Phonetics and phonology by Santi

INDEX International Phonetic Alphabet IPA……………………………………………....…….4 Phonetics and Phonology..................................................................................…....6 English Pronunciation...............................................................................................8 The Sound of English and Representation...............................................................9 Difference between Stress and Intonation..............................................................10 The Vocal Tract.......................................................................................................14 The Production of Speech......................................................................................15 Production of Speech Sound..................................................................................16 Vowels vs. Consonants...........................................................................................17 Place of Articulation................................................................................................18 Manner of Articulation.............................................................................................20 Classifying the Vowels............................................................................................21 Inflectional Endings.................................................................................................25 Assimilation.............................................................................................................27 Shwa.......................................................................................................................29 Linking....................................................................................................................30 Elision.....................................................................................................................31 Clusters...................................................................................................................32 Spelling Cases........................................................................................................34 Reduction................................................................................................................36 Ellipsis.....................................................................................................................38 Contractions............................................................................................................39 Derivations..............................................................................................................41 Borrowing................................................................................................................42 2

Minimal Pairs..........................................................................................................44 Allophones..............................................................................................................45 Homophones...........................................................................................................47 Homographs...........................................................................................................48 Homonyms..............................................................................................................49 Heterographs and Heteronyms..............................................................................50

The International Phonetic Alphabet (commonly—though unofficially— abbreviated IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of oral language: phones, phonemes, intonation, and the separation of words and syllables. To represent additional qualities of speech, such as tooth gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft lip and cleft palate, an extended set of symbols, the extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, may be used. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two basic types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ m n nI n l l o l pl p n n on o p one wishes to be. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription; thus, /t/ is less specific than, and coul o o depending on the context and language. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, formed what would come to be known from 1897 onwards as the International Phonetic Asso on ( n F n l‘ o on phonétique internationale). Their original alphabet was based on a spelling reform for English known as the Romic alphabet, but in order to make it usable for other languages, the values of the symbols were allowed to vary from language to language. For example, the sound [ʃ] (the sh in shoe) was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French.[6] However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, thus providing the base for all future revisions. The idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, and Passy. Since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989. A minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid-central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap. Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to 4

the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the IPA for speech pathology were created in 1990 and officially adopted by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association in 1994. The general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound (speech segment), although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. This means that: It does not normally use combinations of letters to represent single sounds, the way English does with ⟨sh⟩, ⟨th⟩ and ⟨ng⟩, or single letters to represent multiple sounds the way ⟨x⟩ represents /ks/ or /ɡz/ n English. There are no letters that have contextdependent sound values, as do "hard" and "soft" ⟨c⟩ or ⟨g⟩ in several European languages. Finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as "selectiveness". Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 letters represent consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics are used to modify these, and 19 additional signs indicate suprasegmental qualities such as length, tone, stress, and intonation.These are organized into a chart; the chart displayed here is the official chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. For this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a dotless question mark, and derives originally from an apostrophe. A few 5

letters, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, ⟨ʕ⟩, were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter ‗ n). Despite its preference for harmonizing with the Latin script, the International Phonetic Association has occasionally admitted other letters. For example, before 1989, the IPA letters for click consonants were ⟨ʘ⟩, ⟨ʇ⟩, ⟨ʗ⟩, and ⟨ʖ⟩, all of which were derived either from existing IPA letters, or from Latin and Greek letters. However, except for ⟨ʘ⟩, none of these letters were widely used among Khoisanists or Bantuists, and as a result they were replaced by the more widespread symbols ⟨ʘ⟩, ⟨ǀ⟩, ⟨ǃ⟩, ⟨ǂ⟩, and ⟨ǁ⟩ at the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989. Although the IPA diacritics are fully featural, there is little systemicity in the letter forms. A retroflex articulation is consistently indicated with a right-swinging tail, as in ⟨ɖ ʂ ɳ⟩, and implosion by a top hook, ⟨ɓ ɗ ɠ⟩, but other pseudo-featural elements are due to haphazard derivation and coincidence. For example, all nasal consonants but uvular ⟨ɴ⟩ are based on the form ⟨n⟩: ⟨m ɱ n ɲ ɳ ŋ⟩. However, the similarity between ⟨m⟩ and ⟨n⟩ is a historical accident, ⟨ɲ⟩ and ⟨ŋ⟩ are derived from ligatures of gn and ng, and ⟨ɱ⟩ is an ad hoc imitation of ⟨ŋ⟩. Some of the new letters were ordinary Latin letters turned 180 degrees, such as ɐ ɔ ə ɟ ɥ ɯ ɹ ʇ ʌ ʍ ʎ (turned a c e f h m r t v w y). This was easily done in the era of mechanical typesetting, and had the advantage of not requiring the casting of special type for IPA symbols.

Phonetics (from the Greek word phone = sound/voice) is a fundamental branch of Linguistics and itself has three different aspects: ARTICULATORY PHONETICS - describes how vowels and consonants are po o ― l ‖ nv o p of the mouth and throat; ACOUSTIC PHONETICS - a study of how speech sounds are transmitted: when sound travels through the air from the speaker's mouth to the hearer's ear it does so in the form of vibrations in the air.

AUDITORY PHONETICS - a study of how speech sounds are perceived: looks at n ‘ n o o n v k no vo l and consonants originally intended by the speaker. The actual sound produced, such as a simple vowel or consonant sound is called phone. Closely associated with Phonetics is another branch of Linguistics known as Phonology. Phonology deals with the way speech sounds behave in particular languages or in languages generally. This focuses on the way languages use differences between sounds in order to convey differences of meaning between words. All theories of phonology hold that spoken language can be broken down no n o o n n (p on m ). p on m m ll ‗ n v n o n ‘o l n .I n on ord from another in a given language. This means changing a phoneme in a word, produces another word, that has a different meaning. In the pair of words (minimal pairs) 'cat' and 'bat', the distinguishing sounds /c/ and /b/ are both phonemes. The phoneme is an abstract term (a speech sound as it exists in the mind of the speaker) and it is specific to a particular language. A phoneme may have several allophones, related sounds that are distinct but do not change the meaning of a word when they are interchanged. The sounds corresponding to the letter "t" in the English words 'tea' and 'trip' are not in fact quite the same. The position of the tongue is slightly different, which causes a difference in sound detectable by an instrument such as a speech spectrograph. Thus the [t] in 'tea' and the [t] in 'trip' are allophones of the phoneme /t/.

Phonology is the link between Phonetics and the rest of Linguistics. Only by studying both the phonetics and the phonology of English is it possible to acquire a full understanding of the use of sounds in English speech.

W mâ&#x20AC;&#x2014; n â&#x20AC;&#x2DC; o o n n p on n on . on n on can vary with cultures, regions and speakers, but there are two major standard varieties in English pronunciation: British English and American English. Within British English and American English there are also a variety of accents. Some of them have received more attention than others from phoneticians and phonologists. These are Received pronunciation (RP)* and General American (GA). Received pronunciation is a form of pronunciation of the English language, sometimes defined as the "educated spoken English of southeastern England". RP is close to BBC English (the kind spoken by British newscasters) and it is represented in the pronunciation schemes of most British dictionaries. RP is rather a social accent than regional, associated with the educated upper classes (and/or people who have attended public schools) in Britain. English pronunciation is also divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme /r/ is pronounced. Rhotic speakers pronounce written "r" in all positions. They will pronounce the "r" in stork, whereas non-rhotic speakers won't, making no distinction between stork and stalk. Non-rhotic speakers pronounce "r" only if it is followed by a vowel - right, rain, room, Robert, far awey, etc. Non-rhotic accents are British Received Pronunciation and some other types of British English, Australian, New Zealand and South African English. American English is rhotic (the "r" is always pronounced), with the notable exception of the Boston area and New York City. Rhotic accents can be found also in most of Canada. SE Britain is apparently the source of non-rhotic. England is non-rhotic, apart from the south-western England and some ever-diminishing northern areas. Scotland and Ireland are rhotic.

In English, there is no one-to-one relation between the system of writing and the system of pronunciation. The alphabet which we use to write English has 26 letters but in (Standard British) English there are approximately 44 speach sounds. The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. To represent the basic sound of spoken languages linguists use a set of phonetic symbols called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The chart below contains all of the IPA symbols used to represent the sounds of the English language. This is the standard set of phonemic symbols for English (RP and similar accents).

d h

[ ] - small capital letter I [ ] - 'epsilon' -- a Greek letter [ ] - sometimes called 'upsilon' [ ] - 'ash'; digraph a-e -usually just "digraph" [ ] - script A [ ] - open O [ ] - 'caret' [ ] - 'eng' (right-tail n) [ ] - 'eth' [ ] - 'theta' [ ] - 'schwa' The colon / : / represents longer duration in pronunciation and is found in long vowels such as / i: /, / a: /, / u: /, etc.

It is important to pay attention to stress and intonation if we want to learn a language properly. WHAT IS STRESS? Stress is the emphasis given to a specific syllable or word in speech, usually through a combination of relatively greater loudness, higher pitch, and longer duration. Syllable is a part of a word that is pronounced with one uninterrupted sound. It is also important to remember that we stress the vowel sound of the word, not the consonant sound. The stress placed on syllables in a word is called lexical stress or word stress. Stress placed on some words within a sentence is called sentence stress or prosodic stress.

WORD STRESS: T k o G n o x mpl . I n ‗ n‘. T pl on ‗G ‘. S m l l v n lo The stressed syllables are written in capital letters.   

Water: WAter Station : STAtion People: PEOple

ll om

l : ‗G ‘ x mpl .

SENTENCE STRESS: Sentence stress is the way of highlighting the important words in a sentence. Unlike in word stress, you can choose where you can place the stress. Selecting which words to stress depends on the meaning and context. However, if the stress is not used correctly, the sentence might be misinterpreted. Examples: 1. CLOSE the DOOR. 2. WHAT did HE SAY to you in the GARDEN? 3. Have you SEEN the NEW FILM of TOM CRUISE?

WHAT IS INTONATION? Intonation is the variation of our pitch, in the spoken language. Intonation indicates our emotions and attitudes, determine the difference between statements and qu on n om m l mpo n o v l m ‘ giving out. In English, there are 3 basic intonation patterns: Falling Intonation, Rising Intonation, and Partial/Fall-rise Intonation.

FALLING INTONATION: Falling intonation describes how the voice falls on the final stressed syllable of a phrase or a group of words. It is used in expressing a complete,definite thought, and asking wh-questions.  

“Where is the nearest Police Station?” “She got a new dog”

RISING INTONATION: Rising intonation describes how the voice rises at the end of a sentence. This is common in yes-no questions or in expressing surprise.  

“Your dog can speak?” “Are you hungry?”

PARTIAL INTONATION Partial Intonation describes how voice rises then falls. People use this intonation when they are not sure, or they have more to add to a sentence. We also use this intonation pattern to ask questions, as it sounds more polite.  

“Would you like some coffee?” “I want to go to France, but…”

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STRESS AND INTONATION Definition Intonation is the variation of our pitch, in the spoken language. Stress is the emphasis given to a specific syllable or word in speech Focus Stress pays particular attention to syllables and words. Intonation pays attention to pitch. Emotions/Attitudes Intonation helps you to detect the emotions and attitudes of the speaker. Stress does not enable us to understand the attitudes of the speaker.

All the sounds we when we speak are the results of muscles contracting. The muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the flow of air is needed for almost all speech sounds; muscles in the larynx produce many different modifications in the flow of air from the chest to the mouth. After passing through the larynx, the air goes through what we call the VOCAL TRACT, which ends at the mouth and nostrils. We have a large and complex set of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the vocal tract , and in order to learn how the sounds of speech are produce it is necessary to become familiar with the different parts of the tract.

The Production of Speech

The seven articulators described above are the main ones used in speech.

The tongue, lips, teeth, and various regions of the mouth constitute places of articulation in the oral cavity. This means that air coming from the lungs is constricted somehow to create consonant sounds. According to the place of articulation (where in the mouth or throat the sound is produced) the consonants are: Bilabial: with both lips

/p/, /b/, /m/

Labiodental: between lower lip and upper teeth

/f/, /v/

Dental/Interdental: between the teeth

/ /, / /

Alveolar: the ridge behind the upper front teeth

/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /r/

Alveo-palatal (or post-alveolar): it is the area between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate

/ /, / /, / /, /

Palatal: hard palate, or 'roof' of the mouth'

/j/

Velar: the soft palate or velum

/k/, /g/, / /

Glottal (laryngeal): space between the vocal cords

/h/

According to the manner of articulation (how the breath is used) the consonants are: stops, also known as plosives, fricatives, affricates, nasals, laterals, and approximants. Nasals, laterals and approximants are always voiced; stops, fricatives and affricates can be voiced or unvoiced.

Stops /Plosives/

During production of these sounds, the airflow from the lungs is completely blocked at some point, then released. In English, they are /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/.

Fricatives

The flow of air is constricted, but not totally stopped or blocked. In English, these include /f/, /v/, / /, / /, /s/, /z/, / /, / /, and /h/.

Affricates

These sounds begin like stops, with a complete blockage of air/closure of the vocal tract, and end with a restricted flow of air like fricatives. English has two affricates - the / / sounds of "church" and the / / of "judge".

Nasals

Nasals are sounds made with air passing through the nose. In English, these are /m/, /n/, and / /.

Laterals

Lateral consonants allow the air to escape at the sides of the tongue. In English there is only one such sound - /l/

In the production of an approximant, one articulator is close to another, but the vocal tract is not narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is Approximants produced. In English, these are /j/, /w/ and /r/. Approximants /j/ and /w/ are also referred to as semi-vowels.

Classifying the Vowels Sounds of English The classification of vowels is based on four major aspects: 1. Tongue height - according to the vertical position of the tongue (high vowels, also referred to as close; low vowels, also referred to as open; intermediate - close-mid and open-mid) 2. Frontness vs. backness of the tongue - according to the horizontal position of the highest part of the tongue. 3. Lip rounding - whether the lips are rounded (O-shape) or spread (no rounding) when the sound is being made. 4. Tenseness of the articulators - refers to the amount of muscular tension around the mouth when creating vowel sounds. Tense and lax are used to describe muscular tension. Front vowels (tongue body is pushed forward) High/close vowels (tongue body is raised)

/ / see / / sit

Mid vowels (tongue body is intermediate)

/e/ bait* / / bet

Low/open vowels (tongue body is lowered)

/ bat

Central vowels (tongue body is neutral)

Back vowels (tongue body is pulled back)

/ / boot / / book

/ / sofa**, / / bird

/ / under**

/o/ boat* / bought***

/ father, / sock(BrE)

*In some American accents (especially Californian English), vowel sounds in words such as bait, gate, pane and boat, coat, note are not consider diphthongs. American phonologists often class them as tense monophthongs (/e/ and /o/). **/ / is used in unstressed syllables, while / / is in stressed syllables. The vowel / / used to be a back vowel, and the symbol was chosen for this reason. This is no longer a back vowel, but a central one. ***A considerable amount of Americans don't have the deep / / in their vocabulary, they pronounce bought, ball, law with the deep / / sound.

According to the position of the lips:  

English front and central vowels are always unrounded. English back vowels / /, / , /o/, / / are rounded (/ / vowel is unrounded).

Vowel Tenseness: 

Tense vowels (produced with a great amount of muscular tension): / /, / /, / /, / /, / /. Tense vowels are variable in length, and often longer than lax vowels.  Lax vowels (produced with very little muscular tension): / /, / /, / /, / /, / /, / /, / /. Lax vowels are always short.

An inflectional ending is a group of letters added to the end of a word to change its meaning. Some inflectional endings are: -s

bat

bats

-es

mix

mixes

-ing

snow

snowing

-ed

peck

pecked

An inflectional ending changes the meaning of the base word and creates a new word with a different meaning. -s

m k

no n m

n ―mo

n on ‖ -es

m k

no n m

n on ‖

n ―mo

-ing

means an action is happening now

-ed

means an action already happened

Types of Assimilation "Complete assimilation" usually means that the assimilated sound becomes exactly the same as the sound that it assimilates to. In English, this kind of assimilation is generally optional and occurs more often in fast speech, usually between different words or different parts of compound words. For example, in the word "horseshoe", the s sound of "horse" might be completely assimilated to the following sh sound of "shoe".

"Partial assimilation" is very common in English, but it can be difficult to notice. When it occurs, the assimilated sound is basically the same sound, but adjusted to be a bit more similar to another sound. For example, in the word "click", the /l/ is slightly devoiced due to partial assimilation to the voiceless consonant /k/. A devoiced /l/ is not considered to be a distinct sound from a voiced /l/ in English.

"Intermediate assimilation" is also very common in English. It just means that the assimilated sound changes in some features to become a different sound, but it doesn't become completely the m o n ml o. In â&#x20AC;&#x2DC; É&#x2019; /z/ assimilated and becomes the different sound [s] due to the preceding /t/; it assimilates in the feature of "voicing" to become a voiceless consonant, but it is not completely assimilated: complete assimilation would be if it were turned into another [t]. This kind of assimilation occurs in contractions and with the common word suffixes -s and -ed, and it is mandatory.

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (/ʃwɑː/ l /ʃ ɔː/ o /ʃvɑː/ ( om m p ll ) refers to the mid central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded) in the middle of the vowel chart, denoted by the IPA symbol ə, or another vowel sound close to that position. An example in English is the vowel sound in the 'a' of the word 'about'. Schwa in English is mainly found in unstressed positions, but in some other languages it occurs more frequently as a stressed vowel.

At its simplest, linking is the merging of multiple words together until they sound as if they are only one word. Native speakers of English all do this naturally. Linking is an advanced topic for non-native speakers, but learning to correctly link words can result in significantly more fluid and fluent sounding English speech. Failing to link words naturally results in spoken English which may have awkward pauses, extra, unnecessary sounds, and which will sound very foreign to native speakers. Techniques used for linking words depend on specific adjacent sounds where the words meet in the sentence. Blending is smoothly transitioning from the pronunciation of one sound into the next sound. Blending works well for linking from one continuous consonant--a fricative, approximant, or nasal sound--to another different continuous consonant. In the phrase "this month," the 's sound' /s/ blends smoothly into the 'm sound' /m/.

Blending can also be used to link continuous consonants and vowel sounds, as in the phrase "this afternoon." Here the /s/ of the word "this" is shared between both words.

Nasal aspiration occurs when the 'd sound' /d/ links into the 'n sound' /n/. The tongue moves into the position of the /d/, but the sound is not completed with the typical aspiration (release of air). Instead, the stopped air is release n /n/. T In n on l on lp m ol o n l p on n. An example of nasal aspiration occurs in the phrase "good news": the air is stopped as a /d/, but released as an /n/.

In phonetics and phonology, elision is the omission of a sound (a phoneme) in speech. Elision is common in casual conversation. More specifically, elision may refer to the omission of an unstressed vowel, consonant, or syllable. This omission is often indicated in print by an apostrophe. "Elision of sounds can . . . be seen clearly in contracted forms like isn't (is not), I'll (I shall/will), who's (who is/has), they'd (they had, they should, or they would), haven't (have not) and so on. We see from these examples that vowels or/and consonants can be elided. In the case of contractions or words like library (pronounced in rapid speech as /laibri/), the whole syllable is elided." "It is very important to note that sounds do not simple 'disappear' like a light being switched off. A transcription such as /ĂŚks/ for acts implies that the /t/ phoneme has dropped out altogether, but detailed examination of speech shows that such effects are more gradual: in slow speech the /t/ may be fully pronounced, with an audible transition from the preceding /k/ and to the following /s/, while in a more rapid style it may be articulated but not given any audible realisation, and in very rapid speech it may be observable, if at all, only as a rather early movement of the tongue blade toward the /s/ position."

Examples of Elision: Ne'er-never Gonna-going to Wanna-want to Can't-cannot O'er-over 'tis-it is

In linguistics, a consonant cluster (CC) is a group of two or more consonant sounds that come before (onset), after (coda), or between (medial) vowels. Also known simply as cluster. Consonant cluster simplification (or reduction) sometimes occurs when one consonant (or more) in a sequence of adjacent consonants is elided or dropped. In everyday speech, for instance, the phrase "best boy" may be pronounced "bes' boy," and "first time" may be pronounced "firs' time." "The combination /st/ is a consonant cluster (CC) used as onset in the word stop, and as coda in the word post. There are many CC onset combinations permitted in English phonotactics, as in black, bread, trick, twin, flat and throw. . . . "English can actually have larger onset clusters, as in the words stress and splat, consisting of three initial consonants (CCC). The phonotactics of these larger onset clusters is not too difficult to describe. The first consonant must always be /s/, followed by one of the voiceless stops (/p/, /t/, /k/) and a liquid or glide (/l/, /r/, /w/). You can check if this description is adequate for the combinations in splash, spring, strong, scream and square."

Consonants are easier than vowel in terms of spelling. A consonant sound is often represented by the same consonant letter in writing: bed [bed], pin [pin], kind [kaind], take [teik], mark [ma:rk], false [fo:ls], first, joke, government, skeleton, distribute, tremble, inventive, horrible, wonderful. But there are several consonant sounds that are represented by different consonant letters or letter combinations in writing, for example, [k], [s], [g], [j], [f], [sh]. There are also consonant letters and letter combinations that have several variants of pronunciation, for example, c, ch, g, gh, x, xh. This often presents some difficulty for language learners. The combination SC is pronounced [s] before E, I, Y: scent, science, fascinate, scythe. In several words, the sound [s] is represented in writing by the combination PS, where P is a silent letter: psalm, pseudonym, psychology. The sound [z] is usually represented by the consonant S: rose, cause, always, his, wise, was, present, poison, reason, clumsy, organism, realism, advertise, advise, comprise, raise. But the letter S is never pronounced [z] at the beginning of the word, so expect the letter Z there: zone, zero, zip. (The consonant Z is described at the end of this article.) The ending S/ES of nouns and verbs has three different variants of pronunciation depending on the sound or letter after which it stands. (The mute letter E at the end of the word is not taken into consideration in this rule.) [s] after a voiceless consonant: parks, takes, streets, writes, cuffs, myths, jumps, laughs; 34

[z] after a voiced consonant or a vowel: kids, rides, legs, girls, rooms, chairs, robs, leaves, learns, clothes, boys, cows, goes, ties, studies; [iz] after the letters s, z, x, ch, tch, ge, dge, sh: classes, roses, prizes, quizzes, matches, oranges, bridges, dishes, fixes. In this case, the ending ES is added if the word doesn't have the mute letter E at the end, and the ending S is added if mute E is there. Compare: rise, rises; kiss, kisses; cage, cages; flash, flashes. The combination TH may sometimes present a problem because it represents the voiced sound [ð] and the voiceless sound [θ], and there is no rule on where and which of the two sounds to pronounce. The sound [ð]: the, this, that, these, those, then, they, their, there, though, other, mother, father, brother, weather, neither, bathe, breathe, clothes, soothe, northern, southern. The sound [θ]: thin, thick, thank, think, thought, theater, theory, therapy, thermometer, thorough, thunder, three, through, method, author, bath, breath, cloth, teeth, truth, health, north, south. The sound [k] is represented in writing by the letters and combinations k, ck, c, ch, que. The letter C represents two sounds: [s] and [k], and there are strict rules on where and which of the two sounds is pronounced. The sound [s]: celebrate, center, certainly, ceremony, cemetery, receive, race, price. The sound [s]: cider, cigarette, civil, circus. The sound [s]: cycle, cylinder, Cyprus. The letter C is pronounced [k] before the vowels A, O, U and before consonants. The sound [k]: cat, cabin, cake, call, care, carry, cancel, cast, delicate, intricate The sound [k]: come, complete, cord, cost, country, acoustic, decorate. The sound [k]: cut, custom, cute, current, curious, cucumber, calculate. The combination CH represents the sound [ch] in typically English words: chair, chess, child, chief, choke, achieve, reach, rich, which, church, such, bunch. 35

The combination CH represents the sound [k] in words of Greek or Latin origin: chemistry, chaos, charisma, chlorine, chorus, archaeology, archaic, archive, archipelago, architect, echo, mechanic, monarchy, anarchy, synchronize, psychologist, school, scholar. The combination CH represents the sound [sh] in words of French origin: champagne, chandelier, charlatan, chef, chevron, chic, chiffon, cache, moustache, machine, parachute.

Many English learners pronounce each word clearly, to get the pronunciation perfect – n v En l p k on‘ o . Natural spoken English contains reductions– sounds that change and disappear when spoken at normal speed. This sometimes makes spoken English hard for students to understand. Doing English pronunciation practice with reductions will help you speak more naturally AND understand spoken English more easily. TO Mo n v En l say it like this:

on‘ p ono n

― o‖ l k

GOING TO –> “GONNA” I’m gonna graduate from college in two more years. She’s not gonna like that movie. It’s really violent.

n m

―2.‖ Instead, we

WANT TO –> “WANNA” I wanna go out tonight. Hurry up! We don’t wanna miss our flight!

WANTS TO –> “WANTSTA” He wantsta stay home. She wantsta start piano lessons.

A ― ‖

mpl

In spoken English, nativ previous word:

o l p

n―

o ‖

p ono n n ― ‖? o

― ‖ o

n o

reada – I read a good book. hasa – She has a car. mada – We made a mess. hava – They have a dog.

YOU In n o m l pok n En l

m n n

Are ya hungry? Do ya like Japanese food? Have ya ever been to Paris? What were ya thinking about?

p ono n

― o ‖

“ya”:

AND T

― n ‖o

o “n” in spoken English:

I ate rice n beans. She likes baseball n soccer. I went to the bank n the supermarket. He wants to get a dog n a cat.

An ellipsis [ … ] proves to be a handy device when you're quoting material and you want to omit some words. The ellipsis consists of three evenly spaced dots (periods) with spaces between the ellipsis and surrounding letters or other marks. Let's take the sentence, "The ceremony honored twelve brilliant athletes from the Caribbean who were visiting the U.S." and leave out "from the Caribbean who were": The ceremony honored twelve brilliant athletes … visiting the U.S. If the omission comes after the end of a sentence, the ellipsis will be placed after the period, making a total of four dots. … See how that works? Notice that there is no space between the period and the last character of the sentence. The ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in the flow of a sentence and is especially useful in quoted speech: Juan thought and thought … and then thought some more. "I'm wondering …" Juan said, bemused. Note carefully the spacing of the ellipsis marks and the surrounding characters in the examples above. In mid-sentence, a space should appear between the first 38

and last ellipsis marks and the surrounding letters. If a quotation is meant to trail off (as in Juan's bemused thought), leave a space between the last letter and the first ellipsis mark but do not include a period with the ellipsis marks. If words are left off at the end of a sentence, and that is all that is omitted, indicate the omission with ellipsis marks (preceded and followed by a space) and then indicate the end of the sentence with a period … . If one or more sentences are omitted, end the sentence before the ellipsis with a period and then insert your ellipsis marks with a space on both sides. … As in this example. A coded ellipsis (used in the construction of this page) will appear tighter (with less of a space between the dots) than the use of period-space-period-space-period. When words at the beginning of a quoted sentence are omitted, it is not necessary to use an ellipsis to indicate that words have been left out when that fragment can fit into the flow of your text. An exception: in a blockquoted fragment, use an ellipsis to indicate an omission: According to Quirk and Greenbaum, the distinctions are unimportant … for count nouns with specific reference to definite and indefinite pronouns.

Native speakers usually use contractions especially when speaking. We make contractions by connecting two or more words together. One or more letters are removed from the words when they are connected. I m → I'm →"I'm older than you." I

→I' → "I'd better do my homework."

v → I'v → "I've always liked sushi."

ll → I'll → "I'll tell you later."

I o l → I' → "I'd have taken you if I had known." There Contractions T T 39

→T →T

' → "There's been mail today." ' → "There's more in the fridge."

ll → T

'll → "There'll be a protest strike tomorrow."

→T

' → "There'd better be a good reason why you are late."

T o l →T ' → "There'd have been more people here if the party had been on the weekend." That Contractions T

→T

' → "That'd better be the last time she calls me."

→T

' → "That's it."

ll → T

o l →T

'll → "That'll make it easier to understand." ' → "That'd have been why."

Negative Contractions no →

n' → "You aren't invited."

C n no → C n' → "You can't smoke in here." Co l no → Co l n' → "He couldn't find you." D Do

no → D n' → "She didn't remember me." no → Do

n' → "He doesn't work here."

Do no → Don' → "I don't like spiders." H

no → H

n' → "He hadn't been told."

no → H

n' → "She hasn't left."

no → M

no → N

n' → "I musn't make a noise." n' → "You needn't come."

S o l no → S o l n' → "We shouldn't eat sweets." W W

no → W no → W

n' → "It wasn't bad." n' → "They weren't helpful."

W ll no → Won' → "We won't regret it." Wo l no → Wo l n' → "You wouldn't believe me."

Derivation, in descriptive linguistics and traditional grammar, the formation of a o n n omo o n x o ( . . ― op ‖ o ― op l‖). I m jo o o n o n l n . In o lln the derivation of a word is its history, or etymology. In generative grammar, derivation means a sequence of linguistic representations that indicate the structure of a sentence or other linguistic unit resulting from the application of some grammatical rule or set of rules.

In linguistics, borrowing (also known as lexical borrowing) is the process by which a word from one language is adapted for use in another. The word that is borrowed is called a borrowing, a borrowed word, or a loanword. The English language has been described by David Crystal as an "insatiable borrower." More than 120 other languages have served as sources for the contemporary vocabulary of English. Present-day English is also a major donor language--the leading source of borrowings for many other languages. "English . . . has freely appropriated the major parts of its vocabulary from Greek, Latin, French, and dozens of other languages. Even though The official's automobile functioned erratically consists entirely of borrowed words, with the single exception of the, it is uniquely an English sentence." Exploration and Borrowing "The vocabulary of English based on exploration and trade [was] often brought to England in spoken form or in popular printed books and pamphlets. An early example is assassin (eater of hashish), which appears in English about 1531 as a loanword from Arabic, probably borrowed during the Crusades. Many of the other words borrowed from eastern countries during the Middle Ages were the names of products (Arabic lemon, Persian musk, Semitic cinnamon, Chinese silk) and placenames (like damask, from Damascus). These were the most direct examples of the axiom that a new referent requires a new word."

Some examples of borrowed words:

In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate that two phones constitute two separate phonemes in the language.

In p onolo n llop on (/ˈæləfoʊn/; from the Greek: ἄλλος állo "o " n φωνή p ōnē "vo o n ") on o o m l pl po l pok n o n (or phones) or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. Fo x mpl p ( n p n) n p ( n p n) are allophones for the phoneme /p/ in the English language. The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context (such allophones are called positional variants), but sometimes allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme will usually not change the meaning of a word, although sometimes the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible. Native speakers of a given language usually perceive one phoneme in that language as a single distinctive sound, and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone variations used to pronounce single phonemes.

A homophone is a word that has the same sound as another word but is spelled differently and has a different meaning: to/two/too there/their/they're pray/prey

Homographs are words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings and are often pronounced differently as well. bass as in fish vs bass as in music. bow as in arrow vs bow as in bending or taking a bow at the end of a performance. close as in next to vs close as in shut the door. desert as in dry climate vs desert as in leaving alone.

Homonyms, or multiple meaning words, are words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings. For example, bear:

A bear (the animal) can bear (tolerate) very cold temperatures. The driver turned left (opposite of right) and left (departed from) the main road.

Heterographs. These are words that are spelled differently, but sound the same. We know them as to, too, two, and there, their, and they’re. B ‘ mo . Heteronyms are a subset of omo p ( n l ‘ no forget homonyms) that have different pronunciations and meanings. In other words, they are homographs, but not homophones. These include row (as in an argument) and row (at to row a boat or a row of seats) Wind: I need to wind the alarm clock so I can fly my kite in the early morning gusty wind. Record: Please record the program when they try to beat the world record for word nerdiness. Excuse: Please excuse this poor excuse for art.