The Phrase Phonology of English and French

Elisabeth O. Selkirk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138919013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317419808
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This work, first published in 1980, was a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. This study concerns certain aspects of the relationship between syntax and phonology in English and French. In particular, it represents an investigation of the universal conventions and language-particular readjustment rules which create the proper surface structure input to the phonological rules operating beyond the level of the word in French and English, and it offers a description of those phonological rules. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

Chapter I

The Stress of Non-Lexical Items in English

Generative descriptions of phrase stress in English have traditionally been concerned only with the levels of stress on the lexical category items, i.e., nouns, verbs, and adjectives, appearing within larger syntactic units. But recent papers (by King (1970), Baker (1971), Lakoff (1970), Zwicky (1970), Bresnan (1971b), Fiengo (1971), and Brame and Baker (1972)) have discussed phenomena which are related to the stress of non-lexical items. They have brought to light many facts which have long lain dormant in dusty volumes by phoneticians, as well as new facts which only a generative approach to language could reveal as important. These extremely interesting discussions have made clear the need for a comprehensive understanding of the processes of stress reduction in non-lexical category items in English. Below I will propose an analysis of this stress reduction and the vowel reductions stemming from it.

1. The Weak and Strong Forms of Grammatical Formatives in English

Traditional phoneticians all take care to point out that the monosyllabic “form-words” (=non-lexical items) of English have “strong” and “weak” forms.¹ Strong forms are stressed. Weak forms are unstressed, and quite often have a different phonetic shape from the corresponding strong form. For example, while the strong form of the auxiliary have is

, its weak form is

(or one of the variants [əv], [v], or [ə]). Without exception, the phoneticians describing English emphasize that it is necessary to employ the weak (unstressed) forms in speaking–except under special syntactic circumstances.² To use the strong forms in inappropriate contexts is artificial and incorrect. Use of the weak forms constitutes correct, normal, “cultivated” speech.

In normal speech, only monosyllabic form words are destressed. Polysyllabic ones retain some degree of secondary stress. Contrast the normal pronunciation of till tomorrow

with that of until tomorrow

. Till has no word stress, but until does. In particularly fast or colloquial speech, however, even polysyllabic form words may lose their word stress. The pronunciation of until may become [ṇtḷ]. Similarly, gonna

may be pronounced

in fast casual speech. My concern in this chapter is only with the rule affecting the stress reduction on the monosyllables. Presumably, some extension of this rule in fast speech accounts for the stress reduction in polysyllables, but this possibility will not be pursued in this study.

Below I have compiled lists of the strong/weak pairs of form words in English. Essentially the same items are listed by Sweet, Jones, Ward, Gimson, Palmer, and Kruisinga for British English, and Kenyon, Thomas, and Hultzén for American English. Accompanying the lists are sample sentences illustrating the contexts for appearance of weak and strong forms. Many of the sentences have been drawn from Kenyon and Hultzén. I am including these lengthy lists here in order to illustrate the great variety of words which have unstressed weak forms. In all of the contexts where weak forms appear, by definition, some stress reduction has taken place. It is obvious that the explanation for the appearance of weak forms in any one of the groups below should not be divorced from the explanations for the other cases. The same principle of stress reduction is at work within the noun phrase, the verb phrase and the other phrase constituents of English. A unified description of stress reduction in non-lexical category items must be made.

The lists show the range of possible realizations of the weak forms. The particular realization depends in most instances on the larger context, both phonetic and syntactic, in which the form is found. For example, in the first list below one sees that is is either [ɪz], [z], or [s]. The shape is takes is determined by the final segment of the preceding word. Notice also that the auxiliary have loses its /h/ fairly automatically, but the /ə/ is deleted only if a personal pronoun pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I THE STRESS OF NON-LEXICAL ITEMS IN ENGLISH
• CHAPTER II THE SEGMENTAL PHRASE PHONOLOGY OF ENGLISH
• CHAPTER III THE SYNTAX OF LIAISON IN FRENCH
• CHAPTER IV THE PHONOLOGY OF LIAISON
• bibliography