POWER OF COMMUNICATION

POWER OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is also the most powerful input resource in an enterprise. The various resources, just to recount, are as below:
1 Men
2 Money
3 Materials
4 Machines
5 Methods
6 Management
7 Measurement
8 Message covering both information and communication flows
9 Motive Power
10 Motivational Leadership
Messaging has emerged as the most important resource for, without it, nothing can be transacted anywhere. It is the lifeline of any society. It is the glue that holds companies, communities and countries together.
There is another process that is also used to influence others – it is the use of authority or power. They say if person has power it shows because it quickly shows his influence or hold on others‟ opinion. However, it must be understood in its proper perspective. Power has been described as „a process of influencing others to do something that, left to themselves, they will not do‟. This process is, then, quite different from that of communication where we influence others as equals - members of the family, members of the inter-departmental teams or customers or fellow members of an association. The process of communication is greatly dependent on the skill of individuals who, as equal members, are in a position to influence others so as to compel, propel or impel them to work together to achieve common goals!

Communication as a two-way process

Communication is a complete process - it starts with communicators sending messages to receivers, the „communicatees‟. An experienced sender of message, whether oral or written, would think of the audience as his customer. He would try to gauge or guess the kind of level of communication the receiver is comfortable with. Thereafter, he would craft his message in a manner and in the language, words, phrases and idioms that the receiver is familiar with. Each receiver of message isreally a customer whose needs and wants should be as well known to the sender as it happens in a market place. Obviously, like the sender who chooses words, phrases and idioms from his vocabulary depending on own learning, experience and exposure, receiver also has his own mental filter that is the product of his learning, experience and exposure. To absorb the message in his mind, he does the abstraction of the message in to words, phrases and idioms that he is familiar with or has command over. This leads to his formulating his response to the message received. Once again, it goes through the mind filter and ultimately comes out of the communicatee and starts its return journey to the sender of the message. It conveys back what is understood by the receiver.
A sensitive speaker is able to judge the reaction of his audience from the gestures, sounds and expressions of the audience – the way they sit, the way they yawn or the way they twitter their fingers etc. It is thus a complete cycle because it is a two way process. Until the full process has been gone through the process of communication is considered to be incomplete.

Information as a one-way process

Information flow is another related process. Information is knowledge; it comes from the processing of raw data which records the events as they take place in every miniscule of an organization or an institution. Knowledge is power. The flow of information is considered to be an extremely powerful tool at the disposal of men at all levels of a business enterprise.
However, difference between communication and information flows must be understood clearly. Whereas communication is a two way process, information is a one-way process. It is, therefore, half of the process. Yet it is used very extensively in organizations. As businesses grow in size, complexity and dynamics, it is very difficult to ensure two way process all the time. Much of the time, information flows one way – downwards, upwards or horizontal along formal lines of command. These lines of command become the channels of information flows and serve as the cornerstones of communication, coordination and control.

consonant,contoid,contour&contraction

consonant,contoid,contour&contraction

There are many types of consonant, but what all have in common is that they obstruct the flow of air through the vocal tract. Some do this a lot, some not very much: those which make the maximum obstruction (i.e. plosives, which form a complete stoppage of the airstream) are the most consonantal. Nasal consonants result in complete stoppage of the oral cavity but are less obstructive than plosives since air is allowed to escape through the nose. Fricatives make a considerable obstruction to the flow of air, but not a total closure. Laterals obstruct the flow of air only in the centre of the mouth, not at the sides, so obstruction is slight. Other sounds classed as approximants make so little obstruction to the flow of air that they could almost be thought to be vowels if they were in a different context (e.g. English w or r).
The above explanation is based on phonetic criteria. An alternative approach is to look at the phonological characteristics of consonants: for example, consonants are typically found at the beginning and end of syllables while vowels are typically found in the middle.

For most practical purposes a contoid is the same thing as a consonant; however, there are reasons for having a distinction between sounds which function phonologically as consonants and sounds (contoids) which have the phonetic characteristics that we look on as consonantal. As an example, let us look at English w (as in ‘wet’) and j (as in ‘yet’). If you pronounce these two sounds very slowly you will hear that they are closely similar to the vowels [i] and [u] – yet English speakers treat them as consonants. How do we know this? Consider the pronunciation of the indefinite article: the rule is to use ‘a’ before consonants and ‘an’ before vowels, and it is the former version which we find before w and j; similarly, the definite article is pronounced ði before a vowel but ðə before a consonant, and we find the ðə form before j and w.
Another interesting case is the normal pronunciation of the r phoneme in the BBC accent – in many ways this sound is more like a vowel than a consonant, and in some languages it actually is found as one of the vowels, yet we always treat it as a consonant.
The conclusion that has been drawn is that since the word ‘consonant’ as used in describing the phonology of a language can include sounds which could be classed phonetically as vowels, we ought also to have a different word which covers just those sounds which are phonetically of the type that produces a significant obstruction to the flow of air through the vocal tract (see consonant above): the term proposed is contoid.

contour

It is usual to describe a movement of the pitch of the voice in speech as a contour. In the intonation of a language like English many syllables are said with a fairly level tone, but the most prominent syllables are said with a tonal contour (which may be continued on following syllables). In the study of tone languages it is usual to make a distinction between register languages which generally use only phonologically level tones (e.g. many West African languages) and those which also use contour tones such as rises, falls, fall–rises and rise–falls (e.g. many East Asian languages, such as Chinese).

contraction

English speech has a number of cases where pairs of words are closely combined into a contracted form that is almost like a single word. For example, ‘that’ and ‘is’ are

Nasalization & Syllables

Nasalization

In linguistics, the imparting of a nasal quality to a sound, by opening up the nasal cavity as an extra resonator. All speech sounds are made with some configuration of the throat and oral cavity. The velum or soft palate acts as a drawbridge: it is normally retracted so as to close off the nasal cavity, but in nasal sounds it is lowered to allow air to resonate simultaneously through the nose.

Nasal consonants, like M and N and the Ng in sing and the Ñ in España, have a complete closure somewhere in the mouth, and air escapes only through the nose. They may also be called nasal stops.

Nasal vowels have both the oral and nasal cavities open. Nasalization is thus an extra articulation on an oral vowel, so nasal vowels may also be called nasalized vowels. This is nitpicking, but there are no solely nasal sounds. Also, configuration of the nasal cavity can't be altered (say by flaring the nostrils), or at least if this is physically possible it's never been reported as used in any language. The only parameter of nasality is whether the velum is open or shut.

Familiar languages with nasal vowels are French, Portuguese, Polish, and Hindi, and they are quite common world-wide, especially in West African languages. The four French vowels are illustrated by the phrase un bon vin blanc 'a good white wine'. All languages without exception have oral vowels, and usually have more oral than nasal.

The IPA phonetic symbol for nasalization is a tilde, thus [œ˜ bõ vE˜ blã]. (Only the Portuguese letters ã õ will show up correctly in HTML, so I've had to use a separate tilde: it should be over the vowel in all cases.) In Polish Lech Wałęsa = [lex va'we˜sa]

This is called primary nasalization when the language systematically uses nasal vowels as distinct phonemes: French [bõ] 'good' contrasts with [bo] 'beautiful'.

Most consonants can't be nasalized, or rather a nasalized B just is an M. They are the same orally, and instead of exploding abruptly as B does, the air is released continuously through the nose in M. But some consonants, those called sonorants, allow their normal oral articulation to have simultaneous nasality imposed over them. This set includes the laterals or L-like sounds, the rhotics or R-like sounds, and the approximants including W and Y. However, it is extremely rare to have nasalized sonorants as phonemes: usually they are the result of secondary nasalization.

Syllables and their parts

Words can be cut up into units called syllables. Humans seem to need syllables as a way of segmenting the stream of speech and giving it a rhythm of strong and weak beats, as we hear in music. Syllables don't serve any meaning-signalling function in language; they exist only to make speech easier for the brain to process. A word contains at least one syllable.

Most speakers of English have no trouble dividing a word up into its component syllables. Sometimes how a particular word is divided might vary from one individual to another, but a division is always easy and always possible. Here are some words divided into their component syllables (a period is used to mark the end of a syllable):

tomato = to.ma.to 
window = win.dow 
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: su.per.ca.li.fra.gi.lis.ti.cex.pi.a.li.do.cious (some people might put some of the periods in different places in this word).

Syllables have internal structure: they can be divided into parts. The parts are onset and rhyme; within the rhyme we find the nucleus and coda. Not all syllables have all parts; the smallest possible syllable contains a nucleus only. A syllable may or may not have an onset and a coda.

Onset: the beginning sounds of the syllable; the ones preceding the nucleus. These are always consonants in English. The nucleus is a vowel in most cases, although the consonants [ r ], [ l ], [ m ], [ n ], and the velar nasal (the 'ng' sound) can also be the nucleus of a syllable. In the following words, the onset is in bold; the rest underlined.

read 
flop 
strap

If a word contains more than one syllable, each syllable will have the usual syllable parts:

win.dow 
to.ma.to 
pre.pos.te.rous 
fun.da.men.tal

Rhyme (or rime): the rest of the syllable, after the onset (the underlined portions of the words above). The rhyme can also be divided up:

Rhyme = nucleus + coda

The nucleus, as the term suggests, is the core or essential part of a syllable. A nucleus must be present in order for a syllable to be present. Syllable nuclei are most often highly 'sonorant' or resonant sounds, that can be relatively loud and carry a clear pitch level. In English and most other languages, most syllable nuclei are vowels. In English, in certain cases, the liquids [ l r ] and nasals [ m n ] and the velar nasal usually spelled 'ng' can also be syllable nuclei.

vowel combinations

·         vowel combinations

·         A vowel combination is a combination of two or three vowels, or of a vowel and at least one consonant, that is associated with one or more specific single sounds. For example, ea has the sounds /long e/ and /long a/; ay has the sound /long a/, and igh has the sound /long i/. These vowel combinations are sometimes called digraphs, diphthongs, trigraphs, and triphthongs.

·         Vowel combinations occur in three different forms in written English:

·                                  1- Vowels often appear in clusters within a single syllable. This is the most common form.

·         2- Vowels often appear in combination with a particular consonant or consonants which, together, represent a sound unit that is different from what you would expect if you didn't know the specific combination. For example, the o in old has the /long o/ sound, but if you didn't already know that already, you would think that the o in cold was short.

·         3- Another common combination in English is one or two vowels followed by gh. The gh is usually silent. It is usually easier to decode the whole unit (igh, eigh) than to process the vowel and the gh separately.

Monophthongs

A monophthong consists of only one vowel sound that does not change during its articulation; i.e., it starts and ends in the same quality, and the speech organs do not change their position during its pronunciation. Monophthongs are also called simple vowels, pure vowels, or stable vowels. American linguists list from 9 to 12 monophthongs in American English, generally 11 monophthongs: [a:], [æ], [i:], [i], [e], [o:], [o], [u:], [u], [ər], [ə].

Monophthongs

A monophthong consists of only one vowel sound that does not change during its articulation; i.e., it starts and ends in the same quality, and the speech organs do not change their position during its pronunciation. Monophthongs are also called simple vowels, pure vowels, or stable vowels. American linguists list from 9 to 12 monophthongs in American English, generally 11 monophthongs: [a:], [æ], [i:], [i], [e], [o:], [o], [u:], [u], [ər], [ə].

phonological features of a phoneme

phonological features of a phoneme

A phoneme is opposed to all other phonemes of its subsystem (respectively, consonants

and vowels) in several ways. /p / has to be defined as an unvoiced bilabial plosive to account for

all the oppositions found with the other consonants in English. These three features are all

necessary because if /p/ was described as an unvoiced consonant it could be opposed to /b/, /d/,

/g/, /v/, /C/, /z/, /Y/, /dY/, but would not appear as distinct from all other unvoiced sounds. If /p/

was described as a bilabial only it could be opposed to all non-bilabials but would not appear as

distinct from /b/ and /m/. If /p/ was described only as a plosive it would be opposed to all nonplosives but would not appear distinct from /t/, /d/, /g/, /b/, /k/.

Hence we can say that

1) voiceless

2) bilabial

3) plosive

are the distinctive features of /p/.

Consider the phoneme /m/. Phonetically it is described as a voiced bilabial nasal.

However if bilabiality is necessary to account for its opposition to /n/ for example and nasality is

necessary to account for its opposition to /b/ voicing is not a phonological feature since there are

no voiceless nasals.

 As voicing is not a distinctive feature of /m/, we say is it as redundant

feature from a phonological point of view.

Let’s have a look at /l/. It is described phonetically as a voiced alveolar lateral. However

since there are no other lateral sounds in English, voicing and alveolarity are redundant

phonological features.

 Voicing is also a redundant feature for vowels since there are no voiceless

vowels.

Each language has its own set of phonemes; oppositions among those phonemes differ

necessarily from language to language : they have been based on different sets of features for each

language. For example nasality exists both in French and in English. However in French nasality

is a distinctive feature of both consonants and vowels. 

The French /m/ is opposed to /p/, /b/

because it is nasal, as in English. But whereas there are no nasal vowels in English (at least in

Received Pronunciation of British English) in French there are nasal and oral (non-nasal) vowels:

/bo/ beau (“beautiful”) is opposed to /bõ/ bon (“good”) because of its nasality. So is /pla/ plat

(“flat”) when it is opposed to /plã/ plan (“map”).

Another example of the relevancy of sets of features would be the role of lip rounding in

French and in English. Lip rounding exists in both languages. In English, only back vowels are

rounded and rounding alone will never account for the opposition between two vowels. So

rounding is a redundant feature of English vowels. In French , both /i/ and /y/ are high front

vowels, but /y/ is distinct from /i/ because of its rounding only: /vy/ vu (“seen”) is opposed to

/vi/ vit (“saw”). Rounding is a distinctive feature of French vowels.

Segmentation of the string of sounds can also differ from one language to the other. 

example, phonetic [tR] is considered as one phoneme in Spanish (/tR/), as two in French ( /t/+/R/)

and as one or two in English depending on the analysis of the set of consonants. 

SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY-phonemes

SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY-phonemes

(1)            a. the cat is on the mat

                b. the mat is on the cat

What is the difference in sounds?

What is the difference in meaning

Obviously the set of sounds uttered in (1a) and (1b) is identical. So the difference lies in

the order in which these sounds appear: [k]and [m] permute in (1b). We see that the order of

appearance can alter meaning. In (1a) and (1b) the relationship between the cat and the mat is

inverted.

In our examples we produce a change in meaning through a substitution of segments in a

string of sounds. These segments are called phonemes. A precise definition will be given later on.

Now imagine you’re in London and you want to go to Bond Street. You ask a couple:

“Excuse me, could you tell me where Bond Street is?”. They both answer in chorus: “Second left

and then right”,which can be transcribed as

(2)                    a [sek?nd left ?n Cen raHt]

                         b [sek?nd left ?n Cen RaHt]

Both have given you the same information although you perceive a difference in the

sounds used, that is, the woman has used [r], the regular English / r / sound, whereas the man

used the rolled lingual [R] instead. They are transcribed phonetically respectively as

[raHt] and [RaHt]

This difference in the pronunciation, which allows you to deduce that the wife is English and the

husband Scottish, doesn’t entail a change in meaning.

The two segments [r] and [R] can be used indifferently since there is no change of

meaning: the difference between the two is said to be phonetic. This was not the case for the

substitution of [h] for [R] in [Ri:Hz] - [hi:Hz], which brings about a change in meaning and is said

to be phonological (or phonemic).

Minimal Pairs

Let’s come back to the concept of phoneme. Since the substitution of [h] for[R] changes

she into he, [h] and [R] belong necessarily to two different phonemes. Whereas [r] and [R], which

under no circumstances change the information given, are said to belong to the same phoneme /r/.

In the discussion of phonological versus phonetic differences, what matters is whether the

substitution of one sound for another brings about a change in meaning or not; the description of

this change does not enter the field of phonology.

Generally, when we wish to decide whether two segments belong to the same phoneme or,

on the contrary, are realisations of two different phonemes, we put them in an identical context,

that is the same string of sounds. When there is a difference between two otherwise identical

strings of sound and this difference results in a change of meaning, these two strings are said to

constitute a minimal pair. 

If we substitute one segment for another and this results in a change in meaning the two

segments belong to two different phonemes. Thus [k] and [m] are realisations of two different

phonemes /k/ and /m/ because substituting one for the other as first element of the string [-zt]

gives two different words: /kzt/ (cat) and /mzt/ (mat).

One can safely say that the phonemes of a given language form a system in which they are

all opposed to one another. Take English /p/:

/p/ is opposed to /b/ as in /pHg/ : /bHg/ pig : big

/p/ is opposed to /t/ as in /pi:/ : /ti:/ pea : tea

/p/ is opposed to /d / as in /pHg/ : /dHg / pig : dig

/p/ is opposed to /k/ as in /pzt/ : /kzt/ pat : cat

/p/ is opposed to /g/ as in /pPt/ : /gPt/ pot : got

/p/ is opposed to /m/ as in /pzt/ : /mzt/ pat : mat

/p/ is opposed to /n/ as in /pHt/ : /nHt/ pit : knit

/p/ is opposed to /M/ as in /rHp/ : /rHM/ rip : ring

/p/ is opposed to /f/ as in /pi:t/ : /fi:t/ peat : feet

/p/ is opposed to /v/ as in /pet/ : /vet/ pet : vet

/p/ is opposed to /S/ as in /pN:t/ : /SN:t/ port : thought

/p/ is opposed to /C/ as in /pzt/ : /Czt/ pat : that

/p/ is opposed to /s/ as in /pzt/ : /szt/ pat : sat

/p/ is opposed to /z/ as in /pHp/ : /zHp/ pip : zip

/p/ is opposed to /R/ as in /pi:/ : /Ri:/ pea : she

/p/ is opposed to /Y/ as in /lep?/ : /leY?/ leper : leisure

/p/ is opposed to /tR/ as in /pi:p/ : /tRi:p/ peep : cheap

/p/ is opposed to /dY/ as in /pi:p/ : /dYi:p/ peep : jeep

/p/ is opposed to /l/ as in /pHt/ : /lHt/ pit : lit

\/p/ is opposed to /r/ as in /pPt/ : /rPt/ pot : rot

/p/ is opposed to /w/ as in /pi:/ : /wi:/ pea : we

/p/ is opposed to /j/ as in /p?Tk/ : /j?Tk/ poke : yoke

/p/ is opposed to /h/ as in /pi:/ : /hi:/ pea : he

This procedure can theoretically be applied to each phoneme of the language. Note,

though, that in the chart above, /p/ is opposed to other consonants only. This is because even

though all phonemes of a given language form a system, oppositions in that language are

organised in such a way that consonants can only be opposed to consonants and vowels to

vowels. 

Word Stress & Phonetic Process

Word Stress & Phonetic Process

Words of more than one syllable have differing degrees of stress on each syllable. Stress is indicated by a
combination of higher pitch and louder volume, but many students find it difficult to identify which
syllable is stressed. To practice, try making a list of words with more than one syllable and guessing
which syllable is stressed. Then go to a dictionary which gives a pronunciation guide and see which
syllable is marked as stressed. Most dictionaries mark stress by placing a small tick before the beginning
of the syllable.

In English, the vowels of unstressed syllables have often changed historically. The spelling often indicates
the original sound, but over time, the number of vowels that occur in unstressed vowels has diminished.
In general, unstressed vowels tended to become /\/, especially in suffixes with grammatical significance
(e.g. plural –es, present tense –es, past tense –ed, and past participle –en). In some varieties of
English, including US English, this sound alternates with /ˆ/, depending upon the word: compare village
/vˆlˆdΩ/ (or /vˆlˆĵ/) with cower /kau\r/. There is no rule for which words contain which of these vowels,
and, in general, I will accept either one. If in doubt, use the schwa (/\/).

Sometimes the mid central vowel /√/ appears in a stressed syllable, as in sun /s√n/. The sound can be
distinguished from schwa by pronouncing the word oven /√v\n/. However, some textbooks simplify
things by using the symbol /\/ for all mid central vowels (e.g. /\v\n/). You may choose to adopt this
simplification if you find it helpful. In some cases, historically unstressed vowels have disappeared
completely, although we may still spell them. The most famous example is the so-called “silent e” in
words like name /nem/ and begged /begd/. Make sure that you do not transcribe these as two-syllable
words.

Phonetic Process

A wide variety of sound changes take place when certain sounds come into contact with each other. The
most important is called assimilation. This process is best illustrated by comparing the words incapable
and impossible. Both words contain the prefix in-, which makes the adjective negative. However, the
prefix is pronounced /ˆn/ or /ˆm/, depending on whether or not the following consonant is labial. If it is,
the alveolar /n/ becomes a labial /m/, assimilating the quality of the following labial consonant. A
particularly important occurrence of assimilation is in words with the grammatical endings (plural or
present tense –s and past tense or past participle –d). Consider the following words and their
pronunciations:
cats /kæts/ scolds /skoldz/
dogs /døgz/ worked /w\rkt/
thinks /†inks/ begged /begd/
In each case, the grammatical ending varies between voiceless /s/ or /t/ and voiced /z/ or /d/, depending on
whether or not the preceding consonant is voiced or voiceless. In a few cases, the consonant in the
grammatical ending is assimilated to a preceding vowel (all vowels are voiced):
horses /hørs\z/ scolded /skold\d/

Upon hearing an English sentence - even without understanding its meaning - one can
distinguish a certain number of prominent syllables. The prominence is at its highest on the
vowels, which are louder, longer, higher in pitch and sometimes different in quality. In the word
/b?n@:n?/ banana, the syllable which bears the stress is /na:/. It is pronounced with more
strength, it lasts longer and it reaches a higher pitch than the surrounding syllables; it also differs
from them because it has a full vowel as opposed to /?/ (schwa), which is the most central and
hence the most neutral of all vowels.

This prominence does not belong to the vowel itself but characterises the whole syllable.
This explains why stress is called suprasegmental as opposed to phonemes which are segmental.
At this stage we can clarify the distinction between different types of phonological elements:
- distinctive features always appear simultaneously in bundles that are characteristics of
the phonemes
- phonemes are maximal bundles of distinctive features and have their own time-space.
This is why they are segmental
- supra-segmental elements include :
a) syllables: they are supra-segmental units formed of phonemes and characterised
as units by the presence of the vowel
b) stress:it is a supra-segmental feature characterising the units which
we intuitively recognise as words.

Effects of Stress on Words

In actual fact, our accidental gap sentence an English sentence in disguise:

/!dYPn Hz ? !naHs !hUzb?nd/
John is a nice husband

Now that we know what the sentence means, we realise that there are more words than
stresses. So the notion of word as it is usually understood is not always absolutely compatible
with the notion of stress. We have five words and yet two of them, i.e. /Hz/ and /?/ do not bear any
stress even though they are well formed syllables. Each word has a potential word stress, even
“little” words like articles, prepositions etc. For instance into /Hn!tT/ has a stressed syllable and an
unstressed one even though most of the time the stress is not realised. Why then are is and a not
stressed in our example?

In the realisation (utterance) of a sentence, functional words (i.e. our former “little
words”: articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions etc.) do not receive stress as lexical words
do. However they can receive stress under given circumstances

In polysyllabic lexical words, there is one and only one prominent syllable, where the
primary stress is realised. There can also be a so-called secondary stress in long words (ex:
photographic /$f?Tt?!grzfHk/) but this stress is not a phonological sign since its placement never
results in an opposition between two words; it may indicate word structure. Primary word stress is
signalled with an apostrophe (£) which precedes the stressed syllable, and secondary stress with a
comma before the stressed syllable.
As we have said, prominence is also achieved through quality, which affects mainly the
vowel.

Stress and Oppositions

Stress placement is linked to vocalic quality. There are many pairs of words which are
spelled the same way but are pronounced differently due to the placement of stress :

a. !kPndUkt (N)                         k?n!dUkt                   (V)                    conduct
b !dez?t (N)                                 dH!z2:t                     (V)                     desert
c. !preznflt (N,A)                       prH!zent                      (V)                    present

Compounds

Let’s take a case where a lexical word loses its own stress. Compound words are single
words that can be analysed into two lexical words, both of which exist independently as English
words and hence bear their own stress.

Examples of this are White House which can be analysed into 'white and 'house;
'typewriter which can be analysed into 'type and 'writer ; 'car-ferry which can be analysed into
'car and ' ferry . As one can see, when these words are brought together, one of them loses its
stress. However, it is not always possible to predict which one.

Some compounds like loudspeaker have not yet been subjected to a univocal treatment.
According to some authors the stress placement is ' loud- speaker , which is rather a combination
of two words, since they both bear a primary stress; others see it as loud 'speaker , i.e. a
compound.

If one considered cupboard /!kUb?d/ as a compound word, one could say that upon
losing its stress, the word board /£bN:d/ changed the nucleus of its single syllable into a schwa.
This case of compounding would tend to prove that unstressed syllables lose the specific quality of their vowel.

Syllable Structure

Syllable Structure

A word like measure has two syllables. In order to identify which phonemes are in the first syllable and
which are in the second, we need to look at the pattern of vowels and consonants. We can represent each
consonantal phoneme with “C” and each vowel (vocalic) phoneme with “V”. Hence measure /m´Ω\r/
would be “CVCVC”. Notice that the pattern is based on the number of phonemes, not the number of
letters in the English spelling.
In order to have a syllable, you must have a vocalic phoneme, which may or may not be accompanied by
consonants on either side. So “CVCV” has two syllables because it has two vowels. In English, there are
only two significant syllable patterns: “VCV” and “VCCV”. In other words, English has syllables divided
by one consonant or more than one consonant (it does not matter if the first vowel is preceded by a
consonant or if the second vowel is followed by a consonant). As you can see, measure follows the
“VCV” pattern.
 The syllable division for each type is as follows:
                                                                   V | C V
                                                                 V C | C V
Note that English words with double consonants (like bitter) can be tricky. The double consonant tells us
something about the preceding vowel (compare biter), not that the word has two consonant phonemes.
Words like bitter really follow the “VCV” pattern in English.
Nasal and liquid consonants can sometimes be vocalic; that is, they combine the functions of vowels and
consonants. Linguists represent this function by placing a small circle underneath the IPA symbol. But do
these consonants constitute separate syllables? This is a more complex issue than can be dealt with in an
introductory course, and we will not go too far astray if we avoid the issue. If you perceive a consonant to
be vocalic, it is best to simply insert a “dummy” vowel into your transcription. The best choice is to use
the schwa (/\/). Hence the word golden would be transcribed /gold\n/.

Phonology

Phonology

Consider the sound of the consonant in the English word the. This sound is a voiced dental fricative. In
French, this sound does not exist, which is why English spoken with a French accent is famous for
replacing it with a voiced alveolar fricative z, which is very similar. The reason for this is that the number
of linguistic sounds which humans can produce is greater than the number which actually occurs in each
language. When studying an individual language, like English, we can therefore focus in only the sound
that occur in that language and the system by which they relate to each other. Studying a system of sounds
is called phonology.

When looking at the phonological system of an individual language, we limit our study to those sounds
which are perceived by speakers as distinct and capable of indicating some grammatical significance.
Sounds which meet these criteria are called phonemes. For instance, the [l] and [r] are perceived as
distinct and help us understand the difference between lice and rice. However, [l] and [r] are not distinct
phonemes in many Asian languages, which is why speakers of those languages often have trouble
distinguishing the two words when speaking English. Linguists use the IPA to represent phonemes but
indicate that they are phonemes by placing them between slashes. Thus the word fish is rendered /fˆß/ (US
/fˆš/). This is called phonemic transcription, as opposed to the phonetic transcription described above.

In general, it is only necessary to use phonemic transcription when studying the English language.
Phonemic transcriptions represent the pronunciation of a word and the precise number of phonemes in the
word. Thus the word fish has three phonemes, which can be seen clearly in the transcription /fˆß/

The High Back and Mid Back vowels are rounded

The positions of the low sounds are very unstable, and the /a/ sound may be central orback, depending upon the speaker (some linguists use /å/ or /Å/ to represent the back version). InAmerican pronunciation the vowel /ø/, which tends to occur in words with o, au, ou, and aw spellings, hasbeen almost completely been replaced by /a/. So you may find it hard to hear if you pronounce the wordhot with the same vowel as in father. You may think of the vowel /ø/ as the vowel in hot, spoken with aBritish accent. Most American speakers still pronounce /ø/ before /r/, as in for.The mid central vowel /\/ has a special name; it is called a schwa. This vowel, and the slightly lower /√/

Monophthongs and Diphthongs

The vowels shown above are all pronounced in one part of the mouth. These are called monophthongs.
English also possesses vowels which are pronounced in two contrasting parts of the mouth, called
diphthongs. Note the spelling “phth” in both words.
The diphthongs in English are as follows:
Back-Front Back-Back
Low-High
Mid-High
/ai/
/oi/
/au/
Here are some examples of how these sounds are pronounced:
high /hai/ boy /boi/ house /haus/
Note that many students incorrectly try to transcribe the sound in high with /ˆ/. The symbol /ˆ/ indicates
the monophthongal sound in bitter /bˆt\r/, and the symbol /ai/ indicates the diphthong in biter /bait\r/.
The pronunciation of diphthongs varies a good deal in English, which means that linguists often
transcribe them in other ways. The following table contains some of the acceptable alternative
transcriptions which you may encounter. You may choose any of these if you feel that they more closely
reflect your pronunciation.
/ai/
/au/
/oi/
/aˆ/, /åi/, /åˆ/, /aj/, /åj/
/a¨/, /åu/, /å¨/, /aw/, /åw/
/oˆ/, /øi/, /øˆ/, /oj/, /øj/
As you can see, some people interpret the second element of a diphthong as a glide consonant. However, I
suggest that you avoid these transcriptions, since they make the syllabification rule given below more
complicated. Note also that the historical English monophthongs /i/, /e/, /u/, and /o/ are largely
pronounced as diphthongs today (something like /ij/, /ei/, /uw/, and /ou/ respectively). You can detect this
if you listen to an English speaker pronounce the Spanish name Jose. Apart from the pronunciation of the
s as /z/, the English speaker’s diphthongal pronunciation of o and e is responsible for the noticeable
English accent. In Spanish, these vowels are true monophthongs. However, in an introductory course like
this one, it is not necessary to use separate transcriptions for /i/ and /ij/, /e/ and /ej/, etc., since the sounds
are so similar. You may represent these sounds as monophthongs.