Pronunciation concept, 8 5 13

Concepts in Pronunciation Stephen van Vlack Foreword This book is written with Korean students in mind There are many comments included which deal concretely with the Korean language and target some of the problems which Korean students, in particular, have when learning English pronunciation The book is intended for classroom use with a native speaker of English, but it is possible for the student to work with the book alone The concepts provided in this book are intended to help the student better understand the mechanisms of human speech This includes Korean as well as English It is, therefore, not out of the realm of possibility for the student to actually improve their Korean pronunciation as well as their English by using this book Try to have fun with it and never stop experimenting with sounds Table of Contents Page # Part - The Vocal Process Part - Sounds and Articulation 11 Consonant Sounds Stop Consonants Fricative Consonants Nasal Consonants A Special Fricative Affricate Consonants Glide Consonants Lateral Consonants 11 12 20 31 35 39 44 48 Vowel Sounds Front Vowels Back Vowels Central Vowels Diphthongs 53 55 60 64 68 Part - Stress 72 Word-level Stress Sentence-level Stress 72 75 Part - Intonation Quizzes 76 77 Quiz Quiz Quiz Appendix 77 79 81 82 Introduction Goals This book has two purposes The first one is to get the students to pronounce English better The second goal is to give the students the ability to turn around and teach pronunciation effectively to their own students In order to this, the students must learn some of the basic underlying principals which guide pronunciation, and English pronunciation in particular The concepts the students learn in this course will enable them to think in a very concrete way about what actually occurs as they make sounds By learning the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), hopefully their knowledge of pronunciation will be converted from a more passive into a more active state and that is exactly what we need to be effective teachers A large part of what I want students to in this course is to play with sounds I hope that this book, and the course designed to compliment it will give the students the chance to play with their voices By using and viewing pronunciation in a different light, they should acquire a better feel for the mechanisms that are used in the vocal process and hopefully find their English voice Point of View There are many different aspects of phonetics For the purposes of this course we are going to focus on very basic sound in meaning That means that we are not going to go into excessive little details of pronunciation Instead, we are going to look at sound patterns that change meaning in English or those which are necessary for intelligible pronunciation The transcriptions the students will encounter, and will ultimately be responsible for producing, are what is called broad transcription The dialect we will be looking at is SAE (Standard American English) or something as close to that as possible On occasion, interesting facts will be made about other dialects and particular points will be pointed out In general, to lessen confusion we will not be looking at allophones, or different phonemes that hold the same meaning We will also be looking at more rapid forms of speech to a smaller extent In no way is this book intended to be a definitive text on English phonetics The book will just scratch the surface of this immensely interesting field Organization The book is organized into several sections The two main sections cover the sounds themselves After an introduction of how sounds are made, the sounds are broken into consonants and vowels Consonant sounds are grouped according to their manner of articulation Vowel sounds are divided according to their place of articulation Lastly, there are some very short sections on some of the higher level phonetic peculiarities of English, like tense and intonation which are followed by an appendix The appendix includes information on some Korean phonetic features Part The Vocal Process Turning air into sound How sound is made is really quite simple Sound begins with air Air is pumped out of the lungs and into your larynx, a pipe in your throat As the air moves up the larynx, it moves through your voice box Your voice box is that lump which sticks out on your neck It is larger for men than for women Children have small voice boxes It is in the voice box that air is first changed into sound Air enters the voice box and moves across the vocal cords Your vocal cords are stringy muscles which are stretched across the inside of your voice box As the air moves across the vocal cords, friction is created which creates sound Air flow out of the voice box is controlled by the vocal folds, muscles which cover the voice box and are able to open or close Think of the vocal folds as two doors which, when open, allow air to pass and when closed stop the flow of air Once the air gets out of the voice box it winds up in one of two places; the mouth or the nasal cavity Often, it goes to both Where the air goes is determined by the uvula When the uvula is lowered, air passes into the nasal cavity and out the nose When the uvula is raised, air flow to the nose is blocked and it must move through the mouth alone Articulators Inside the mouth, there are many parts which determine exactly how a particular sound is made These are called articulators The most important articulator is the tongue What part of the mouth the tongue touches determines which sound will be made The lips are also important articulators It is important to remember that the articulators in our mouths are able to move A good definition for articulators would be the parts of the mouth which move around or touch other parts in order to create specific sounds Classifying sounds Sounds are classified based on two different criteria; Manner of Articulation and Place of Articulation Manner of Articulation refers to how the flow of air is controlled during the process of making a sound For example, is the flow of air stopped or somehow impeded? The vocal folds are the most important factor in determining Manner of Articulation (MOA) Place of Articulation (POA) refers to what the articulators are doing as the sound is being made Usually we are concerned with what part of the mouth they are touching or where they are located The tongue is the most important factor in determining Place of Articulation (POA) Sound Groupings Based on MOA Consonant Sounds - In these sounds the vocal folds are not completely open and the flow of air is somehow restricted Stop - In these sounds the vocal folds are entirely closed before the sound is made Air pushes against the closed vocal folds until the pressure becomes too great and forces them open The vocal folds burst open releasing a large amount of air and then close again slowly Fricative - In these sounds the vocal folds are open, but only slightly Air flow is halted but never completely stopped The small opening in the vocal folds causes a large amount of friction in the voice box and that is why these sounds are called fricatives Nasal - These are sounds in which the uvula is lowered causing the air to move through the nasal cavity instead of the mouth Both fricative consonants and vowels can be nasal, but there are no nasal vowels in Standard American English Affricate - These sounds are a mix of two sounds; one stop and one fricative, and share elements of both Affricates begin with the vocal folds closed As the air begins to put pressure on them, they open up slightly and the air is allowed to escape There is no explosion of air, as in stop sounds Glide - The flow of air is almost completely free For this reason these sounds are sometimes called `Semi-vowels` They differentiate themselves by having some sort of movement going on inside the mouth Lateral - These sounds also fall under the Semi-vowel classification but are different because the air moves along the sides of the tongue Vowel Sounds - These sounds have no obstruction of the air flow This means that the vocal folds are completely open as the sounds are made Sound Groupings Based on POA Bi-labial - These sounds are made using both lips The lips are either closed completely and open up or are rounded, like you are kissing something a little bit far away from you Labio-dental - In these sounds the upper teeth are touching the lower lip Inter-dental - The tip of the tongue sticks out from between the two front teeth Dental - The tip or front of the tongue touches the back of the teeth as the sound is made Alveolar - The front of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge as the sound is made Palatal - In these sounds, the middle of the tongue is pushed up again the palate Velar - The back of the tongue pushes against the uvula in these sounds Glottal - These sounds are articulated in the glottis, the space between the two vocal folds A very small opening in the glottis allows for a small puff of air to escape As the air escapes it creates friction which makes the sound Consonant Chart It is helpful to put all 24 consonant sounds of English into a single chart That way we get look at how the sounds are grouped It is easy to tell which ones are similar and which ones are very different Below is a chart which shows the Manner and Place of Articulation for Standard American English (SAE) consonant sounds Review and Practice: Diphthongs Answer the following questions How are diphthongs different from other vowel sounds? How many diphthongs are there? Can you make a diphthong without moving your tongue? Are there any falling diphthongs in English? Some Tongue Twisters Howard thought about eating a brown cow The height of the night gave Mike a fright The coy boy named Roy played with a bright toy 70 IPA Practice Write the following sentences in English /h n brn k/ / ht v  fr wz mez/ / b nemd r wz vri k/ /w het z  hrbl we tu lv/ 71 Part Stress Stress is not only what many of us feel while learning English, but is also a part of the English pronunciation system In order to be a good speaker of English, stress must be understood There are two main types of stress in English Word-level Stress This is the stress that falls on one syllable in each word Each word has one main stress and stress is marked on the vowel in the stressed syllable Stressed syllables are produced, higher, longer and louder than other syllables For one syllable words, the stress will be easy to find In multi-syllable words stress can be difficult If you have been studying English for a while, you will begin to develop feelings for what sounds good and what may be not so good Stress is a great place to try to use your intuition Say the word to yourself using different stress patterns Your good intuition should tell you which one sounds better and is, therefore, acceptable Here are some examples Try saying these words changing the stress patterns Mark the stressed syllable photographer equipment stadium walkway 72 newspaper Some Problems Sometimes words that look identical have different stress patterns This is most common between nouns and verbs Below is a list of some nouns and verbs which have different stress patterns See if you can mark the stress on each side Nouns Verbs combat digest export suspect survey progress record contest insult object combat digest export suspect survey progress record contest insult object Compound Nouns and Phrasal Verbs Compound nouns and phrasal verbs have predicable stress In compound nouns the stress is almost always in the first part of the word Take, for example, the word mailman The stress is on the first syllable In phrasal verbs the stress is on the second or prepositional part of the phrasal verb 73 Look at the two sentences below and as you pronounce them try to find the one which is the phrasal verb Please put the toy armadillo up on the shelf I am no longer going to put up with this kind of laziness Unstressed Syllables In the section on vowels, we were introduced to the central vowel schwa Schwa is an unstressed vowel // is also an unstressed vowel in English In unstressed syllables the vowels are very often reduced to a schwa or // sound in rapid speech Thus, stress has a very large effect on the actual pronunciation of a word For example, the word carburetor in careful speech would be transcribed /krbret/ In rapid speech it is /krbrd/ If the stress were changed to the third syllable, it would be /kbred/ in rapid speech This could cause a lot of confusion Word stress is sometimes pretty tricky There are many ways to go about learning it, but nothing can replace simple practice The more exposure you have to English, the more you will be able to use the correct stress patterns As you have seen incorrect word stress can change the meaning of a word or make a fairly common word unrecognizable Be careful 74 Sentence-level Stress Just like some syllables in words are stressed so are some words within a sentence Stressed words with a sentence are also produced higher and longer than the other words The rules of what words in a sentence receive stress are easy Basically, content words are stressed, while function words are not Content words are words which carry some sort of semantic meaning, like nouns, verbs, and modifiers Function words are words which have grammatical or functional significance, like prepositions, article, and pronouns Look at the sentences below and mark the words which receive word stress The large woman with all those children looks like an old friend of mine Chunky chickens and their children are wonderful to eat The postcard that Bob sent me is chock full of all sorts of fun stuff Sentence stress is not that difficult You just have to practice in order to get used to following the simple rules One of the best ways to practice pronunciation is to read aloud Take any material and read it out loud as fast or as slowly as you want Try to play a little with your voice Have fun with it 75 Part Intonation English has three different tones These tones are like musical notes and are differentiated by pitch We, thus, have High, middle, and low tones in English Intonation is the patterns of use these tones enjoy in language Example High _ are Mid How Low you? In English there are two main intonation patterns: rising and falling Rising is when the tones rise at the end of a sentence High _ fat? Mid _ Is Low _John Falling is when the tones fall at the end of the sentence High _ are Mid _ We Low _thin In English, rising intonation is used in yes/no questions Yes/no questions are questions to which you must answer either yes or no Falling intonation is used in all other types of sentences, from direct statements to wh-questions, and finally commands 76 Quizzes Quiz Enjoy the following quiz Part Rewrite the following in standard English /w wz  m n wk w  t stren lk n hz fes mebi t wz  t hi h d st stoln ov  bljn wn frm  por old wmin wt  trbl psn hi wz lkli hv hi wz sun rstd ba  plis nd  ledi gt h mni b k/ 77 Part Write the following words in the IPA Mark them for stress and syllables luggage majoring discover unresponsive mystery cooperate refrigerate applications technology screen encourage bitter Part Write the following sentences in the IPA Why you have to keep on bothering me like this? It`s going to school that Bob really hates Betty is the woman who John thinks he is going to marry someday 78 Quiz Enjoy quiz number Part Rewrite the following in standard English orthography / wmin wntd tu pn  m n hu bd h n  sbwe/ /w du ju nsst n mek s du s bor z n s kl s/ /f pit pp pkt  pk v pkld ppz h mni ppz dd pit pp pk/ Rewrite the following words in the IPA dividing them into syllables and marking stress on the correct syllable walk surprise subject negotiate 79 order environmental radio treatment moisture goodbye 80 Quiz Take it Enjoy it Part Show the difference in sound between the following words by writing them in the IPA who will work wow wok awoke weak walk why when where whack Rewrite the following short story into standard English /t wz  reni de nd vribdi wz rili bord ivn  bg dg n  korn ivn so nown kspktd  sml ivl m n tu bt  por dgz p t wz trbl h  dg krd v kors  b dli bord m n wnt tu prsn for mni jirz for hz momntri l ps v slf kntrol/ 81 Appendix Below is a chart which shows the Manner and Place of Articulation for Standard Korean consonant sounds Stop -voice Fricative -voice +asp +lar Bi-labial p ph p DentalAlveolar t th t Nasal +voice +lar +asp s s Lateral +voice +lar n l  Palatal h  j k kh  k LabialVelar Glottal Glide +voice m PalatalAlveolar Velar Affricate -voice w h (Adapted from, Maddieson 1984 Patterns of Sounds Cambridge: CUP.) The manners asp and lar are abbreviations for aspiration and laryngealization These are features used to distinguish different stops and affricates, as well as fricatives Aspiration is shown by the addition of a small `h` to right of the consonant Laryngealization is indicated by a bar under the consonant Study the chart above to see the differences between English and Korean Compare the Korean consonant chart above with the English consonant chart on page 82 One More English Vowel Chart Take a look at the chart above and compare it to the Korean chart on the next page Comparing the two might help you figure out where your tongue is in your mouth as you make sounds Once you know where your tongue is and what it is doing, the next step will be to be able to take conscious control of your tongue; the primary articulator 83 A Korean Vowel Chart27 27 Adapted from Maddieson (1984) Patterns of Sounds Cambridge: CUP 84