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Phonology 2 The Distance Delta

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Phonology 2 Summary This input is about connected speech. Before looking at the features of connected speech, however, we will need to look at the issue of stress, both word stress and sentence stress. We will also be looking at some features that result from the fact that English is largely a ‘stress-timed language’, although this concept has been criticised recently, as we will see. We will be looking at a selection of exercises and activities dealing with features of connected speech.

Objectives By the end of this input you will: 

Know about the features and problems of word stress and sentence stress in English.

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Be able to understand the concept of syllable-timed and stress-timed languages, and be aware of different current views of this concept.

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Be able to identify and explain particular features of connected speech.

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Be prepared to teach students how to recognise features of connected speech and how to produce these features as accurately as possible.

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Contents

1. Introduction to Stress and Word Stress 2. Teaching Word Stress 3. Introduction to Sentence Stress 4. Teaching Sentence Stress 4.1. Recognition 4.2. Production 5. English as a Stress-Timed language? 6. Features of Connected Speech 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Assimilation 6.3. Liaison/Catenation 6.4. Elision 6.5. Weak Forms 7. Teaching Connected Speech 7.1. Some issues concerning the Teaching of Connected Speech 8. Terminology Review Reading Appendices

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1. Introduction to Stress and Word Stress Stress is a term we use to describe the prominent syllable of a word or a sentence. We can talk about both word stress and sentence stress (or prominence). Each word of more than one syllable has a ‘more strongly’ stressed syllable. The position of stress is an important feature of an utterance; even in a single word it can be a defining feature; indeed a word mis-stressed is not only ‘wrong’, it could be unrecognisable to the listener. Try saying ‘daffodil’ with the stress on the second syllable instead of the first. Worse, it could be heard as something else. 

‘Important’ is stressed on the second syllable. Move it to the first syllable and see what happens.

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‘Important’, mis-stressed by placing stress on the first syllable, becomes more like ‘impotent’.

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‘Graffiti’ stressed on the first syllable becomes more like ‘gravity’.

What is stress exactly? It is when a syllable is made louder and longer; as a result there is a greater expulsion of air. The other syllables become, or appear to be, weak by contrast. There can also be a change in pitch; in fact the stressed syllable will be where meaningful pitch movement takes place. There is more about pitch in Phonology 3. The question arises: how can learners know where the stress falls when they first encounter a word on the page? Is there any way we can help them, at least to have some expectations as to the patterns of stress? Certainly there are rules, or at least patterns: see the following task.

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Task 1: Evaluating Word Stress Rules (20mins) Look at the following rules concerning word stress. Of course these are not absolute rules, and you may be able to think of exceptions. How many of these rules do you think students would find useful and therefore you would teach? 

There is ‘front weight’ in many two-syllable nouns and adjectives: ‘water’ / ‘ugly’

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In words with suffixes the suffixes are never stressed: ‘-ly’ in ‘quietly’ etc.

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There is a set of words which can be used as a verb or a noun in English ‘increase’/‘decrease' ‘export’/‘import’ ‘record’ ‘insult’ ‘permit’ etc. In all these words, the noun has the stress on the first syllable, and the verb has the stress on the last syllable.

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The following suffixes (‘-ary’, ‘-ator’ etc.) cause the stress to be placed on the fourth syllable from the end of the word e.g. ‘vocabulary’, ‘gladiator’, ‘alimony’ etc.

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The following suffixes (‘-ity’, ‘-logy’, ‘-graphy’, ‘-cracy’, ‘-sophy’ etc.) cause the stress to be placed on the third syllable from the end of the word e.g. ‘democracy’, ‘university’, ‘philosophy’ etc.

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The following suffixes (‘-ic’, ‘-ation’ etc.) cause the stress to be placed on the second syllable from the end of the word e.g. ‘automatic’, ‘administration’ etc.

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A general tendency is for the stressed syllable to be somewhere in the middle of the word rather than on the first or last syllable in words of four, five or six syllables e.g. ‘conservative’, ‘originality’, ‘environmentally’ etc.

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Compound words: Words formed from a combination of two words tend to be stressed on the first element. Examples are: ‘postman’, ‘newspaper’, ‘teapot’ and ‘crossword’.

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The suffix ‘-able’ usually does not change the stress pattern of a word to which it is added e.g. ‘commend’ and ‘commendable’, ‘comfort’ and ’comfortable’ etc.

Most of these rules or tendencies are from Kelly, G., 2000, How to Teach Pronunciation, Pearson Longman or Kenworthy, J. 1996 Teaching English Pronunciation Longman.

Word stress rules are very often: 

Complicated

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Complicated to express

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Fraught with exceptions

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These may be useful rules for the purposes of descriptive linguistics but are rather complex from the pedagogical point of view. Even the simplest ‘rules’ tend to be cautious: and of course the writers cited above recognise this. Of one particular stress observation Kelly writes: ‘This is a valid observation. But how dependable a rule can this be to a student?’ In saying so he recognises that a useful rule of linguistics may have dubious pedagogic value. So it could be that an ‘ad hoc’ approach to stress may be a more effective way of dealing with this problem.

2. Teaching Word Stress You will recall that when we dealt with sounds we described the stages of: 

Differentiation / Recognition

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Production

The same stages can apply to the work we have to do on word stress, and later on sentence stress and features of connected speech. Once again it could be said that by and large students need to recognise before they can produce. Here we will look at some of the exercises that we can give our students to help them with the recognition and production of word stress. First, recognition:

Task 2: Differentiation / Recognition of Word Stress - Activities (20mins) Example: ‘Same or different’? The learners are presented with words or short phrases in pairs, and asked to say whether they are the same or different in stress pattern e.g. ‘operate’ and ‘beautiful’, ‘Coca-cola’ and ‘lemonade’. This is a useful exercise for recognition purposes, providing the lexical items are known to the learners, so that they see them as relevant to their language learning as a whole. It could be used as a warmer or as part of a focus on revision of lexis covered during the previous week / term / course. 1. Now consider the next two exercises from published pronunciation materials. What is the exercise focusing on? 2. How useful is the exercise? 3. At what level would you introduce these materials? 4. In what way might you adapt them, incorporate them into a lesson? (From Kenworthy, J. 1987, Teaching English Pronunciation, Longman)

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In the following exercise, for higher level students, the main task is the identification of the main stress. Connected to this is also focus on those weak syllables that have the schwa sound /ə/.

From Bowler, B. & Cunningham, S. 1991 Headway Upper Intermediate Pronunciation OUP

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In the following exercise the focus is on word stress patterns:

Haycraft, B. 1994 English Aloud 1 Heinemann (p13)

Task 3: Production of Word Stress - Activities (20mins) Here are two activities from different books for the productive practice of word stress. As before consider for each: 1. What is the exercise focusing on? 2. How useful is the exercise? 3. At what level would you introduce these materials? 4. In what way might you adapt them, incorporate them into a lesson?

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From Cunningham, C. & Moor, P. 1996 Headway Elementary Pronunciation OUP (p31)

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From Haycraft, B. 1994 English Aloud 2 Heinemann (p23)

3. Introduction to Sentence Stress Stresses in sentences (also known as prominence) may be the result of several things. Some words are more likely to be stressed than others because they are content words rather than structural words. Consider the following example: ‘Luke’s taller than Samantha.’ Clearly the two names and the comparative adjective are more prominent than the modest structural word ‘than’, which would almost disappear in rapid speech. Secondly, some content words have more prominence than others. This is for a reason and learners or even recently trained teachers sometimes ask this question: ‘Where is the stress in this sentence: He’s been working in London for five years’? Of course the assumption here is wrong; a sentence has no one correct stressed syllable. It would most probably be on the word ‘years’ if only because the natural fall of a neutral (or ‘unmarked’) statement would take place there. However, contexts could be imagined that would allow us to stress this sentence in different places: 1. He’s been working in London for five years. 2. He’s been working in London for five years. 3. He’s been working in London for five years. 9

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4. He’s been working in London for five years. 5. He’s been working in London for five years. The meaning in each instance is as a result quite changed, for sentence stress is of course meaningful. Sentence stress differentiates between one explicit option and lots of other implicit ones; there are always invisible alternatives, or ‘marked’ utterances: For example: He’s been working in London. (means not in Innsbruck, not Grimsby etc.) For the sentences 1-4 above you try to find a conversational context for each of the possible utterances, and think of the implicit alternatives. Another reason for words to be stressed rather than other words is that some words are new information, other words information that is already known. Think of this conversation at a party: Host: (to guest) I thought John was coming? (Here John is the ‘new information’). Guest: Oh John’s coming OK. He’s getting a lift with Mary. (Here John is now ‘old information’. Mary is new information so is prominent). The term ‘sentence stress’ can be a little misleading as dialogues between friends can often be formed of grammatically incomplete utterances e.g. A: Tea? B: Sounds good. A: How do you take it? B: Milk. No sugar. So in ‘Sounds good’, the stress arguably falls on ‘good’ yet it is not a sentence but an utterance where ‘good’ receives prominence i.e. there is a movement in pitch which serves to stress a syllable. Where the greatest movement happens is called nuclear stress or the tonic syllable.

4. Teaching Sentence Stress As we have seen, in a typical sentence most syllables of the sentence are not stressed. Indeed often all of them except one remain unstressed. One of the problems in drawing the students’ attention to sentence stress is to risk them becoming over-attentive to details that would perhaps be best disregarded in the interests of focus on the single stressed syllable. Even left to their own devices, students will focus on individual syllables, possibly giving them prominence that is not required. As Kenworthy says in Teaching English Pronunciation: Every word seems important to someone who is struggling to put together a message in a new language. What can we do to help students with sentence stress? Once again, work has to be done for both differentiation/recognition and production:

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4.1.

Differentiation / Recognition

Here are two extracts from materials that deal with the recognition of sentence stress:

From Haycraft, B. 1994 English Aloud 1 Heinemann (p23)

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From Cunningham, S. and Bowler, B. 1990 Headway Intermediate Pronunciation Oxford University Press (p32)

4.2.

Production

There are activities we can use to help the learner. The first thing of course is to deal with the phenomenon mentioned above whereby a differently stressed word changes the emphasis of a sentence and its meaning. Kenworthy (1987) describes the following activity: At beginners level it is possible to demonstrate the shift of stress using simple dialogues in which the two speakers ask each other the same question in turn. Here’s an example (stressed syllables are in bold): 12

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A: What do you do? B: I’m a computer programmer. What do you do? A: I work in a solicitor’s office”. Here are two further examples from books devoted to Pronunciation. Notice that while in both the materials the activities are productive in the first from English Aloud 1 the production is simply imitative, though it remains a valid exercise. In the second from Headway Upper Intermediate Pronunciation, students have to think consciously where the appropriate stress should go and this provides a useful stage between recognition and real production. Haycraft, B. 1994 English Aloud 1 Heinemann (p30)

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From Bowler, B. & Cunningham, S. 1991 Headway Upper intermediate Pronunciation OUP (p3)

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Task 4: Questionnaire on Word and Sentence Stress (40mins) (Optional) Ask one or two your colleagues how they teach word and sentence stress. Find out as much as you can of their tricks of the trade. Your questions are going to concern how they focus on: 

Both word stress and sentence stress: ask them what they do.

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In class generally to indicate stress position on the board.

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In the presentation of new language items, lexical, structural, functional etc.

Post your most interesting findings or 3 favourite ideas on the Discussion Forum on the Delta website.

5. English as a Stress-Timed Language? Well-defined stressed syllables are a major feature of English. As a result English has sometimes been described as a stress-timed language. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics gives this definition: A stress timed language (such as English) is a speech rhythm in which the stressed syllables recur at equal intervals of time. Consider the following utterance: Has anyone got │ today’s paper? It is comprised of two ‘tone groups’ which are bounded by (brief) pauses when we speak. In each tone group there is a stressed word, or syllable within a word if the word is more than one syllable long, which in the above utterance has been underlined. While the stressed syllables occur regularly, the spaces in between can be comprised of varying numbers of syllables, often crammed together and phonologically ‘distorted’. So the first tone group has five syllables, and the second only four, although the time taken to utter each tone group is (roughly) the same.

Syllable-timed languages A syllable timed rhythm is a speech rhythm in which all syllables are said to recur at equal intervals. French, for example, could be seen as such a language: If you say the following sentence you will notice a more or less even regular fall of syllables: ‘Il est arrivé a six heures’ (example from Longman Dictionary). 15

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Japanese and Spanish are other examples of syllable timed languages. The Longman Dictionary is rightly cautious about these two types of timing. They are tendencies rather than absolute categories. Recent research, employing very sophisticated measuring techniques, has proved that such compression is only a tendency and not a hardand-fast rule, implying that languages fall somewhere on a continuum between stress-timed and syllable-timed, and may vary depending on the kind of speech act. For example, an informal chat in English is more likely to have more elements of stress-timing than a prewritten speech. Nonetheless, it is certainly true that in English a dramatically different number of syllables can be found between one stressed syllable and the next, and furthermore that this obliges English words to be distinctly ‘elastic’.

6. Features of Connected Speech 6.1 Introduction We might imagine that it is possible to specify a ‘correct’ pronunciation for each word. Even a dictionary is likely to tell you that ‘she’ is pronounced /ʃiː/ In fact, within a crowded and rapidly spoken sentence in which this word has to jostle for space, ‘she’ may end up something more like /ʃɪ/ as in ‘she goes’ or /ʃə/ or just /ʃ/as in ‘she lives’. In complete utterances all sorts of ‘distortions’ take place; this is true of all languages, of course; but is a phenomenon particularly evident in English, which is phonologically an extremely malleable language; weak syllables get squashed together; strong ones can be remarkably attenuated. Take the question ‘How long have you worked here?’ Say this at natural i.e. fast speed and you will see that the four syllables of ‘how long’ve you’ probably take slightly less time than the syllable ‘worked’. In everyday conversation this would sound, or rather ‘look’ something like this: ‘hlongvyou w o r k e d here’. The fact of stress timing means that within words some syllables become weakened and distorted, indeed have to be in order to ‘fit into’ the stress timing. But things happen not just within words; we also have to see what happens at their junctures, where one word borders with another. We will now look at some of the features of connected speech.

6.2 Assimilation This is when a speech sound changes, becoming more like another sound which follows or precedes it. This phenomenon is already visible in the spelling of words. For example it is not by chance that we say ‘impossible’ and ‘intolerant’. Try to switch the negative prefixes around and you will find they take more effort to say. What we are looking at then is the phonological ‘law of least effort’. Spoken language certainly obeys the assimilation law of least effort. Look at the word ‘handbag’. Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of being Earnest’, in her line ‘In a handbag!?’ might actually pronounce each of those three consecutive and very differing consonants /ndb/, which ordinarily is quite difficult. However, in ordinary speech 16

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we would probably go for /hæmbæg/. Assimilation can be either regressive (looking backwards), when a sound affects what comes before it as in the ‘handbag’ example, where the bilabial sound /b/ causes the nasal alveolar sound /n/ which comes before it, to be articulated further forward in the mouth as the bilabial nasal /m/. Or, it can be progressive (looking forwards), so that a preceding sound has an effect on the following sound. An example of this is with the regular endings of past tense verbs, where a verb ending with a voiced sound is followed by the voiced sound /d/ e.g. ‘moved’, or the unvoiced sound is followed by the corresponding unvoiced sound /t/, as with ‘danced’. The third type of assimilation is coalescence or coalescent assimilation, when both sounds affect each other, as in the boundary between ‘would’ and ‘you’ in ‘Would you…?’ where the sounds /d/ and /j/ coalesce into the sound /ʤ/.

6.3 Catenation or Liaison ‘Liaison refers to the smooth linking or joining together of words in connected speech… …Two words can have a silence between them, but liaison is concerned with the way sounds are fused together at word boundaries’. (Underhill 1994: 65). This is also referred to by some writers as ‘catenation’ from the Latin-based word for ‘chain’, or simply as ‘linking’. Regardless of what overarching term is used, it is made up of a number of areas which we will explore in the following section. Intrusion Say the phrase ‘pie and chips’ at normal speed and then transcribe it using phonemic script. Using the weak form of ‘and’, the phrase would be transcribed /paɪən(d)ʧɪps/. When said without pausing, you may notice a /j/ occurring between ‘pie’ and ‘and’ /paɪjən(d)ʧɪps/. This is an example of intrusion and the /j/ sound is referred to as an ‘intrusive sound’. There are three intrusive sounds: /j/, /r/ and /w/. These occur between two vowel boundaries and help link the vowel sounds together smoothly. An example of intrusive /r/ is ‘China and Japan’ /ʧaɪnərənʤəpæn/ with an intrusive ‘r’ between the schwa at the end of ‘China’ and the schwa or /æ/at the beginning of ‘and’. An intrusive /w/ occurs in ‘go away’ /gəʊwəweɪ/. The vowel boundary in this case is the /əʊ/ at the end of ‘go’ and the schwa at the start of ‘away’. Consonant Vowel Linking The examples of liaison or catenation we have just looked at involve intrusion, the intrusion of an extra phoneme to facilitate articulation, but catenation or liaison can occur without any intrusion taking place. Consider the utterance ‘In a minute I’ll be leaving for…’ Listen to what happens to ‘in’ and ‘a’ when said at normal speed and what happens between the /t/ of ‘minute’ and ‘I’ll’. It is hard for a learner to distinguish where exactly the word boundaries are as a result of the linking of the final consonant sound with the initial vowel sound. Learners may think they have heard the words ‘inner’ /ɪnə/ and ‘tile’ /taɪl/ instead or even something like ‘inner mini tile’ /ɪnəmɪnɪtaɪl/. Maybe students have asked you why you start your lessons by mentioning ‘festivals’? In fact you are saying ‘first of all’ /fɜ:stəvɔ:l/ and not ‘festival’ /festɪvəl/ but they could be forgiven for the misunderstanding. Juncture ‘First of all’ and ‘festival’ whilst sounding similar are transcribed differently. However, some utterances are phonemically identical but there are two possible interpretations of the sounds heard, consider ‘I scream’ and ‘ice cream’ or ‘send the maid’ and ‘send them aid’ or 17

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‘mice pies’ and ‘my spies’. The transcriptions are the same for each pair, /aɪskriːm/, /sen(d)ðəmeɪd/ and /maɪspaɪz/, but a listener would probably still be able to distinguish which one was being said. As Adrian Underhill (1994: 94) describes it thus: ‘Juncture is the label given to a number of features which may occur at the boundary between two words in connected speech such that, even though the two words may be linked together, the boundary between them is nevertheless unambiguous and clear’. Native speakers are able to produce some very small adjustments to their pronunciation which enable us to distinguish between these phrases. There is often a slight pause between sounds but also slight changes in stress as well as subtle changes to the quality of the phonemes themselves. However, the most useful guide to help distinguish between, for example, ‘I scream’ and ‘ice cream’ is of course the context.

6.4 Elision Another effect of fast speech is elision, where similar sounds occurring together result in one sound being omitted, or elided. Go back to your transcription of ‘pie and chips’, perhaps you come up with something like /paɪjənʧɪps/. If so, you’ll have omitted the final ‘d’ of ‘and’. This is an example of elision. It simplifies the consonant cluster occurring between ‘and chips’ by omitting the /d/ phoneme. Elision often occurs with the consonant sounds /t/ and /d/, consider the phrases ‘next please’, ‘old man’ and ‘first day’. It can also work within words as with the omission of the schwa in ‘suppose’ /spəʊz/.

6.5 Weak forms If a word is unstressed it often appears in its weak form. For example ‘can’ might be pronounced /kæn/ but it is probably more often pronounced /kən/ with the weak form using a schwa sound, the commonest vowel sounds in English. It is towards this sound that the vowels in many common, unstressed non-content words conform when they are unstressed. The following words, for example, are more often that not used in their weak form, surprising though some of them may seem. ‘and’, ‘than’, ‘to’, ‘that’, ‘must’, ‘but’, ‘are’, ‘of’, ‘from’, ‘them’, ‘some’, ‘shall’, ‘was’, ‘does’, ‘can’, are all most often pronounced with a /ə/. The reduction of the vowel to a schwa is the most common way to form weak forms, however, there are other vowel sounds which can be weak. For example: /iː/ to /ɪ/ as in ‘been’ /bɪn/ /uː/ to /ʊ/ as in ‘you’ /jʊ/ In both cases there can be further weakening to a schwa e.g. /bən/ and /jə/.

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Task 5: Weak forms (10mins) Look at the following and mark all the weak forms: We took her along and we sat and waited for her. When we were told she’d got in we went down to meet the other girls. They were really nice but I said to Emma: “You can always come home I’m only a phone call away) And that was it. When their first single, Wannabe, went to No 1 it was, like, just amazing. I suppose it’s like when you win the raffle. It was a family occasion and a friend brought some champagne around—which was something we never had.

7 Teaching Connected Speech 7.1 Some Issues concerning the Teaching of Connected Speech While it might be possible to focus in some detail on individual phonemes, study of connected speech is more of a challenge. There are indeed particular reasons why focus on features of connected speech is difficult: The first is familiar. We discussed it under the teaching of sentence stress. In order to focus on features of connected speech we have to look at the details. But this is self-defeating because looking at the details may make us lose sight of what happens at speed. If our students think about them too much then they will tend to give their full strong form value when they say them. The emphasis has to be on fluency. But here lies our second problem: the normal description of the features of connected speech is necessarily a description of native speaker speech. Things happen because we are speaking with certain fluency, a fluency which, almost certainly, the learner is not capable of. Some teachers believe in teaching their elementary learners to say, from the very beginning: /weəʤəlɪv/ for ’where do you live?’ A case can be made for this. Certainly a student who has learned to say with caution ‘where-do-you-live’ may indeed have difficulty in speeding up and saying /weəʤəlɪv/. On the other hand, will the student ever be accurately fluent enough for these features to happen? In turn it could be argued that they will reach fluency only if they are given the means to do so, that is, features of connected speech. Thus we come full circle. However, it can also be argued that knowing how the phrase may be said by a fluent speaker will help with recognition and perhaps it is in the area of recognition that teaching connected speech comes into its own, rather than in production. 

Top-down and bottom-up are terms generally applied to the way in which we approach the components of a text. Typically top-down would focus on overall knowledge or awareness of the text type, our expectations as we approach the text and so on. Bottom-up would approach the message of the text primarily through its language components. With caution the same terms might be applied to how we approach analysis of phonology. Do we see the utterance top-down, as a whole, holistically? Or do we approach its constituents, bottom up atomistic ally? 19

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

An excellent discussion significantly entitled ‘Should we teach…aspects of connected speech?’ can be found in Kelly (op cit). The author interestingly raises the issue that some students have the idea that features of connected speech such as contractions, weak forms etc. are a kind of laziness or sloppiness. His conclusion appears to be that while we may not be able to make our students reproduce the features of connected speech outlined in this section it is nonetheless worth attempting to do so because it ‘is a very good way of enhancing students’ understanding of fast and fluent connected speech’ i.e. it helps their listening. Jenkins (1998; 2000; 2007) has also argued against teaching native-speaker models of pronunciation for learners. She believes that focusing on nuclear stress is critical for learners, but that other aspects of connected speech can be relegated, perhaps to specialist pronunciation classes.



Clearly a modest amount of attention to features of connected speech must be part of our pronunciation teaching. Ideally it should be integrated into all language focus. Furthermore attention to the features of spoken language can only be done in its natural habitat, so to speak; that is at natural speed.

Below are samples of materials for the teaching of features of connected speech: firstly recognition and discrimination. Recognition The first concerns schwa, the most common feature of connected speech. The schwa is often just an unstressed syllable within a word irrespective of whether that word is said alone or within an utterance e.g. ‘accommodation’ on its own versus ‘Have you got any accommodation?’ In both situations accommodation is pronounced /əkɒmədeɪʃən/ with three schwas. So here it is not what happens around the word that causes the sounds to be weakened. But in ‘I’m looking for accommodation’, ‘for’ is pronounced /fə/ i.e. it is a weak form not its strong form /fɔ:/, sometimes called the citation form. This is because its pronunciation has been affected by the co-text around it and where stress falls within the utterance. This schwa is, therefore, a feature of connected speech.

Fletcher, C. & O’Connor J. D. 1989 Sounds English Longman (p88)

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Below is another example activity focussing on connected speech. It is initially recognition based but subsequently productive.

From Cunningham, S. and Bowler, B. Headway Intermediate Pronunciation OUP p82 Note: this activity also involves intonation. It is important to recall that there is no separation of intonation from all the aforementioned features of connected speech, although intonation itself will be dealt with in its own section.

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Below is a further example of focus on some of the features of connected speech described above. See if you can identify which features are being examined here: Fletcher, C. & O’Connor J. D. 1989 Sounds English Longman (p86)

Production Most exercises concerning features of connected speech necessarily focus on production. Indeed production of strings of connected speech is at the heart of modern language teaching. We are working on production of connected speech the very moment we drill a sentence; for in drilling there is an emphasis on speed and naturalness. If students concentrate on producing the strong syllables and repeat at a good speed, the weak syllables will sometimes be formed naturally.

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Task 7: Features of Connected Speech in Pronunciation Materials (30mins) (Optional) Here is a list of connected speech activities taken from the two listed books. If you do not have copies of these books available, you can still do this exercise. Headway Intermediate Pronunciation English Aloud Book 2 Look at the lists below and make a brief note of what features of connected speech lie behind each of these heading. Headway Intermediate Pronunciation 

Contractions of the verb ‘to be’ (for example here the issues would be multiple!)

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Weak forms of ‘would you’ and ‘do you’

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Weak forms of ‘was’ and ‘were’

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Contractions and weak forms with ‘shall’ and ‘I’ll’

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Word linking

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‘As…as…’

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Weak forms of ‘for’

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Modals of obligation in connected speech

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Contractions of ‘will’ and ‘would’

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‘Can’ and ‘can’t’ in connected speech etc.

English Aloud Book 2 

Weak forms with ‘must’.

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Predicting the Stresses

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Weak forms and word linking, stressed and unstressed auxiliaries

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Weak forms of ‘will’

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Sentence stress with ‘would have been’

Looking at the above areas try to work out in each case what the connected speech issues will be under each topic. For example under weak forms with ‘must’, the connected speech issues would be the weakening of /mʌst/ to /məst/ or in some cases with elision of /t/,/məs/, or alternatively the strengthening of it to /mʌst/ for a final answer; the fact that there is no weakening in the negative etc. When you have identified what you think the issues will be and post your ideas in the forums.

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8 Terminology Review Can you identify the terms or concepts being defined below? Example: A unit of pronunciation which is (usually) longer than a sound, but (usually) less than a word – SYLLABLE. 1. A phonological phenomenon whereby a sound alters due to the influence of a preceding or following sound. For example, the ‘n’ in ‘Green Park’ is articulated as /m/ due to the following /p/. 2. The process of ‘squeezing together’ the syllables that occur between stressed syllables, so that each segment of an utterance takes the same time to produce. 3. A language where stressed syllables tend to occur at regular intervals and syllables are not assigned the same stress. 4. A word consisting of a single syllable. 5. The effect of emphasising certain syllables by making them louder or longer, or by increasing their pitch. 6. A language where each syllable tends to take the same length of time to say. 7. The omission of sounds / syllables because a similar sound occurs immediately afterwards, e.g. the ‘ed’ at the end of ‘walked’ ‘disappears’ in ‘I walked to work’.

See Appendix 1

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The Distance Delta

Reading: If you would like to explore this area further:

Suggested Reading One of the following: Kenworthy, J. 1987 Teaching English Pronunciation Longman Kelly, G, 2000 How to Teach Pronunciation Longman Underhill, A. 1994 Sound Foundations Heinemann

Additional Reading Dalton & Seidlehofer 1994 Pronunciation Oxford University Press Roach P 2001 English Phonetics and Phonology OUP Jenkins, J. 1998 Which pronunciation norms and models for English as an International Language? ELT Journal 52/2 Jenkins, J. 2000 The phonology of English as an International Language Oxford University Press Jenkins, J. 2007 English as Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity Oxford University Press For use with students: Bowler B. & Cunningham S. 1991, Headway Upper-Intermediate Pronunciation OUP Cunningham, S. and Bowler, B. 1990, Headway Intermediate Pronunciation OUP Cunningham, S. and Moor P. 1996, Headway Elementary Pronunciation OUP Hancock, M. 1995, Pronunciation Games Cambridge University Press Hancock, M. 2003, English Pronunciation in Use Cambridge University Press Haycraft, B. 1994 English Aloud 1 and 2 Heinemann O’Connor, J. D. & Fletcher, C.1989 Sounds English Longman

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The Distance Delta

Appendices Appendix 1 – Terminology Review

1. ASSIMILATION 2. ACCOMMODATION 3. STRESS-TIMED LANGUAGE 4. MONOSYLLABLE 5. STRESS, or PROMINENCE 6. SYLLABLE-TIMED LANGUAGE 7. ELISION

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