The Phonemes of English,

part 2

September 13, 2013

 Stress
• A stressed syllable may be denoted by a vertical dash
immediately preceding the stressed syllable.
• Examples of “contrast”:
• (N)
• (V)
• “Insult”
•
(N)
•
 A Useful Diacritic
• Some English syllables have a consonant peak.
• This can only happen with /n/, /m/, /l/ and /r/.
• When this happens, the consonant is said to be syllabic
and is denoted with a small vertical dash underneath.
• Examples:
‘chasm’

‘ribbon’
‘eagle’
‘feature’
 A Word of Caution
• The vowel system of English can vary greatly from one
dialect to another.
• Ex: the vowels of Canadian English have shifted away from
their American counterparts…
• (for some, but not all, speakers)
• Shift #1:

• Shift #2:
• Examples:
 /u/-fronting
• The third element of the shift involves the “fronting” of the
vowel /u/.
• Compare:
Los Angeles
Saskatoon
• Note that not every Canadian does this.
Calgary
• Also note that North American vowel systems are diverging:
• Chicago
• Saskatoon
Source: http://accent.gmu.edu
• New York City
 Moral of the Story #2
• Your phonemic system might be different from the
“official” transcriptions in the textbooks.
• If you don’t believe what the books say, you may very
well be right.
• Pay attention to both your speech and the phonetic
habits of those around you...
• You might learn something!
 For Monday
• Please take a stab at the following exercises from
Chapter 2 of A Course in Phonetics before Monday:
• A 1-10
• B 11-20
• D 31-40
• (American speaker)
• (phonemic transcriptions)
• Here’s the online link:
• http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter2/exercises.htm

• This will be a practice transcription exercise that we

will go over together in class.