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English phonology
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English phonology is the study of the phonology (i.e., the sound system) of the English language. Like all languages, spoken English has wide variation in its pronunciation both diachronically and synchronically from dialect to dialect. This variation is especially salient in English, because the language is spoken over such a wide territory, being the predominant language in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States in addition to being spoken as a first or second language by people in countries on every continent, and notably in South Africa and India.
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Encyclopedia
English phonology is the study of the phonology (i.e., the sound system) of the English language. Like all languages, spoken English has wide variation in its pronunciation both diachronically and synchronically from dialect to dialect. This variation is especially salient in English, because the language is spoken over such a wide territory, being the predominant language in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States in addition to being spoken as a first or second language by people in countries on every continent, and notably in South Africa and India. In general the regional dialects of English are mutually intelligible.
Although there are many dialects of English, the following are usually used as prestige or standard accents: Received Pronunciation for the United Kingdom, General American for the United States and General Australian for Australia.
Phonemes
- See IPA chart for English dialects for concise charts of the English phonemes.
The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by John C. Wells, for example, using symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, denotes 24 consonants and 23 vowels used in Received Pronunciation, plus two additional consonants and four additional vowels used in foreign words only. For General American it provides for 25 consonants and 19 vowels, with one additional consonant and three additional vowels for foreign words. The American Heritage Dictionary, on the other hand, suggests 25 consonants and 18 vowels (including r-colored vowels) for American English, plus one consonant and five vowels for non-English terms .
Consonants
The following table shows the consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English. When consonants appear in pairs, fortis consonants (i.e., aspirated or voiceless) appear on the left and lenis consonants (i.e., lightly voiced or voiced) appear on the right:
- Nasals and liquids may be syllabic in unstressed syllables, though these may be analyzed phonemically as .
- Postalveolar consonants are usually labialized (e.g., ), as is word-initial or pre-tonic /r/, though this is rarely transcribed.
- The voiceless velar fricative dialectal, occurring largely in Scottish English. In other dialects, words with these sounds are pronounced with .
- The sequence /hw/, a voiceless labiovelar approximant , is sometimes considered an additional phoneme . For most speakers, words that historically used to have these sounds are now pronounced with ; the phoneme is retained, for example, in much of the American South and in Scotland.
- Depending on dialect, may be an alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex, or labiodental approximant.
- Many dialects have two allophones of —the "clear" L and the "dark" or velarized L; in some dialects, may be always clear or always dark.
| pit | | bit | | tin | | din | | cut | | gut | | cheap | | jeep | | fat | | vat | | thin | | then | | sap | | zap | | she | | measure | | loch | | | we | | map | |
| left | | nap | | run (also , ) | | yes | | ham | | bang |
Vowels
The vowels of English differ considerably between dialects. Because of this, corresponding vowels may be transcribed with various symbols depending on the dialect under consideration. When considering English as a whole, no specific phoneme symbols are picked over others; instead lexical sets are used, each named by a word containing the vowel in question. For example, the vowel of the LOT set ("short O") is transcribed in Received Pronunciation, in Australian English, and in General American. For an overview of the correspondences see IPA chart for English dialects.
The monophthong phonemes of General American differ in a number of ways from Received Pronunciation:
- Vowels are more equal in length, differing mainly in quality.
- The central vowel of nurse is rhotic or a syllabic .
- Speakers make a phonemic distinction between rhotic and non-rhotic
- No distinction is made between and , nor for many people with .
Reduced vowels occur in some unstressed syllables. (Other unstressed syllables may have full vowels, which some dictionaries mark as secondary stress.) The number of distinctions made among reduced vowels varies by dialect. In some dialects vowels are centralized but otherwise kept mostly distinct, while in Australia and many US dialects all reduced vowels collapse to a schwa . In Received Pronunciation, there is a distinct high reduced vowel, which the OED writes <>.
- roses (merged with in Australian English)
- Rosa’s, runner
- bottle
- button
- rhythm
- Canadian English, exhibits allophony of and called Canadian raising. The phenomenon also occurs (especially for ) in many US speakers, in South Atlantic English, and in the Fens.
- In Received Pronunciation, the vowels in lair and lure may be monophthongized to and respectively. Australian English speakers more readily monophthongize the former but it is listed here anyway.
- In Rhotic dialects, words like pair, poor, and peer can be analyzed as diphthongs, although other descriptions analyze them as vowels with in the coda.
Transcription variants
The choice of which symbols to use for phonemic transcriptions may reveal theoretical assumptions or claims on the part of the transcriber. English 'lax' and 'tense' vowels are distinguished by a synergy of features, such as height, length, and contour (monophthong vs. diphthong); different traditions in the linguistic literature emphasize different features. For example, if the primary feature is thought to be vowel height, then the non-reduced vowels of General American English may be represented as follows:
General American full vowels,
vowel height distinctive |
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If, on the other hand, vowel length is considered to be the deciding factor, the following symbols may be chosen:
General American full vowels,
vowel length distinctive |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
(This convention has sometimes been used because the publisher did not have IPA fonts available, though that is seldom an issue any longer.)
If vowel transition is taken to be paramount, then the chart may look like one of these:
General American full vowels,
vowel contour distinctive |
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| or | General American full vowels,
vowel contour distinctive |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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(The transcriber at left assumes that there is no phonemic distinction between semivowels and approximants, so that is equivalent to .)
Many linguists combine more than one of these features in their transcriptions, suggesting they consider the phonemic differences to be more complex than a single feature.
General American full vowels,
height & length distinctive |
|---|
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Distribution of allophones
Although regional variation is very great across English dialects, some generalizations can be made about pronunciation in all (or at least the vast majority) of English accents:
Initial-stress-derived nouns mean that stress changes in many English words came about between noun and verb senses of a word. For example, a rebel [] (stress on the first syllable) is inclined to rebel [] (stress on the second syllable) against the powers that be. The number of words using this pattern as opposed to only stressing the second syllable in all circumstances doubled every century or so, now including the English words object, convict, and addict.
- The voiceless stops are aspirated at the beginnings of words (for example tomato) and at the beginnings of word-internal stressed syllables (for example potato).
- A distinction is made between tense and lax vowels in pairs like beet/bit and bait/bet, although the exact phonetic implementation of the distinction varies from accent to accent. However, this distinction collapses before .
- For many people, is somewhat labialized in some environments, as in reed and tree . In the latter case, the may be slightly labialized as well.
- Wherever originally followed a tense vowel or diphthong (in Early Modern English) a schwa offglide was inserted, resulting in centering diphthongs like in beer , in poor , in fire , in sour , and so forth. This phenomenon is known as breaking. The subsequent history depends on whether the accent in question is rhotic or not: In non-rhotic accents like RP the postvocalic was dropped, leaving and the like (now usually transcribed and so forth). In rhotic accents like General American, on the other hand, the sequence was coalesced into a single sound, a non-syllabic , giving and the like (now usually transcribed and so forth). As a result, originally monosyllabic words like those just mentioned came to rhyme with originally disyllabic words like seer, doer, higher, power.
- In many (but not all) accents of English, a similar breaking happens to tense vowels before , resulting in pronunciations like for peel, for pool, for pail, and for pole.
- In many dialects, becomes before , as in human .
Phonotactics
Note: This information applies to RP. Other than variations in the possible onsets with or without final , and the presence or absence of the phoneme , it also applies to the other main varieties of English. only occurs syllable-initial and does not occur in clusters.
Syllable structure
The syllable structure in English is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C), with a maximal example being strengths (although it can be pronounced ). Because of an extensive pattern of articulatory overlap, English speakers rarely produce an audible release in consonant clusters. This can lead to cross-articulations that seem very much like deletions or complete assimilations. For example, hundred pounds may sound like but X-ray and electropalatographic studies demonstrate that inaudible and possibly weakened contacts may still be made so that the second in hundred pounds does not entirely assimilate a labial place of articulation, rather the labial co-occurs with the alveolar one.
Onset
There is an on-going sound change (yod-dropping) by which as the final consonant in a cluster is being lost. In RP, words with and can usually be pronounced with or without this sound, e.g., or . For some speakers of English, including some British speakers, the sound change is more advanced and so, for example, in General American is also not present after , , , , , and . In Welsh English it can occur in more combinations, for example in .
The following can occur as the onset:
| | , , , ,
, , *, *, , ,
, , , | play, blood, clean, glove, prize, bring, tree*, dream*, crowd, green, twin, dwarf, language, quick | , ,
, , ,
, , | floor, sleep, friend, three, shrimp, swing, thwart, which | , , , , , ,
, , , , ,
, , , | pure, beautiful, tube, during, cute, argue, music, new, few, view, thurifer, suit, Zeus, huge, lurid | | , , | speak, stop, skill | | , | smile, snow | | | sphere | , , , ,
, ,
, , , | split, spring, spew, smew, street, student, sclerosis, scream, square, skewer |
* In General American, and tend to affricate, so that tree resembles "chree", and dream resembles "jream". This may be transcribed as and respectively, but the pronunciation varies and may, for example, be closer to and or with a fricative release similar in quality to the rhotic, ie. , , or , .
Note: A few onsets occur infrequently making it uncertain whether they are native pronunciations or merely non-assimilated borrowings, e.g., (pueblo), (bwana), (kvetch), (svelt), (Sri Lanka), (schwa), (schmuck), (schlep), (shtick), (schnapps), (sthenics) and (sphragistics).
Nucleus
The following can occur as the nucleus:
- All vowel sounds
- , and in certain situations (see below under word-level rules)
- in rhotic varieties of English (eg General American) in certain situations (see below under word-level rules)
Coda
Most, and in theory all, of the following except those which end with , , , , or can be extended with or representing the morpheme -s/z-. Similarly most, and in theory all, of the following except those which end with or can be extended with or representing the morpheme -t/d-.
The following can occur as the coda:
| non-rhotic varieties, | | | help, bulb, belt, hold, milk | | harp, orb, fort, beard, mark, morgue | | golf, solve, wealth, else, Welsh, belch, indulge | | dwarf, carve, north, force, marsh, arch, large | | film, kiln | | arm, born, snarl | | Nasal + homorganic plosive: , , , | jump, tent, end, pink | | triumph, warmth, month, prince, bronze, lunch, lounge, length | | left, crisp, lost, ask | | fifth | | opt, act | | depth, lapse, eighth, klutz, width, adze, box | | sculpt, twelfth, waltz, whilst, mulct, calx | | warmth, excerpt, corpse, quartz, horst, infarct | | prompt, glimpse, thousandth, distinct, jinx, length | | sixth, next |
Note: For some speakers, a fricative before is elided so that these never appear phonetically: becomes , becomes , becomes .
Syllable-level rules
- Both the onset and the coda are optional
- at the end of an onset ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) must be followed by or
- Long vowels and diphthongs are usually not followed by
- is rare in syllable-initial position
- Stop + before are excluded
- Sequences of /s/ + C1 + + C1, where C1 is the same consonant in both the onset cluster and the coda and is a short vowel, are virtually nonexistent
Word-level rules
- does not occur in stressed syllables
- does not occur in word-initial position in native English words although it can occur syllable-initial, e.g.,
- occurs in word-initial position in a few obscure words:
thew, thurible, etc.; it is more likely to appear syllable initial, e.g. , , and, in rhotic varieties, can be the syllable nucleus (ie a syllabic consonant) in an unstressed syllable following another consonant, especially , , or Certain short vowel sounds, called checked vowels, cannot occur without a coda in a single syllable word. In RP, the following short vowel sounds are checked: , , and .
Stress
Stress is phonemic in English. For example, the words desert and dessert are distinguished by stress, as are the noun a record and the verb to record. Stressed syllables in English are louder than non-stressed syllables, as well as being longer and having a higher pitch. They also tend to have a fuller realization than unstressed syllables.
Examples of stress in English words, using boldface to represent stressed syllables, are holiday, alone, admiration, confidential, degree, and weaker. Ordinarily, grammatical words (auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, and the like) do not receive stress, whereas lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) must have at least one stressed syllable.
English is a stress-timed language. That is, stressed syllables appear at a roughly steady tempo, and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this.
Traditional approaches describe English as having three degrees of stress: Primary, secondary, and unstressed. However, if stress is defined as relative respiratory force (that is, it involves greater pressure from the lungs than unstressed syllables), as most phoneticians argue, and is inherent in the word rather than the sentence (that is, it is lexical rather than prosodic), then these traditional approaches conflate two distinct processes: Stress on the one hand, and vowel reduction on the other. In this case, primary stress is actually prosodic stress, whereas secondary stress is simple stress in some positions, and an unstressed but not reduced vowel in others. Either way, there is a three-way phonemic distinction: Either three degrees of stress, or else stressed, unstressed, and reduced. The two approaches are sometimes conflated into a four-way 'stress' classification: primary (tonic stress), secondary (lexical stress), tertiary (unstressed full vowel), and quaternary (reduced vowel). See secondary stress for details.
When a stressed syllable contains a pure vowel (rather than a diphthong), followed by a single consonant and then another vowel, as in holiday, many native speakers feel that the consonant belongs to the preceding stressed syllable, , or assign it to both the preceding and following syllables. Such consonants are sometimes describes as ambisyllabic. However, when the stressed vowel is a long vowel or diphthong, as in admiration or pekoe, speakers agree that the consonant belongs to the following syllable: .
Intonation
Prosodic stress is extra stress given to words when they appear in certain positions in an utterance, or when they receive special emphasis. It normally appears on the final stressed syllable in an intonation unit. So, for example, when the word admiration is said in isolation, or at the end of a sentence, the syllable ra is pronounced with greater force than the syllable ad. (This is traditionally transcribed as .) This is the origin of the primary stress-secondary stress distinction. However, the difference disappears when the word is not pronounced with this final intonation.
Prosodic stress can shift for various pragmatic functions, such as focus or contrast. For instance, consider the dialogue
- "Is it brunch tomorrow?"
- "No, it's dinner tomorrow."
In this case, the extra stress shifts from the last stressed syllable of the sentence, tomorrow, to the last stressed syllable of the emphasized word, dinner. Compare
- "I'm going tomorrow."
or
- "I'm going
tomorrow."
with
- "It's
dinner tomorrow."
Although grammatical words generally do not have lexical stress, they do acquire prosodic stress when emphasized. Compare ordinary
- "Come in"!
with more emphatic
- "Oh,
do come in!"
History of English pronunciation
Around the late 14th century, English began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift, in which
- the high long vowels and in words like
price and mouth became diphthongized, first to and (where they remain today in some environments in some accents such as Canadian English) and later to their modern values and . This is not unique to English, as this also happened in Dutch (first shift only) and German (both shifts).
The other long vowels became higher:
became (for example meet),
became (later diphthongized to , for example name),
became (for example goose), and
become (later diphthongized to , for example bone).
Later developments complicate the picture: whereas in Geoffrey Chaucer's time food, good, and blood all had the vowel and in William Shakespeare's time they all had the vowel , in modern pronunciation good has shortened its vowel to and blood has shortened and lowered its vowel to in most accents. In Shakespeare's day (late 16th-early 17th century), many rhymes were possible that no longer hold today. For example, in his play The Taming of the Shrew, shrew rhymed with woe.
æ-tensing
æ-tensing is a phenomenon found in many varieties of American English by which the vowel has a longer, higher, and usually diphthongal pronunciation in some environments, usually to something like . Some American accents, for example that of New York City or Philadelphia, make a marginal phonemic distinction between and although the two occur largely in mutually exclusive environments.
Bad-lad split
The bad-lad split refers to the situation in some varieties of southern English English and Australian English, where a long phoneme in words like bad contrasts with a short in words like lad.
Cot-caught merger
The cot-caught merger is a sound change by which the vowel of words like cot, rock, and doll ( in New England, elsewhere) is pronounced the same as the vowel of words like caught, talk, and tall . This merger is widespread in North American English, being found in approximately 40% of American speakers and virtually all Canadian speakers.
Father-bother merger
The father-bother merger is the pronunciation of the short O in words such as "bother" identically to the broad A of words such as "father", nearly universal in all of the United States and Canada save New England and the Maritime provinces; many American dictionaries use the same symbol for these vowels in pronunciation guides.
See also
- Category:Splits and mergers in English phonology
Bibliography
External links
- Enter a word to hear it spoken. About 100,000 words in British English with alternative pronunciations.
- . Includes mp3 audio samples of all the English phonemes.
- . A poem first published in an appendix to the 4th edition of the Dutchman's schoolbook "Drop Your Foreign Accent: engelsche uitspraakoefeningen" (Haarlem: H D Tjeenk Willink & Zoon. The first version of the poem was entitled De Chaos, gave words with problematic spellings in italics, but had only 146 lines. Later versions contain about 800 of the worst irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation.
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