Romeo and Juliet Film and Text Analysis

ph singlemics What is phonemics? phonology is the study of the estim adapted system of wrangles. It is a huge atomic number 18a of language theory and it is difficult to do to a greater extent on a general language course than construct an unwrapline k straight sortledge of what it includes. In an exam, you whitethorn be asked to comment on a text that you ar seeing for the low gear time in term of various language descriptions, of which phonology whitethorn be atomic number 53. At angiotensin converting enzyme extreme, phonology is concerned with manakin and physiology the organs of saving and how we learn to employment them.At a nonher(prenominal) extreme, phonology shades into socio-linguistics as we deal social attitudes to features of vigorous such(prenominal)(prenominal) as dialect and intonation. And part of the subject is concerned with keying prey standard ways of recording dustup, and defending this emblemic entirelyy. For most kinds of study pe rhaps a language investigation into the phonologic development of little children or regional variations in punctuate, you pull up stakes need to physical exertion pho unclutteric state of affairsment to be credible.But this is non necessary in all kinds of study in an exam, you may be concerned with sty incliningic readys of with child(p) in advertising or literature, such as assonance, hoarfrost or onomatopoeia and you do not need to utilization special phonic symbols to do this. The physics and physiology of talk Man is distinguished from the other primates by having the apparatus to make the ponderouss of speech. Of course meet around of us learn to blab without ever fucking much(prenominal) about these organs, save in a swooning and general smack so that we k directly how a cold or sore throat alters our bear per socio-economic yearance.Language scientists stick out a real gun posted understanding of how the tender body start outs the sound s of speech. Leaving to wholeness side the vast subject of how we choose particular utterances and identify the sounds we need, we notify suppose rather merely of how we utilise our lungs to breathe out air, produce quivers in the larynx and then map our tongue, teething and lips to inter convince the sounds. The diagram below delivers or so of the more(prenominal) important speech organs. phonology This kind of diagram helps us to understand what we view in others moreover is little utilizable in understanding our own speech.Scientists potty in a flash place small cameras into the mouths of experimental subjects, and mention rough of the physical exitments that accom p any speech. But most of us move our vocal organs by reflexes or a sensory faculty of the sound we hope to produce, and ar not likely to benefit from watching movement in the vocal fold. The diagram is a simplified cross-section through with(predicate) the human head which we could not see in reality in a living speaker, though a simulation might be instructive. But we do observe some external signs of speech sounds apart from what we heed.A hardly a(prenominal) mass put whiz across the ability to understand most of a speakers utterances from lip-reading. But umteen more be possessed of a moxie of when the lip-movement does or does not correspond to what we hear we notice this when we watch a feature film with dubbed dialogue, or a TV broadcast whither the sound is not synchronized with what we see. The diagram fag end as head as institute useful in conjunction with descriptions of sounds for cause indicating where the airflow is constricted to produce fricatives, whether on the palate, the alveolar ridge, the teeth or the teeth and lips together.Speech therapists stool a genuinely full moon stoped working k nowadaysledge of the physiology of human speech, and of exercises and remedies to over cut difficulties some of us encounter in speaking, wh ere these have physical causes. An understanding of the anatomy is in addition useful to various kinds of expert who consider people to use their voices in special or laughable ways. These would include singing teachers and voice coaches for actors, as well as the fifty-fifty more specialized coaches who train actors to produce the speech sounds of hitherto un long-familiar varieties of side or other languages.At a more basic level, my French teacher at school insisted that we (his pupils) could produce definite vowel sound sounds only with our mouths more open than we would ever need to do part speaking face. And a literally stiff top(prenominal) lip is a great help if i wishes to mimic the speech sounds of Queen Elizabeth II. secure Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. internet/armoore/ Phonology So what happens? Mostly we use air that is moving out of our lungs (pulmonic egressive air) to speak.We may pause treadrary hookup breathing in, or try to use the ingressive air hardly this is likely to produce quiet speech, which is undecipherable to our magnetic inclinati mavinners. (David Crystal notes how the rulerly balanced respiratory cycle is altered by speech, so that we breathe out slowly, utilize the air for speech, and breathe in swiftly, in order to keep talking). In languages other than side of meat, speakers may also use non-pulmonic sound, such as clicks ( arrange in southern Africa) or glottalic sounds ( set worldwide). In the larynx, the vocal folds state of affairs up vibrations in the egressive air.The vibrating air passes through further cavities which can modify the sound and finally argon articulated by the passive (immobile) articulators the hard palate, the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth and the active (mobile) articulators. These argon the pharynx, the velum (or leisurely palate), the jaw and lower teeth, the lips and, above all, the tongue. This is so important and so flexile an organ, that languag e scientists identify distinguishable regions of the tongue by name, as these atomic number 18 associated with particular sounds.Working outwards these atomic number 18 the supportside oppo position the soft palate the centre opposite the meeting point of hard and soft palate the wait opposite the hard palate the blade the tapering area facing the ridge of teeth the full point the extreme end of the tongue The first three of these ( buns, centre and bounder) are cognize together as the dorsum (which is Latin for backbone or spine) Phonology, phonemes and phonics You may have known for some time that the suffix phone is to do with sounds. Think, for instance, of telephone, microphone, gramophone and xylophone. The morpheme comes from classical phonema, which center a sound. Telephone means distant sound Microphone means small sound (because it sends an input to an amplifier which in turn drives loudspeakers so the original sound is small compared to the out put sound) Gramophone was originally a trade name. It comes from inverting the original salmagundi, record player (=sound-writing) so called because the sound ca utilise a needle to trace a pattern on a develop cylinder. The process is reversed for playing the sound back Xylophone means wood sound (because the factor is one of very few where the musical note is produced simply by making wood resonate) The primal consentaneous of grammar is a morpheme.A basic unit of write language is a grapheme. And the basic unit of sound is a phoneme. However, this is technically what Professor Crystal describes as the smallest creaseive unit and it is highly useful to you in explaining things but strictly speaking may not exist in real utter language use. That is, almost anything you say is a continuum and you rarely assemble a series of discrete sounds into a connected whole. (It is possible to do this with synthesised speech, as apply by Professor Stephen Hawking but the guide is so different from by nature occurring speech that we can recognize it instantly. And in that location is no perfect or single right way to say anything just as well because we can neer just now reproduce a previous performance. Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology However, in your comments on phonology, you allow for for sure want sometimes to focus on single phonemes or small sequences of phonemes. A phoneme is a sound segment of words or syllables. Quite a good way to understand how it may fate meaning is to consider how replacing it with another phoneme get out pitch the word so if we replace the oculus sound in bad we can make bawd, bed, bid, bird and bud. In ii issues here one letter is replaced with two but in all these contingencys it is a single vowel sound that changes. ) The first people to write in English used an existing alphabet the Roman alphabet, which was itself fitted from the Grecian alphabet for writi ng in Latin. (In the Roman Empire, Latin was the official language of government and administration, and in particular of the forces but in the eastern parts of the empire Greek was the official language, and in Rome Greek was communicate as widely as Latin.Because these first authors of English (Latin-speaking Roman monks) had more sounds than letters, they used the analogous letters to represent different sounds perhaps making the assumption that the reader would recognize the word, and supply the usurp sounds. It would be galore(postnominal) years before anyone would think it possible to have more consistent spelling, and this has never been a realistic option for writers of English, though spelling has changed over time. And, in any case, the sounds of Old English are not exactly the identical as the sounds of modern English.As linguists have become certain of more and more languages, umteen with sounds never heard in English, they have tried to create a comprehensive set of symbols to correspond to features of sound vowels, amenables, clicks and glottalic sounds and non-segmental or suprasegmental features, such as tensity and tone. Among many schemes used by linguists one has perhaps more authority than most, as it is the product of the transnational phonetic Association (IPA). In the table below, you give see the phonetic characters that correspond to the phonemes used in averageal mouth English.To give examples is problematic, as no two speakers pass on produce the kindred sound. In the case of the vowels and a few consonants, the examples will not match the sounds produced by all speakers they reflect the variety of express known as Received Pronunciation or RP. Note that RP is not specific to any region, but uses more of the sounds found in the south and midlands than in the magnetic north. It is a socially prestigious accent, saveed in greater or slight degree by broadcasters, civil servants, barristers and people who record speaking clock messages. It is not fixed and has changed measurably in the last 50 years.But to give one example, the sound delineated by ? is not common to all UK native speakers. In many parts of London and the south-east of England the sound represented by f will be substituted. So, in an advertisement, the mother-in-law of Vinnie Jones (former soccer player for Wimbledon and Wales now an actor) says I fought e was a big fug (/a? f t i? w? z ? b? g fug/). You may also wonder what has happened to the letter x. This is used in English to represent two consonant sounds, those of k and s or of k and z. In phonetic placement these symbols will be used.Consonant and vowel each have two related but distinct meanings in English. In writing of phonology, you need to make the distinction clear. When you were younger you may have learned that b,c,d,f and so on are consonants while a,e,i,o,u are vowels and you may have wondered about y. In this case consonants and vowels bear on the let ters that commonly represent the relevant sounds. Phonologists are interested in vowel and consonant sounds and the phonetic symbols that represent these (including vowel and consonant letters). It may be wise for you to use the words consonant and vowel (alone) to denote the sounds.But it is better to use an unambiguous phrase and write or speak about consonant or vowel sounds, consonant or vowel letters and consonant or vowel symbols. In most words these sounds can be identified, but there are some cases where we move from one vowel to another to create an effect that is like n each and these are diphthongs. We also have some triphthongs where three vowel sounds come in succession in words such as come alive, power and sure. (But this depends on the speaker many of us alter the sounds so that we say our as if it were are. For whatchamacallit you may p mend the term vowel glides and say that fine and boy contain two-vowel glides while fire may contain a three-vowel glide. C opyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology IPA symbols for the sounds of English The examples order of battle the letters in bold that correspond to the sound that they illustrate. You will flummox guidance below on how to use these symbols in electronic documents. The IPA distributes audio files in analog and digital form, with specimen orthoepys of these sounds. Consonants pip, pot p b bat, hemipteron t tell, table d dog, dig k cat, key g get, gum f fish, ph phone v van, vat ? th thick, th thump, faith th ? th these, th there, flavorless th s sat, sit z zebra, zap ? sh ship ? treasure, leisure s s h hop, hut t? ch chip dge, dge d? lodg judg dg dg m man, mumm mmy mm n man, pan n n ng, ng ? sing wrong ng l let, lips r rub, ran w wait, wrick j yet, yacht Short vowels ? bit, dizzy i i ? bet, hea e ead ea ? cat, dad a a ? dog, rotten o o ? cut, nut u u ? put, soo u oot oo ? about, clever er big vowels i? crea eam , see een ea ee bur fir urn, ir irm ur har far ard, ar ar cor fau orn, au aun or u? boo glue oob, ue oo Diphthongs a? spice, pie i ie wai fate ait, a ai toy joy oy, oy oy oa oats, note o a? clow vow own, ow ow bor ored, pour oured or our dee pie eer, ie ier ee hai bea air, ea ear ai cur fue ure, ue uel ur Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology A phoneme is a speech sound that helps us construct meaning. That is, if we replace it with another sound (where this is possible) we get a new meaning or no meaning at all.If I replace the sign consonant (/r/) from rubble, I can get double or Hubble (astronomer for whom the space teles wangle is named) or meaningless forms (as regards the lexicon of standard English) like fubble and wubble. The same thing happens if I change the vowel and get rabble, rebel, Ribble (an English river) and the nonsense form robble. (I have used the conventional spelling of rebel here, but to avoid c onfusion should perhaps use phonetic transcription, so that replacements would always appear in the same position as the character they replace. But what happens when a phoneme is adapted to the spoken context in which it occurs, in ways that do not alter the meaning either for speaker or hearer. Rather than say these are different phonemes that share the same meaning we use the model of allophones, which are bods of a phoneme. Thus if we isolate the l sound in the sign position in lick and in the terminal position in ball, we should be able to hear that the sound is (physically) different as is the way our speech organs produce it. Technically, in the countenance case, the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum or soft palate.The initial l sound is called clear l, while the terminal l sound is sometimes called a dark l. When we want to show the detail of phonetic variants or allophones we enclose the symbols in square brackets whereas in transcribing sounds from a phonol ogical viewpoint we use delivery lines. So, using the IPA transcription l is clear l, while ? is dark l. If this is not clear think am I only describing a sound (irrespective of how this sound fits into a system, has meaning and so on)? If so, use square brackets. Am I trying to show how the sound is part of a wider system (irrespective of how exactly it sounds in a devoted instance)?If so, use slant brackets. So long as we need a form of transcription, we will rely on the IPA scheme. But increasingly it is possible to use digital recording and reproduction to produce reference versions of sounds. This would not, of course, pr raset change in the choice of which particular sounds to use in a given context. When people wonder about bother (h? r? s) or harass (h? r? s) they usually are able to articulate either, and are concerned about which reveals them as more or less improve in the use of the proper form. For your information, the stress historically falls on the first syllabl e, to rhyme with occlude thus in both Pocket Oxford UK, 1969 and Funk & Wagnalls New Practical Standard US, 1946. The fashion for hu-rass is found on both sides of the Atlantic and we should not credit it to, or blame it on, US speakers of English. ) Phonologists also refer to segments. A segment is a discrete unit that can be identified in a stream of speech, according to Professor Crystal. In English the segments would correspond to vowel sounds and consonant sounds, say.This is a clear metaphor if we think of fruit the number of segments varies, but is finite in a whole fruit. So some languages have few segments and others many from 11 in Rotokas and Mura to 141 in Xu. The term may be most laborsaving in indicating what non-segmental or supra-segmental (above the segments) features of spoken language are. Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology The sounds of English Vowels English has twelve vowel sounds. In the table above they are d ivided into s still unretentive and five long vowels. An alternative way of organizing them is ccording to where (in the mouth) they are produced. This method allows us to describe them as forward, central and back. We can qualify them further by how high the tongue and lower jaw are when we make these vowel sounds, and by whether our lips are rounded or spread, and finally by whether they are short or long. This scheme shows the following arrangement Front vowels /i? / cream, seen (long high front spread vowel) /? /- bit, silly (short high front spread vowel) /? / bet, head (short mid front spread vowel) this may also be shown by the symbol /e/ /? cat, dad (short low front spread vowel) this may also be shown by /a/ rally vowels / /- burn, firm (long mid central spread vowel) this may also be shown by the symbol / / /? / about, clever (short mid central spread vowel) this is sometimes known as schwa, or the objective vowel sound it never occurs in a dysphoric posi tion. /? / cut, nut (short low front spread vowel) this vowel is quite uncommon among speakers in the Midlands and further north in Britain Back vowels /u? / boob, glue (long high back rounded vowel) /? put, soot (short high back rounded vowel) also shown by /u/ / / corn, faun (long mid back rounded vowel) also shown by /o? / /? /- dog, rotten (short low back rounded vowel) also shown by /o/ / / hard, far (long low back spread vowel) We can also arrange the vowels in a table or even depict them against a cross-section of the human mouth. hither is an example of a simple table Front High Mid Low Central Back ? i? ? ? ? ? ? u? ? Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology DiphthongsDiphthongs are sounds that begin as one vowel and end as another, while gliding among them. For this reason they are sometimes expound as glide vowels. How many are there? Almost every modern authority says eight-spot but they do not all list the same eig ht (check this for yourself). Simeon Potter, in Our Language (Potter, S, 1950 Chapter VI, Sounds and Spelling, London, Penguin) says there are nine and lists those I have shown in the table above, all of which I have found in the modern reference works. The one most usually take outted is / / as in bored. umpteen speakers do not use this diphthong, but use the same vowel in poured as in duplicity but it is alive and well in the north of Britain. Potter notes that all English diphthongs are locomote that is the first element is stressed more than the second. Other languages have rising diphthongs, where the second element is stressed, as in Italian uomo (man) and uovo (egg). Consonants Some authorities claim one or two fewer consonants than I have shown above, regarding those with double symbols (/t? / and /d? /) as diphthong consonants in Potters phrase. The list omits one sound that is not strictly a consonant but works like one.The full IPA list of phonetic symbols includes some for non-pulmonic consonants (not made with air coming from the lungs), click and glottal sounds. In some varieties of English, especially in the south of Britain (but the sound has migrated north) we find the glottal plosive or glottal end up, shown by the symbol /? / (essentially a question mark without the dot at the tail). This sound occurs in place of /t/ for some speakers so /bot? l/ or /botl/ (bottle) become /bo l/ or /bo? l/. We form consonants by unequivocal or impeding the egressive (outward) flow of air.We do this with the articulators from the glottis, past the velum, the hard palate and alveolar ridge and the tongue, to the teeth and lips. The sound results from three things Voicing All vowels mustiness be indulgent they are caused by vibration in the vocal cords. But consonants may be voiced or not. Some of the consonant sounds of English come in pairs that differ in being voiced or not in which case they are described as arduous or unverbalised. So b is voiced and p is the unvoiced consonant in one pair, while voiced g and voiceless k form another pair.We can explain the consonant sounds by the place where the juncture principally occurs or by the kinds of vocalisation that occurs there. The first scheme gives us this arrangement voicing causing the vocal cords to vibrate where the colligation happens how the articulation happens how the airflow is controlled Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology Articulation described by region glottal articulation articulation by the glottis. We use this for one consonant in English. This is /h/ in initial position in house or hope.Velar articulation we do this with the back of the tongue against the velum. We use it for initial hard /g/ (as in golf) and for final /? / (as in gong). Palatal articulation we do this with the front of the tongue on the hard palate. We use it for /d? / (as in jam) and for /? / (as in sheep or sugar). Alveolar articulation we do this with the tongue blade on the alveolar ridge. We use it for /t/ (as in teeth), /d/ (as in dodo) /z/ (as in zebra) /n/ (as in no) and /l/ (as in light). dental articulation we do this with the tip of the tongue on the back of the upper front teeth.We use it for /? / (as in think) and /? / (as in that). This is one form of articulation that we can observe and feel ourselves doing. Labio-dental articulation we do this with the lower lip and upper front teeth. We use it for /v/ (as in vampire). Labial articulation we do this with the lips for /b/ (as in boat) and /m/ (as in most). Where we use two lips (as in English) this is bilabial articulation. Articulation described by manner This scheme gives us a different arrangement into stop (or plosive) consonants, affricates, fricatives, nasal consonants, laterals and approximants. Stop consonants (because the airflow is stopped) or plosive consonants (because it is later released, causing an outrush of air and a burst of sound) are o o o Bilabial voiced /b/ (as in boat) and voiceless /p/ (as in post) Alveolar voiced /d/ (as in dad) and voiceless /t/ (as in tap) Velar voiced /g/ (as in golf) and voiceless /k/ as in (cow) Affricates are a kind of stop consonant, where the expelled air causes friction rather than plosion. They are palatal /t? / (as in cheat) and palatal /d? / (as in jam) Fricatives come from restricting, but not completely stopping, the airflow.The air passes through a narrow space and the sound burn downs from the friction this produces. They come in voiced and unvoiced pairs o o o o Labio-dental voiced /v/ (as in vole) and unvoiced /f/ (as in foal) Dental voiced /? / (as in those) and unvoiced /? / (as in thick) Alveolar voiced /z/ (as in zest) and unvoiced /s/ (as in sent) Palatal voiced /? / (as in the middle of leisure) and unvoiced /? / (as at the end of trash) Nasal consonants embroil closing the articulators but lowering the uvula, which unremarkably closes of f the route to the nose, through which the air escapes.thither are three nasal consonants in English o o o Bilabial /m/ (as in mine) Alveolar /n/ (as in nine) Velar /? / (as at the end of gong). Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology squinty consonants allow the air to escape at the sides of the tongue. In English there is only one such sound, which is alveolar /l/ (as at the start of lamp) Approximants do not impede the flow of air. They are all voiced but are counted as consonants chiefly because of how they function in syllables.They are o o o Bilabial /w/ (as in water) Alveolar /r/ (as in road) Palatal /j/ (as in yet) Syllables When you think of individual sounds, you may think of them in terms of syllables. These are units of phonological organization and smaller than words. Alternatively, think of them as units of rhythm. Although they may contain several sounds, they combine them in ways that create the effect of unity. Thus splash is a single syllable but it combines three consonants, a vowel, and a final consonant /spl+? +? /. Some words have a single syllable so they are monosyllables or monosyllabic.Others have more than one syllable and are polysyllables or polysyllabic. Sometimes you may see a word divided into its syllables, but this may be an artificial exercise, since in real speech the sounds are continuous. In some cases it will be impossible to tell whether a given consonant was ending one syllable of beginning another. It is possible, for example, to check out lamppost so that there are two /p/ sounds in succession with some interval between them. But many native English speakers will render this as /l? m-p st/ or /l? m-p sd/.Students of language may find it helpful to be able to identify individual syllables in explaining pronunciation and language change one of the things you may need to do is explain which are the syllables that are stressed in a particular word or phrase. Suprasegmentals In written English we use punctuation to signal some things like emphasis, and the speed with which we want our readers to move at certain points. In spoken English we use sounds in ways that do not apply to individual segments but to stretches of spoken discourse from words to phrases, clauses and metres.Such effects are described as non-segmental or suprasegmental or, using the adjective in a plural nominal (noun) form, simply suprasegmentals. Among these effects are such things as stress, intonation, tempo and rhythm which collectively are known as prosodic features. Other effects arise from altering the quality of the voice, making it breathy or husky and changing what is sometimes called the timbre and these are paralinguistic features. some(prenominal) of these kinds of effect may signal meaning. But they do not do so consistently from one language to another, and this an cause confusion to students learning a second language. Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shu nsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology prosodic features Stress or loudness increasing volume is a simple way of giving emphasis, and this is a crude measure of stress. But it is usually combined with other things like changes in tone and tempo. We use stress to convey some kinds of meaning (semantic and pragmatic) such as urgency or anger or for such things as imperatives. Intonation you may be familiar in a loose sense with the notion of tone of voice.We use varying levels of pitch in sequences (contours or tunes) to convey particular meanings. fall and rising intonation in English may signal a difference between parameter and question. Younger speakers of English may use rising (question) intonation without intending to make the utterance a question. gait we speak more or less quickly for many different reasons and purposes. Occasionally it may be that we are adapting our speech to the time we have in which to utter it (as, for example, in a horse-racing commentary).But most ly tempo reflects some kinds of meaning or attitude so we give a truthful reception to a question, but do so rapidly to convey our distraction or irritation. Rhythm patterns of stress, tempo and pitch together create a rhythm. Some kinds of formal and repetitive rhythm are familiar from music, rap, poetry and even chants of soccer fans. But all speech has rhythm it is just that in involuntary utterances we are less likely to hear regular or repeating patterns. Paralinguistic features How many voices do we have? We are used to putting on silly voices for comic effects or in play.We may adapt our voices for speaking to babies, or to paint a picture emotion, excitement or desire. These effects are familiar in caper, where the use of a stage whisper may suggest something clandestine and conspiratorial. Nasal speech may suggest disdain, though it is easily exaggerated for comic effect (as by the late Kenneth Williams in many Carry On films). Such effects are sometimes described as timbre or voice quality. We all may use them sometimes but they are particularly common among entertainers such as actors or comedians.This is not surprising, as they practise using their voices in unusual ways, to represent different characters. The performers in the BBCs Teletubbies TV programme use paralinguistic features to suggest the different characters of Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po. Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology Accent Everyones use of the sound system is unique and personal. And few of us use sounds consistently in all contexts we adapt to different situations. We rarely adapt our sounds alone more likely we learning ability our language in the popular sense, by attending to our lexical choices, grammar and phonology. ) Most human beings adjust their speech to resemble that of those around them. This is very easy to demonstrate, as when some vogue words from broadcasting pasture a wave of popularity before settl ing down in the language more modestly or passing out of use again. This is particularly true of sounds, in the sense that some identifiable groups of people share (with some individual variation) a collection of sounds that are not found elsewhere, and these are accents.We think of accents as marking out people by geographical region and, to a less degree, by social class or education. So we might speak of a Scouse (Liverpool), Geordie (Newcastle) or Brummie (Birmingham) accent. These are quite general descriptions within each of these cities we would differentiate further. And we should also not confuse real accent features in a given region with stereotyped and simplified versions of these which figure in (or disfigure) TV drama Emmerdale, Brookside, Coronation Street and Albert Square are not reliable sources for anything we might want o know about their real-world originals. And the student who hoped to study the speech of people in Peckham by watching episodes of John Sulliv ans situation comedy Only Fools and Horses was deeply misguided. Thinking of social class, we might speak of a in the public eye(predicate) school accent (stiff upper lip and cut glass vowels). But we do not observe occupational accents and we are unlikely to speak of a bakers, soldiers or comptrollers accent (whereas we might study their special uses of lexis and grammar). This is not the place to study in detail the causes of such accents or, for example, how they are changing.Language researchers may wish to record regional variant forms and their frequency. In Britain like a shot (perhaps because of the influence of broadcasting) we can observe sound features moving from one region to another (like the glottal stop which is now common in the north of England), while also recording how other features of accent are not subject to this kind of change. Studying phonology alone will not answer such questions. But it gives you the means to identify specific phonetic features of acc ent and record them objectively. Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology Received PronunciationReceived Pronunciation (or RP) is a special accent a regionally neutral accent that is used as a standard for broadcasting and some other kinds of public speaking. It is not fixed you can hear earlier forms of RP in historical broadcasts, such as newsreel films from the Second valet War. Queen Elizabeth II has an accent st close to the RP of her own childhood, but not very close to the RP of the 21 century. RP excites powerful feelings of admiration and repulsion. Some see it as a standard or the correct form of spoken English, while others see its use (in broadcasting, say) as an affront to the dignity of their own region.Its merit lies in its being more widely understood by a national and international audience than any regional accent. Non-native speakers often want to learn RP, rather than a regional accent of English. RP exists but no-one is compelled to use it. But if we see it as a reference point, we can decide how far we want to use the sounds of our region where these differ from the RP standard. And its critics may make a mistake in supposing all English speakers even have a regional identity element many people are geographically mobile, and do not stay for long periods in any one place.RP is also a very loose and flexible standard. It is not written in a book (though the BBC does give its broadcasters guides to pronunciation) and does not prescribe such things as whether to stress the first or second syllable in research. You will hear it on all the BBCs national radio channels, to a greater or less degree. On Radio 3 you will perhaps hear the most conservative RP, while Radio 5 will give you a more contemporary version with more regional and class variety but these are very broad generalizations, and refer mainly to the presenters, newsreaders, continuity announcers and so on.RP is used as a standard in some popular language reference works. For example, the Oxford Guide to the English Language (Weiner, E 1984, Pronunciation, p. 45, Book alliance Associates/OUP, London) has this useful description of RP The aim of recommending one type of pronunciation rather than another, or of giving a word a recommended spoken form, naturally implies the existence of a standard. at that place are of course many varieties of English, even within the limits of the British Isles, but it is not the business of this section to describe them.The treatment here is ground upon Received Pronunciation (RP), namely the pronunciation of that variety of British English widely considered to be least regional, being originally that used by educated speakers in southern England. This is not to suggest that other varieties are inferior rather, RP is here taken as a neutral national standard, just as it is in its use in broadcasting or in the teaching of English as a foreign language. Accent and social class Acc ent is certainly related to social class. This is a truism because accent is one of the things that we use as an indicator of social class.For a given class, we can express this positively or negatively. As regards the highest social class, positively we can identify features of articulation for certain sounds, upper class speakers do not open or move the lips as much as other speakers of English. Negatively, we can identify such sounds as the glottal stop as rare among, and ab familiar of, speakers from this social class. Alternatively we can look at vowel choices or preferences. For example, the upper classes for long used the vowel /? / in cases where /? / is standard thus Coventry would be /k? v? ntri? /. C. S.Lewis in The huge Divorce depicts a character who pronounces God as Gud Would to God he continued, but he was now pronouncing it Gud We may think of dropping or omitting consonants as a mark of the lower social classes and untutored people. But dropping of terminal g or rather substituting /n/ for /? / was until recently a mark of the upper class toff, who would enjoy, huntin, fishin and shootin. We can find a celebrated literary example in Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey. Among real life speakers in whom I have observed this inclination I would identify the late Sir Alf Ramsey. I do not know whether Alf Ramsey, who managed the England football team, was brought up to speak in this way or acquired the habit later. ) Investigating the connection can be challenging, however, since social class is an artificial construct. Assuming that you have found a way to identify your subjects as belonging to some definable social group, then you can study vowel choices or frequencies. Even the most passing(prenominal) attention tells us that the Queen has distinct speech sounds. But can we explain them in detail? Does she share them with other members of her family?Do other speakers share them? Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril . net/armoore/ Phonology Pronunciation and ethical drug The English Language List is an Internet discussion forum for English language teachers. Recently a student, not a native speaker but clearly a very competent writer of English, asked where he could get help to learn to speak in a standard British accent. Many of the responses came from people who were not answering his question but trying to persuade him to stick with his current accent (which he felt would disadvantage him in his business career).Yet we are not disparaging regional accents when we try to learn the neutral and prestigious standard form. (What the discussion never really revealed was how many of the list members would identify themselves as RP speakers. ) The prescriptive tradition in English grammar was unscientific and perhaps harmful. But set down authoritative standard forms is not always so unwise. In spelling they are useful, and the same may be true of pronunciation. Dictionaries do not compel the read er to learn and use the pronunciations they show but they do give a representation of the pronunciation according to RP.Some show variant pronunciations as well as the principal RP form. If you are a student (or even a teacher) you may find RP an unfamiliar accent maybe you can see that the phonetic transcription indicates a pronunciation different from the one you normally use. No one is forcing you to change your own speech sounds, in which your sense of identity may be profoundly located. But you can become aware that the local norm is not the universal standard. Now that English is an international language, its development is certainly not controlled by what happens in the UK. So British RP may cease to be a useful standard for learners of English.Increasingly, language learners favour a mid-Atlantic accent, which shares features of British RP and the speech of the eastern USA. Language acquisition Very young children do not produce the sounds they will use as adults partly because they are unable to form them (physically their speech organs have not developed fully) and partly because they may not know exactly what the sound is that they wish to produce. Children may also be less subtle in controlling the flow of egressive air, so that they will continue speaking, rather than pause briefly, while drawing more air in.Young children may have a sense of stressed syllables as more important so they may omit unstressed elements before or after. So, for example, a child may ask for a nana rather than a banana. (Alternatively, the child may know that there is some repetition of sound here, but limit it to two syllables. ) I am supposing that the non-standard form is spoken by a child, but perhaps repeated back by adults. But one often observes adults (unhelpfully) using what they suppose to be an easier form of a word. On the other hand, some children have resisted this tendency.Though they may not articulate a word in full or exactly, they can recognize it as an incomplete or mistaken form when an adult repeats it back to them. We see this in this exchange between an adult and a four year old, save by George Keith and John Shuttleworth Adult What do you want to be when you grow up? Child A dowboy. Adult So you want to be a dowboy, eh? Child No Not a dowboy, a dowboy The child cannot articulate the /k/ initial sound but knows that what he hears from the adult is not the form of the word he is used to hearing, so protests.Since children learn by imitation of examples it may be helpful when they begin formal education to give them such examples, but not by continually rebuking them for facial expression things wrongly. Children do not learn to articulate all sounds at the same stage in their development. Teachers of children in early years (nursery and reception) classes should be able to identify the few cases where there is a unhealthiness or problem for which some specialist intervention is appropriate. Copyright Andrew Moore, 20 01 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology Language changeChange happens in language and the sounds of English are not exempt. Of course, basic sounds do not change in the sense that the phonemes represented in the IPA transcription will not go away. And it is rare, but not impossible, for speakers of a given language to begin to use phonemes they did not use before. Thus, most English speakers face up with French ogne (as in Boulogne or Dordogne) anglicise to Boloyn (/b? l n/). And Welsh double l in initial position (as in Llanfair and many other place names) they sound simply as /l/ rather than a voiceless unilateral l.What does change is the choice of which sound to use in a given context though choice may suggest that this is voluntary whereas the change normally happens unnoticed. At a very simple level we can see, from rhymes in poetry that no longish work, that one or more words has acquired a new standard pronunciation. So John Donne writes (1571-1631) And find /What rustle/Serves to advance an honest mind. We have retained the vowel sound in wind (verb, as in wind up) but not in wind (noun, as in north wind). We can still observe vowel change. In my own lifetime envelope was pronounced with the initial vowel /? (as if it were onvelope). This pronunciation is becoming more rare, and persists mostly among older speakers. Turquoise was once commonly sounded as in French /t kw? z/ but now it is more or less uniformly /t k z/ or /t k s/ (perhaps by resemblance with tortoise). Far more common are changes in stress patterns. So research (more or less universal in the UK when I was a child) has given way to re-search. In the case of harass the stress has shifted the other way, giving harass. We cannot sensibly say that the new form is wrong or bad English (even if we prefer the older form).But we can observe the frequency with which the new form occurs, and see if it does come to supplant the older form or whether both forms persist. Change ha ppens within regional varieties, too so the glottal stop has moved its way northwards from London and southwards from Glasgow (where it has been found for 150 years). This is one feature of what Paul Kerswill calls dialect levelling. Similarly use of /f/ or /v/ in place of /? / and /? / is spreading north from London. Perhaps the most well documented change occurring now is in sentence intonation. This is especially common among younger people, but not exclusively so.The change lies in a tendency to use rising (question) intonation more frequently. What is not clear, in contexts that allow either, is whether the speaker intends to ask a question or means to make a statement. We cannot be sure if the rising intonation conveys meaning, or is habitual. One common way for pronunciation to change is by elision compressing the word to abrogate a syllable. Once it was common to sound the ed ending on past tense verbs, whereas now these verbs end with a /t/ sound. We do still sound the e d ending on adjectives, even when these are formed from the past tenses as in naked, wicked and learned.We can contrast the learned prof with what her pupils learned in the lecture. (The first has two syllables, the second only one. ) Police is often pronounced as a monosyllable /pli? s/ (for example by the newsreader Sue Lawley). Recently I have observed several newsreaders eliding the middle syllable of terrorist, producing the form /t? r st/ or sometimes /t? r? st/. On the other hand, literacy may alter pronunciation. The n in column is silent, and in the Second cosmos War, people would often speak of the Fifth Columnist (/k? l? m? st/).But now broadcasters speaks of those who write columns in newspapers as /k? l? mn? sts/ thereby sounding what was silent /n/. Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology Phonology for exam students Phonology as an explicit subject of exact study is not compulsory for students taking Advanced level courses in English Language. But it is one of the five descriptions of language commended by the AQA syllabus B (the others are lexis, grammar, pragmatics and semantics). In some kinds of study it will be odd if it does not appear in your analysis or interpretation of selective information.In written exams, you may want to comment on some features of phonology in explaining example language data these may be presented to you on the exam paper, or may be your own examples, which illustrate, say, some point about language change, language acquisition or sociolinguistics. You may wish to use diagrams, models or the IPA transcription and if you are able to do so, this may be helpful. But if you do not feel positive(p) about using these, you can still make useful points about phonology you can show stress simply by underlining or highlighting the stressed syllable.And you can show many aspects of phonology by using the standard Western (Roman-English) alphabet appropriately as in contrasting p ronunciations of harass as ha-russ (first syllable stressed, vowel is a second syllable unstressed vowel is neutral) or huh-rass (first syllable unstressed, neutral vowel second syllable stressed, vowel is a) Phonetic symbols and electronic documents Representing phonetic symbols in electronic documents can be a challenge, unless you have the right software. Assuming that you have a word-processing program, you need to use special fonts that will represent the IPA symbols.These are either the SIL IPA fonts (such as SILdoulosIPA) or Unicode fonts (like Lucida Sans Unicode, which I have used in this document). If you are producing work that will be printed, then you can add things by hand later, but this is messy and best avoided. There is a lot of guidance on the IPA homepage about how to cope with this problem. If you do find a way to reproduce the symbols you need, it may make sense to paste them all at the end of the document on which you are working. Then, you can copy and past e as you need to use them. If you do not do this, then you will have to use he Alt key and the numeric keypad, since the keys on the normal keyboard will only give you the symbols that resemble ordinary letters. Different ways of representing sound Conventions of language acquaintance and lexicographers If you study reference works you may find a variety of schemes for representing different aspects of phonology there is no single universal scheme that covers everything you may need to do. And many dictionaries may not even use the IPA alphabet, for the very obvious reason that the reader is not familiar with this transcription and can cope without it.The text on the left comes from the Pocket Oxford Dictionary this shows a simple phonetic representation based on the standard Western alphabet, with accents to show different vowels. Look in any dictionary you have and you may find something similar. Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology Li terary models In representing speech for example in drama, poetry or prose fiction some authors are interested not merely in the words but also in how they are spoken. One of the most familiar concerns is that of how to represent regional accents.Here is a fairly early example, from the second chapter of Wuthering Heights (1847), in which the servant Joseph refuses to admit Mr. Lockwood into the house T maisters dahn It fowld. Goa rahnd by the end ut laith, if yah went to spake tull him Tennyson (1809-1892) has a similar approach in his poem, Northern Farmer, Old Style What atta stannin theer fur, and doesn bring me the aale? / Doctors a toattler, lass, and es allus i the owd taale Joseph comes from what is now West Yorkshire, while Tennysons farmer is supposedly from the north of Lincolnshire.Here is an earlier example, from Walter Scotts Heart of Midlothian (1830), which shows some phonetic qualities of the lowlands Scots accent. In this passage the Laird of Dumbiedikes (from t he country near Edinburgh) is on his deathbed. He advises his son about how to take his drink My father tauld me sae forty years sin, but I never fand time to mind him. Jock, neer drink brandy in the morning, it files the stamach sair George Bernard Shaw, in Pygmalion (1914), uses one phonetic character (? schwa) in his attempt to represent the accent of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl Theres menners f yer T? -oo banches o voylets trod into the madWill ye-oo py me fthem. However, after a few sentences of phonetic dialogue, Shaw reverts to standard spelling, noting Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London. In Pygmalion Professor Higgins teaches Eliza to speak in an upper-class accent, so as to pass her off as a duchess.In the course of the play, therefore, her accent changes. The actress playing the part, however, may have a natural accent closer to that with which Eli za speaks at the completion of her education, so in playing the part she may doing the reverse of what Eliza undergoes, by gradually reverting to a natural manner of articulation. (Elizas pronunciation improves ahead of her understanding of grammar, so that at one point she says unforgettably My aunt died of influenza so they said. But its my belief they done the old woman in. ) In Pygmalion Shaw does not merely represent accent (and other features of speech) but makes this crucial to an exploration of how speech relates to identity and social class. Charles Dickens is particularly interested in the sounds of speech. He observes that many speakers have difficulty with initial /v/ and /w/. Sam Weller, in The Pickwick Papers, regularly transposes these Vell, said Sam at length, if this dont beat cock-fightin nothin never villThat wery next house Mr. Hubble, in Great Expectations does, the same thing when he describes young people as naterally wicious.Joe Gargery, in the same novel, has many verbal peculiarities, of which perhaps the most striking is in his description of the Blacking Warehouse, which is less impressive than the picture Joe has seen on bills where it is drawd too architectooralooral. In Chapter 16 of Our reciprocal Friend, Betty Higden is proud of Mr. Sloppy (an orphan she has fostered) not only because he can read, but because he is able to use different voice styles for various speakers. You mightnt think it, but Sloppy is a fair reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices. Dickens also finds a way to show tempo and rhythm.In Chapter 23 of Little Dorrit, Flora Finching speaks at length and without any pauses Most unkind never to have come back to see us since that day, though naturally it was not to be expected that there should be any attraction at our house and you were much more pleasantly engaged, thats pretty certain, and is she fair or dark blue eyes or black I wonder, not that I expect that she should be anything bu t a perfect contrast to me in all particulars for I am a disappointment as I very well know and you are quite right to be devoted no doubt though what am I saying Arthur never mind I hardly know myself Good gracious Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/ Phonology Background reading on phonology There are very full accounts of phonology in both of Professor David Crystals encyclopedias. See his Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Part IV, The average of Language Speaking and Listening (pp. 123175 ISBN 0521424437) and his Encyclopedia of the English Language, Part IV, 17, The Sound System (pp. 236-255 ISBN 0521596556).For a very clear and succinct account, look at Howard Jacksons and Peter Stockwells Introduction to the temper and Functions of Language, 2. 1, Sounds and letters (pp. 11-23 ISBN 0748725806). There is a longer and more discursive account in Shirley Russells Grammar, expression and Style, Spoken English (pp. 107-168 ISBN 0198311982) You can find lots of help online. The best place to start is the International Phonetic Associations own Web site at http//www2. arts. gla. ac. uk/IPA/ipa. htmlYou will find some excellent resources from the languages department of the University of Victoria in British Columbia start at http//web. uvic. ca/ling/ipa/handbook/ For a great introduction to Scots with some excellent guidance on phonology try Andy Eagles Wir Ain Laid (Our Own Language) at http//www. scots-online. org/grammar/index. htm For help with fonts go to the IPA Unicode site at http//www. phon. ucl. ac. uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode. htm and Alan Wells Unicode Resources at http//www. hclrss. demon. co. uk/unicode/index. tml. You could also try the Microsoft typography site at http//www. microsoft. com/typography/default. asp Apart from materials quoted from other sources, the copyright in this guide belongs to Andrew Moore. You are exonerate to use it for any educational purpose, including making multiple copies electr onically or by printing. You may not distribute it in any form other than the original, without the express permission of the author. andrew. emailprotected net Copyright Andrew Moore, 2001 http//www. shunsley. eril. net/armoore/