Language Use in Oral Verbal Communication

Oral communication is a type of communication that takes place

through the mouth. It takes place with the help of or the use of
spoken words. It comes under verbal communication in which the
person can express oneself, can present ideas, and can also share
information, examples for oral communication are as follows: any
conversations with family, friends, and relatives or with coworkers
as well as the presentation and narrated speeches. Whereas
verbal communication uses sounds or words to convey ideas,
thoughts, and information.
Pronunciation as a way of materializing of oral form of
language
Phonic shaping of oral form of language is called [Link]
is the act or result of producing the sounds of speech, including
articulation, stress, and intonation, often with reference to some
standard of correctness.

Phonic Structure of Language and its Components

The English phonetic system comprises the four
components: speech sounds, syllabic word structure, stress,
and intonation
-Speech sounds-morphemes,words,utterances
-Syllable-is a unit of spoken message larger than a single sound
and smaller than a [Link]:syllable formation ; syllable
separation
-Stress(features):duration-length,intensity-loudness,pitch-
[Link]:physical nature of word stress ; position of the
word stress in polysyllabic words ; degree of wore stress.
-Intonation Effect: sentence stress ; linguistic use of speech
tempo.

Units of Language vs. Speech

Language Units:
text,sentences,phrase,word,morpheme,phoneme,distinctive feature.
Units of Speech: discourse,utterance,tone
unit,syllable,segment,articulatory feature.

Phonetics as Science and its Branches

-Phonetics is the study of the range of sounds which occur
in speech, including the way they are produced by the
speech organs and their acoustic
[Link]:Articulatory Phonetics(study of the
way speech sounds are made by vocal organs),Acoustic
Phonetics(study the physical properties of speech
sound),Auditory Phonetics(study the perceptual response
to speech sounds),Functional Phonetics(conserned with the
range and function of sound).
- Phonology is the study of the distribution of and the
relationships between speech sounds, i.e, the system of
sounds of a [Link]:Segmental
Phonology(analyses speech into discrete segments),Supra-
Segmental Phonology(analyses features which extended
more then one segment.

Defining an Accent
An accent is a unified entity of pronunciation patterns used
for communicative interaction by the members of the same
speech community.

Major Accents of English

American English (General American / Network
English, Eastern American, Southern American);
Australian English (Cultivated Australian, Broad
Australian, General Australian).

Social Shapes of English

There are First Language( is a speaker’s native language),
Second Language( is any other language that the speaker
learns to control at any time), Foreign Language( is any
language spoken by the speaker less than L2 level). Lingua
franca is a language as a means of communication by
speakers who do not have language in common. Pidgin
language is a language used for the purpose of
communication between speakers of mutually unintelligible
language which has been developed out of the mixture of
the languages of the communities concerned
The Problem of Standard English and Models of
English for Intercultural Communication
On the one hand, it is crucial for the people of the English-
speaking world to be able to understand the English of that
world and to be understood in their turn in the process of
intercultural communication. On the other hand, each
(English-speaking) nation is seeking to preserve its
uniqueness and to avoid losing its national identity, and
identity implies individuality which among other things
includes the preservation of a national language or a
national variety of a polyethnic language.

Pronunciation Norm and its Condition

Pronunciation norm is a set of parameters describing that
phonetic shaping of spoken form of a national language
which at a given time is 1) generally considered correct, 2)
statistically relevant, 3) enjoys social prestige. The English
pronunciation norm appears for EFL learners in the explicit,
materialized form through its codification. EFL learners who
acquire English out of its natural environment mainly deal
with the codified pronunciation norm as their major sources
of reference are pronouncing dictionaries.

Specialist dictionaries of English Pronunciation

The most specialist dictionaries of English pronunciation
are The English Pronouncing Dictionary (EPD) and The
Longman English Pronunciation Dictionary (LPD).
The EPD has been in use for about 90 years. It was
originally compiled by Prof. Daniel Jones. The most recent
edition of the EPD was published in 2006 under the title
The Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (CEPD),
which provides information about present pronunciation of
near 80,000 English words and phrases.
The LPD is compiled by John C. Wells and was first
published in1995. The third release of the LPD is of 2008. It
includes 135,000 pronunciations, where include full
coverage of both British and American English.

Variation in Standard / Literary Pronunciation

There are several Standard EnglishesPronunciation. But not
a lot of people actually speak a standard variety of English:
many people speak their own dialects, and have their own
accents that can be very different from the standard form.
There are about 160 different English dialects. One of them
are British dialects and American dialects.
The main variety of British English Pronunciation is
Received Pronunciation (RP)
And the main type of American English Pronunciation is
General American English Pronunciation (GAEP)
So, and the Literary Pronunciation has its national
pronunciation standard. Today all the English-speaking
nations have their own national variants of pronunciation
and each of them has peculiar features that distinguish it
from other varieties of English.

BR / BBC English as the British national Standard of

Pronunciation
RP is closely associated with broadcasting in general, and
the BBC in particular. A range of accents are used on the
BBC. BBC is used to refer to television channels and radio
stations that are run by the BBC. It is widely believed,
that the BBC traditionally employed as newsreaders and
broadcasters only people who could speak RP. But,
nowadays there are some pronunciation of RP, which could
have been used by people. These, the conservative RP
form used by the older generation and by certain
professions or social groups. The general RP forms most
commonly in use and typified by the pronunciation adopted
by BBC; and the advanced RP forms mainly used by young
people of exclusive social groups

Social-Historical Survey of RP / BBC English

RP (Received Pronunciation). RP implicitly enjoys the status
of the national standard of pronunciation in the United
Kingdom.
The historical origins of RP go back to the 16-17 century
recommendations that the speech model should be that
 provided by the educated pronunciation of the court and
the capital.
Before World War 2, RP had a regional base but its
occurrence was socially determined- it was characteristic of
upper-class speech throughout the country.
in the early 20th century the consolidation of Educated
Southern English (RP) as a model took place, though
variations according to style, age and idiolect were
observable in it
The British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC) adopted RP
for the use by its newsreaders since 1920s. Until the early
70s of the last century it was the only accent demanded in
the BBC's announcers. Only over the last 30 years, both
the BBC and other British national radio and TV channels
have been increasingly tolerant of the accent of their
broadcasters.
The second half of the 20th century witnessed the radical
changes in RP's social base:
1) the second great communication leap ( theadvent of
radio and television) has led to a greater number of
speakers, in various layers of society, using RP.
2) the social structure of the British society has lost much
of its earlier rigidity;
3) access to higher education has led to a relaxation of
view on prestige in pronunciation.
It is fair to mention, however, that only 3-5 per cent of the
population of England speak RP.

Phonological and Phonetic Dimensions of RP / BBC

English
The main segmental features of RP/BBC English. As for its
phoneme inventory, this accent has 20 vowels and 24
consonants. The system of vowels embraces 12 pure
vowels or monophthongs and 8 diphthongs. The system of
RP consonants consists of the following two wide
categories of sounds :
• those typically associated with a noise component: p, b, t,
d, k, g, f, v, T, D, s, z, S, Z, h, tS, dZ ;
• those without a noise component which may share many
phonetic characteristics with vowels – 7 sonorants: m, n, N,
l, r, j, w.
According to the phonotactic specification of /r/ occurrence,
RP is a non-rhotic or r-less accent, i.e. /r/ does not occur
after a vowel or at the end of the words. It may be claimed
that /r/ in RP has a limited distribution, being restricted in
its occurrence to pre-vocalic positions.
Phoneme lexical distribution/[Link]. J.C. Wells in
his article “Cockneyfication of RP” discusses several of
recent and current sound changes in RP:
• the decline of weak /I/ the vowel [I] is becoming less
frequent in weak syllables. There is the trend
towards preconsonantalschwa. This trend may be
explained by the process of centralization of unstressed
vowels
• glottalling, [t] is pronounced as a glottal allophone] in
certain environments.
• l-vocalization
• intrusive /r/,
• yod coalescence, and an increased tendency towards the
coalescence of yod (the semivowel /j/) with a preceding
alveolar plosive, so that : t+j - > tS, d+j - > dZ = the
process of affricatization;
• assorted lexical changes.

All American dialects differ from Received

Pronunciation in two phonetic features:
1. high rise [ɑ:];
2. retroflex articulation [r] after vowels.

Canadian English Pronunciation:

• The Canadian variant represents a unique case of a
bilingual situation where English is the official language
along with French. The phonetic feature of the variant is
the mixing of American and British pronunciations.
- The American intrusive [r] is also present in the Canadian
version, Canadians pronounce [r] before consonants and at
the end of the word (car);
 • voiced pronunciation [t] in intervocalic position (butter);
• the vowel sound [a:] becomes [æ] or [eɪ] (dance,
tomato);
• Canadians stick to [ɔ:] and [ɒ] where Americans would
pronounce [əʊ] (shone, produce);
• similarly with [i:] and [ɪ] (been);
• the diphthong [eɪ] (again) is fully pronounced under
stress;
• prefixes anti-, semi-, multi- are pronounced with [ɪ] in
the British manner;
• after the consonants t, d, n, the sound [ju:] is pronounced
in the American manner [u:] (student);
• diphthong [əʊ] is not subject to reduction.
• Also a unique phonetic feature of the Canadian variant is
"Canadian rising". This concept refers to the modification of
the core of diphthongs [aʊ] and [aɪ] into [ɒ] or [ʌ].

Australian English Pronunciation:

The development of the Australian variant was influenced
by the remoteness of the Australian continent from
England and the phonetics of the existing Aboriginal
languages.
Here are the main phonetic features of the Australian
variant:
• in a closed syllable, i is pronounced as [i], not [ɪ] (bit,
tip);
• the letter a in a closed syllable can be pronounced as [ɛ]
(bat, flat);
• there is an alternation of [ɑ:] with [æ];
• voicing t between vowels (letter);
• [nt] and [n] in the position between vowels can be
realized as [n] or [ɾ‌].
• Also a special phonetic feature of the Australian variant is
Yod coalescence. This concept refers to the process as a
result of which the sounds [dj], [tj], [sj] and [zj] are
transformed into [ʤ], [tʃ], [ʃ], [ʒ]

New Zeland English Pronunciation:

 New Zealand English was formed under the influence of
Scottish English, the dialects of the south of England and
the language of the aboriginal Maori.
The New Zealand version was perceived as reminiscent of
the Australian version, but largely based on the British
one.
However, unlike Australian, New Zealand is much more
distinguishable at the phonetic level. This was achieved by
a number of changes in vowels [4; five].
They include:
• centralizing [i] into [a] (thick, thin);
• rise [e] to [i] (concession); • narrowing [æ] to [e] (cat);
• Merging [еə] and [iə] (air - ear)

Conclusion:
1. The Canadian variant represents a unique case of a
bilingual situation where English is the official language
along with French. A phonetic feature of the variant can be
considered a mixture of American and British
pronunciations.
2. The phonetic features of the Australian version are
expressed in a special rhythm and intonation of speech,
which are also traced only in the New Zealand version.
3. New Zealand English is similar to Australian, but much
more distinct.

Phonological and Phonetic Dimensions for Accent Description /

Comparison.
• All accents have characteristic phonological and phonetic features
which can be divided into segmental and prosodic(prominence,
pitch, loudness, speed of utterance), the latter are superimposed on
the segmental chain of sounds and carry the information which the
sounds do not contain.

Segmental Differences between Accents.

• A most complete set of segmental differences between accents
includes differences in:
1) Phoneme inventory;
 2) Phonotactic / structural specifications;
3) Phoneme lexical distribution / incidence / selection;
4) Phoneme realization / production.

Prosodic Differences between Accents.

• Prosodic differences between accents include:
1) Word-level stress patterns inventory and their distribution
regularities;
2) Utterance-level stress and placement of prominence regularities;
3) Intonational specifications.

Voice Quality Features of Accents.

•

Social and Communicative Dimension of an Accent

• The language of any speaker displays variation within many types:
region, social group, field of discourse, spoken or written medium,
formal or informal type of verbal interaction etc.

+ Alongside with various lects, currently, an idiolect, or “a person‟s

individual speech patterns”, is becoming a popular topic in
sociolinguistic discourse, due to the fact that “linguistic impressions”
created by a given speaker/writer “could be usable just like a
signature to identify them”.
Cockney as an Example of a Broad Accent of English.
An example of an accent reprecenting much-localized, non-
standart English is Cockney, the broadest London working-class speech.
A Cockney, in the loosest sense of the word, is an inhabitan of the Est End
of London. Cockney speakers have a distinctive accent and dialect with
revealing features of its grammar, vocabulary, and major
phonetic distinctins.
Cockney Phonology
H dropping. /h/ is not pronounced in initial positions in words which have
this phoneme in RP (have /av/, hat / æt/ ). /h/ is used however in initial
positions in words which RP begin with a vowel.
TH frontings/ stopping. The contrast between /θ/ and /f/ is completely lost
and between /ð/ and /v/ is occasionally lost (think /fink/, father /fa:və/
 L vocalization. Dark /l/ (in positions not immediately before vowels)
becomes vocalic /u/ (milk /miuk). When the preceding vowel is /o:/ , /l/ ,
may disapper completely (called /kho:d/)
Vowels
• diphthongization of /i:/->/əi/, /u:/ ->/əu/ thus bead =/bəid/.
• When /o:/ is final, it is pronounced as /owə/, sore, saw = /sowə/; when it
is not final, its realization is closer /ou/
• Diphthong shift. Cockney uses distinctive pronunciation of
RP diphthongs:
• /ei/ is realized as /ai/ e.g. lady = /laidi/;
• /ai/ sounds as /oi/—/ai/, e.g. price= /prois/;
• /əu/ sounds as /æu/, e.g. load /læud/;
• /au/ sounds as /a:/, e.g. loud /la:d/;

Estuary English
Estuary English is a contemporary variety of British English: a mixture of
non-regional and southeastern English pronunciation, grammar and
vocabulary,which is thought to have originated around the banks of the
River Thames and its
estuary. Also known as CockneyfiedRP and Nonstandard Southern Englis
h.
Chief Differences between RB and regional Accent of British
English.
Vocalic System:
No /ʌ /- /ʊ/ contrast. Typically, /ʌ/ does not occur in the accents of the
north, e.g. but = /bʌt/ (South), and /bʊt/(North)
Different distribution of /æ/ and /a:/: before the voiceless fricatives /f/,
/θ/,/s/ and certain consonant clusters containing initial n/ or /m/, /æ/ is
pronounced in the North instead of /a:/ in the South.
Vowel length contrast is absent in Scottish English and Northern Ireland.
Consonantal system:
Rhoticism, i.e. retaining post-vocalic /r/, is spread in Scotland, Ireland, and
Southwest in words like bar, farm etc. which have orthographic 'r'. Non-
rhoticism, i.e. absence of post-vocalic /r/, is typical of RP and
Welsh English. Thus, some British English accents are 'rhotic' or 'r-ful' and
others are non-rhotic or 'r-less'

/t/ glottaling .In most regional accents the glottal stop is widely used,
especially in the north-east of England, East Anglia and Northern It may
also be pronounced simultaneously with the voiceless /p/, /t/, /k/
most strikingly between the vowels, e.g. pity

/j/ (Yod) dropping: in most accents /j/ is dropped after /t/ or /s/. e.g. student
= /stu:dnt/, suit /su:t/, in the North it has been lost after
/θ/, e.g. enthusiasm /ən’θu:zɪəzm/;

Many non-RP speakers use [n] in the suffix -ing instead of speaking
['spi:kin]. In the areas of western central England including Birmingham,
Manchester and Liverpool they pronounce /ng/: /sɪngə/, wing [wɪng]

Contemporary Sociolinguistic Stuation in the USA

-
General American Phonological and Phonetic
Description/Discrimination.
-

We know that sonority is acoustic energy, and now that we understand

how speech is produced, we know that the most sonorous sounds, the ones
that have the most acoustic energy, are the sounds that are produced with
the vocal tract unobstructed. The most sonorous sounds are vowels.
Consonants, on the other hand, have an obstruction in the vocal tract so
they’re less sonorous. So we might also think of a syllable as a vowel
surrounded by some consonants. That’s a good beginning definition, but
it’s a little more complex than that, as we’ll see in this unit and the next.
Our mental grammar doesn’t just organize words into syllables, but it also
structures what’s inside a syllable. Let’s take a look. The name for the
most sonorous part of a syllable is the nucleus. In a typical syllable, the
nucleus will be a vowel, produced with an unobstructed vocal tract. The
segments that come before the nucleus are called the onset, and if there are
any segments after the nucleus they’re called the coda. The nucleus and
coda together form a unit that we call the rhyme, and linguists like to use
the Greek letter sigma (σ) to label the entire syllable.
Let’s look at how this works in some English words. When we say a word
is “monosyllabic” that just means that it has one syllable. We’ll start with
a nice simple word like big [bɪɡ]. The nucleus is the most sonorous part, so
in this word, the vowel [ɪ] is the nucleus. The consonant that comes after
the vowel nucleus [ɡ] is the coda, and the consonant that comes before [b]
is the onset. The only part of a syllable that always has to be there is the
nucleus. Some syllables have an onset but no coda, like the word day [deɪ],
and some syllables have a coda but not onset, like the word eat [it]. And
the occasional syllable has neither an onset nor a coda, just a nucleus, like
the word I [aɪ]!

What about a single-syllable word that has more consonants in it? Let’s
look at screens. Again, the vowel [i] is the nucleus of this syllable, and the
consonants [nz] that come after the nucleus form the coda. There are three
consonants [skɹ] before the nucleus, and they form the onset. When there’s
a group of consonants in the onset or coda we call them a cluster.

Monosyllabic words are pretty straightforward. How does it work with

words that have more than one syllable, like raptor? It’s got two syllables,
so it has two nuclei [æ] [ə]. The consonant at the beginning of the word [ɹ]
is the onset of the first syllable, and the consonant at the end of the word
[ɹ] is obviously the coda of the second syllable. What about these two
consonants in the middle? In the word raptor, the [p] is the coda of the first
syllable and [t] is the onset of the second syllable, but there are other
logical possibilities. We could just as easily say that the first syllable has a
coda cluster [pt], or that the second syllable has an onset cluster [pt]. How
does the mental grammar organize consonants in the middle of a multi-
syllabic word?

Well, it’s not random, and the mental grammar doesn’t just try to
distribute consonants evenly. There’s a systematic principle that operates
in the mental grammar, which is that onsets are greedy. To see what that
means, let’s look at a word that has a bunch of consonants in the middle,
like emblem. There are three consonants [mbl] in the middle of this word,
so there are four logical possibilities for how they could be organized. It
could be that all the consonants go in the onset of the second syllable. It
could be that they all go in the coda of the first syllable, or they could be
divided up between the coda of the first and the onset of the second, with a
couple of possible permutations. What does the mental grammar do with
these consonants?
The principle that onsets are greedy means that an onset will take as many
consonants as it can. So this first option here has the greediest onset: it has
the greatest number of consonants in an onset position. But it looks pretty
weird, doesn’t it, to have a syllable start with [mbl]? A greedy onset takes
as many consonants as it can within the grammar of that language. It’s a
principle of English grammar that words don’t begin with a cluster like
[mbl], and neither do syllables. Of these four options, the one that has the
greediest onset that is possible within English is this one: the [m] is the
coda of the first syllable, and the consonant cluster [bl] is the onset of the
second syllable.

Let’s look at one more example to illustrate this idea that onsets are
greedy. Consider the word ugly. The two vowels [ʌ] [i] form the two
nuclei of the syllables; there’s no onset for the first syllable, and no coda
for the second syllable. So there are three logical possibilities for these
middle consonants [ɡl] — they could both be the coda; they could both be
the onset; or they could split the difference. Which does the mental
grammar do? The onset is greedy, so it wants to take as many consonants
as it can. We know that [ɡl] is a possible onset in English, because there
are lots of words that start with [ɡl], like glue, glass, glamour. So because
[ɡl] is a possible, grammatical onset cluster in English, the onset of the
second syllable takes all of it, and leaves no consonants in the coda of the
first syllable.

Speech can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which sounds
show a tendency to cluster or group. These smallest phonetic
groups arc generally given the name of syllables. Being the smallest
pronounceable units, syllables form morphemes, words and phrases. Each
of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Thus a
meaningful language unit phonetically may be considered from the point
of view of syllable formation and syllable division.

The syllable is a complicated phenomenon and like a phoneme it can be

studied on four levels - articulatory, acoustic, auditory and functional. The
complexity of the phenomenon gave rise to many theories.

We could start with the so-called expiratory (chest pulse or pressure)

theory by R.H. Stetson. This theory is based on the assumption that
expiration in speech is a pulsating processand each syllable should
correspond to a single expiration. Sothe number of syllables in an
utterance is determined by the number of expirations made in the
production of the utterance. This theory was strongly criticized by Russian
and foreign linguists. G.P. Torsuyev, for example, wrote that in a phrase a
number of words and consequently a number of syllables can be
pronounced with a single expiration. This fact makes the validity of the
theory doubtful.
Another theory of syllable put forward by O. Jespersen is generally called
the sonority theory. According to O. Jespersen, each sound is characterized
by a certain degree of sonority which is understood us acoustic property of
a sound that determines its perceptibility. According to this sound property
a ranking of speech sounds could be established: <the least sonorous>
voiceless plosives  voiced fricatives voiced plosives  voiced
fricatives  sonorants  close vowels open vowels <the most sonorous>.
In the word plant for example we may use the following wave of sonority:
[pla:nt]. According to V.A. Vasssilyev the most serious drawback of this
theory is that it fails to explain the actual mechanism of syllable formation
and syllable division. Besides, the concept of sonority is not very clearly
defined.

Further experimental work aimed to description of the syllable resulted in

lot of other theories. However the question of articulatory mechanism of
syllable in a still an open question in phonetics. We might suppose that
this mechanism is similar in all languages and could be regarded as
phonetic universal.
It is perfectly obvious that no phonetician has succeeded so far in giving
an adequate explanation of what the syllable is. The difficulties seem to
arise from the various possibilities of approach to the unit. There exist two
points of view:

1. Sоme linguists consider the syllable to be a purely articulatory unit

which lacks any functional value. This point of view is defended on the
ground that the boundaries of syllables do not always coincide with those
of morphemes.

2. However the majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest

pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic function.
Trying to define the syllable from articulatory point of view we may talk
about universals. When we mean the functional aspect of the syllable it
should be defined with the reference to the structure of one particular
language.

The definition of the syllable from the functional point of view tends to
single out the following features of the syllable:

a) a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length;

b) a syllable is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents
(which is usually of vowel - consonant type);

c) the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonants is

optional; there are no languages in which vowels are not used as syllable
nuclei, however, there are languages in which this function is performed
by consonants;

d) the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows by the

rules which are specific enough for a particular language.

2. The structure and functions of syllables in English

Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition

vowel - consonant. Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not
with the exceptions of [l], [m], [n], which become syllabic in a final
position preceded by a

noise consonant: bottle [bσtl], bottom [bσtm], button [b/\tn] and [r] (in
those accents which pronounce [r]) perhaps [præps].

The structure of English syllables can be summarized as follows:

• Many syllables have one or more consonants preceding the nucleus.

These make up the syllable onset: me, so, plow.

• Many syllables have one or more consonants, following the nucleus.

They make up the syllable coda. They are traditionally known as closed
syllables: cat, jump.

• The combination of nucleus and coda has a special significance, making

up the rhyming property of a syllable.

Let’s sum up. Syllables are units within words, and they also have an inner
structure of their own. Every syllable has a nucleus, which is the most
sonorous part of the syllable: a vowel or another sonorous sound. If there
are consonants, which are less sonorous, they make up the onset and coda
of the syllable. And in the middle of a word, onsets are greedy: they’ll take
 as many consonants as they can, within the constraints of the grammar of
the language.

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

Phonetics studies human sound-making methods for their
description, classification and transcription
Phonetics is the science which studies the characteristics of
human sound-making, especially those sounds used in speech,
and provides methods for their description, classification and
transcription
Articulatory Phonetics is the study of the way speech
sounds are made by the vocal organs
Acoustic Phonetics studies the physical properties of
speech sound, as transmitted between mouth and ear
Auditory Phonetics studies the perceptual response to
speech sounds, as mediated by ear, auditory nerve and brain
Functional Phonetics is concerned with the range and
function of sounds in specific languages

Phonology is the study of the segmental (speech sound types)

and prosodic (intonation) features which have a differential value

∗ Segmental Phonology analyses speech into discrete

in the language

∗ Supra-segmental (Non-segmental) Phonology analyses

segments, such as phonemes

those features which extend over more then one segment, such
as intonation contours

∗ The problem of the identification of the phonemes of a language

Phonology solves

∗ The problem of the identification of the phonemes in a particular

word, utterance.
The distribution and grouping of phonemes and syllables in words
– phonotactics

Phoneticians are people engaged in the study of phonetics.

Phonologists are people engaged in the study of phonology.
 Theories of Teaching Pronunciation in Current TEFL /
TESOL Practices
Practice
Past
∗ Central position – pronunciation
∗ Accurate pronunciation of isolated sounds or words
∗ Techniques: use of phonetic alphabet, transcription
practice, recognition / discrimination tasks, focused
production tasks, tongue twisters and games

Today
Learn how to produce a wide range of complex and
subtle distinctions which relate sound to meaning at
several different levels.
Frameworks for Comparing Accents of English
Two accents reveal differences of several kinds
• accents employ definite phonological and phonetic means, and
they display differences which can be described by a set
of linguistic parameters or classificatory principles.
• users of an accent make choices of pronunciation forms which can
be defined by
1) the speaker’s social characteristics, such as social status, level
of education, age, sex,
2) a particular communicative situation (formal or informal)
Accent displays feature which correlate with the following

∗ Phonological and phonetic (Linguistic) dimension

dimensions

∗ Socio-communicative dimension

∗ Segmental feature is features peculiar of the system of

Linguistic Dimesion

∗ Supra-segmental or prosodic features are features such as

sounds/phonemes of a certain accent

pitch, utterance- level stress, effects of speech tempo and rhythm

which are superimposed on a succession of sound segments in a

∗ Voice quality is the auditory impression made by certain

speech chain.

mechanical setting of the speech organs over stretches of

speech.
∗ Coarticulatory or adjustment phenomena comprise change of
consonant or vowel quality, loss of consonants or vowels and in
natural sounding pronunciation in conversational English.

∗ The speaker/s social characteristics

Socio-communicative dimension

∗ A particular communicative situation