Transcribing the Sound of English: A Phonetics Workbook for Words and Discourse

201 Pages·2011·0.7 MB·English

by  Paul Tench

Transcribing the Sound of English
Do you have a fear of transcription? Are you daunted by the prospect of learning
and handling unfamiliar symbols? Th is workbook is for students who are new to
linguistics and phonetics, and off ers a didactic approach to the study and transcription
of the words, rhythm and intonation of English. It can be used independently or
in class and covers all the pronunciation details of words, phrases, rhythm and
intonation. Progress is deliberately gentle with plenty of explanations, examples
and ‘can’t go wrong’ exercises. In addition, there is an associated website with audio
recordings of authentic speech, which provide back-up throughout. Th e audio clips
also introduce students to variations in accents, with eleven diff erent speakers. Going
beyond the transcription of words, the book also ventures into real discourse with the
simplifi cation systems of colloquial English speech, rhythm and intonation.
PAUL TENCH was senior lecturer in phonetics and applied linguistics at the Centre
for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, and is now retired as
an associate researcher there.

Transcribing the
Sound of English
A Phonetics Workbook
for Words and Discourse
PAUL TENCH
Cardiff University
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
Th e Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521166058
© Paul Tench 2011
Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2011
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-521-16605-8 Paperback
ISBN 978-1-107-00019-3 Hardback
Additional resources for this publication at www.cambridge.org/tench
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
Part I Words . . .
Why transcribe? 3
1 Vowels 6
Th e short vowels 6
Th e long vowels 17
Monophthongs (‘pure’ vowels) 18
Diphthongs 25
Th e weak vowels 33
Summary 37
2 Consonants 38
Plosives 38
Nasals 39
Fricatives 39
Aff ricates 44
Approximants 47
Summary 50
Syllabic consonants 50
Infl ections 53
3 Word stress 56
Compound words 57
4 Allophones 60
Consonants 61
Aspiration 61
Glottal reinforcement 63
Voiced fl apping 63
Devoicing 63
/r/ 65
Fronting, backing and rounding 65
Summary of allophones for each consonant 66
v
Contents
Vowels 69
Nasalization 70
Clipping 70
Breaking 70
Smoothing 71
Diphthongization 71
5 Accents 73
Lexical sets 75
USA 77
London 78
West Country 78
Midlands 79
North of England 80
Scotland 81
Wales 82
Northern Ireland 83
Africa 84
India 85
A foreign accent 86
6 Phrases 88
Assimilation 88
Elision 95
Epenthesis 99
Liaison 101
Part II . . . and Discourse
7 Rhythm 105
Prepositions 106
Conjunctions 108
Determiners 111
Titles 114
Pronouns 114
Auxiliary verbs 115
Modal verbs 117
Just, not, so, there 118
Syllable elision in lexical items and phrases 121
Transcription text 1 Goldilocks 124
Transcription text 2 Travelling to Italy 127
Transcription text 3 9/11 128
vi
Contents
8 Intonation: tonality 130
Introduction 130
Symbols 132
Tonality 134
Tonality and grammatical contrasts 143
9 Intonation: tonicity 149
Neutral and marked tonicity 150
Broad and narrow focus 152
Final adjuncts 154
10 Intonation: tone 158
Tones 158
Statements and questions 165
Directives 169
Social interaction 171
11 Intonation: secondary tone 176
Secondary tones 176
Heads and pre-heads 179
12 Intonation: paratones 182
Paratones 182
Calling 185
Bibliography 187
Index 190
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Th anks
to colleagues in the Centre for Language and Communication Research at
Cardiff University who encouraged me, especially to Dr Gerard O’Grady who
checked through a lot of the work and helped with recordings,
to Dean, Nathan and Rob, our good natured and very patient technical staff ,
to Jill Knight who helped with a lot of the typing,
to the two Tims, Maureen, Lisa, Chris, Shona, Gordon, Jennifer, Judy,
Bhaskarrao and Wayne for agreeing to recording their voices in lexical sets
and Su Yanling for recording Chinese lexical tones,
to Cambridge University Press and the authors, Ronald Carter and Michael
McCarthy, of Exploring Spoken English for permission to use a number of
their recordings, and
to the hundreds of undergraduate students of Pronunciation of English and
the scores of postgraduates of Phonology who persevered with the material
and gave me excellent feedback.
viii
Introduction
Transcribing the Sound of English is not so much a coursebook in phonetics
nor a textbook on English phonology, but a training course in developing stu-
dents’ powers of observation on features of English pronunciation and their
skills in recording them in writing. It begins in a very elementary way but it
is thorough, and eventually leads to the most comprehensive coverage of the
sounds of English from words to full discourse that is available anywhere. It is
designed for both native and non-native speakers of English, and for that latter
reason all of the material is available in audio form. Every single word and all
the discourses that are presented in Transcribing the Sound of English have
been recorded and are available at www.cambridge.org/tench. Every single
example with a reference number in the left -hand margin of this book is found
with that same reference on that website.
If you are new to the subject, start at the beginning of Part I and do Chapters
1, 2 and 3 about transcribing words. You are introduced to broad transcription
in a very gentle way, with plenty of practice material – so much, in fact, that a
skilful, confi dent student could actually skip some of it, but there is enough to
provide a less confi dent student with plenty of practice to build up their confi -
dence. Th ere is no key to this practice material, because you cannot go wrong!
Th ere are, however, quick tests (kw(cid:2)k t(cid:3)sts) at strategic points, and for them
a key is provided on the same website. By the end of Chapter 3, you should be
able to transcribe a word like homogeneous without any diffi culty.
You could then choose to ignore Chapter 4 if you do not need to get into
narrow transcription. You could also ignore Chapter 5 on accents if desired.
Th ese two chapters are more advanced and are written in a more academic
style. But you could return to them later.
It would be good to do Chapter 6 on phrases, which returns to a more gentle
approach in broad transcription. It introduces you to features of pronuncia-
tion that may not be immediately obvious when words come together and
aff ect each other. But it only takes a little refl ection to see what quite naturally
happens in your own ordinary, informal speech.
Part II takes you on from words and phrases to full discourse with its
rhythm and intonation systems. Chapter 7 shows the eff ect of rhythm in utter-
ances, especially in terms of the so-called weak forms of words in context. It
is closed with three whole discourses, monologues, which are carefully graded
with guidance to help you to listen out for things, but that guidance becomes
progressively less explicit until you no longer need it.
1