Aspects Of Connected Speech - Research Paper Example

?Introduction Why is it that foreign of English Language always tend to think that Native English speakers talk too fast? Why is it that thenative English speakers, on the other hand, seem to think that the native Slovak speakers, for example, speak to fast as well? Could it be that as non-native speakers of particular languages, they do not hear the rhythm, elision, assimilation, linking and other aspects of connected speech? When studying language that is not their mother tongue, at first they may focus on separate letters and perhaps words. Then they try to understand how to put them together and follow the appropriate word order and other language rules. It takes a while to comprehend the natural utterance of native speakers who speak without any obvious borders between each and every word. Native speakers have the tendency to utter their speech without focusing on the clarity. Non-native speakers think, (observing numerous amounts of native speakers and specifically English native speakers), that native speakers, in their natural speech attempt to speak as economically as possible, and tend to focus on the concept of their utterance as a whole, rather than on individual words within the provided utterance. Another advantage that native speakers have at their disposal is the ability to predict following and upcoming lexical items. Furthermore, it is the ability to predict and assume words or even word combinations such as collocations, phrases, and in English, phrasal verbs for example, well in advance of hearing or speaking them Many authors have explored aspects of connected speech with English. Their opinions on which aspects actually belong to this category vary. Nevertheless, this research will focus primarily on aspects of simplification (Chapter 1), such as assimilation, elision, epenthesis, linking (more particularly r-linking as this appears to be an important process in British English, which will be the language studied in this research) and weak versus strong forms, as well as discussion on the glottal stop /?/. Chapter 2 will provide analysis of three dialogues extracted and transcribed from the movie ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ in order to ascertain to what respect the aspects of connected speech as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 are evident. Preceding the conclusion, findings will be accrued in relation to the three particular characters providing the dialogues (Chapter 3), in an attempt to determine whether particular phonetic features and/or phonological rules pertain to each individual accent or whether the same occur across the connected speech of all three people. Hypothesis: it is expected that results will show similar occurrences in terms of pronunciation and phonological rules across all three characters. Apart from the fact that all three actors are of British descent this assertion is made on the basis that all three are portraying a British accent in a British movie, so it is to be expected that similar phonetic and phonological occurrences will be evident. Chapter 1: Simplification Assimilation An important aspect of connected speech is that of assimilation, wherein the articulation of words is altered in accordance with phonetic characteristics in their immediate environment; in other words sounds are influenced by other immediate sounds and thus assimilated (Davenport & Hannahs, 2005, p.25). It largely depends upon context, with speakers who are speaking slowly and carefully using it less, and speakers who speak rapidly using it more (Roach, 1998, p.123), and is the reason why mechanized speech, where each word is recorded in isolation, does not work (Roach, 1998, p.123). Roach (1998, p.124) states there are two basic types of assimilation, namely progressive and regressive. Progressive assimilation is where the affected word comes after the word that affects it, as in ‘did you’ [did ju]; for example, in connected speech many speakers would assimilate the approximant /j/ with the alveolar /d/ and articulate it as [did?u] or [did??] (Tyrode, 2008, p.2). Regressive assimilation on the other hand, is where the affected word precedes the word that affects it, as in ‘is she’, where in isolation the word ‘is’ ends with a voiced alveolar fricative /z/ [?z] not its voiceless counterpart. In connected speech however, the final articulation of ‘is’ /z/ assimilates with the voiceless post-alveolar fricative /?/ to and becomes devoiced [?s ?i] (Tyrode, 2008, p.1). Brinton (n.d., p.31) provides discussion on progressive and regressive assimilation but adds a further type of assimilation termed coalescent assimilation, wherein two contiguous sounds combine to make a new sound. The most common occurrence of coalescent assimilation for native speakers of English is known as palatalization and occurs when an alveolor consonant precede a palatal/y/ (Brinton, n.d., p.31); for example, in the sentence ‘She needs your help’ [?i nidz j? h?lp] the alveolar voiced fricative /z/ becomes palatalized [?]. Apart from being progressive, regressive and coalescent, assimilation in connected speech falls into three further categories (Tyrode, 2008, p.2): assimilation of place, assimilation of manner, and assimilation of voice (Roach, 1998, p.124). Assimilation of place is when a consonant changes because of surrounding sound differences in place of articulation (Roach, 1998, p.125), and is “a graded phenomenon” (Gaskell & Snoeren, 2008, p.2). It is most observable when an alveolar consonant is followed by a non-alveolar consonant, as in the phrase ‘that person’ and ‘meat pie’, where the alveolar /t/ assimilates to the place of articulation of the following bilabial /p/ to become [??p p?sn] and [mip pa?] (Roach, 1998, p.124). Other examples include a dental consonant /t/, as in ‘bright colour’ [bra?t k?l?] changing to a voiceless velar /k/ sound when preceding a voiceless velar consonant [bra?k k?l?], and also to a voiceless velar consonant /k/ when preceding a voiced velar consonant, as in ‘quite good’ [kwa?t gud] – [kwa?k gud] (Roach, 1998, p.124). Further examples of alveolar assimilation include the following: hot potato [h?t p?te?to?] bad boy [b?d b??] sad man [s?d m?n] hot crumpet [h?t kr?mp?t] bad girl [b?d g?l] sad king [s?d k??] In each of the cases above, the alveolar /t/ and /d/ assimilate to the point of articulation of the following sound. If preceding a bilabial, the sound /t/ or /d/ becomes bilabial as in [h?p p?te?to?], [b?b b??] and [s?m m?n]. If the sound precedes a velar, it assimilates to velar position as in [h?k kr?mp?t], [b?g g?l] and [s?k k??. Bilabials /p/ and /b/ on the other hand, do not assimilate and “typically remain bilabial irrespective of the context” (Davenport & Hannahs, 2005, p.25). Assimilation of manner in rapid or casual speech changes the consonant to that which is easier to articulate or one that requires less airflow obstruction (Roach, 1998, p.125). Examples of this are a plosive becoming a fricative or nasal, such as in the phrases [g?d na?t] ‘good night’ becoming [g?n na?t] or [??t sa?d] ‘that side’ becoming [??s sa?d] (Roach, 1998, p.125). Assimilation of manner, in terms of alveolar stop variations, also occurs between vowels (Davenport & Hannahs, 2005, p.26) wherein the process known as flapping occurs in Northern Irish and North American English. This is when the /t/ and /d/ is lost between vowels, and is replaced by a “sound involving voicing and a very brief contact between tongue tip and alveolar ridge” (Davenport & Hannahs, 2005, p.26), as in ‘Adam’ [?d?m] and ‘atom’ [?t?m] becoming [???m] and [???m]. Assimilation of voice is limited in scope and only occurs with regressive assimilation. Roach (1998, p.26), states that this type of assimilation occurs when the final consonant of a word is a voiced (fortis) consonant and the initial consonant of the following word is a voiceless (lenis) consonant; in this case the voiced (fortis) consonant becomes voiceless (lenis). The opposite, according to Roach (1998, p.26), is never true; in other words, when the first word ends in a voiceless consonant and the second word begins in a voiced consonant, this regressive assimilation will not occur with native speakers, and elicitation of such assimilation marks an obvious foreign speaker (Roach, 1998, p.125). While the above represents assimilation across word boundaries, assimilation also occurs across morpheme boundaries, as well as within morphemes (Roach, 1998, p.126). According to Tyrode (2008, p.2), assimilation of place, manner and voice are common in languages other than English; for instance, while assimilation of voice is not common in English, it is common in Scottish (Tyrode, 2008, p.2), as in [b??de?] ‘birthday’ which is pronounced as [b??de?], and [bl?kb?d] ‘blackboard’ which is pronounced as [bl?gb?d]. Thus the voiceless consonants at the end of ‘birth’ and ‘black’ may be voiced in the Scottish language. In contrast, and in support of Roach (1998, p.126) Tyrode (2008, p.2), claims the assimilation of voiced to voiceless consonants is common in the English language; examples are phrases such as [ov k?s] ‘of course’ and ‘have to’ [h?v tu], where the voiced labio-dental fricative /v/ loses its voice preceding a voiceless consonant to become [of k?s] and [h?f tu]. A similar occurrence can be found in [njuzpe?p?] ‘newspaper’ which is pronounced with a voiceless /s/ instead of the voiced /z/ [njuspe?p?] (Tyrode, 2008, p.2). Elision Elision is related to assimilation, and refers to when sounds disappear (Roach, 1998, p.127). “Both consonants and vowels may be affected, and sometimes even whole syllables may be elided” (Tyrode, 2008, p.3). As with assimilation, elision occurs in rapid and casual speech, and while foreigner speakers of English do not necessarily need to master elision to sound native, it is important for them to grasp the elision concept because when listening to the English speaker, they will not hear sounds that he or she expects to hear (Roach, 1998, p.127). Examples of elision include a weak vowel disappearing after a /p/,/t/ or /k/ sound, in words such as ‘potato’ [p?te?t??], ‘tomato’,[t?mat??] ‘canary’, [k?ne?ri] ‘perhaps’, and ‘today’ [t?de?]; weak vowels plus /l/, /n/ or /r/ becoming syllabic consonants, as in ‘police’ [plis], ‘tonight’ [tna?t] and ‘correct’ [krekt]; complex consonant clusters being averted, as in ‘acts’ [?ks] and ‘scripts’ [skr?ps] where the medial alveolar /t/ is dropped; and the loss of the final /v/ phoneme in the word ‘of’ [?v] before consonants, as in ‘lots of them’ [l?ts???m] and ‘waste of money’ [we?st?m?ni] (Roach, 1998, p.127). Examples given by Tyrode (2008, p.3) include “unstressed structural words”, such as ‘and’ in ‘boys and girls’ where the /d/ is dropped to become ‘boys n girls’, and ‘cup of tea’ where the /v/ is dropped to become ‘cuppa tea’. (Tyrode, 2008, p.3). Davenport & Hannahs (2005, p.29) state that elision also happens with dental fricatives when they precede /s/ or /z/ sounds, such as in the words ‘clothes’ [kl??s] that sounds homophonous to ‘close’, and ‘months’ [m?ns]. In some English variations, according to Davenport & Hannahs (2005, p.29) the [?] and [?] sounds become [f] and [v] respectively, which means that, in some Southern English Accents, the words “three” and “free” sound identical. Meanwhile, in some Scottish variants, the word-initial [?] and [?] sounds are replaced by [s], as in the case of the word ‘thousand’, and may also be replaced by [?] and [?] sounds as in the word ‘the’ (Davenport & Hannahs, 2005, p.29). Tyrode (2008, p.3) states that there are two types of elision. The first type is “word internal”, and this refers to elision in unaccented syllables that occur between two consonants. This can occur in vowels that are weak and central, such as with the words ‘certain’ [s?tn], ‘importance [?mp?tns], ‘student’ [stjudnt], ‘impatience’ [?mpe??ns], ‘vision’ [v??n], ‘classical’ [kl?s?kl], ‘arrival’ [?ra?vl] and ‘nasal’ [ne?zl] (Tyrode, 2008, p.3). Word internal elision can also occur with alveolar consonants eliding between two consonants, such as in the word ‘handsome’ [h?nsm], ‘postpone’[p??sp??n] and ‘asthma’ [?sm?] (Tyrode, 2008, p.3). The second type of elision discussed by Tyrode is at word boundaries where “word final alveolars are generally elided when they are preceded and followed by other consonants, especially when the following consonant is a plosive” (4). Examples of this are ‘next turn’[n?kst?n], ‘best joke’ [b?s???k], ‘end two’ [?ntu] and ‘rubbed down’ [r?bda?n] (Tyrode, 2008, p.4). Liaison Liaison, or linking as it is termed by some, refers to the linking of words together, and refers to the relationship between a sound and the sound that immediately precedes and follows it (Roach, 1998, p.128). The phoneme /r/ for example cannot occur in a syllable final position in British English, but when linked with a word that begins with a vowel the /r/ is pronounced. For example, the word ‘here’ in isolation is pronounced differently than the when in the phrase ‘here are’ ; in isolation the /r/ is not articulated, as in [h??] but a linking is heard in ‘here are’ [h??? r ? ?]. Similarly, the word “four” in isolation is pronounced as [f?] but in the phrase ‘four eggs’ it is articulated as [f?? r? ?gz] (Roach, 1998, p.128). Another example of an added /r/ sound is when some speakers add an /r/ onto a vowel final word that does not call for an /r/. This has been coined as an “intrusive r” (Roach, 1998, p.128). Examples of an intrusive /r/ include ‘media event’ [midi?? r ? ?v?nt] and ‘formula A’ [f?mjul?? r ? e?] (Roach, 1998, p.128). Other sounds inserted to ease articulation between vowels include /w/, as in ‘he wants to eat’ [hi w?nz tu? w? it] and ‘don’t do it’ [de?nt du? w? ?t] and /j/, as in ‘I ate earlier’ [a?? j? e?t ?li?] and ‘happy as’ [h?pi? j? ?z]. Linking –r, as well as the other forms of linking, are linguistically concerned with a phenomenon known as juncture, which can be defined as the association between a sound and those that immediately follow or precede it (Brinton, n.d., p.27; Roach, 1998, p.129). Native speakers of English usually produce close juncture behaviours, which means they use phonological and phonetic tactics or processes, such as assimilation, liaison and elision to link word boundaries in an organized manner (Thompson & Howard, 2007, p.895). Open juncture behaviour on the other hand (termed as juncture) is marked by a pause between the two sounds, as in ‘ice-cream’ [a?skrim] and ‘I scream’ [a? skrim] (Brinton, n.d., p.28) and ‘my train’ [ma?tre?n] and ‘might rain’ [ma?t re?n] (Roach, 1998, p.129], and help to make word boundaries more apparent and phonetically discrete; such pauses often involve the addition of a glottal stop at such junctures (Thompson & Howard, 2007, p.895). Epenthesis Epenthesis is another process of speech simplification but this time instead of deleting or assimilating sounds the process involves the addition of sounds. In many languages native speakers insert epenthetic stops after a nasal and before an obstruent, as in the word ‘youngster’[j??kst?], wherein a velar stop /k/ has been inserted between a velar nasal /?/ and an obstruent, the alveolar fricative /s/. This occurs therefore if the “velum closes before the oral closure for the nasal is released” (Warner, 2002, p.1) causing a pause and the closing of the vocal tract, thus resulting in the articulation of a stop. A further example is the word ‘gangster’ [g??gst?], wherein a voiced velar epenthetic stop /g/ is inserted between the nasal /?/ and the fricative /s/. Epenthesis therefore, refers to the insertion of a consonant or vowel into difficult articulation sequences in order to make pronunciation easier (Brinton, n.d., p.38). Further examples include ‘warmth’ [w?mp?], ‘nuclear’ [nuk?l??] and ‘comfort’ [k?mpf?t]. Vowel epenthesis is very commonly used by native speakers of English as a means of resolving consonant clusters (Fleischhacker, 2000, p.1) Weak versus strong forms According to Roach (1998, p.102) some words can have a weak or strong form; for example, ‘that’ used in the sentence ‘I like that.’ is the strong form of the word (Roach, 1998, p.102) and is stressed, but used in the sentence ‘I don’t think that it’s right.’ the same word is weak and unstressed. A weak form is usually marked by a weakened vowel, most often a schwa /?/, neutralized version of /i/ and /u/ and sometimes no vowel at all (Lira, 2008, p.2), as in ‘come and kiss me’ [k?m ?n k?s mi] and ‘bread and butter’ [br?d n b?t?]. There are competing schools of thought as to whether the mastery of the weak forms is important to new speakers of the English language. Some phoneticians believe “mastery of weak forms is crucial not only to understand but also to produce connected speech effectively and appropriately” (Leanez & Waasaf, n.d., p.170), and according to this school of thought, a new English speaker must master the weak forms if they are to understand and communicate properly, otherwise what they hear will sound unintelligible and unfocused. The opposing theory is that the mastery of weak forms is not necessary for adequate communication, but is only useful for perception (Leanez & Waasaf, n.d., p.171). Roach (1998, p.102) states that there are forty words in the English language that can be used in a weak or strong form and that most of them are function words such as prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and the like, and their weak forms are more prominent than their strong forms. He further claims that while it is possible for an individual to not use the weak form of any of the words, it is unadvisable to do so, because doing so makes the speaker sound unnatural. Since most native speakers consistently use weak forms, knowledge of how and where they are used can assist in comprehension for a non-native speaker and thus help them to understand what they are hearing more easily (Roach, 1998, p.102). According to Leanez & Waasaf (n.d., 170), the accent, position and phonetic environment of the syllable determines if the syllable is going to be used in its weak or strong form. Some of Roach’s rules (1998, p.103) for discerning whether a word will be used in its strong or weak form are as follows: 1) if the word comes at the end of a sentence it is most likely used in its strong form; if it comes in the middle of a sentence it is most likely used in its weak form. For example, in the sentence ‘chips are what I am fond of’ the ‘of’ is in its strong form, but in the sentence, ‘I am fond of chips’ the ‘of’ is in its weak form; 2) when a weak form is being contrasted with another weak form they both become strong forms, such as in the sentence ‘the letter was from him, not to him’; related to this is the coordinated prepositions, such as in the sentence ‘I travel to and from London frequently’; 3) when a weak form of a verb is used for special emphasis it becomes a strong form, as in ‘you must give me more money’; and 4) when a weak verb form is being cited or quoted it is used as a strong form, as in ‘you shouldn’t put ‘and’ at the end of a sentence’ (Roach, 1998, p.103). Regular occurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables provides the rhythm of speech, and according to Roach (1998, p.120), stressed syllables occur at regular intervals whether immediately surrounded by unstressed syllables or not; in other words the intervals between stressed syllables will be roughly the same, regardless of whether they are interrupted by unstressed syllables or not. This theory holds true for English, Russian and Arabic. In other languages, such as French, Telugu and Yoruba, the rhythm of the speech is that the time between stressed syllables is shorter or longer, depending on the number of unstressed syllables (Roach, 1998, p.120). For English, the term ‘foot’ regards to a stressed syllable and all unstressed syllables that follow it; that particular foot would then end with the next stressed syllable, and a new foot would begin (Roach, 1998, p.120). Additionally, stress is altered according to context, for example ‘pres’ent’ verb and ‘’present’ noun, and the English language naturally alternates between stressed and unstressed syllables, with the stress levels adjusted to bring this about (Roach, 1998, p.122). Another way that stressed and unstressed syllabic rhythm is contextual is that certain speakers in certain situations will use different speech rhythms; for instance a speaker who is speaking publically will speak rhythmically, while an individual who is hesitant or nervous will speak arhythmically (Roach, 1998, p.122-123). Thus, rhythm is emblematic of a speaking style, not of English speech as a whole, and a person’s style will either tend towards minimum rhythm or maximum rhythm, depending on the context and the speaker’s style (Roach, 1998, p.123). Glottal stops A glottal stop is another feature of connected speech and is a type of lenition wherein the oral motion of a stop is eliminated (Eddington & Taylor, 2009, p.298); in other words it is a type of consonant mutation. A glottal stop may be recognized in different ways (Roengpitya, 1997, p.21): Glottal closures can, of course, occur without accompanying oral closure, in which case they form glottal stops. Different types of glottal stops have been observed in the world’s languages. In several languages they are part of regular stop series. This is the case in Hawaiian, in which there are only eight contrasting consonants…Elsewhere, glottal stops serve to demarcate the boundaries of phrases or other prosodic units. A frequent role of this type is to indicate the beginning of a word when no other consonant is present. In other languages, however, glottal stops function more as a variation in phonation type…the glottal stop is sometimes realized as laryngealization of the following vowel. In Jalapa Mazatec, the realization is usually entirely as creaky voice on an associated vowel (Ladefoged and Maddieson 74-75). Davenport & Hannahs (2005, p.10) explain that glottal stops are formed by the vocal chords being completely closed when making a certain sound. This is contrasted with voiced sounds, in which the vocal chords are narrow and create vibration, and voiceless sounds where no such vibration can be felt and the chords are completely open. In contrast to these the glottal stop has completely closed vocal chords which causes pressure to build up below them and is then released forcefully. In stereotypical British Cockney speech glottal stops are used as a variant of /t/ both between vowels and in word final position (Holmes, 1995, p.433); for example [go? ? b?? ? b?? mei?] ‘got a bit of butter mate?’.Glottal stops are also used quite extensively in Scottish English and more recently in Estuary English as well as in New Zealand (Holmes, 1995, p.433). Conclusion Native speakers of the English language use a variety of techniques in their everyday speech, techniques that they largely take for granted, but are difficult for the non-native speaker to comprehend. This chapter has discussed three simplification processes they use - assimilation, elision, epenthesis and liaison, which may or may not be used across all languages but are found in the connected speech of English. It has also provided insight into weak versus strong forms as used by native speakers in connected speech, as well as some discussion on glottal stops. References Brinton, D.M. (n.d.) 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