Aspects of connected speech

Aspects of connected speech

Many years ago scientists tried to develop machines that produced speech from a vocabulary of pre-recorded words; the machines were designed to join these words together to form sentences. For very limited messages, such as those of a "talking clock", this technique was usable, but for other purposes the quality of the speech was so unnatural that it was practically unintelligible. In recent years, developments in computer technology have led to big improvements in this way of producing speech, but the inadequacy of the original "mechanical speech" approach has many lessons to teach us about pronuncia-tion teaching and learning. In looking at connected speech it is useful to bear in mind the difference between the way humans speak and what would be found in "mechanical speech".

Rhythm 

The notion of rhythm involves some noticeable event happening at regular intervals of time; one can detect the rhythm of a heartbeat, of a flashing light or of a piece of music. It has often been claimed that English speech is rhythmical, and that the rhythm is detectable in the regular occurrence of stressed syllables.
Of course, it is not suggested that the timing is as regular as a clock: the regularity of occurrence is only relative. The theory that English has stress-timed rhythm implies that stressed syllables will tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not; this would not be the case in "mechanical speech".
The stress-timed rhythm theory states that the times from each stressed syllable to the next will tend to be the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. The theory also claims that while some languages (e.g. Russian, Arabic) have stress-timed rhythm similar to that of English, others (e.g. French, Telugu, Yoruba) have a different rhythmical structure called syllable-timed rhythm; in these languages, all syllables, whether stressed or unstressed, tend to occur at regular time intervals and the  time between stressed syllables will be shorter or longer in proportion to the number of unstressed syllables.
Some writers have developed theories of English rhythm in which a unit of rhythm, the foot, is used (with a parallel in the metrical analysis of verse).
The foot begins with a stressed syllable and includes all following unstressed syllables up to (but not including) the following stressed syllable.
Some theories of rhythm go further than this, and point to the fact that some feet are stronger than others, producing strong-weak patterns in larger pieces of speech above the level of the foot.
To understand how this could be done, let's start with a simple example: the word 'twenty' has one strong and one weak syllable, forming one foot. A diagram of its rhythmical structure can be made, where s stands for "strong" and w stands for "weak".

Strong and weak syllables

Strong and weak syllables

Strong and weak One of the most noticeable features of English pronunciation is that some of its syllables are strong while many others are weak; this is also true of many other languages, but it is necessary to study how these weak syllables are pronounced and where they occur in English.

The distribution of strong and weak syllables is a subject that will be met in several later chapters. For example, we will look later at stress, which is very important in deciding whether a syllable is strong or weak.
Elision is a closely related subject, and in considering intonation the difference between strong and weak syllables is also important. Finally, words with "strong forms" and "weak forms" are clearly a related matter. In this chapter we look at the general nature of weak syllables.
What do we mean by "strong" and "weak"? To begin with, we can look at how we use these terms to refer to phonetic characteristics of syllables. When we compare weak syllables with strong syllables, we find the vowel in a weak syllable tends to be shorter, of lower intensity (loudness) and different in quality. For example, in the word 'data' delta the second syllable, which is weak, is shorter than the first, is less loud and has a vowel that cannot occur in strong syllables. In a word like 'bottle' the weak second syllable contains no vowel at all, but consists entirely of the consonant . We call this a syllabic consonant.
There are other ways of characterising strong and weak syllables. We could describe them partly in terms of stress (by saying, for example, that strong syllables are stressed and weak syllables unstressed) but, until we describe what "stress" means, such a description would not be very useful.

The most important thing to note at present is that any strong syllable will have as its peak one of the vowel phonemes (or possibly a triphthong) , but not a, i, u. If the vowel is one of  then the strong syllable will always have a coda as well.
Weak syllables, on the other hand, as they are defined here, can only have one of a very small number of possible peaks. At the end of a word, we may have a weak syllable ending with a vowel 

PHONETICS AS A SCIENCE

PHONETICS AS A SCIENCE

Nowadays Phonetics is defined as an independent branch of Linguistics
which studies the sound matter of the language, its semantic functions and the lines
of its development. Phonetics began to be developed as a science in the 19th
century. The factors that stimulated its development were as follows:
• a more thorough acquaintance with the functioning of the human speaking
apparatus;
• investigations of many linguists who studied languages that had not
alphabets;
• compiling alphabets for such languages.
The objects, aims and value of Phonetics are defined on the basis of
scientific conception of language based on the thesis that being the most important
medium of human intercourse, language is at the same time directly and
inseparably connected with thought. This connection manifests itself not only in
the generally recognized fact that thoughts can be expressed in actual speech only
by means of words organized into sentences pronounced with the proper intonation
but also in the less obvious fact that thoughts can originate and be formulated in
the human mind also only on the basis of words and sentences. It is clear that
language can only exist in the material form of speech sound, though the sounds of
speech do not constitute a separate independent element of language.

Speech sounds are vibrating particles of air or sound waves or still in other
words – a variety of matter moving in space and time. Speech sounds are produced
by human organs of speech. Every speech sound is a complex of definite finely coordinated and differentiated movements and positions of various speech organs.
They can be considered from the physiological phenomenon having its articulating
and auditory aspects.
Accordingly to it Phonetics is subdivided into three principal parts: the branch of Phonetics concerned with the study, description and classification of speech sounds as regards their reduction by the human speaking apparatus is called Articulatory Phonetics. Its oldest and simplest method of
investigation is the method of direct observation (visual and auditory).
This method is subjective. The objective methods require the use of various apparatus
and devices such as the artificial palate, photography, X-ray photography, X-ray
cinematography, laryngoscopy etc.
The branch of Phonetics which is concerned with the study of the acoustic aspect is called Acoustic Phonetics. It uses kymograph (records, qualitative variations of sounds), a spectrograph (shows
frequencies of a given sound and its amplitudes), auscilograph (records sound
vibrations) and intonograph (investigates the fundamental frequency of speech as
the component of intonation).
The branch of Phonetics which studies the units serving people for communicative purposes is called Phonology. Besides we have Special Phonetics or Descriptive Phonetics, General Phonetics, Historical Phonetics, Comparative Phonetics.
All the branches of Phonetics are closely connected with each other as well as with some other branches of Linguistics such as Lexicology, Grammar, and Stylistics. The connection of Phonetics with Lexicology lies in the fact that distinction of words is realized by the variety of
their appearances.
The phonetic course of a given language determines the sound composition of words. For example Turkish languages do not admit two or more consonants at the beginning of words while in some Slavonic languages such a phenomenon is widely spread (вкрасти, спритний). Sound interchange is a very vivid manifestation of a close connection of Phonetics with Morphology. It can be
observed in the category of number (man – men; goose – geese; foot – feet).
 Sound interchange also helps to distinguish basic forms of irregular verbs (sing-sangsung),
adjectives and nouns (strong-strength), verbs and nouns (to extend-extent).

Phonetics is closely connected with Syntax. Any partition of a sentence is realized
with the help of pauses, sentence stresses, melody. Changes in pausation can alter
the meaning of an utterance. For example: One of the travelers / said Mr. Parker /
was likeable (direct speech). If the pause is after “said”, then we have another
meaning of this sentence: One of the travelers said / Mr. Parker was likeable. The
rising/falling nuclear tone determines the communicative type of the sentence: You
know him – statement / You know him – general question.

Phonetics is also connected with Stylistics through repetition of sounds,
words and phrases. Repetition of this kind creates the basis of rhythm, rhyme and
alliteration (repetition of sounds). Rhythm may be used as a special device not only
in poetry but in prose as well:
Round about the cauldron go
In the poison’d entrails throw
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble
Investigations in historical aspects of languages and the field of
dialectology would be impossible without an understanding of phonetics. The
practical aspect of Phonetics is no less important. Teaching of reading and
writing is possible only when one clearly understands the difference between the
sounds and written forms of the language and the connection between them.
Phonetics is also widely used in teaching correct pronunciation and allocution of
actors, singers, TV announcers on the basis of established orthoepical norms.
Orthoepy is the correct pronunciation of the words of a language. Phonetics is
important for eliminating dialectical features from the pronunciation of dialect
speakers; in logopedics (in curing various speech defects); in surdopedagogics (in
teaching normal aural speech to deaf and dumb people). Acoustic Phonetics and
Phonology are of great use in technical acoustics or sound technology that is the
branch of science and technology which is concerned with the study and design of
techniques for the recording, transmission, reproduction, analysis and synthesis of
sound by means of various devices such as microphone, loud-speaker, radio and
television sets, speech synthesizers etc.

Levels of stress

Levels of stress

  Up to this point we have talked about stress as though there were a simple distinction between "stressed" and "unstressed" syllables with no intermediate levels; such a treatment would be a two-level analysis of stress.
Usually, however, we have to recognise one or more intermediate levels. It should be remembered that in this chapter we are dealing only with stress within the word. This means that we are looking at words as they are said in isolation, which is a rather artificial situation: we do not often say words in isolation, except for a few such as 'yes', 'no', 'possibly', 'please' and interrogative words such as 'what', 'who', etc. However, looking at words in isolation does help us to see stress placement and stress
levels more clearly than studying them in the context of continuous speech.

Let us begin by looking at the word 'around' , where the stress always falls clearly on the last syllable and the first syllable is weak. From the point of view of stress, the most important fact about the way we pronounce this word is that on the second syllable the pitch of the voice does not remain level, but usually falls from a higher to a lower pitch.  where the two parallel lines represent the speaker's highest and lowest pitch level.
The prominence that results from this pitch movement, or tone, gives the strongest type of stress; this is called primary stress.In some words, we can observe a type of stress that is weaker than primary stress but stronger than that of the first syllable of 'around'; for example, consider the first syllables of the words 'photographic' , 'anthropology' .
The stress in these words is called secondary stress. It is usually represented in transcription with a low mark .  We have now identified two levels of stress: primary and secondary; this also implies a third level which can be called unstressed and is regarded as being the absence of any recognizable amount of prominence.
These are the three levels that we will use in describing English stress. However, it is worth noting that unstressed syllables containing , i, u, or a syllabic consonant, will sound less prominent than an unstressed syllable containing some other vowel. For example, the first syllable of 'poetic'  is more prominent than the first syllable of 'pathetic'. This could be used as a basis for a further division of stress levels, giving us a third ("tertiary") level. It is also possible to suggest a tertiary level of stress in some polysyllabic words.
To take an example, it has been suggested that the word 'indivisibility' shows four different levels: the syllable bIl is the strongest (carrying primary stress), the initial syllable In has secondary stress, while the third syllable  has a level of stress which is weaker than those two but stronger than the second, fourth, sixth and seventh syllable (which are all unstressed). stress. While this may be a phonetically correct account of some pronunciations, the introduction of tertiary stress seems to introduce an unnecessary degree of complexity. 

The nature of stress

The nature of stress 

Stress has been mentioned several times already in this course without an explanation of what the word means. The nature of stress is simple enough: practically everyone would agree that the first syllable of words like 'father', 'open', 'camera' is stressed, that the middle syllable is stressed in 'potato', 'apartment', 'relation', and that the final syllable is stressed in 'about', 'receive', 'perhaps'. Also, most people feel they have some sort of idea of what the difference is between stressed and unstressed syllables, although they might explain it in different ways. We will mark a stressed syllable in transcription by placing a small vertical line (') high up, just before the syllable it relates to; What are the characteristics of stressed syllables that enable us to identify them? It is important to understand that there are two different ways of approaching this question. One is to consider what the speaker does in producing stressed syllables and the other is to consider what characteristics of sound make a syllable seem to a listener to be stressed. In other words, we can study stress from the points of view of production and of perception; the two are obviously closely related, but are not identical. The production of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed syllables.
Measuring muscular effort is difficult, but it seems possible, according to experimental studies, that when we produce stressed syllables, the muscles that we use to expel air from the lungs are often more active, producing higher subglottal pressure. It seems probable that similar things happen with muscles in other parts of our vocal apparatus. Many experiments have been carried out on the perception of stress, and it is clear that many different sound characteristics are important in making a syllable recognisably stressed. From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables have one characteristic in common, and that is prominence. Stressed syllables are recognised as stressed because theyare more prominent than unstressed syllables.
What makes a syllable prominent? At least four different factors are important: i) Most people seem to feel that stressed syllables are louder than unstressed syllables; in other words, loudness is a component of prominence. In a sequence of identical syllables (e.g. ba:ba:ba:ba:), if one syllable is made louder than the others, it will be heard as stressed. However, it is important to realise that it is very difficult for a speaker to make a syllable louder without changing other characteristics of the syllable  if one literally changes only the loudness, the perceptual effect is not very strong.
ii) The length of syllables has an important part to play in prominence. If one of the syllables in our "nonsense word" ba:ba:ba:ba: is made longer than the others, there is quite a strong tendency for that syllable to be heard as stressed.
iii) Every voiced syllable is said on some pitch; pitch in speech is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds and to the musical notion of low- and high-pitched notes. It is essentially a perceptual characteristic of speech. If one syllable of our "nonsense word" is said with a pitch that is noticeably different from that of the others, this will have a strong tendency to produce the effect of prominence. For example, if all syllables are said with low pitch except for one said with high pitch, then the high-pitched syllable will be heard as stressed and the others as unstressed. To place some movement of pitch (e.g. rising or falling) on a syllable is even more effective in making it sound prominent.
 iv) A syllable will tend to be prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in quality from neighbouring vowels. If we change one of the vowels in our "nonsense word" (e.g. ba:bi:ba:ba:) the "odd" syllable bi: will tend to be heard as stressed. This effect is not very powerful, but there is one particular way in which it is relevant in English: the previous chapter explained how the most frequently encountered vowels in weak syllables are , , i, u (syllabic consonants are also common).
We can look on stressed syllables as occurring against a "background" of these weak syllables, so that their prominence is increased by contrast with these background qualities. Prominence, then, is produced by four main factors: (i) loudness, (ii) length, (iii) pitch and (iv) quality.
Generally these four factors work together in combination, although syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only one or two of them. Experimental work has shown that these factors are not equally important; the strongest effect is produced by pitch, and length is also a powerful factor. Loudness and quality have much less effect. 

PLOSIVES: classification in consonants

 PLOSIVES: classification in consonants

A plosive is a consonant articulation with the following characteristics: • One articulator is moved against another, or two articulators are moved against each other, so as to form a stricture that allows no air to escape from the vocal tract. The stricture is, then, total. • After this stricture has been formed and air has been compressed behind it, it is released - that is, air is allowed to escape. • If the air behind the stricture is still under pressure when the plosive is released, it is probable that the escape of air will produce noise loud enough to be heard. This noise is called plosion. There may be voicing during part or all of the plosive articulation. To give a complete description of a plosive consonant we must describe what happens at each of the following four phases in its production:
 • The first phase is when the articulator or articulators move to form the stricture for the plosive. We call this the closing phase.
• The second phase is when the compressed air is stopped from escaping. We call this the compression phase.
• The third phase is when the articulators used to form the stricture are moved so as to allow air to escape. This is the release phase.
• The fourth phase is what happens immediately after (iii), so we will call it the post-release phase.

 English plosives 

English has six plosive consonants: p, t, k, b, d, g. The glottal plosive ? occurs frequently but it is of less importance, since it is usually just an alternative pronunciation of p, t, k in certain contexts. The plosives have different places of articulation. The plosives p, b are bilabial since the lips are pressed together; t, d are alveolar since the tongue blade is pressed against the alveolar ridge . Normally the tongue does not touch the front teeth as it does in the dental plosives found in many languages. The plosives k, g are velar; the back of the tongue is pressed against the area where the hard palate ends and the soft palate begins . The plosives p, t, k are always voiceless; b, d, g are sometimes fully voiced, sometimes partly voiced andsometimes voiceless.  All six plosives can occur at the beginning of a word (initial position), between other sounds (medial position) and at the end of a word (final position). To begin with we will look at plosives preceding vowels (which can be abbreviated as CV, where C stands for a consonant and V stands for a vowel), between vowels (VCV) and following vowels (VC).
i) Initial position (CV): The closing phase for p, t, k and b, d, g takes place silently. During the compression
phase there is no voicing in p, t, k; in b, d, g there is normally very little voicing - it begins only just
before the release. If the speaker pronounces an initial b, d, g very slowly and carefully there may be
voicing during the entire compression phase (the plosive is then fully voiced), while in rapid speech there may be no voicing at all.
The release of p, t, k is followed by audible plosion - that is, a burst of noise. There is then, in the
post-release phase, a period during which air escapes through the vocal folds, making a sound like h.
This is called aspiration. Then the vocal folds come together and voicing begins. The release of b, d, g is followed by weak plosion, and this happens at about the same time as, or shortly after, the beginning of voicing. The most noticeable and important difference, then, between initial p, t, k and b, d, g is the aspiration of the voiceless plosives p, t, k.
The different phases of the plosive all happen very rapidly, but the ear distinguishes clearly between p, t, k and b, d, g. If English speakers hear a fully voiced initial plosive, they will hear it as one of b, d, g but will notice that it does not sound quite natural.
If they hear a voiceless unaspi- rated plosive they will also hear that as one of b, d, g, because it is aspiration, not voicing which distinguishes initial p, t, k from b, d, g. Only when they hear a voiceless aspirated plosive will they hear it as one of p, t, k; experiments have shown that we perceive aspiration when there is a delay between the sound of plosion and the beginning (or onset) of voicing.

In initial position, b, d, g cannot be preceded by any consonant, but p, t, k may be preceded by s. When one of p, t, k is preceded by s it is unaspirated. From what was said above it should be clear that the unaspirated p, t, k of the initial combinations sp, st, sk have the sound quality that makes English speakers perceive a plosive as one of b, d, g; if a recording of a word beginning with one of sp, st, sk is heard with the s removed, an initial b, d or g is perceived by English speakers.

 • Medial position (VCV): The pronunciation of p, t, k and b, d, g in medial position depends to some extent on whether the syllables preceding and following the plosive are stressed. In general we can say that a medial plosive may have the characteristics either of final or of initial plosives.

• Final position (VC): Final b, d, g normally have little voicing; if there is voicing, it is at the beginning of the compression phase; p, t, k are always voiceless. The plosion following the release of p, t, k and b, d, g is very weak and often not audible. The difference between p, t, k and b, d, g is primarily the fact that vowels preceding p, t, k are much shorter. The shortening effect of p, t, k is most noticeable when the vowel is one of the long vowels or diphthongs. This effect is sometimes known as pre-fortis clipping

The best way to improve pronunciation

 The best way to improve pronunciation

Many adults have the mistaken impression that the best way to learn a language is to
learn naturally, just as a child does. However, employing a child’s language learning
style is not doable. Children have infinite time to try out new language. If people do
not understand them, they simply try and try again until they get what they want.
Adults will not acquire language as readily because they are inhibited by social and
psychological constraints. Furthermore, some experts think that children are wired
for language, and that, as one grows older, it becomes biologically more difficult to
acquire a language naturally (because the brain loses the ability to make new
connections). The good thing is that adults, unlike small children, can readily deduce
and learn language rules. So any good language pronunciation course should
combine naturalistic methods (listening, guessing, trying out new things, etc.) and
rules (explanations of what to do with your mouth, explanations of how sounds
change based on their positions, etc.). Adults can and do benefit from some explicit
rule-based instruction.

Your native language does affect your accent. Often times, adults adjust English to
make it sound more like their native language.
Working on individual sounds is not the most important thing you can do to improve
your accent; the most important thing you can do to improve your accent is to work
on your prosody. Prosody is the larger patterns of a language, like rhythm,
tone/intonation, and pausing. Prosody varies from language to language, and in
English, prosody is used to convey emotion.