Lecture 1 Phonetics as a Linguistic Science Plan

3. Northern English Pronunciation

The Northern regional type of English pronunciation is characterized by features that are common to all the dialect used in the northern part of England.

Thus, the main distinctions of the Northern type of English pronunciation, as opposed to RP, are as follows:

(a) the vowel /æ/ is more open and more retracted back, as in /a/ (e. g. “back, bad”).

(b) /ɑ:/ is fronted compared with /ɑ:/ in RP and it approximates to /æ/ (e. g. “glass, fast, after”),

(c) /u/ is used instead of /ʌ/ (e.g. “cup, love, much”),

(d) /ou/ is pronounced as a monophthongal /o:/ (e.g. “go, home”),

(e) /e/ or /ɛ: / are pronounced instead of /eI/ (e. g. “may, say, take”).

(f) All tones are drawled.

4. Scottish English Pronunciation

The Scottish type of English pronunciation is based on the dialects spoken in Scotland which vary among themselves in some respects. Some of their common features, which distinguish the Scottish type of pronunciation from RP, are as follows:

(a) the use of the rolled /r/ not only between and before vowels (as in “hurry, brown”), but also after vowels (as in “born”);

(b) the use of the back-lingual fricative /x/, which resembles the corresponding Russian sound (e. g. “loch”);

(c) the use of the dark /l/ in all positions (“like, least”);

(d) the use of monophthongs instead of diphthongs before /r/ (as in “beard, there, pure, poor, sure”);

(e) the pronunciation of all the vowels short. There is no distinction in length between the vowels in words like “food-good”, with the exception that the vowel in inflected words is not as short as the vowel in non-inflected words (“road-rowed, greed-agreed”).

There are certain peculiarities in the intonation of the Scottish type of English pronunciation, such as

(a) Special Questions may end with a high level tone after a fall on the interrogative word, e.g.
RP ˈWho’s ˈhaving the `grape fruit?

Scot. `Who’s ˌhaving the ˈgrape fruit?

(b) A final vocative does not necessarily continue the tune of the General Question, e.g.

RP ˈWill you ˈin to ˊlunch, Mr. Brown?

Scot. ˈWill you be ˌin to ˊlunch, ˌMr. ˎBrown?

We may now summarize by saying that one should distinguish between RP and “educated” regional types of pronunciation (such as Southern, Northern and Scottish types of English pronunciation), of the one hand, and local dialects, on the other.

One of the best examples of uneducated local dialects is Cockney.

Cockney is used by the manual workers, in the region of London, Cockney has not been investigated, but there are certain striking peculiarities that should be mentioned here. In Cockney:

(a) a nasalized /aI/, or /ɛI/, is used for /eI/ (as in “railway”, “take”);

(b) a nasalized /ɔI/ is used for /aI/ ( as in “I”, “right”, “night”);

(c) /h/ is omitted in “ his, her”;

(d) /p, t, k/ are over aspirated;

(e) the final /ŋ/ sounds like /n/ ( as in “evening, havening”).
English is spoken not only in the British Isles. It is the national language in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and of a great part of the population in Canada. Each of those national has its own orthoepic norm which exists a long side of regional types and numerous dialects.

Though those national languages have distinctive features of their own which differentiate them from British English and from each other, they have much more in common. That is why they are considered to be variants of the same language, the English language.

5. American English Pronunciation

American English which is a variant of the English language, has developed its own peculiarities in vocabulary, grammatical structure and pronunciation. There are three main types of AE pronunciation, the Eastern, the Southern, and the General American type.

The G.A. type of pronunciation is considered to be the standard pronunciation of American English. It is used by the majority of Americans, and is, therefore, less regional, where as the other two types of pronunciation are easily detected as either Eastern or Southern. G. A. is used by radio and TV in the USA.

The peculiarities of GA lie in

(1) the pronunciation of sounds,

(2) differences in the accentual structure of words, and

(3) intonation.
1) Peculiarities of the pronunciation of GA sounds as compared to RP sounds are as follows:

a) /r/ in GA is retroflexive, the tip of the tongue is curled back;

b) /t/ between a vowel and a sonorant, or between two vowels the second of which is unstressed, is vocalized: it is a short voiced /t/. But the distinction between /t/ and /d/ is not neutralized. American easily distinguish the words in such minimal pairs as “writer-rider”.
E.g. “better, pity, battle, twenty” (Exception: “return”).

(c) /l/ is always dark, even before vowels (e.g. “film, look, like”);

(d) /ʃ/ is vocalized in words like “excursion” /ʒn/, “version” /ʒn/, “Persia” /ʒ/;

(e) /d/ is omitted after /l/ and /n/ (e. g. “ cold, old, sold, individual”);

(f) /k/ is omitted before /t/ (e. g. “asked” /æst /);

(g) /j/ is omitted before /u/ (e.g. “duty” /du:ti/, “student” /`studnt/ , “tutor” /tu:tə/, “new”/nu:/);

(h) /hw/ is used in words spelt with “wh” (e. g. “which, why, while, whine, wheel”);

(i) the use of the

l stop /’/ instead of /t/ before /m, n, l, r, j, w/; (e.g. “certainly” / `sɜ:’nll/, “that one” /ðæt’wən/

(j) GA vowels are not differentiated by their length. D. Jones notes that all American vowels are long.

(k) /æ/ is used instead of /ɑ: (“path, grass, staff, laugh, can’t, last, pass, ask, half”) EXCEPTIONS: father, palm, balm, alms, March, part”);

(l) /æ/ in GA is wider and longer than /æ/ in RP, the Americans pronounce it with a twang (“ma”’, “can”);

(m) AE vowels are nasalized in all positions.

(n) In AE /ou/ is much less diphthongal than in RP. It may be represented as /o:/ or /o/.

G.P. Krapp writes: “In the British speech a great variety of diphthongal shadings occur, some of them are familiar in the exaggerated representations of Englishmen and their speech on the American stage”.

2) Peculiarities in the accentual structure of words in GA as compared to RP.

American speakers make much greater used of secondary stress in polysyllabic words than British speakers do. In words ending in “-ary, -ory, -ery, -mony, -ative” the syllable containing the but last vowel bears tertiary stress (i.e. stress is somewhat weaker than secondary stress).

E.g. ˈdictioˌnary, ˈterriˌtory, ˈmilliˌnery, ˈcereˌmony, comˈmuniˌcative.

(3) Peculiarities of GA intonation.

The most frequent intonation contour for statements and requests in GA is the tune, beginning low, rising to a high level, and then steadily falling.

e.g. He asked me to do it. or He asked me to do it.

You better do it . or You better do it. The same type of falling intonation contour characterizes the so-called General Questions in GA.

Did he ask you to do it?

“Rising” tunes that rise from a low pitch level and end on a high pitch level occur with some General Questions, especially in situations where a very polite form is desirable.

e.g. Do you know him?

Will you be ready at seven?

Such intonation contours used in GA unemphatic questions are generally perceived by RP speakers in Britain as implying surprise or disappointment. On the other hand, the RP General Questions (pronounced with a Descending Scale ending with a Rise) are considered by the American to sound pretentious.

Though the so-called Special Questions are pronounced with a falling tone in both RP and GA, the difference lies in the pronunciation of the Scale. If in RP it is usually the Descending Scale (e.g. ˈWhy ˈhaven’t you `told me aˌbout it?), in GA the whole utterance is generally pronounced on a level tone.

e.g. Why haven’t you told me about it? or

Why haven’t you told me about it?

Such questions sound dispassionate and disrespectful to an RP speaker.

The RP Special Question pronounced with a rising tone (polite question) are perceived by the Americans as questions implying curiosity.

To end a sentence with a high-pitched fall-rise (which differs from the RP fall-rise) is another frequent intonational characteristic in GA.

e.g. Can you do it? We ˌcertainly ˅can.

We ˌhappened to be ˅passing by.

On account of the fact that the features which distinguish AE from the British English are numerous, some linguists claim that AE can no more be considered a variant of the English language. H. L. Mencken, for instance, wrote that “the American form of the English language was plainly departing from the parent stem, and it seemed at least likely that the differences between American and English would go on increasing”.

But most of the linguists express the opposite point of view. Prof. Shveitser, a Russian linguist who has made a thorough study of AE, has proved that the distinctions between AE and BE do not affect the inventory of the main language units which are common to both variants of the English language: AE and BE.