Intonation in American English

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 818.

Accentual structure of words in American English

The major differences in the accentual structure between RP and GA are mainly with the use of the tertiary stress. The primary stress is tonic, the secondary stress is pre-tonic, the tertiary stress is post-tonic. The tertiary, or post-tonic stress in GA falls on the suffixes –ary, -ery, ory, -mony, -arily, -ative, -on (′dictio˛nary, ′terri˛tory, ′testi˛mony, ′ordi˛narily). The same polysyllabic words in RP have only primary stress that falls on the first syllable.

Compound words which have two stresses in RP have only one primary stress in GA: ˛green ′tea (′green card). Some compound words have stress on the first element in GA and in RP they retain it on the second element: weekend, ice-cream, hotdog.

In words of French origin GA tends to have stress on the final syllable, while RP has it on initial one: ballet RP /′bælei/, GA /bæ′lei /; beret RP /′beri/, GA /bә′rei/.

Some words have first syllable stress in GA whereas in RP the stress may be elsewhere: address RP /ә′dres/, GA /′ædres/; cigarette RP /sigә′ret/, GA /′sigәrәt/.

American English intonation differs from British English intonation mainly in the direction of the voice pitch and the realization of the terminal tones. English specch for Americans sounds affected and sophisticated. And for the English, Americans sound dull, monotonous and indifferent. Thus GA intonation on the whole produces an impression of level or monotonous melody. The monotony of GA intonation is explained by the following factors: 1) pitch characteristics, 2) narrow range of the utterance, 3) slow tempo, 4) more complicated than RP rhythmical structure of intonation (RP unstressed vouwels are characterized by qualitative reduction, in GA sounds in unstressed syllables are lengthened).

1. Preterminal pitch contour in RP is graduallydescending stepping, in GA it is mid-level. I don't want to go to the theatre.

2. The rising terminal tone inRP in GA has a mid-rising contour: Do you like it?

3. The distribution of terminal tones in sentence types is also different in both variants of English. GA “Yes, No” questions commonly have a falling terminal tone; the counterpart RP tone would be a rising one: Shall we stay here? Requests in RP are usually pronounced with a Rise, whereas in GA they may take a Fall-rise: Open the door.

The norms of GA and RP pronunciation are highly variable. Differences between GA and RP sound, accentual structure and intonation do not affect the main language structures, therefore GA is only a variety of the English language and cannot be considered American language.