Contents Introducti

Weakening of vowels

Phonetic reduction most often involves a centralization of the vowel, that is, a reduction in the amount of movement of the tongue in pronouncing the vowel, as with the characteristic change of many unstressed vowels at the ends of English words to something approaching schwa. A well-researched type of reduction is thaz

of the neutralization of acoustic distinctions in unstressed vowels, which occurs in many languages. The most common reduced vowel is schwa. Whereas full vowels are distinguished by height, backness, and roundness, according to Bolinger (1989), reduced unstressed vowels are largely unconcerned with height or roundness. English /ə/, for example, may range phonetically from mid [ə] to
open [a]; English /i/ ranges from close [i], [ɪ], [e], to open-mid [ɛ]. The primary

distinction is that /ɨ/ is further front than /ə/, contrasted in the numerous English words ending in unstressed -ia. That is, the jaw, which to a large extent controls vowel height, tends to be relaxed when pronouncing reduced vowels. Similarly,

English /ɵ/ ranges through [ʊ] and [o]; although it may be labialized to varying

degrees, the lips are relaxed in comparison to /uː/, /ou/, or /ɔː/. The primary distinction in words like folio is again one of backness. However, the backness distinction is not as great as that of full vowels; reduced vowels are also centralized, and are sometimes referred to by that term. They may also be called obscure, as there is no one-to-one correspondence between full and reduced vowels.

Centralisation isn't the only form of reduction, however. Many Germanic languages, in their early stages, reduced the number of vowels that could occur in unstressed syllables, without (or before) clearly showing centralisation. Proto-Germanic and its early descendant Gothic still allowed more or less the full complement of vowels and diphthongs to appear in unstressed syllables, except notably short /e/, which merged with /i/. In early Old High German and Old Saxon, this had been reduced to five vowels (i, e, a, o, u, some with length distinction), later reduced further to just three short vowels (i/e, a, o/u). In Old Norse, likewise, only three vowels were written in unstressed syllables: a, i and u (their exact phonetic quality is unknown).


Old English, meanwhile, distinguished only e, a, and u (or o). Catalan, a Romance language, also shows reduction, but in differing
degrees depending on dialect. The Valencian dialect reduces the number of
possible vowels from seven to five in unstressed environments,
merging [ɛ] into [e] and [ɔ] into [o]. The central Catalan dialect goes even further,
distinguishing only [i], [u] and [ə] or [ɐ],with [ɛ] and [e] becoming [ə]and [ɔ]
and [o] merging into [u]. In Italian, the vowels noted e and o in spelling are pronounced [e] and [o] in unstressed syllables.
Sound duration is a common factor in reduction: In fast speech, vowels are reduced due to physical limitations of the articulatory organs, e.g., the tongue cannot move to a prototypical position fast or completely enough to produce a full-quality vowel (compare with clipping). Different languages have different types of vowel reduction, and this is one of the difficulties in language acquisition; see, e.g., "Non-native pronunciations of English" and "Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages". Vowel reduction of second language speakers is a separate study. Stress-related vowel reduction is a principal factor in the development of Indo-European ablaut, as well as other changes reconstructed by historical linguistics. Such vowel reduction is one of the sources of distinction between a spoken language and its written counterpart. Vernacular and formal speech often have different levels of vowel reduction, and so the term "vowel reduction" is also applied to differences in a language variety with respect to, e.g., the language standard. In some, cases phonetic, vowel reduction, may contribute to phonemic (phonological) reduction, which means merger of phonemes, induced by indistinguishable pronunciation.
Elision. Before the speaking about elision we should find answer to this question. What is elision? Quite simply, elision is all about dropping sounds or not pronouncing them fully in fluent speech.
We may notice that sometimes, words seem to have letters missing within the phonetic transcription. For instance, we know that the word round is pronounced /raund/ and the word to is pronounced /tǝ/. However, when the words are used together as in round to, we often drop the final /d/, so that phonetically it reads /raun tǝ/. This is because /t/ and /d/ are both labio-dental sounds, and we tend to drop one - in this case the voiced /d/. This is called elision.
This is one of the aspects of sentence stress that we need to consider when guiding and teaching our students, as opposed to pointing them towards isolated phonetic dictionary entries.
In English, stress placement in sentences and rhythm are part and parcel of everyday speech. As a result, stress placement is variable depending upon the meaning and the effect sought. This is quite a large area of phonetics, so for now we will simply identify some regular features of stress placement in connected utterances. Some words regularly attract the stress, while others don't. Those that are regularly unstressed are: auxiliary verbs - primary and modal determiners (articles, demonstrative pronouns, etc.) subject pronouns (he, she, it, they, etc.), prepositions (one/two syllable words e.g. on, in, at, upon, etc.), conjunctions (and, but, so, etc.)
These are primarily grammatical words, rather than content words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. We might think of them as 'small' words but technically they are called 'function' words.
However, we could say I want an apple and an orange' - where the 'and' is unstressed and pronounced with schwa, but imagine that the question were 'Would you like an apple or an orange in your lunchbox?'. The answer might be 'I want and apple AND an orange', in which case the important part is the fact that speaker wants BOTH and therefore the 'and' doesn't have schwa...
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Elision is called gradation by some and involves the loss of a phoneme in connected speech. This tends to happen in unstressed syllables and, in a sense, elision is a simplification or an economy made in rapid colloquial speech. In short, in natural conversation, we tend to glide over weak forms and 'lose' some of them. As a result, learners of English need to be made aware of it more for their ability to understand native speakers' rapid speech than for their own speech production. There are 3 main phonetic environments where this occurs:
a) Syllable-final clusters involving /t, d/ conscripts is pronounced /'konskrips/
Helen's machine stopped printing is pronounced /'hlanz ma'jirn stop printig/ /h/ and /j/ tend not to create this elision but other consonants can in rapid speech. Cruttenden provides a number of useful examples that show the vulnerability of /t/ and /d/ in combinations.