Like many other languages,
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
has wide variation in
pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
, both
historically
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
and from
dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical)
phonological
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
system. Among other things, most dialects have
vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language
The Muscogee lang ...
in
unstressed
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s and a complex set of
phonological feature
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that distinguishes one sound from another within a language. For example, the feature oicedistinguishes the two bilabial plosives: and There are many diffe ...
s that distinguish
fortis and lenis
In linguistics, fortis and lenis ( and ; Latin for "strong" and "weak"), sometimes identified with tense and lax, are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as the ...
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
s (
stops
Stop may refer to:
Places
*Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States
* Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Facilities
* Bus stop
* Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...
,
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
s, and
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
s).
Phonological analysis of English often concentrates on or uses, as a reference point, one or more of the
prestige
Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.)
Prestige may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Films
* ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnet ...
or
standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object th ...
accents, such as
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been ...
for
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
,
General American
General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or so ...
for the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, and
General Australian
Australian English is relatively homogeneous when compared with British and American English. The major varieties of Australian English are sociocultural rather than regional. They are divided into 3 main categories: general, broad and cultivated ...
for
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
. Nevertheless, many other dialects of English are spoken, which have developed independently from these standardized accents, particularly regional dialects. Information about these standardized accents functions only as a ''limited'' guide to all of English phonology, which one can later expand upon once one becomes more familiar with some of the many other dialects of English that are spoken.
Phonemes
A
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
of a language or dialect is an
abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
of a
speech sound
In phonetics and linguistics, a phone is any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words.
In contrast, a phoneme is a speech sound in a given language that, if swapped with another ...
or of a group of different sounds which are all perceived to have the same function by speakers of that particular language or dialect. For example, the English word ''through'' consists of three phonemes: the initial "th" sound, the "r" sound, and a vowel sound. The phonemes in this and many other English words do not always correspond directly to the letters used to spell them (English
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
is not as strongly
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
as that of many other languages).
The number and distribution of phonemes in English vary from dialect to dialect, and also depend on the interpretation of the individual researcher. The number of consonant phonemes is generally put at 24 (or slightly more depending on the dialect). The number of vowels is subject to greater variation; in the system presented on this page there are 20–25 vowel phonemes in
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been ...
, 14–16 in
General American
General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or so ...
and 19–21 in Australian English. The pronunciation keys used in dictionaries generally contain a slightly greater number of symbols than this, to take account of certain sounds used in foreign words and certain noticeable distinctions that may not be—strictly speaking—phonemic.
Consonants
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus , whose distribution is more limited.
Fortis consonants are always
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
,
aspirated in
syllable onset
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
(except in clusters beginning with ), and sometimes also
glottalized
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...
to an extent in
syllable coda
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...
(most likely to occur with , see
T-glottalization
In English phonology, ''t''-glottalization or ''t''-glottalling is a sound change in certain English dialects and accents, particularly in the United Kingdom, that causes the phoneme to be pronounced as the glottal stop in certain positions ...
), while lenis consonants are always
unaspirated
In linguistics, a tenuis consonant ( or ) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized.
In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish ''p, t, ch ...
and un-glottalized, and generally partially or fully
voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
. The alveolars are usually
apical
Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to:
*Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology)
*Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features loc ...
, i.e. pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching or approaching the roof of the mouth, though some speakers produce them
laminally, i.e. with the blade of the tongue.
Consonant examples
The following table shows typical examples of the occurrence of the above consonant phonemes in words, using
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
s where possible.
Sonorants
* The pronunciation of varies by dialect:
** Received Pronunciation has two main allophones of : the clear or plain (the "light L"), and the
dark
Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown.
Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lu ...
or
velarized
Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of four d ...
(the "dark L"). The clear variant is used before vowels when they are in the same syllable, and the dark variant when the precedes a consonant or is in syllable-final position before silence.
** In South Wales, Ireland, and the Caribbean, is usually clear, and in North Wales, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand it is usually dark.
** In General American and Canada, is generally dark, but to varying degrees: before stressed vowels it is neutral or only slightly velarized. In southern U.S. accents it is noticeably clear between vowels, and in some other positions.
** In urban accents of Southern England, as well as New Zealand and some parts of the United States, can be pronounced as an approximant or
semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
() at the end of a syllable (
''l''-vocalization).
* Depending on dialect, has at least the following allophones in varieties of English around the world (see
Pronunciation of English /r/
The pronunciation of the phoneme in the English language has many variations in different dialects.
Variations
Depending on dialect, has at least the following allophones in varieties of English around the world:
*"Standard" R: labialize ...
):
**
postalveolar approximant
The voiced alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolar and postalveolar approximants is , a lowercase letter ''r'' rotated 18 ...
(the most common realization of the phoneme, occurring in most dialects, RP and General American included)
**
retroflex approximant
The voiced retroflex approximant is a type of consonant used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\`. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase lett ...
(occurs in most Irish dialects and some American dialects)
**
labiodental approximant
The voiced labiodental approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is something between an English / w/ and / v/, pronounced with the teeth and lips held in the position used to articulate the letter V. The sym ...
(occurs in south-east England and some London accents; known as
''r''-labialization)
**
alveolar flap
The voiced alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents a dental, alveolar, or postalveolar tap or flap is .
The terms ''tap'' and ''flap' ...
(occurs in most Scottish, Welsh,
Indian
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
and some South African dialects, some conservative dialects in England and Ireland; not to be confused with
flapping
Flapping or tapping, also known as alveolar flapping, intervocalic flapping, or ''t''-voicing, is a phonological process found in many varieties of English, especially North American, Cardiff, Ulster, Australian and New Zealand English, whereby ...
of and )
**
alveolar trill
The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. ...
(occurs in some very conservative Scottish dialects and some
Indian
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
,
South African and Welsh accents)
**
voiced uvular fricative
The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , an inverted small uppercase letter , or in broad transcription if rhot ...
(occurs in northern Northumbria, largely disappeared; known as the
Northumbrian burr)
* In most dialects is
labialized
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
in many positions, as in ''reed'' and ''tree'' ; in the latter case, the may be slightly labialized as well.
* In some
rhotic accents, such as General American, when not followed by a vowel is realized as an
r-coloring
In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulate ...
of the preceding vowel or its coda: ''nurse'' , ''butter'' .
* The distinctions between the nasals are
neutralized in some environments. For example, before a final , or there is nearly always only one nasal sound that can appear in each case: , or respectively (as in the words ''limp'', ''lint'', ''link'' – note that the ''n'' of ''link'' is pronounced ). This effect can even occur across syllable or word boundaries, particularly in stressed syllables: ''synchrony'' is pronounced whereas ''synchronic'' may be pronounced either as or as . For other possible syllable-final combinations, see in the Phonotactics section below.
Obstruents
In most dialects, the fortis stops and affricate have various different allophones, and are distinguished from the lenis stops and affricate by several phonetic features.
* The allophones of the fortes include:
**
aspirated when they occur in the onset of a
stressed syllable, as in ''potato''. In clusters involving a following liquid, the aspiration typically manifests as the devoicing of this liquid. These sounds are unaspirated after within the same syllable, as in ''stan, span, scan'', and at the ends of syllables, as in ''mat'', ''map'', ''mac''. The voiceless fricatives are always unaspirated, but a notable exception to this are English-speaking areas of Wales, where they are often aspirated.
** In many accents of English, fortis stops are
glottalized
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...
in some positions. This may be heard either as a glottal stop preceding the oral closure ("pre-glottalization" or "glottal reinforcement") or as a substitution of the glottal stop for the oral stop (glottal replacement). can only be pre-glottalized. Pre-glottalization normally occurs in British and American English when the fortis consonant phoneme is followed by another consonant or when the consonant is in final position. Thus ''football'' and ''catching'' are often pronounced and , respectively. Glottal replacement often happens in cases such as those just given, so that ''football'' is frequently pronounced . In addition, however, glottal replacement is increasingly common in British English when occurs between vowels if the preceding vowel is stressed; thus ''better'' is often pronounced by younger speakers as . Such
''t''-glottalization also occurs in many British regional accents, including
Cockney
Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...
, where it can also occur at the end of words, and where and are sometimes treated the same way.
* Among stops, both fortes and lenes:
** May have
no audible release
A stop with no audible release, also known as an unreleased stop or an applosive, is a stop consonant with no release burst: no audible indication of the end of its occlusion (hold). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, lack of an audible relea ...
in the word-final position. These allophones are more common in North America than Great Britain.
** Always have a 'masked release' before another plosive or affricate (as in ''rubbed'' ), i.e. the release of the first stop is made after the closure of the second stop. This also applies when the following stop is
homorganic (articulated in the same place), as in ''top player''. A notable exception to this is
Welsh English
Welsh English ( cy, Saesneg Gymreig) comprises the dialects of English spoken by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In addition to the distinctive words and gr ...
, where stops are usually released in this environment.
** The affricates have a mandatory fricative release in all environments.
* Very often in the United States and Canada, and less frequently in Australia and New Zealand, both can be
pronounced as a voiced flap in certain positions: when they come between a preceding stressed vowel (possibly with intervening ) and precede an unstressed vowel or
syllabic
Syllabic may refer to:
*Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words
**Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable
*Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables
*Abugida, writing system ...
. Examples include ''water'', ''bottle'', ''petal'', ''peddle'' (the last two words sound alike when flapped). The flap may even appear at word boundaries, as in ''put it on''. When the combination appears in such positions, some American speakers pronounce it as a
nasalized
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internationa ...
flap that may become indistinguishable from , so ''winter'' may be pronounced similarly or identically to ''winner'' .
*
Yod-coalescence
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
is a process that
palatalizes the
clusters , , and into , , and respectively, frequently occurring with clusters that would be considered to span a syllable boundary.
[, cited in .]
**Yod-coalescence in stressed syllables, such as in ''tune'' and ''dune'', occurs in
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
,
Cockney
Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...
,
Estuary English
Estuary English is an English accent associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southea ...
,
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English (from Latin ''Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland a ...
(some speakers),
Newfoundland English
Newfoundland English is a term referring to any of several accents and dialects of Atlantic Canadian English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of these differ substantially from the English commonly spoken elsewhere in ...
,
South African English
South African English (SAfrE, SAfrEng, SAE, en-ZA) is the set of English language dialects native to South Africans.
History
British settlers first arrived in the South African region in 1795, when they established a military holding op ...
, and to a certain extent in
New Zealand English
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
and
Scottish English
Scottish English ( gd, Beurla Albannach) is the set of varieties of the English language spoken in Scotland. The transregional, standardised variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English (SSE). Scottish Standard ...
(many speakers). This can lead to additional homophony; for instance, ''dew'' and ''due'' come to be pronounced the same as ''Jew''.
**In certain varieties—such as
Australian English
Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language; while Australia has no official language, Engli ...
, South African English, and New Zealand English— and in stressed syllables can coalesce into and , respectively. In Australian English for example, ''assume'' is pronounced by some speakers. Furthermore, some British, Canadian, American, New Zealand and Australian speakers may change the sound to before , so that a word having a cluster of like in ''strewn'' would be pronounced .
* The
postalveolar consonant
Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...
s are strongly
labialized
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
: .
* In addition to , clusters also have affricate-like realizations in certain positions (as in ''cats, roads, tram, dram, eighth, behind them, cupful, obvious''; see also ), but usually only are considered to constitute the monophonemic affricates of English because (among other reasons) only they are found in all of morpheme-initial, -internal, and -final positions, and native speakers typically perceive them as single units.
Vowels
English, much like other Germanic languages, has a particularly large number of vowel phonemes, and in addition the
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s of English differ considerably between dialects. Consequently, corresponding vowels may be transcribed with various symbols depending on the dialect under consideration. When considering English as a whole,
lexical set
A lexical set is a group of words that all fall under a single category based on a single shared phonological feature.
A phoneme is a basic unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. Most commonly, following the work ...
s are often used, each named by a word containing the vowel or vowels in question. For example, the set consists of words which, like ''lot'', have in
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been ...
and in
General American
General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or so ...
. The " vowel" then refers to the vowel that appears in those words in whichever dialect is being considered, or (at a greater level of
abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
) to a
diaphoneme
A diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of ''late'' () with that of ...
, which represents this interdialectal correspondence. A commonly used system of lexical sets, devised by
John C. Wells
John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics.
Career
Wells ea ...
, is presented below; for each set, the corresponding phonemes are given for RP and General American, using the notation that will be used on this page.
For a table that shows the pronunciations of these vowels in a wider range of English dialects, see
IPA chart for English dialects
This chart shows the most common applications of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent English language pronunciations.
See Pronunciation respelling for English for phonetic transcriptions used in different dictionaries.
*AmE, ...
.
The following tables show the vowel phonemes of three standard varieties of English. The notation system used here for Received Pronunciation (RP) is fairly standard; the others less so. The feature descriptions given here (front, close, etc.) are abstracted somewhat; the actual pronunciations of these vowels are somewhat more accurately conveyed by the
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
symbols used (see
Vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
for a chart indicating the meanings of these symbols; though note also the points listed below the following tables). The symbols given in the table are traditional but redirect to their modern implementation.
The differences between these tables can be explained as follows:
* General American lacks a phoneme corresponding to RP (, ), instead using in the words and generally in the words. In a few North American accents, namely in
Eastern New England (
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
),
Western Pennsylvania
Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic ...
(
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
), and to some degree in
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...
(
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
,
Portland
Portland most commonly refers to:
* Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States
* Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...
) and Eastern
Canadian English
Canadian English (CanE, CE, en-CA) encompasses the varieties of English native to Canada. According to the 2016 census, English was the first language of 19.4 million Canadians or 58.1% of the total population; the remainder spoke French ( ...
, words do not have the vowel of (the
''father''–''bother'' merger has not occurred) but instead merge with .
* Although the notation is used for the vowel of in RP and General American, the actual pronunciation is closer to a
near-open central vowel in RP and advanced back in General American. The symbol continues to be used for reasons of tradition (it was historically a back vowel) and because it is still back in other varieties.
* RP transcriptions use rather than largely for convenience and historical tradition; it does not necessarily represent a different sound from the General American phoneme, although the RP vowel may be described as somewhat less open than the American one.
* The different notations used for the vowel of in RP and General American ( and ) reflect a difference in the most common phonetic realizations of that vowel.
* The triphthongs given in the RP table are usually regarded as sequences of two phonemes (a diphthong plus ); however, in RP, these sequences frequently undergo
smoothing
In statistics and image processing, to smooth a data set is to create an approximating function that attempts to capture important patterns in the data, while leaving out noise or other fine-scale structures/rapid phenomena. In smoothing, the dat ...
into single diphthongs or even monophthongs.
* The different notations used here for some of the Australian vowels reflect the phonetic realization of those vowels in Australian: a central rather than in , a more closed rather than in , a close-mid rather than traditional RP's in , an open-mid rather than traditional RP's in , an opener rather than somewhat closer in , a central rather a back in and , and somewhat different pronunciations of most of the diphthongs. Note that central in , close-mid in and open-mid in are standard realizations in modern RP and the difference between modern RP and Australian English in these vowels lies almost only in transcription rather than pronunciation.
* Both Australian and RP are long monophthongs, the difference between them being in tongue height: Australian is close-mid , whereas the corresponding RP vowel is open-mid .
Other points to be noted are these:
* The vowel is coming to be pronounced more open (approaching ) by many modern RP speakers. In American speech, however, there is a tendency for it to become more closed, tenser and even diphthongized (to something like ), particularly in certain environments, such as before a
nasal consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...
. Some American accents, for example those of
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
and
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, make a marginal phonemic distinction between and , although the two occur largely in mutually exclusive environments. See
:/æ/ raising.
* A significant number of words (the group) have in General American, but in RP. The pronunciation varies between and in Australia, with speakers from
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
using more extensively than speakers from other regions.
* In General American and Canadian (which are
rhotic accents, where is pronounced in positions where it does not precede a vowel), many of the vowels can be
r-colored by way of realization of a following . This is often transcribed phonetically using a vowel symbol with an added retroflexion
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
; thus the symbol has been created for an r-colored
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
(sometimes called schwar) as in , and the vowel of can be modified to make so that the word ''start'' may be transcribed . Alternatively, the sequence might be written to indicate an r-colored offglide. The vowel of is generally always r-colored in these dialects, and this can be written (or as a syllabic ).
* In modern RP and other dialects, many words from the group are coming to be pronounced by an increasing number of speakers with the vowel (so ''sure'' is often pronounced like ''shore'').
* The vowels of and are commonly pronounced as narrow diphthongs, approaching and , in RP. Near-RP speakers may have particularly marked diphthongization of the type and , respectively. In General American, the pronunciation varies between a monophthong and a diphthong.
Allophones of vowels
Listed here are some of the significant cases of
allophony
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
of vowels found within standard English dialects.
*Vowels are shortened when followed in a syllable by a voiceless (
fortis) consonant. This is known as
''pre-fortis clipping''. Thus in the following word pairs the first item has a shortened vowel while the second has a normal length vowel: 'right' – 'ride' ; 'face' – 'phase' ; 'advice' – 'advise' .
* In many accents of English,
tense vowels undergo
breaking before , resulting in pronunciations like for ''peel'', for ''pool'', for ''pail'', and for ''pole''.
* In RP, the vowel may be pronounced more back, as , before syllable-final , as in ''goal''. In standard Australian English the vowel is similarly backed to before . A similar phenomenon may occur in
Southern American English
Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though concentrated increasingly in more rural areas, and spoken primarily by Wh ...
.
* The vowel is often pronounced in open syllables.
* The and diphthongs may be pronounced with a less open starting point when followed by a
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
consonant; this is chiefly a feature of Canadian speech (
Canadian raising
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
), but is also found in parts of the United States. Thus ''writer'' may be distinguished from ''rider'' even when
flapping
Flapping or tapping, also known as alveolar flapping, intervocalic flapping, or ''t''-voicing, is a phonological process found in many varieties of English, especially North American, Cardiff, Ulster, Australian and New Zealand English, whereby ...
causes the and to be pronounced identically.
Unstressed syllables
Unstressed syllable
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as ...
s in English may contain almost any vowel, but in practice vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables tend to use different inventories of phonemes. In particular, long vowels are used less often in unstressed syllables than stressed syllables. Additionally there are certain sounds—characterized by
central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
position and weakness—that are particularly often found as the nuclei of unstressed syllables. These include:
*
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
, , as in and (in non-rhotic dialects) (
– merger); also in many other positions such as ''about'', ''photograph'', ''paddock'', etc. This sound is essentially restricted to unstressed syllables exclusively. In the approach presented here it is identified as a phoneme , although other analyses do not have a separate phoneme for schwa and regard it as a reduction or neutralization of other vowels in syllables with the lowest degree of stress.
*
r-colored schwa
In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulate ...
, , as in in General American and some other rhotic dialects, which can be identified with the underlying sequence .
*
syllabic consonant
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...
s: as in ''bottle'', as in ''button'', as in ''rhythm''. These may be phonemized either as a plain consonant or as a schwa followed by a consonant; for example ''button'' may be represented as or (see above under
Consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
).
* , as in ''roses'' and ''making''. This can be identified with the phoneme , although in unstressed syllables it may be pronounced more centrally, and for some speakers (particularly in Australian and New Zealand and some American English) it is merged with in these syllables (
weak vowel merger
The close and mid-height front vowels of English (vowels of ''i'' and ''e'' type) have undergone a variety of changes over time and often vary by dialect.
Developments involving long vowels
Until Great Vowel Shift
Middle English had a long ...
). Among speakers who retain the distinction there are many cases where
free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such v ...
between and is found, as in the second syllable of ''typical''. (The
OED
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
has recently adopted the symbol to indicate such cases.)
* , as in ''argument'', ''today'', for which similar considerations apply as in the case of . (The symbol is sometimes used in these cases, similarly to .) Some speakers may also have a rounded schwa, , used in words like ''omission'' .
* , as in ''happy'', ''coffee'', in many dialects (others have in this position). The phonemic status of this is not easy to establish. Some authors consider it to correspond phonemically with a close front vowel that is neither the vowel of nor that of ; it occurs chiefly in contexts where the contrast between these vowels is neutralized, implying that it represents an
archiphoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-w ...
, which may be written . Many speakers, however, do have a contrast in pairs of words like ''studied'' and ''studded'' or ''taxis'' and ''taxes''; the contrast may be vs. , vs. or vs. , hence some authors consider that the ''happY''-vowel should be identified phonemically either with the vowel of or that of , depending on speaker. See also
''happy''-tensing.
* , as in ''influence'', ''to each''. This is the back rounded counterpart to described above; its phonemic status is treated in the same works as cited there.
Vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language
The Muscogee lang ...
in unstressed syllables is a significant feature of English. Syllables of the types listed above often correspond to a syllable containing a different vowel ("full vowel") used in other forms of the same
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
where that syllable is stressed. For example, the first ''o'' in ''photograph'', being stressed, is pronounced with the vowel, but in ''photography'', where it is unstressed, it is reduced to schwa. Also, certain common words (''a'', ''an'', ''of'', ''for'', etc.) are pronounced with a schwa when they are unstressed, although they have different vowels when they are in a stressed position (see
Weak and strong forms in English
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word ''(lexical stress)'' and at the level of the phrase or sentence ''(prosodic stress)''. Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently ...
).
Some unstressed syllables, however, retain full (unreduced) vowels, i.e. vowels other than those listed above. Examples are the in ''ambition'' and the in ''finite''. Some phonologists regard such syllables as not being fully unstressed (they may describe them as having ''tertiary stress''); some dictionaries have marked such syllables as having
secondary stress
Secondary stress (or obsolete: secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees of Stress (linguistics), stress in the pronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being called ''primary''. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for ...
. However linguists such as Ladefoged and regard this as a difference purely of vowel quality and not of stress, and thus argue that vowel reduction itself is phonemic in English. Examples of words where vowel reduction seems to be distinctive for some speakers include ''chickaree'' vs. ''chicory'' (the latter has the reduced vowel of , whereas the former has the vowel without reduction), and ''Pharaoh'' vs. ''farrow'' (both have the vowel, but in the latter word it may reduce to ).
Lexical stress
Lexical stress is phonemic in English. For example, the noun ''increase'' and the verb ''increase'' are distinguished by the positioning of the stress on the first syllable in the former, and on the second syllable in the latter. (See
initial-stress-derived noun
Initial-stress derivation is a phonological process in English that moves stress to the first syllable of verbs when they are used as nouns or adjectives. (This is an example of a suprafix.) This process can be found in the case of several dozen ...
.) Stressed syllables in English are louder than non-stressed syllables, as well as being longer and having a higher pitch.
In traditional approaches, in any English word consisting of more than one
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
, each syllable is ascribed one of three degrees of stress: ''primary'', ''secondary'' or ''unstressed''. Ordinarily, in each such word there will be exactly one syllable with primary stress, possibly one syllable having secondary stress, and the remainder are unstressed (unusually-long words may have multiple syllables with secondary stress). For example, the word ''amazing'' has primary stress on the second syllable, while the first and third syllables are unstressed, whereas the word ''organization'' has primary stress on the fourth syllable, secondary stress on the first, and the second, third, and fifth unstressed. This is often shown in pronunciation keys using the
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
symbols for primary and secondary stress (which are ˈ and ˌ respectively), placed before the syllables to which they apply. The two words just given may therefore be represented (in
RP) as and .
Some analysts identify an additional level of stress (''tertiary'' stress). This is generally ascribed to syllables that are pronounced with less force than those with secondary stress, but nonetheless contain a "full" or "unreduced" vowel (vowels that are considered to be reduced are listed under above). Hence the third syllable of ''organization'', if pronounced with as shown above (rather than being reduced to or ), might be said to have tertiary stress. (The precise identification of secondary and tertiary stress differs between analyses; dictionaries do not generally show tertiary stress, although some have taken the approach of marking all syllables with unreduced vowels as having at least secondary stress.)
In some analyses, then, the concept of lexical stress may become conflated with that of vowel reduction. An approach which attempts to separate these two is provided by
Peter Ladefoged
Peter Nielsen Ladefoged ( , ; 17 September 1925 – 24 January 2006) was a British linguist and phonetician.
He was Professor of Phonetics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught from 1962 to 1991. His book ''A Course ...
, who states that it is possible to describe English with only one degree of stress, as long as
unstressed syllables are phonemically distinguished for
vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language
The Muscogee lang ...
. In this approach, the distinction between primary and secondary stress is regarded as a phonetic or prosodic detail rather than a phonemic feature – primary stress is seen as an example of the predictable "tonic" stress that falls on the ''final'' stressed syllable of a
prosodic unit
In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...
. For more details of this analysis, see
Stress and vowel reduction in English
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word ''(lexical stress)'' and at the level of the phrase or sentence ''(prosodic stress)''. Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently ...
.
For stress as a prosodic feature (emphasis of particular words within utterances), see below.
Phonotactics
Phonotactics
Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek "voice, sound" and "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...
is the study of the sequences of phonemes that occur in languages and the sound structures that they form. In this study it is usual to represent consonants in general with the letter C and vowels with the letter V, so that a syllable such as 'be' is described as having CV structure. The
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
symbol used to show a division between syllables is the dot . Syllabification is the process of dividing continuous speech into discrete syllables, a process in which the position of a syllable division is not always easy to decide upon.
Most languages of the world syllabify and sequences as and or , with consonants preferentially acting as the onset of a syllable containing the following vowel. According to one view, English is unusual in this regard, in that stressed syllables attract following consonants, so that and syllabify as and , as long as the consonant cluster is a possible syllable coda; in addition, preferentially syllabifies with the preceding vowel even when both syllables are unstressed, so that occurs as . This is the analysis used in the ''
Longman Pronunciation Dictionary
John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics.
Career
Wells ear ...
''. However, this view is not widely accepted, as explained in the following section.
Syllable structure
The
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
structure in English is (C)
3V(C)
5, with near-maximal examples being ''strengths'' (, a (C)
3V(C)
4 syllable, although it can also be pronounced or ) and ''twelfths'' (, a (C)
2V(C)
5 syllable, although it can also be pronounced , , or ). From the phonetic point of view, the analysis of syllable structures is a complex task: because of widespread occurrences of articulatory overlap, English speakers rarely produce an audible release of individual consonants in consonant clusters. This coarticulation can lead to articulatory gestures that seem very much like deletions or complete assimilations. For example, ''hundred pounds'' may sound like and ''jumped back'' (in slow speech, ) may sound like , but X-ray and
electropalatographic studies demonstrate that inaudible and possibly weakened contacts or lingual gestures may still be made. Thus the second in ''hundred pounds'' does not entirely assimilate to a labial place of articulation, rather the labial gesture co-occurs with the alveolar one; the "missing" in ''jumped back'' may still be articulated, though not heard.
Division into syllables is a difficult area, and different theories have been proposed. A widely accepted approach is the maximal onset principle: this states that, subject to certain constraints, any consonants in between vowels should be assigned to the following syllable. Thus the word ''leaving'' should be divided rather than *, and ''hasty'' is rather than * or *. However, when such a division results in an onset cluster which is not allowed in English, the division must respect this. Thus if the word ''extra'' were divided * the resulting onset of the second syllable would be , a cluster which does not occur initially in English. The division is therefore preferred. If assigning a consonant or consonants to the following syllable would result in the preceding syllable ending in an unreduced short vowel, this is avoided. Thus the word ''comma'' (in RP) should be divided and not *, even though the latter division gives the maximal onset to the following syllable.
In some cases, no solution is completely satisfactory: for example, in British English (RP) the word ''hurry'' could be divided or , but the former would result in an analysis with a syllable-final (which is held to be non-occurring) while the latter would result in a syllable final (which is said not to occur in this accent). Some phonologists have suggested a compromise analysis where the consonant in the middle belongs to both syllables, and is described as
ambisyllabic
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
. In this way, it is possible to suggest an analysis of ''hurry'' which comprises the syllables and , the medial being ambisyllabic. Where the division coincides with a word boundary, or the boundary between elements of a compound word, it is not usual in the case of dictionaries to insist on the maximal onset principle in a way that divides words in a counter-intuitive way; thus the word ''hardware'' would be divided by the M.O.P., but dictionaries prefer the division .
In the approach used by the ''
Longman Pronunciation Dictionary
John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics.
Career
Wells ear ...
'', Wells claims that consonants syllabify with the preceding rather than following vowel when the preceding vowel is the nucleus of a more salient syllable, with stressed syllables being the most salient, reduced syllables the least, and full unstressed vowels ("secondary stress") intermediate. But there are lexical differences as well, frequently but not exclusively with compound words. For example, in ''dolphin'' and ''selfish,'' Wells argues that the stressed syllable ends in , but in ''shellfish,'' the belongs with the following syllable: → , but → , where the is a little longer and the is not reduced. Similarly, in ''toe-strap'' Wells argues that the second is a full plosive, as usual in syllable onset, whereas in ''toast-rack'' the second is in many dialects reduced to the unreleased allophone it takes in syllable codas, or even elided: → ; likewise ''nitrate'' → with a voiceless (and for some people an affricated ''tr'' as in ''tree''), vs ''night-rate'' → with a voiced . Cues of syllable boundaries include aspiration of syllable onsets and (in the US) flapping of coda ''(a tease'' → vs. ''at ease'' → ), epenthetic stops like in syllable codas (''fence'' → but ''inside'' → ), and r-colored vowels when the is in the coda vs. labialization when it is in the onset ''(key-ring'' → but ''fearing'' → ).
Onset
The following can occur as the
onset
Onset may refer to:
*Onset (audio), the beginning of a musical note or sound
*Onset, Massachusetts
Onset is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Wareham, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 1,573 at the 2010 census.
Geog ...
:
Notes:
Other onsets
Certain English onsets appear only in contractions: e.g. (''
'sblood''), and or (''
'swounds'' or ''
'dswounds''). Some, such as (''pshaw''), (''fwoosh''), or (''vroom''), can occur in
interjection
An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
s. An archaic voiceless fricative plus nasal exists, (''fnese''), as does an archaic (''snew'').
Several additional onsets occur in
loan word
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
s (with varying degrees of anglicization) such as (''bwana''), (''moiré''), (''noire''), (''zwitterion''), (''zwieback''), (''Dvorak''), (''kvetch''), (''schvartze''), (''Tver''), (''Zwickau''), (''Kjell''), (''Kshatriya''), (''Tlaloc''), (''Vladimir''), (''zloty''), (''Tskhinvali''), (''Hmong''), (''Khmer''), and (''Nganasan'').
Some clusters of this type can be converted to regular English phonotactics by simplifying the cluster: e.g. (''dziggetai''), (''Hrolf''), (''croissant''), (''
Nguyen
Nguyễn () is the most common Vietnamese surname. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as Nguyen. Nguyên (元)is a different word and surname.
By some estimates 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this s ...
''), (''pfennig''), (''phthalic''), (''tsunami''), (''!kung''), and (''Xhosa'').
Others can be replaced by native clusters differing only in
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
: (''sbirro''), and (''sgraffito'').
Nucleus
The following can occur as the
nucleus
Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to:
*Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom
*Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA
Nucle ...
:
*All vowel sounds
*, and in certain situations (see below under
word-level patterns)
* in
rhotic varieties of English (e.g.
General American
General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or so ...
) in certain situations (see below under
word-level patterns)
Coda
Most (in theory, all) of the following except those that end with , , , , or can be extended with or representing the
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
-s/-z. Similarly, most (in theory, all) of the following except those that end with or can be extended with or representing the morpheme -t/-d.
argues that a variety of syllable codas are possible in English, even in words like ''entry'' and ''sundry'' , with being treated as affricates along the lines of . He argues that the traditional assumption that pre-vocalic consonants form a syllable with the following vowel is due to the influence of languages like French and Latin, where syllable structure is CVC.CVC regardless of stress placement. Disregarding such contentious cases, which do not occur at the ends of words, the following sequences can occur as the
coda
Coda or CODA may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* Movie coda, a post-credits scene
* ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television
*''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
:
*Notes:
For some speakers, a fricative before is elided so that these never appear phonetically: becomes , becomes , or becomes .
Syllable-level patterns
*Syllables may consist of a single vowel, meaning that onset and coda are not mandatory.
*The consonant does not occur in syllable-initial position (except in unassimilated loans like ''
Ngorongoro
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (, ) is a protected area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Ngorongoro District, west of Arusha City in Arusha Region, within the Crater Highlands geological area of northern Tanzania. The area is n ...
'').
*The consonant does not occur in syllable-final position.
*Onset clusters ending in are followed by or its variants (see note 5 above).
*Long vowels and diphthongs are not found before , except for the mimetic words ''boing'' and ''oink'', unassimilated foreign words such as Burmese ''aung'' and proper names such as ''
Taung
Taung is a small town situated in the North West Province of South Africa. The name means ''place of the lion'' and was named after Tau, the King of the Barolong. ''Tau'' is the Tswana word for lion.
Education
High,Secondary and Middle Schools ...
'', and American-type pronunciations of words like ''strong'' (which have or ). The short vowels occur before only in assimilated non-native words such as ''
ginseng
Ginseng () is the root of plants in the genus ''Panax'', such as Korean ginseng ('' P. ginseng''), South China ginseng ('' P. notoginseng''), and American ginseng ('' P. quinquefolius''), typically characterized by the presence of ginsenosides an ...
'' and ''
Song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...
'' (name of a Chinese dynasty) or non-finally in some dialects in words like ''strength'' and ''length'' as well as in varieties without the
''foot''-''strut'' split.
* is rare in syllable-initial position (although in the northern half of England, is used for and is common at the start of syllables).
* Stop + before (all presently or historically ) are excluded.
* Sequences of + C
1 + V̆ + C
1, where C
1 is a consonant other than and V̆ is a short vowel, are virtually nonexistent.
Word-level patterns
* does not occur in stressed syllables, unless it is merged with another vowel as in some varieties.
* does not occur in word-initial position in native English words, although it can occur syllable-initially as in ''luxurious'' in American English, and at the start of borrowed words such as ''genre''.
*, , and, in
rhotic varieties, can be the syllable nucleus (i.e. a
syllabic consonant
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...
) in an unstressed syllable following another consonant, especially , , or . Such syllables are often analyzed phonemically as having an underlying as the nucleus. See above under
Consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
.
*The short vowels are
checked vowels, in that they cannot occur without a coda in a word-final stressed syllable. (This does not apply to , which does not occur in stressed syllables as mentioned above.)
Prosody
The
prosodic
In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, st ...
features of English – stress, rhythm, and intonation – can be described as follows.
Prosodic stress
Prosodic stress is extra stress given to words or syllables when they appear in certain positions in an utterance, or when they receive special emphasis.
According to Ladefoged's analysis (as referred to under above), English normally has prosodic stress on the final stressed syllable in an
intonation unit
In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...
. This is said to be the origin of the distinction traditionally made at the lexical level between primary and secondary stress: when a word like ''admiration'' (traditionally transcribed as something like ) is spoken in isolation, or at the end of a sentence, the syllable ''ra'' (the final stressed syllable) is pronounced with greater force than the syllable ''ad'', although when the word is not pronounced with this final intonation there may be no difference between the levels of stress of these two syllables.
Prosodic stress can shift for various
pragmatic
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement.
Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to:
*Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy
*Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics
*''Pragmatics'', an academic journal in ...
functions, such as focus or contrast. For instance, in the dialogue ''Is it brunch tomorrow? No, it's dinner tomorrow'', the extra stress shifts from the last stressed syllable of the sentence, ''tomorrow'', to the last stressed syllable of the emphasized word, ''dinner.''
Grammatical
function words are usually prosodically unstressed, although they can acquire stress when emphasized (as in ''Did you find the cat? Well, I found a cat''). Many English function words have distinct strong and weak pronunciations; for example, the word ''a'' in the last example is pronounced , while the more common unstressed ''a'' is pronounced . See
Weak and strong forms in English
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word ''(lexical stress)'' and at the level of the phrase or sentence ''(prosodic stress)''. Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently ...
.
Rhythm
English is claimed to be a ''
stress-timed'' language. That is, stressed syllables tend to appear with a more or less regular rhythm, while non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this. For example, in the sentence ''One make of car is better than another'', the syllables ''one'', ''make'', ''car'', ''bett-'' and ' will be stressed and relatively long, while the other syllables will be considerably shorter. The theory of stress-timing predicts that each of the three unstressed syllables in between ''bett-'' and ' will be shorter than the syllable ''of'' between ''make'' and ''car'', because three syllables must fit into the same amount of time as that available for ''of''. However, it should not be assumed that all varieties of English are stress-timed in this way. The English spoken in the West Indies, in Africa and in India are probably better characterized as
syllable-timed, though the lack of an agreed scientific test for categorizing an accent or language as stress-timed or syllable-timed may lead one to doubt the value of such a characterization.
Intonation
Phonological contrasts in intonation can be said to be found in three different and independent domains. In the work of Halliday the following names are proposed:
*''Tonality'' for the distribution of continuous speech into tone groups.
*''Tonicity'' for the placing of the principal accent on a particular syllable of a word, making it the ''tonic syllable''. This is the domain also referred to as
prosodic stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
or
sentence stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or Sentence (linguistics), sentence. That emphasis is typically caused ...
.
*''Tone'' for the choice of pitch movement on the tonic syllable. (The use of the term ''tone'' in this sense should not be confused with the
tone of tone languages, such as Chinese.)
These terms ("the Three Ts") have been used in more recent work, though they have been criticized for being difficult to remember. American systems such as
ToBI ToBI (; an abbreviation of tones and break indices) is a set of conventions for transcribing and annotating the prosody of speech. The term "ToBI" is sometimes used to refer to the conventions used for describing American English specifically, whic ...
also identify contrasts involving boundaries between intonation phrases (Halliday's ''tonality''), placement of pitch accent (''tonicity''), and choice of tone or tones associated with the pitch accent (''tone'').
Example of phonological contrast involving placement of intonation unit boundaries (boundary marked by comma):
Example of phonological contrast involving placement of tonic syllable (marked by capital letters):
Example of phonological contrast (British English) involving choice of tone (\ = falling tone, \/ = fall-rise tone)
There is typically a contrast involving tone between
wh-question
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative ...
s and
yes/no questions, the former having a falling tone (e.g. "Where did you \PUT it?") and the latter a rising tone (e.g. "Are you going /OUT?"), though studies of spontaneous speech have shown frequent exceptions to this rule.
Tag questions asking for information are said to carry rising tones (e.g. "They are coming on Tuesday, /AREN'T they?") while those asking for confirmation have falling tone (e.g. "Your name's John, \ISN'T it.").
History of English pronunciation
The pronunciation system of English has undergone many changes throughout the history of the language, from the
phonological system of Old English, to
that of Middle English, through to that of the present day. Variation between
dialects
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
has always been significant. Former pronunciations of many words are reflected in their spellings, as
English orthography
English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and p ...
has generally not kept pace with phonological changes since the Middle English period.
The English consonant system has been relatively stable over time, although
a number of significant changes have occurred. Examples include the loss (in most dialects) of the and sounds still reflected by the in words like ''night'' and ''taught'', and the splitting of voiced and voiceless allophones of fricatives into separate phonemes (such as the two different
phonemes represented by ). There have also been many
changes in consonant clusters, mostly reductions, for instance those that produced the usual modern pronunciations of such letter combinations as , and
.
The
development of vowels has been much more complex. One of the most notable series of changes is that known as the
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through ...
, which began around the late 14th century. Here the and in words like ''price'' and ''mouth'' became diphthongized, and other long vowels became higher: became (as in ''meet''), became and later (as in ''name''), became (as in ''goose''), and became and later (in RP now ; as in ''bone''). These shifts are responsible for the modern pronunciations of many written vowel combinations, including those involving a
silent final .
Many other changes in vowels have taken place over the centuries (see the separate articles on the
low back,
high back and
high front vowels,
short A, and
diphthongs
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
). These various changes mean that many words that formerly rhymed (and may be expected to rhyme based on their spelling) no longer do. For example, in
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's time, following the Great Vowel Shift, ''food'', ''good'' and ''blood'' all had the vowel , but in modern pronunciation ''good'' has been shortened to , while ''blood'' has been shortened and lowered to in most accents. In other cases, words that were formerly distinct have come to be pronounced the same – examples of such mergers include
''meet–meat'',
''pane–pain'' and
''toe–tow''.
Controversial issues
Velar nasal
The phonemic status of the velar nasal consonant is disputed; one analysis claims that the only nasal phonemes in English are and , while is an allophone of found before velar consonants. Evidence in support of this analysis is found in accents of the north-west Midlands of England where is only found before or , with ''sung'' being pronounced as . However, in most other accents of English ''sung'' is pronounced , producing a three-way phonemic contrast ''sum'' – ''sun'' – ''sung'' and supporting the analysis of the phonemic status of . In support of treating the velar nasal as an allophone of , claims on psychological grounds that did not form part of a series of three nasal consonants: "no naïve English-speaking person can be made to feel in his bones that it belongs to a single series with ''m'' and ''n''. ... It still ''feels'' like ''ƞg''." More recent writers have indicated that analyses of as an allophone of may still have merit, even though may appear both with and without a following velar consonant; in such analyses, an underlying that is
deleted by a
phonological rule
A phonological rule is a formal way of expressing a systematic phonological or morphophonological process or diachronic sound change in language. Phonological rules are commonly used in generative phonology as a notation to capture sound-related o ...
would account for occurrences of not followed by a velar consonant. Thus the phonemic representation of ''sing'' would be and that of ''singer'' is ; in order to reach the phonetic form and , it is necessary to apply a rule that changes to before or , then a second rule that deletes when it follows .
* 1. → / ____ velar consonant
* 2. → ∅ / _____
These produce the following results:
However, these rules do not predict the following phonetic forms:
In the above cases, the is not deleted. The words are all single
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
s, unlike ''singer'' and ''singing'' which are composed of two morphemes, ''sing'' plus ''-er'' or ''-ing''. Rule 2 can be amended to include a symbol # for a morpheme boundary (including word boundary):
2. /ɡ/ → ∅ /
___ #
This rule then applies to ''sing'', ''singer'' and ''singing'' but not to ''anger'', ''finger'', or ''hunger''.
According to this rule, the words ''hangar'' ('shed for aircraft'), which contains no internal morpheme boundary, and ''hanger'' ('object for hanging clothes'), which comprises two morphemes, are expected to constitute a minimal pair as ''hangar'' versus ''hanger'' ; in actuality, their pronunciations are not consistently distinguished in this manner, as ''hangar'' is frequently pronounced .
Additionally, there are exceptions in the form of comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, where Rule 2 must be prevented from applying. The ending ''-ish'' is another possible exception.
As a result, there is, in theory, a minimal pair consisting of ''longer'' ( 'more long') and ''longer'' ( 'person who longs'), though it is doubtful that native speakers make this distinction regularly. Names of persons and places, and loanwords, are less predictable. ''Singapore'' may be pronounced with or without ; ''bungalow'' usually has ; and ''Inge'' may or may not have .
Vowel system
It is often stated that English has a particularly large number of vowel phonemes and that there are 20 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American, and 20–21 in Australian English. These numbers, however, reflect just one of many possible phonological analyses. A number of "biphonemic" analyses have proposed that English has a basic set of short (sometimes called "simple" or "checked") vowels, each of which can be shown to be a phoneme and which can be combined with another phoneme to form long vowels and diphthongs. One of these biphonemic analyses asserts that diphthongs and long vowels may be interpreted as comprising a short vowel linked to a consonant. The fullest exposition of this approach is found in , where all long vowels and diphthongs ("complex nuclei") are made up of a short vowel combined with either (for which the authors use the symbol ), or (plus for
rhotic accents), each thus comprising two phonemes. Using this system, the word ''bite'' would be transcribed , ''bout'' as , ''bar'' as and ''bra'' as . One attraction that the authors claim for this analysis is that it regularizes the distribution of the consonants , , and (as well as in non-rhotic accents), which would otherwise not be found in syllable-final position. suggest nine simple vowel phonemes to allow them to represent all the accents of American and British English they surveyed, symbolized (front vowels); (central vowels); and (back vowels).
The analysis from came out of a desire to build an "
overall system" to accommodate all English dialects, with dialectal distinctions arising from differences in the ordering of phonological rules, as well as in the presence or absence of such rules. Another category of biphonemic analyses of English treats long vowels and diphthongs as conjunctions of two vowels. Such analyses, as found in or for example, are less concerned with dialectal variation. In , for example, there are seven basic vowels and these may be doubled (
geminated
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
) to represent long vowels, as shown in the table below:
Some of the short vowels may also be combined with ( ''bay'', ''buy'', ''boy''), with ( , ''beau'') or with ( ''peer'', ''pair'', ''poor''). The vowel inventory of English RP in MacCarthy's system therefore totals only seven phonemes. Analyses such as these could also posit six vowel phonemes, if the vowel of the final syllable in ''comma'' is considered to be an unstressed allophone of that of ''strut''. These seven vowels might be symbolized , , , , , and . Six or seven vowels is a figure that would put English much closer to the average number of vowel phonemes in other languages.
A radically different approach to the English vowel system was proposed by
Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
and
Halle. Their ''
Sound Pattern of English'' proposed that English has lax and tense vowel phonemes which are operated on by a complex set of phonological rules to transform underlying phonological forms into surface phonetic representations. This generative analysis is not easily comparable with conventional analyses, but the total number of vowel phonemes proposed falls well short of the figure of 20 often claimed as the number of English vowel phonemes.
See also
*
Australian English phonology
*
English orthography
English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and p ...
*
English pronunciation of Greek letters
*
General American
General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or so ...
*
Non-native pronunciations of English
Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native users of any language tend to carry the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules from their first language or first languages ...
*
Old English phonology
Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternation ...
*
Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers
Japanese has one liquid phoneme , realized usually as an apico-alveolar tap and sometimes as an alveolar lateral approximant . English has two: rhotic and lateral , with varying phonetic realizations centered on the postalveolar approximant a ...
*
Phonological development
Phonological development refers to how children learn to organize sounds into meaning or language (phonology) during their stages of growth.
Sound is at the beginning of language learning. Children have to learn to distinguish different sounds and ...
*
Phonological history of English vowels
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
*
Phonological history of English consonants
This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of the English language which concern consonants.
Consonant clusters
H-cluster reductions
* Reduction of /hw/ – to /h/ in a few words (such as ''who''), but usually to , for t ...
*
Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩
In English, the digraph represents in most cases one of two different phonemes: the voiced dental fricative (as in ''this'') and the voiceless dental fricative (''thing''). More rarely, it can stand for (''Thailand'', ''Thomas'') or t ...
*
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been ...
*
Regional accents of English
Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. For example, the United Kingdom has the largest variation of accents of any country in the world, and therefore no single "British accent" exists. This ar ...
*
Rhoticity in English
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic variet ...
*
T-glottalization
In English phonology, ''t''-glottalization or ''t''-glottalling is a sound change in certain English dialects and accents, particularly in the United Kingdom, that causes the phoneme to be pronounced as the glottal stop in certain positions ...
*
R-colored vowel
In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulate ...
*
International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects
This chart shows the most common applications of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent English language pronunciations.
See Pronunciation respelling for English for phonetic transcriptions used in different dictionaries.
*AmE, ...
*
:Splits and mergers in English phonology
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
*
*
*Campbell, F., Gick, B., Wilson, I., Vatikiotis-Bateson, E. (2010), “Spatial and Temporal Properties of Gestures in North American English /r/”. ''Child's Language and Speech'', 53 (1): 49–69
*
*
*Dalcher Villafaña, C., Knight, R.A., Jones, M.J., (2008), “Cue Switching in the Perception of Approximants: Evidence from Two English Dialects”. ''University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics'', 14 (2): 63–64
*Espy-Wilson, C. (2004), “Articulatory Strategies, speech Acoustics and Variability”. ''From Sound to Sense'' June 11 – June 13 at MIT: 62–63
*
*
*Hagiwara, R., Fosnot, S. M., & Alessi, D. M. (2002). “Acoustic phonetics in a clinical setting: A case study of /r/-distortion therapy with surgical intervention”. ''Clinical linguistics & phonetics'', 16 (6): 425–441.
*
*Hoff, Erika, (2009), ''Language Development''. Scarborough, Ontario. Cengage Learning, 2005.
*Howard, S. (2007), “The interplay between articulation and prosody in children with impaired speech: Observations from electropalatographic and perceptual analysis”. ''International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology'', 9 (1): 20–35.
*
*Locke, John L., (1983), ''Phonological Acquisition and Change''. New York, United States. Academic Press, 1983. Print.
*
*
*Sharf, D.J., Benson, P.J. (1982), “Identification of synthesized/r-w/continua for adult and child speakers”. ''Donald J. Acoustical Society of America'', 71 (4):1008–1015.
*Wise, Claude Merton (1957), ''Applied Phonetics'', Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
External links
University of Glasgow Dynamic Dialects Accent Map
{{DEFAULTSORT:English Phonology