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Accentual Pattern

This document discusses various phonological rules and processes in connected speech in English, including accentual patterns, weak forms, assimilation, reduction, elision, and liaison. Accentual patterns refer to rules for stress placement within words. Weak forms occur when unstressed vowels are reduced in connected speech. Assimilation, reduction, and elision involve sounds changing or being omitted when words are strung together. Assimilation involves a sound taking on attributes of a neighboring sound. Reduction reduces unstressed vowels and syllables. Elision omits sounds altogether. Liaison refers to consonants being pronounced across word boundaries. These connected speech processes help speech flow smoothly and quickly.

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Archana Madpathi
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783 views

Accentual Pattern

This document discusses various phonological rules and processes in connected speech in English, including accentual patterns, weak forms, assimilation, reduction, elision, and liaison. Accentual patterns refer to rules for stress placement within words. Weak forms occur when unstressed vowels are reduced in connected speech. Assimilation, reduction, and elision involve sounds changing or being omitted when words are strung together. Assimilation involves a sound taking on attributes of a neighboring sound. Reduction reduces unstressed vowels and syllables. Elision omits sounds altogether. Liaison refers to consonants being pronounced across word boundaries. These connected speech processes help speech flow smoothly and quickly.

Uploaded by

Archana Madpathi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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• Accentual pattern
 Meaning
 Rules
• Weak forms in connected speech
 Assimilation
 Reduction
 Elision
 Liaison
 Conclusion

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ACCENT
The distinctive manner of pronouncing a language associated
with a particular region, social group, etc., whether of a native
speaker or a foreign speaker or a significant tone/sound.
e.g. British or Indian accent.

RULES FOR ACCENTUAL PATTERN


1. All the English words have some accent, primary or
secondary, on the first or second syllable.
E.g. ‘cough’, cut, great, office, advertise, ar’tistic, Poli’tician,
appli’cation, recom’mended.

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2. Word with weak prefixes are accented on the root, & not the
prefix.
e.g. a' broad, across, admit, advice, ahead, alone, amount

3. The inflectional suffixes –es, -ing, -ed, and the following


derivational suffixes do not affect the accent–age, -dom, -en,
-ess, -ful.

4.Words ending with –ion - accent on the last but one syllable
e.g. imagi’nation, appli’cation, conver’sation, intro’duction.

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5. Words ending with –ic, -ical, -ically - accent on the last but one
syllable (syllable preceding the suffix)
e.g. apolo’getic, e’lectric, scien’tific, sympa’thetic.

6. Words ending with –ial, ially –accent on the last but one
syllable preceding the suffix
e.g. arti’ficial confi’dentially

7. Words ending with –ian –accent on the last but one syllable
e.g. li’brarin, mu’sician

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8. Words ending with –ious – accent on the last but one syllable
e.g. in’dustrious, in’jurious

9. Words ending with –ity –accent on the syllable preceeding the


suffix, i.e. on the third syllable from the end. The ante-
penultimate syllable
e.g. ac’tivity, mo’raity, ne’cessity.

10. Words of more than two syllables ending with –ate – primary
accent is placed two syllables before the suffix, i.e. on the
third syllable from the end.
e.g. complicate, cultivate, educate, fortunate.

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WEAK FORMS IN CONNECTED SPEECH

In natural speech there are many processes that results in


differences between isolated words are the same words in
occurring in connected speech

When we speak naturally we do not pronounce a word, stop and


then continue, fluent speech flows with a rhythm and the
words bump into each other. To make speech flow smoothly
the way we pronounce the end and beginning of some word
can change depending on the sounds at the beginning and end
of those words.

These changes that affect the quality of sounds are known as


Features of connected speech.
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DIFFERENT FORMS :
1. Assimilation
2. Reduction
3. Elision
4. Liaison

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ASSIMILATION
Definition: If a speech is thought of as a string of sounds linked
together, assimilation is what happen to a sound when it its
influenced by one of its neighbor.

For example, the word ‘this’ has the sound /s/ at the end if it is
pronounced on its own. But when followed by ʃ in a word such
as ‘shop’ it often changes rapid in speech through assimilation.

Types :
• Progressive
• Regressive

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1. Progressive : the interchange of a sound which often take
place and identified in plural form words.
Example: Dogs transcription [dogz]
Most of the time it changes when the consonant sound /s/ is
followed by the voiced consonant such as g, d and with the
vowel e.

2. Regressive : when a sound influences one which precedes it;


the most familiar case of regressive assimilation in English is
that of alveolar consonants, such as t, d, s, z, n which are
followed by non-alveolar consonants: assimilation results in a
change of place of articulation from alveolar to a different place

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REDUCTION
• Reduction helps highlight important syllables in another way by
emphasizing unstressed syllables.
• The vowel in an unstressed syllable is reduced in both length
and clarity.
• The most common reduced vowel sound in English is the
“schwa” /ə/.
• Though represented by many different spellings, the schwa is
always a short, completely relaxed and open sound (like
second syllable in “pizza”).
• Contractions are another example of reduction.
• They reduce the number of syllables, and eliminate some
vowels completely. (I am/I’m, you are/you’re, etc.)

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ELISION:
Elision is used to refer to the omission of sounds in connected
speech. In other words, assimilation means the variation of a
sound whereas, elision means the loss of a sound. Both
consonants and vowels may be affected, and sometimes even
whole syllables may be elided.

The term elision describes the disappearance of a sound. For


example, in the utterance He leaves next week speakers would
generally elide (leave out) the /t/ in next week saying /neks
wi:k/.

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Again here, the reason is, putting certain consonant sounds
together while maintaining a regular rhythm and speed.

Examples
The modal 'will' is special. We can use it in the
short form with a subject pronoun and with
questions words.
• She will be late.
• She'll be late.
• Who will be there?
• Who'll be there?

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LIAISON
Definition: “Linking” or “joining together” of sounds is what this
French word refers. Linguistic Pronunciation of the usually
silent consonant final at the end of a word immediately before
another word commencing with a vowel, in such a way that
the consonant is taken over as the initial sound of the
following word.
Examples
In English the best-known case of liaison is the “linking r” there
are many words in English (e.g. ‘car’, ‘here’, ‘tyre’) which in
rhotic accent such as General American or Scots would be
pronounced with a final r but which in BBC pronunciation end
in a vowel when they try to pause or before a consonant

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Another aspect of liaison in English is the movement of a single
consonant at the end of an unstressed word to the beginning of
the next if that is strongly stressed: a well-known example is
‘not at all’, where the t of ‘at’ becomes initial.

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REFERENCE
http://www.ukessays.com/essays/englishlanguage/features-of-
connected-speech-inenglish-english-language-essay.php
http://assimilationphonetics.blogspot.com/

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