Practical English Phonetics and Phonology

A Resource Book for Students

Beverley Collins, Inger M. Mees, Paul Carley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429954764
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Routledge English Language Introductions cover core areas of language study and are one-stop resources for students.

Assuming no prior knowledge, books in the series offer an accessible overview of the subject, with activities, study questions, sample analyses, commentaries and key readings – all in the same volume. The innovative and flexible 'two-dimensional' structure is built around four sections – Introduction, Development, Exploration and Extension – which offer self-contained stages for study.

Revised and updated throughout, this fourth edition of Practical English Phonetics and Phonology:

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• presents the essentials of the subject and their day-to-day applications in an engaging and accessible manner;

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• covers all the core concepts of phonetics and phonology, such as the phoneme, syllable structure, production of speech, vowel and consonant possibilities, glottal settings, stress, rhythm, intonation and the surprises of connected speech;

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• incorporates classic readings from key names in the discipline;

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• outlines the sound systems of six key languages from around the world (Spanish, French, Italian, German, Polish and Japanese);

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• is accompanied by a brand-new companion website which hosts a collection of samples provided by genuine speakers of 25 accent varieties from Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Singapore and West Africa, as well as transcriptions, further study questions, answer keys, links to further reading and numerous recordings to accompany activities in the book.

This edition has been completely reorganised and new features include: updated descriptions of the sounds of modern English and the adoption of the term General British (GB); considerable expansion of the treatment of intonation, including new recordings; and two new readings by David Crystal and John Wells.

Written by authors who are experienced teachers and researchers, this best-selling textbook will appeal to all students of English language and linguistics and those training for a certificate in TEFL.

Section B
Development

B1
Phoneme and Syllable Revisited

The phoneme revisited

In Section A2 we introduced the phoneme. We shall now return to examine the concept a little more closely, and consider its place in linguistic organisation. You’ll recall that the phoneme is an abstract unit which may be realised as any one of a number of allophones. Allophones are the concrete entities of speech. The allophones of a particular phoneme typically have phonetic similarity, that is to say, they have both articulatory and acoustic features in common (stated loosely, this implies that they are produced in much the same way by the speaker and sound much the same to the listener).

Taken to the finest level of analysis, no two realisations of a phoneme are ever totally identical. Even if we ask the same person to produce the same sound under carefully controlled conditions, there will still be very slight differences between one utterance and the next. However, this perfectionist approach is not very useful in linguistic analysis. In reality, most allophones can be placed in fairly well- defined categories, and it is usually possible to provide descriptive rules to predict their occur-rence in a particular phonetic context.

Complementary distribution and free variation

Let’s take the case of the English phoneme /l/. This has three clearly defined recurring allophones (see Figure B1.1). It is possible to state, in broad terms, the chief phonetic contexts where the particular allophones of the phoneme /l/ are likely to occur:

• clear [l] occurs before vowels and /j/;
• dark (velarised) [ɫ] before a consonant (except /j/) or a pause;
• voiceless (fricative) [l̥] occurs initially in a stressed syllable following /p/ or /k/.

We can demonstrate the distribution of the allophones of the /l/ phoneme with the example in Figure B1.2.

Figure B1.1 Chief allophones of English /l/

Figure B1.2 Distribution of allophones of /l/

The occurrence of allophones in this instance is therefore predictable. They can be considered as complements to each other; where one occurs the other cannot. Such an allophonic patterning, which is very frequent in language, is termed complementary distribution.

Nevertheless, not all the allophones of all phonemes can be accounted for in this way. For example, in GB English the pronunciation of /t/ in words like Britain varies. Some people realise the sound as alveolar [t] and others produce a glottal stop [ʔ]: [ˈbrɪtn̩] vs. [ˈbrɪʔn̩]. Many speakers alternate between these possibilities. To take an example from another language, for /r/ some speakers of Dutch employ an alveolar [r] while others use a uvular fricative or approximant (which we can symbolise as [ʁ]). But some Dutch people vary between [r] and [ʁ] in the same position in the word, using the alveolar type on one occasion and the uvular type on another. Such variation cannot be accounted for in terms of complementary distribution, since we cannot predict from the context which allophone will be selected. In such cases, the allophones are said to be in free variation, implying that the realisation of one allophone rather than another appears to be a matter of chance. Nevertheless, there may often be additional, possibly non- linguistic, factors involved, so free variation is not always as ‘free’ as it might appear at first sight! It’s frequently the case that social influences are at work, and that speakers’ use of particular allophones on any given occasion may be determined by matters such as the formality of the circumstances, or perhaps the socio- economic background of the people they are with at the time. For example, Australian schoolchildren may pronounce the vowel in start in different ways. In the playground, speaking to other schoolmates, they might use a ‘broad Australian’ front vowe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Audio recordings (on companion website)
• Prefaces and acknowledgements
• Phonetic symbols
• English phonemic transcription key
• A Introduction
• B Development
• C Exploration
• D Extension
• Glossary
• Further reading
• References
• Index
• The International Phonetic Alphabet