Sound Patterns of Spoken English

167 Pages·2003·1.76 MB·English

by  Linda Shockey

Sound Patterns of Spoken English
Chapter 1 begins by noting that most people aren’t aware of
the sounds of language. This book is written by one of those
annoying people who listen not to what others say, but to
how they say it. I dedicate it to fellow sound anoraks and to
others interested in spoken language, with a hope that they
will find it useful.
Sound Patterns of
Spoken English
Linda Shockey
© 2003 by Linda Shockey
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5018, USA
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton South, Melbourne,
Victoria 3053, Australia
Kurfürstendamm 57, 10707 Berlin, Germany
The right of Linda Shockey to be identified as the Author of this Work
has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as
permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without
the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2003 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shockey, Linda.
Sound patterns of spoken English / Linda Shockey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-631-22045-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 0-631-22046-1
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English language – Phonology. 2. English language – Spoken
English. 3. English language – Variation. 4. Speech acts
(Linguistics) 5. Conversation. I. Title.
PE1133 .S47 2003
421′.5 – dc21
2002007301
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12.5pt
by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom
by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
For further information on
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com
Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
Preface x
1 Setting the Stage 1
1.1 Phonetics or Phonology? 3
1.1.1 More mind than body (fossils again) 7
1.1.2 A 50/50 mixture 7
1.1.3 More body than mind 8
1.1.4 Functional phonology and perception 9
1.1.5 Have we captured the meaning of ‘phonology’? 10
1.1.6 Influence of phonology on phonetics 10
1.1.7 Back to basics 11
1.2 Fast Speech? 11
1.3 Summary 13
2 Processes in Conversational English 14
2.1 The Vulnerability Hierarchy 14
2.1.1 Frequency 14
2.1.2 Discourse 16
2.1.3 Rate? 17
2.1.4 Membership in a linguistic unit 18
2.1.5 Phonetic/Phonological 18
2.1.6 Morphological 19
vi Contents
2.2 Reduction Processes in English 19
2.2.1 Varieties examined 19
2.3 Stress as a Conditioning Factor 20
2.3.1 Schwa absorption 22
2.3.2 Reduction of closure for obstruents 27
2.3.3 Tapping 29
2.3.4 Devoicing and voicing 30
2.4 Syllabic Conditioning Factors 32
2.4.1 Syllable shape 32
2.4.2 Onsets and codas 33
2.4.3 CVCV alternation 34
2.4.4 Syllable-final adjustments 36
2.4.5 Syllable shape again 42
2.5 Other Processes 42
2.5.1 Î-reduction 43
2.5.2 h-dropping 44
2.5.3 ‘Palatalization’ 44
2.6 Icons 46
2.7 Weak Forms? 46
2.8 Combinations of these Processes 48
3 Attempts at Phonological Explanation 49
3.1 Past Work on Conversational Phonology 49
3.2 Natural Phonology 52
3.3 Variable Rules 53
3.4 More on Rule Order 54
3.5 Attempts in the 1990s 56
3.5.1 Autosegmental 56
3.5.2 Metrical 58
3.5.3 Articulatory 58
3.5.4 Underspecification 59
3.5.5 Firthian prosodics 60
3.5.6 Optimality theory 61
3.5.7 A synthesist 64
Contents vii
3.6 And into the New Millennium 67
3.6.1 Trace/Event theory 67
3.7 Summary 71
4 Experimental Studies in Casual Speech 72
4.1 Production of Casual Speech 72
4.1.1 General production studies 72
4.1.2 Production/Perception studies of particular
processes 80
4.2 Perception of Casual Speech 89
4.2.1 Setting the stage 89
4.2.2 Phonology in speech perception 93
4.2.3 Other theories 104
4.3 Summary 109
5 Applications 111
5.1 Phonology 111
5.1.1 Writ small in English, writ large in other
languages 111
5.1.2 Historical phonology 113
5.2 First and Second Language Acquisition 117
5.2.1 First language acquisition 117
5.2.2 Second language acquisition 119
5.3 Interacting with Computers 124
5.3.1 Speech synthesis 125
5.3.2 Speech recognition 125
5.4 Summary 126
Bibliography 127
Index 142
Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 Map of Lodge’s research sites 21
3.1 t-glottalling in several accents 65
4.1 Citation-form and casual alveolar consonants
in both citation form and casual speech 79
Tables
2.1 Factors influencing casual speech reduction 15
4.1 Listeners’ transcriptions of gated utterances 101
Preface
This is not an introductory book: to get the most from it, a reader
should have studied some linguistics and should therefore know
the basics of phonetics and phonology. There are numerous works
where these basics are presented clearly and knowledgeably, and
it would be an unneccessary duplication of effort (as well as an
embarrassing display of hubris) to attempt a recapitulation of what
is known.
The following books (or others of a similar nature) should be
assimilated before reading Sound Patterns of Spoken English:
Clark, J. and Yallop, C., Introduction to Phonetics andPhonology,
Blackwell, 1995.
Ladefoged, P., Vowels and Consonants, Blackwell, 2000.
Roca, I. and Johnson, W., A Course in Phonology, Blackwell, 1999.
There are hundreds of other useful references included in the text
of this book. A few of these which have formed my approach to
the study of sounds (and to the authors of which I am greatly
indebted) follow:
Bailey, C.-J., New Ways of Analysing Variation in English,
Georgetown University Press, 1973.
Brown, G., Listening to Spoken English, Longman, 1977, 1996.
Hooper, J., Natural Generative Phonology, Academic Press, 1976.