Teaching House Delta Module One

Unit 7 – Phonology 1

Unit 7 – Phonology 1

Introduction

In this section we will be learning about the main features of the phonology of English. We will start
with a look at the sounds that comprise English and how we can describe them. In later units, we will
move on to looking at word and sentence stress and the features of connected speech. In addition,
we will consider the various roles intonation plays in spoken communication.

Objectives
By the end of the section you will:
• have reviewed and extended your command of terminology to describe various
phonological features.
• have reviewed the particular phonological features of English specifically.
• have considered the role of phonology in the classroom.
Connection to the Module 1 Exam
This knowledge is explicitly tested in
• Paper 1 Tasks One & Two
• Paper 1 Task Five
• Paper 1 Task Four
• Paper 1 Task Three
It may also be implicitly tested in
• Paper 2 task One
• Paper 2 task Three

Attitudes towards Teaching Pronunciation

Before we get started on the nuts and bolts of phonology, let’s take a look at some varying attitudes
towards teaching pronunciation in the English Language classroom. Before the dawn of the Direct
Method, there wasn’t much of a focus on spoken language in the language classroom. Indeed, in
some contexts there still isn’t! Even in “communicative” classrooms, with a focus on speaking,
pronunciation is often seen as incidental to the much more important areas of meaning and written
form, grammar and lexis.

Take a few minutes now to consider the role that pronunciation plays in your lessons by
asking yourself the following questions. Make some notes if you like.
• How do you feel about teaching pronunciation?

• How do your learners feel about English pronunciation?

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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

• Do you tend to focus on one area of phonology over another (consider sounds, word stress,
sentence stress, intonation)?

• What level of pronunciation do we hope our learners will achieve? Think about this in terms of
receptive level and productive level.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As with any area of the syllabus, teachers have very different attitudes towards teaching
pronunciation.

Most of us feel ambivalent, at least sometimes, about pronunciation—either about our ability to
transcribe phonemes correctly, place word stress, or describe an intonation pattern as fall, rise-fall??
We may also wonder what level our students truly need to reach with pronunciation—native(like?),
intelligible?

All of this is interesting, necessary and, in actuality, not difficult: it all just takes time to learn, and you
may not have had time to cover it sufficiently in your CELTA course, or the inclination to study it since.
If this is the case for you, now is the time to remedy this—both for the sake of your confidence in the
classroom, your learners, and for your performance on the Delta exam—on which you will be
expected to know the phonemic chart, and be familiar with word stress, connected speech, features
of intonation and so forth.

DISCUSSION: Think more specifically about your level of confidence in teaching the
following features of phonology by giving yourself a score between 1 and 5.
1 = very unconfident / unsure and 5 = very confident.
• Sounds
• Word Stress
• Sentence Stress
• Intonation
Add some notes in each of the categories and then share with your Delta colleagues in the
“Phonology – Fondness or Phobia?” online discussion.
Category Confidence Comments
Low …… High
1...2…3...4…5
Sounds

Word stress

Sentence stress

Intonation
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

Phonemes and Allophones

We’ll be using the words ‘phoneme’(noun) and ‘phonemic’(adjective) extensively throughout this unit,
and, to a lesser extent, ‘allophone’, so let’s begin with a clear definition of these terms and a few
examples.

Spoken language is an arrangement of sounds. A phoneme is “one of the smallest units of speech
that make one word different from another word:”, according to The Cambridge Learner’s dictionary1.
What exactly does this mean? Here is an example.

Sink and think in their written forms are different: one has an (s), and the other (th) before the ink. In
their spoken forms as well, the initial sound varies: /s/ or /θ/. We can therefore conclude that /s/ and
/θ/ are English phonemes: those sounds can create two distinct English words with different
meanings.

The difficulty of certain English phonemes is that they can create ambiguity of meaning for students,
not only in producing words, but also understanding them. This is dependent to a great extent on
context: if you and an English language learner are discussing politics, with each of you using
phrasing like “I think/ people think/do you think?”, and the learner is producing /s/ instead of /θ/
whenever he says ‘think’, this won’t prevent you from understanding him. You may notice it for
correction, but you won’t wonder why they’re talking about sinking.

However, in the absence of a clear context, problems with phonemes can cause breakdowns in
understanding between speakers, as illustrated by this well-known and amusing, if somewhat
contrived video clip to advertise Berlitz language courses2.

In your own teaching experience, can you think of some common sources of confusion
caused by misplaced/substituted phonemes? How do you commonly deal with these types
of errors?

Allophones

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can convey a distinct meaning, while an allophone is a
variant of a phoneme. One phoneme has several allophones. Substituting one allophone for another
allophone of the same phoneme doesn't lead to a different word, just a different pronunciation of the
same word. For example, the letter ‘k’ in ‘kick’ appears twice, with slightly different pronunciation.
They are both allophones of the phoneme /k/.

Here’s another example. Think of the word libel. In phonemic terms this would be written /laɪbl/. But if

1 PHONEME | meaning, definition in Cambridge English Dictionary accessed 12th September 2022
2 Berlitz, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOTpIVxji8 accessed 12th September 2022
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

you say it to yourself, both listening to and feeling what goes on in your mouth, you will notice that
the two /l/ phonemes are different allophonic variations of the phoneme /l/. The first /l/ is known as a
‘clear /l/’ and the second ‘a dark /l/’. The dark /l/ ‘happens’ because it is preceded by the /b/. Indeed it
would be difficult to go from the /b/ to a clear /l/. The International Phonetic Alphabet does distinguish
between the clear and the dark /l/ (transcribing them /l/ and [ɫ] respectively). The English phonemic
chart does not make this distinction for pragmatic reasons.

In some languages, sounds that are phonemes in English are only allophones, leading to a difficulty in
recognizing and producing those sounds in speakers of particular L1s. Classic examples are /b/ and
/v/ in Spanish, /l/ and /r/ in Japanese. When I was living in Poland, I distinctly remember an 8-year-old
student of mine correcting my pronunciation of the Polish word “proszę”. Apparently I was saying the
‘sz’ sound as [ɕ] instead of [ʂ]3 and therefore conveying the word piglet instead of please. Even after
lengthy modelling and drilling by this child, the two sounds still sounded identical (/ʃ/) my A1 level
Polish-speaker / British English-speaking ears – and [checks internet4] they still do. This makes the [ɕ]
and [ʂ] sounds phonemes in Polish, but merely allophones in English.

Phonetics vs phonemics

As a side note, there is often confusion between the international phonetic alphabet
(the IPA) and the English phonemic chart. The IPA contains symbols for all the sounds
made in all known human languages and is much more extensive than the phonemic
chart. When Adrian Underhill designed the English phonemic chart (which he now calls the Sound
Foundations chart he based the symbols on those found in the IPA but selected only those that
comprise the spoken English language. While comparing the chart to the periodic table of chemical
elements, Underhill states:
“A Periodic Table of Sounds could perhaps aspire to show all the sounds in different
languages, or all the sounds included in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
However it is of greater use to learners and teachers of a particular language to have
a table of just the sounds of that language, and even then not all the sounds
(allophones) are needed, but only the sounds that lead to a difference of meaning
(phonemes).” (Underhill, 20225).

When transcribing phonetically, the convention is to use square brackets – e.g. [ɹaɪt] -
whereas, to transcribe phonemically, the slash symbol is used -e.g. /raɪt/.

3 See InternationalPhoneticAlphabet.org, 2022 https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-

sounds/ for an audio version of these sounds from the IPA
4
Speak Polish with Monika (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5K10_iddYs accessed 14th September 2022
5 Underhill, 2022 The Pronunciation Charts https://adrianunderhill.com/the-pronunciation-charts accessed 14th September

2022
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

2: The American English Phonemic Chart; Underhill,

(2008) Macmillan

1: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

English as a Lingua Franca

In terms of other pronunciation issues students might have, how crucial is the correct
recognition/production of phonemes? Any discussion of pronunciation these days must acknowledge
the place of English as a global language, or a Lingua Franca (ELF)—which describes the role of
English as a communicative bridge between non-native speakers of English, sidestepping native
speaker models. In the ELF view, some features of pronunciation are seen as more vital to effective
communication than others. Incorrect consonants lead to more misunderstandings than incorrect
vowels, for example. The implications of this is clear for the classroom – do we need to spend time
encouraging students to produce the schwa (i.e. the weak /ə/ sound in amaze) for example? It is
argued that speakers of English are perfectly understandable if they don’t pronounce the schwa. On
the other hand, it could also be argued that, by raising learners’ awareness of this sound, they will be
better listeners because they will recognize it when they hear it, or perhaps more commonly when
they expect to hear it but don’t.

Jennifer Jenkins is probably the most visible proponent of ELF, and you can listen to an interesting
interview with her on the Pearson English podcast (2021)6

6
Cleeve, R. (2021) English as a Lingua Franca: A Podcast with Jennifer Jenkins https://www.english.com/blog/english-as-a-
Teaching House Delta Module One
Unit 7 – Phonology 1

And this article provides a short and useful summary of ELF7:

The Mechanics of Producing Sounds

Now we’ll look at the various phonemes of English and how we can describe them, in terms of the
following three things:
• where the phonemes are formed (place of articulation)
• how the phonemes are formed (manner of articulation)
• whether the vocal cords vibrate or not (voiced or unvoiced)

Vowels vs consonants
We need to further divide these descriptions into two categories: vowels and consonants. In terms of
the alphabet, the distinction between vowels and consonants is familiar, but perhaps the phonemic
production distinction is less familiar.
• Vowels are made by forcing air from the lungs through the lips while not obstructing or
constricting this air by any part of the throat, mouth, or nose (aka the articulators). To make
different vowels, you change the position of the tongue, the jaw or the lips.
• Vowels are divided into monophthongs and diphthongs.
o Monophthongs are the sound of a single vowel. The sound of ‘u’ in ‘cup’ is /ʌ /, for
example.
o Diphthongs are two vowel sounds produced consecutively in the same syllable. The
sound of ‘ou’ in ‘mouth’ is / aʊ/, for example.
• Consonants, on the other hand, are made by obstructing or constricting the air from the lungs
with one or more of the articulators.

Place of articulation

Below is a diagram showing the articulatory anatomy in detail.

To talk about the place of articulation—where the phonemes are formed— try making the sound
yourself and use the diagram to identify the articulators employed to make the sound. For example, to
make /b/ and /p/, you use both lips—that is where the sound is formed. Therefore, /b/ and /p/ are bilabial
phonemes.

Here is a list of the articulatory terms:

• Bilabial – using both lips
• Labio-dental – lower lip touches upper teeth
• Dental – tongue touches upper teeth

lingua-franca-a-podcast-with-jennifer-jenkins/ accessed 12th September 2022

7
Jenkins, J. (2005) ‘The ABC of ELT … ‘ELF’ (2005), IATEFL Issues,
https://associates.iatefl.org/pages/materials/voicespdf/gi8.pdf accessed 12th September 2022
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

• Alveolar – tongue touches ridge behind upper front teeth (i.e. the alveolar ridge)
• Palato-alveolar (or post-alveolar) – tongue touches point between alveolar ridge and palate
(roof of mouth)
• Palatal – tongue touches (in this case, almost spreads itself on) the palate.
• Velar – the back of the tongue touches the velum (aka the soft palate at the back of the
mouth).
• Glottal – the glottis (that bit that’s way back and down the throat a bit – the part that produces
glottal stops) closes or almost closes.

3: Places of articulation diagram, Coxhead, P. (2006)

MINI QUIZ
Look at the diagram and decide where the place of articulation is for these phonemes:
1. /l/
2. /t/
3. /θ/ (‘thing’, for example)
4. /v/

Answers:
1. /l/ is formed by touching the tongue to the alveolar ridge → it is alveolar (or lingua-
alveolar since the tongue (lingua) is involved)
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

2. /t/ is also alveolar. The manner and voice of /t/ differs from /l/, though, and we’ll be looking at
manner and voice momentarily.
3. /θ/ is formed by contact between the tongue and the teeth (dental)→ it is dental (or lingua-
dental since the tongue is involved).
4. /v/ is made by touching the bottom lip (labio) with the teeth (dental)→ it is labio-dental.

Manner of articulation

To further distinguish between phonemes, we can specify the manner of articulation. How the air
passes through the articulators

Here are the terms:

• Plosive → the airflow is stopped and then released (/p/, for example)

• Fricative→ the airflow is restricted, but not stopped. (/f/ is restricted by the teeth against the
bottom lip)

• Affricate → the airflow is stopped (like a plosive), but then released with restriction (like a
fricative) An example is /tʃ/, which is the ‘ch’ in ‘chop’.

• Nasal →the airflow is stopped in the mouth and released through the nasal cavity (/m/, for
example).

• Approximant, or Liquid →the articulators don’t fully constrict or obstruct airflow, producing
something between a consonant and a vowel sound (/l/, for example).

• Glide → the articulators glide the consonant sound into the vowel sound that follows. /w/, for
example, in the word ‘won’. /w/ glides into /ʌ/

Voiced or unvoiced?

Finally, phonemes are categorized into yet another group: are they voiced or unvoiced? Voicing refers
to the vibration of the vocal cords—some phonemes produce this vibration, and some don’t. Put your
hand on your throat and say a long /v/--‐--‐ you will feel a vibration. Now try /f/--‐--‐no vibration.
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

TASK
Practice what we’ve just covered by putting the English consonant phonemes into the
correct place on the chart below. First make the sound and consider the location of your
articulators – teeth, tongue, lips. Then consider how you are pronouncing it in terms of the
length and resistance of airflow, and finally whether it’s voiced or unvoiced by checking
your vocal cords.

The first one has been done for you.

There is a downloadable Word version of this chart that you can fill in before checking your answers
below. See the “Place, Manner, Voice Chart” worksheet on Blackboard.

/p/ - pin /k/ - kit /s/ - sun /ŋ/ -thing

/b/ - bed /g/ - gap /z/ - zip /h/- hat
/t/ - ten /f/ - fill / ʃ/ - shell /l/ -late
/d/ - dog /v/ - van /ʒ/ - genre /r/ -run
/t ʃ / - chin /θ/ - think /m/ - mat /w/ - win
/dʒ/ -juice /ð/ - though /n/ - nice /j/ - you

Place
Manner Voiced? Bilabial labiodental dental alveolar postalveolar palatal velar glottal
Plosive - /p/ [ʔ]8
+
Fricative -
+
Affricate -
+
Nasal +
Liquid +
Glide +

8The “glottal stop” is not included in Underhill’s phonemic charts, but it is a common sound in many varieties of English so it’s
worth knowing the symbol!
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

Answers:

Place
Manner Voiced? Bilabial labiodental dental alveolar postalveolar palatal velar glottal
Plosive - /p/ /t/ /k/ [ʔ]
+ /b/ /d/ /g/
Fricative - /f/ /θ/ /s/ /ʃ/ /h/
+ /v/ /ð/ /z/ /ʒ/
Affricate - /tʃ/
+ /dʒ/
Nasal + /m/ /n/ /ŋ/
Liquid + /l/
Glide + /w/ /j/

If you need practice you can test yourself with the Sounds App by Macmillan, in collaboration with
Adrian Underhill – the original creator of the English and American phonemic charts, used widely in
dictionaries and learning materials to this day. Install it on your mobile device and prepare for
phonology teaching and the Delta exam while you’re on the bus or having a coffee break.

Sounds and their relationship with stress

Word Stress

Stress is when a syllable within a word (also in an utterance or sentence—we will discuss this later) is
made louder (volume), higher (pitch) and longer (length); there is a greater expulsion of air. The other
syllables appear weaker by contrast. When we talk about stress in an utterance or tone unit, the
stressed syllable is also where a change in pitch takes place.

How important is word stress? To answer this question, consider whether you have ever had a
learner who consistently struggled with word stress. What effect did this have on his / her
intelligibility? Again, one or two slips with word stress are unlikely to impede communication entirely,
but consistent errors will mean that the listener is trying so hard to repair one error that he or she will
lose track of the overall message. Try saying this (nonsense) sentence with the given word stress
errors and see whether a nearby listener can decode the message:

My brother doesn’t appreciate margarine in his cinnamon roll

They probably can, but it might demand patience or a bit of creative guesswork!

In certain rare circumstances, a change in word stress may indeed obscure the meaning entirely
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

(consider what happens if we mis‐stress ‘important’ and put the stress on the first syllable– it
becomes ‘impotent’! The described person has gone from being an accomplished individual to being
powerless, in the flick of one wrongly stressed syllable).

Marking stress
A single syllable word won’t be marked for stress. A multi--‐syllable word will be marked for primary
stress, and—depending on the word—may be marked for secondary stress, also, though how useful
this is for learners is debatable.

Here is ‘far-fetched’, written in phonemic script, and marked for primary stress (ˈ) and secondary
stress (ˌ)
/ˌfaːˈfetʃt/

Most of the words you’ll come across will have only primary stress. Notice the marking’s position—it
is placed right before the stressed syllable.

TASK
Transcribe the following words into phonemic script and mark the stressed syllable, as
in the example above. Then check your answers below.

1. alleviate 5. distinct
2. asylum 6. footprint
3. benefit 7. morose
4. civil 8. sullen

Answers:

1. /əˈliːvieɪt/ 5. /dɪˈstɪŋt/
2. /əˈsɑɪləm/ 6. /ˈfʊtprɪnt/
3. /ˈbenɪfɪt/ 7. /məˈrəʊs/
4. /ˈsɪvəl/ 8. /ˈsʌlən/

Rules of word stress

There are some rules governing word stress—they aren’t perfect, and exceptions exist, but they
might be helpful for learners to know.
Teaching House Delta Module One
Unit 7 – Phonology 1

TASK
Evaluating word stress rules: Read the rules below and try to think of exceptions to these
rules.

• There is ‘front weight’ in many nouns and adjectives: water/ugly

• In words with suffixes the suffixes are never stressed: ‐ly quietly etc.
• There are words which can be used as a verb or a noun in English, for example:
• increase; export; import; overflow; insult; decrease; protest; In all these words, the noun has the
stress on the first syllable, and the verb has the stress on the last syllable.
• The following suffixes (--‐ary, --‐ator...etc.) cause the stress to be placed on the fourth syllable
from the end of the word (this applies, of course, only to words of four or more syllables).
• Many ‘everyday’ nouns and adjectives of two--‐syllable length are stressed on the first syllable.
Examples are: sister, brother, water, paper.
• A general tendency is for the stressed syllable to be somewhere in the middle of the word
rather than on the first or last syllable in words of four, five or six syllables.
• Compound Words: Words formed from a combination of two words tend to be stressed on the
first element. Examples are: postman, newspaper, teapot and crossword

Sentence Stress
Stress in sentences is decidedly less fixed than word stress. We will discuss sentence stress—
sometimes called prominence, or nuclear stress—in more detail in the next phonology section of the
course, in Unit 8, which covers intonation. However, it is worth introducing briefly here.

It is usual for the content words to be stressed in a sentence—the nouns, verbs, adverbs. The
function words—prepositions, articles, pronouns, auxiliaries, etc.- generally go unstressed. However,
in a sentence like—“I told you I do want to go!”—the auxiliary ‘do’ is added and stressed, probably for
emphasis or to clarify and correct a misconception. This is called “contrastive stress”.

Consider this sentence: My brother doesn’t like dogs. The stress could be placed in multiple locations,
depending on the meaning we wish to communicate. In a neutral context it would probably be placed
on “dogs”. But let’s look at how shifting the stress can change the message.

MINI-QUIZ—the clause on the left has a word in bold, and this is the stressed word. Join
each clause with a clause on the right, looking for a logical connection based on the stressed
word.

1. My brother doesn’t like dogs, a. but my sister does.

2. My brother doesn’t like dogs, b. does yours?
3. My brother doesn’t like dogs, c. he loves them!
4. My brother doesn’t like dogs, d. but he does like cats.
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

Answers:

1b/2c/3a/4d

How effective would this exercise be in teaching sentence stress? There are many other
ways to do this—what exercises have you used, or have seen your colleagues use?

This kind of stress is called "contrastive stress".

Weak forms
Some English words have two forms of pronunciation, one when the word is stressed, and one when
it is unstressed. Think of how the word ‘can’ is pronounced in the following two sentences. Which
one is stressed, and which is not?
1. Don’t worry, I can do it.
2. I don’t want to do it, but I can do it.
In the first sentence, it is probably ‘I’ that is stressed. ‘Can’ is unstressed, and would be written in
phonemic script this way: /kən/ This is the weak form of ‘can’.

In the second sentence, ‘can’ is stressed because it is being contrasted with ‘want’. Now ‘can’ is
pronounced /kæn/. This is the strong form of ‘can’.

The schwa /ə/ is the most common weak form, but /ɪ/ is also common: it is used in the weak form of
‘been’, for example in the sentence I’ve been teaching for five years.

TASK—Look at the following selection of function words. In phonemic script, write the
strong and weak form of each. Either do this by hand on a piece of paper (good practice for
the Delta exam!) or use the /fəˈni:mɪk/ Script Typewriter 1.69. TIP, using a Unicode font,
such as Lucida Sans Unicode, will help preserve the phonemic symbols in digital
documents.
Word Strong form Weak form Word Strong form Weak form
the from
some to
and are
as have
your do
he must
him could
us

9MacKichan, P (2013) /fəˈni:mɪk/ Script Typewriter 1.6, accessed http://www.e-lang.co.uk/mackichan/call/pron/type.html on

16th September 2022
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

Answers:
Check your answers below.

Word Strong form Weak form Word Strong form Weak form
the /ði:/ /ðә/ from /frʌm/or/frɑm/ /frәm/
some /sʌm/ /səm/ to /tu:/ /tә/
and /ænd/ /ən/ or /ənd/ are /ɑ:r/ or /ɑ:/ /әr/ or /ә/
as /æz/ /əz/ have /hæv/ /әv/ or /hәv/
your /jɔːr/or /jɔː/ /jər/ or /jə/ do /du:/ /dә/
he /hi:/ /hɪ/ or /ɪ/ must /mʌst/ /məs/
him /hɪm/ /ɪm/ could /kʌd/ /kəd/
us /ʌs/ or /ʌz/ /әs/ or /әz/

The Stress‐timed rhythm of English

Stressed and unstressed syllables are a major feature of English, and this has resulted in English
being called a ‘stress-timed’ language. This is opposed to some other languages (Japanese, French,
Spanish, Chinese) which are considered to have a syllable‐timed rhythm. In reality, rather than
languages being in one category or another, it is probably more of a cline with languages having
higher and lower degrees of stress or syllable timing. The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching
and Applied Linguistics gives this definition:

“A stress timed language (such as English) is a speech rhythm in which the stressed syllables recur at
equal intervals of time.” (2002)

For example, the following question

“Has anyone heard // from John yet?”

can be divided into two groups of syllables, each with one stressed syllable and additional unstressed
syllables. There are 5 syllables in the first group, and 3 in the second group. Yet, if you time how long
it takes to say each group in natural speech, you will find that it takes roughly the same number of
seconds. We compress the unstressed syllables to make them fit in the available time; this process is
called accommodation.

Syllable timed languages are ones in which all syllables are said to occur at equal intervals. For a
native speaker of a syllable timed language, learning to stretch and compress syllables—and learning
to understand stretched and compressed syllables—is often a long process.
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Unit 7 – Phonology 1

Connected Speech

Connected speech is the term for what happens when words are spoken together, with one
phoneme moving into the other , usually with as little effort as possible. This differs from what we
could call the ‘dictionary pronunciation’—the ideal, undistorted pronunciation of the word. Once we
put the word into natural speech with other words, distortion often occurs. As discussed above, weak
forms are one of the results of words being spoken in the context of a longer stream of discourse.

Below are definitions and examples for some other important features of connected speech.

Assimilation – sound change

Assimilation is when a speech sound changes to become more like another sound which follows or
precedes it.
Do you have ten bucks?
The /b/ is a bilabial, and so is /m/. This makes /m/ and /b/ easier to say in combination than the lingua‐
alveolar /n/ and /b/. The result is that in natural speech this would become /temˈbʌks/. You could say
that the /n/ assimilates to a /m/

Catenation – sound connection

Catenation is when the consonant sound at the end of one word joins with a vowel sound at the
beginning of another.
I won’t wait all day!
The /t/ at the end of ‘wait’ moves directly into the /ɔ/ of ‘all’. The result is /tɔl/. You could say the /t/
catenates with the /ɔ/

Elision – sound omission

Elision is when a syllable that exists in written form is left out in speech. “Family” becomes /fæmliː/ .
The /d/ in and disappears in biscuits and gravy /ˌbɪskɪtsənˈgreɪviː/. In this case you could say that
you elide the /d/ in and

Intrusion – sound omission

Intrusion is when an extra sound is inserted between words to ease the movement from one word to
another beginning with a vowel.
Please do it.
A /w/ sound is inserted between the /u/ of ‘do’ and the /ɪ/ of ‘it’. The result is /duwɪt/. This is called an
intrusive /w/. The /w/ intrudes between do and it.

Reduction
Reduction is when unstressed grammatical words (prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, etc.) sound
shorter; vowels can disappear in words and contractions.
I have to go.
Teaching House Delta Module One
Unit 7 – Phonology 1

The /hæv/ becomes reduced in natural speech; the whole sentence becomes
/aɪjæftəˈgoʊ/ (US chart) /aɪjæftəˈgəʊ / (UK chart)

MINI-QUIZ - Match the connected speech terms from above to the examples. Write what
happens in a full sentence.
E.g. in “put your hand up” the final ‘t’ in put assimilates to a /tʃ/

1. Elision a) An apple
2. Assimilation b) I agree.
3. Intrusion c) Old woman
4. Catenation d) I took them home.
5. Reduction e) Get out.

Answers:

1c – the ‘d’ in ‘old’ is elided

2e – the ‘t’ in get assimilates to a /d/
3b – there is an intrusive /j/ between ‘I’ and ‘agree’
4a – the /n/ in ‘an’ catenates with the /æ/ in apple
5d – ‘them’ reduces to /əm/ and home reduces to /oʊm/.(These are both examples of
elision as well – the overall sentence is an example of reduction)

Our focus on phonology continues in the next section of the course, where we will be covering
suprasegmental features of phonology including intonation.

Suggested further reading

Kelly, G. (2000) How to Teach Pronunciation Longman

Kenworthy J. (1987) Teaching English Pronunciation Longman
Celce-Murcia, M. et al (2010) Teaching Pronunciation: A course book and reference guide, CUP
Roach P (2001) Phonetics, OUP
Rogerson-Revell, P (2011) English Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching, Bloomsbury
Underhill, A. (2005) Sound Foundations (2nd Edition), Macmillan