Adjustments related to sound deletion / insertion

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 765.

Table 5

3. A glottal stop,symbolized [?], is a plosive made at the glottis by the vocal folds. It has several different functions in English.

(I) It is optionally used as a way of adding emphasis to a syllable that begins with a vowel sound.

(II) It forms an essential part of certain interjections, e.g. AmE uh-uh. In these uses ? does not represent any phoneme of the language.

(IV) It may be used as an allophone of the phoneme [t] in certain positions. This is known as “glottalling”,or “glottal replacement”.

In both BrE and AmE, it is widely used where the following syllable begins with a nasal: atmospheric [ætməs'ferik] – [,.?mǝs-], button ['b٨tən] – ['b٨?n]

In BrE, it is often used in informal speech at the end of a word:

What's that? [,wɔ?s'ðæ?]

ELISION (ELLIPSIS, OMISSION, DELETION) is the process of deleting or not nearly articulating of sounds in certain contexts.

1. Some types of elisiontypically occur within a single syllable and therefore within word. In English they include:

• the elision of [t] in [ntS] and of [d] in [nʤ]. Thus lunch [l٨nʧ] may be pronounced [l٨nʃ]; strange [streinʤ] may be [streinƷ].

• loss of [t] when [nt] is between two vowels or before a syllabic [l]: winter, Toronto, mantle

• loss of /t/ or /d/ when they occur in a sequence or cluster of three consonants:

[t] restless, listless, exactly

[d] windmill, kindness, hands

• the elision of [p] in [mps], [mpt], of [t] in [nts], and of [k] in [ŋks], [ŋkt]. Thus jumped [ʤ٨mpt] may be pronounced [ʤ٨mt], lynx [liŋks] may be [liŋs].

2. Other types of elision occur only at syllable boundaries. This applies both within words and between words. For example, next [nekst] in isolation or before a vowel sound is pronounced [nekst], but in a phrase, such as next thing, next question, it is often pronounced [neks], with elision of the [t].

When didn't ['dIdnt] is followed by another word in a phrase, it is sometimes pronounced ['dIdn], with elision of the[t].

Sometimes a pronunciation that was originally the result of elision has become the only possibility for some speakers. Some people have ['kæmrə] as the only pronunciation for camera, or [pli:s ] as the only form for police. For many English people it would feel very artificial to pronounce a [t] in postman ['pəusmən].

Loss of the final [v]in OF before words with initial consonants: lots of money, waste of time.

Loss of initial /h/ and [ð]in pronomial forms in connected speech: ask her, help him,tell them

Smoothing.A diphthong optionally loses its second element before another vowel:

[ai], [au] become [a] try again [tra ə'gein], how about [ha ə'baut]

[ei] becomes [e] stay around [ste ə'raund]

[əu] becomes [ə] going [gəiŋ]