesting as in “Can I vbuy it”
Rise-fall: surprising as in “You were ^first”
Besides, we can differenciate three different types of suprasegmental variable:
- Sequential: which are found as elements in sequences of other such elements occurring one
after other (pre-heads, heads, tonic syllable and tails; pauses; tone-unit boundaries)
- Prosodic: these characteristics of speech which are constantly present and observable while
speech going on (pitch, loudness, quantity, quality, key).
- Paralinguistic: refers to the body language, those facial expressions, gestures, body movements
and certain vocal effects that help us to communicate our message
ACCENTUAL FUNCTION
The word accentual derives from accent, a word used to refer to “stress”. It is important to
know that while word stress is independent of intonation, the placement of tonic stress is a
function of intonation. In this case, intonation works to focus attention on a particular lexical
item or syllable.
e.g. She was ‘wearing a ‘red \dress – She was ‘wearing a \red ,dress
GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION
The listener is better able to recognize the grammar and syntactic structure of what is being
said by using the information contained in the intonation. For example, differentiating questions
and statements.
e.g. They ‘are ‘coming on \Tuesday - \arent they
/arent they
DISCOURSE FUNCTION
The sentences in a convetsation usually contain references that the knowledge is shared and,
in some cases, the meaning of those sentences can only be interpreted there. We can identify
two main areas: one of them is the use of intonation to focus the listener’s attention on the most
important aspect of the message, and the other is concerned with the regulation of
conversational behaviour.
 e.g. She ‘went to \Scotland
e.g. Ive ‘got t ‘take the \dog for a ,walk

9. Intonation. Tonality, tonicity and tone. Provide examples.

Intonation (suprasegmental features or prosody)

WELLS: Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation, we study
how the pitch of the voice rises and falls and how speakers use this pitch variation to
convey meaning. It also involves the study of stress and rhythm. If we had no
intonation, our speech would be monotonous.
The study of intonation is useful for the learners of English in order to they can
recognize and reproduce the consonant and vowel sounds.

Tonality
The frist matter a speaker has to decide is the division of the spoken material
into chunks, in other words, has to decide the organization of the message.
There will be an intonation patter associated with each chunk and these
chunks are known as intonation phrases.
e.g. the speaker choice if he/she say “We don’t know who she is” as a
complete intonation phrase or if he/she will be divided the intonation phrase.

Tonicity
Speakers use intonation to highlight some words as important for the meaning.
These are word where the speaker focuses the hearer’s attention. To highlight an
important word we accent it, we accent its stressed syllable and that is the nucleus.
That is to say, wee add pitch prominence to the rhythmic pattern.

Tone

Having decided where the nucleus goes, there are some kind of pitch movement
that the speaker can choice:
Falling tone: definiteness as in “Stop \talking”
Rising tone: yes/no question as in “is it /over?
listing as in “/red, /brow, /green or \blue
more to follow as in “I went to the /shopping…”
Fall-rise tone: doubts as in “Its vpossible”
Requesting as in “Can I vbuy it”
Rise-fall tone: surprising as in “You were ^first”

10.Intonation. Tonicity. Where does the nucleus go? Provide

examples.

Intonation (suprasegmental features or prosody)

 WELLS: Intonation is the melody of speech. In studying intonation, we study
how the pitch of the voice rises and falls and how speakers use this pitch variation to
convey meaning. It also involves the study of stress and rhythm. If we had no
intonation, our speech would be monotonous.
The study of intonation is useful for the learners of English in order to they can
recognize and reproduce the consonant and vowel sounds.

Tonicity

Speakers use intonation to highlight some words as important for the meaning. These
are word where the speaker focuses the hearer’s attention. To highlight an important word we
accent it, we accent its stressed syllable and that is the nucleus. That is to say, wee add pitch
prominence to the rhythmic pattern.

Where the nucleus goes? The nucleus can go:

On a stressed syllable
We know that a nucleus should go on a stressed syllable. By stressed syllable we mean
the syllable that has lexical stress. Lexical stress is part of the rhythmic pattern of a word’s
pronunciation.
To make a word the nucleus of an intonation phrase, we put a nuclear tone on the
lexically stressed syllable (the one that the dictionary shows) and to produce an English
intonation patterns correctly is essential to know which syllable in each word bears the stress.
To accent the word never we accent the first syllable e.g. “annoyed” (the last syllable
is accented); “tomorrow” (the 2nd syllable is accented); fine (it is accented in its only
syllable).
On or near the last word
By definition, the nuclear accent is the las accent in the intonation phrase. So, clearly
the general tendency is for the nucleus to be towards the end of the intonation phrase. As we
know, the last word in an intonation phrase is important for de meaning.
e.g. ‘Could you tell me the ‘time? – I ‘want to buy a ‘car.

11.Varieties of English pronunciation

The study of variety
Differences between accents are two main sorts: phonetic and phonological. When two
accents differ from each other only phonetically, we find the same det of phonemes in both, but
some or all of the phonemes are realized differently. There may also be differences in stress or
intonation, but not such as would cause a change in meaning.
The most recognizable phonological difference is where one accent has a different number
of phonemes from another. Many speakers with northern English accents, for example, do not
have a contrast between a and u, so that ‘luck’ and ‘look’ are pronounced identically (both as
lu k ) ; in the case of consonants, many accents do not have the phoneme h, so that there is no
difference in pronunciation between ‘art’ and ‘heart’.
On the other hand, some accents differ from others in having more phonemes and
phonemic contrasts. For example, many northern English accents have a long e: sound as the
realisation of the phoneme symbolised e i in BBC pronunciation.
 A more complicated kind of difference is where, without affecting the overall set of
phonemes and contrasts, a phoneme has a distribution in one accent that is different from the
distribution of the same phoneme in another accent. The clearest example is r, which is
restricted to occurring in pre-vocalic position in BBC pronunciation, but in many other accents
is not restricted in this way.

Geographical variation
For a long time, the study of variation in accents was part of the subject of dialectology,
which aimed to identify all the ways in which a language differed from place to place.
Dialectology in its traditional form is therefore principally interested in geographical
differences.
The investigations were extended for rural areas (where the speakers were believed to
be less likely to have been influenced by other accents), to find elderly speakers (whose speech
was believed to have been less influenced by other accents and to preserve older forms of the
dialect) and to use lists of questions to find information about vocabulary and pronunciation, the
questions being chosen to concentrate on items known to vary a lot from region to region.
More recent research has tended to be carried out within the framework of
sociolinguistics, and has tried to cover urban speech with a balanced coverage of ages and social
classes.
AMERICAN

In many parts of the world, the fundamental choice for learners of English is whether
to learn an American or a British pronunciation.
It is said that the majority of American speakers of English have an accent that is often
referred to as General American (GA); since it is the American accent most often heard on
international radio and television networks, it is also called Network English
Accents in America different from GA are mainly found in New England and in the
“deep south” of the country, but isolated rural communities everywhere tend to preserve
different accents; there is also a growing section of American society whose native language is
Spanish (or who are children of Spanish speakers) and they speak English with a pronunciation
influenced by Spanish.
The most important difference between GA and BBC is the distribution of the r
phoneme, GA being rhotic. Thus where BBC pronounces ‘car’ as ka: and ‘cart’ as ka:t, GA has
ka:r and ka:rt.

BBC GA
car’ ka: ka:r
‘more’ mo: moir
‘fear” fio fir
care’ keo ker
‘tour’ tuo tur

American vowels followed by r are strongly “r-coloured”, to the extent that one often
hears the vowel at the centre of a syllable as a long r with no preceding vowel. The GA vowel in
‘fur’, for example, could be transcribed as 3ir (with a transcription that matched those for the
other long vowels in the list above), but it is more often transcribed 3>- with a diacritic to
indicate that the whole vowel is “r-coloured”.
One vowel is noticeably different: the d of ‘dog’, ‘cot’ in BBC pronunciation is not found
in GA. In most words where the BBC accent has d we find a: or o:, so that ‘dog’, which is dog in
BBC, is da:g or do:g in American pronunciation. In this case, we have a phonological difference,
since one phoneme that is present in BBC pronunciation is absent in American accents.
Other segmental differences are phonetic: the 1 phoneme, is almost always
pronounced as a “dark” in American English: the sound at the beginning of ‘like’ is similar to
that at the end of ‘mile’. The pronunciation of t is very different in American English when it
occurs at the end of a stressed syllable and in front of an unstressed vowel. In a word like
‘betting’, which in BBC pronunciation is pronounced with a t that is plosive and slightly
aspirated, American speakers usually have what is called a “flapped r” in which the tip of the
tongue makes very brief contact with the alveolar ridge, a sound similar to the r sound in
Spanish and many other languages. This is sometimes called “voiced t”, and it is usually
represented with the symbol t.

SCOTTISH

There are many accents of British English, but one that is spoken by a large number of
people and is radically different from BBC English is the Scottish accent. There is much
variation from one part of Scodand to another; the accent of Edinburgh is the one most usually
described.
It is in the vowel system that we find the most important differences between BBC
pronunciation and Scottish English. As with American English, long vowels and diphthongs
that correspond to spellings with “r” are composed of a vowel and the r consonant. Like the
American accent described above, Scottish English pronunciation is essentially rhotic and an ‘r’
in the spelling is always pronounced; the words ‘shore’ and ‘short` can be transcribed as Jar
and Jart.
The distinction between long and short vowels does not exist, so that `good’, ‘food’ has
the same vowel, as do ‘Sam’, ‘psalm’ and ‘caught’, ‘cot’. The BBC diphthongs ei, so are
pronounced as pure vowels e, o, but the diphthongs ei, ai, ai exist as in the BBC accent (though
with phonetic differences).
This brief account may cover the most basic differences, but it should be noted that
these and other differences are so radical that people from England. It often happens that
foreigners who have learned to pronounce English as it is spoken in England find life very
difficult when they go to Scotland, though in time they do manage to deal with the
pronunciation differences and communicate successfully.

Other sources of variation

AGE: we can look at how younger people tends to speak with more elisions than older
people. Besides, younger people tend to use a rising intonation in making statements, a style of
speaking that is sometimes called “upspeak” or “uptalk”.
SOCIAL AND CLASS DIFFERENCES: various situational factors influence
pronunciation, such as the social relationship between speaker and hearer, whether one is
speaking publicity or privately, and the purposes for which one is using the language.
STYLE: we all have the ability to vary our pronunciation to suit the different styles of
speech that we use. Speaking to one’s own children, for example, is very different activity from
that of speaking to your boss.