Phonology Of English

Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants ( stops, affricates, and fricatives).

Phonological analysis of English often concentrates on or uses, as a reference point, one or more of the prestige or standard accents, such as Received Pronunciation for England, General American for the United States, and General Australian for Australia. 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 of a language or dialect is an abstraction of a speech sound 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 is not as strongly phonemic 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, 14–16 in General American 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, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with ), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with , see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are always unaspirated and un-glottalized, and generally partially or fully voiced. The alveolars are usually apical, 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 pairs 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 or velarized (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 () 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/):
** postalveolar approximant (the most common realization of the phoneme, occurring in most dialects, RP and General American included)
** retroflex approximant (occurs in most Irish dialects and some American dialects)
** labiodental approximant (occurs in south-east England and some London accents; known as ''r''-labialization)
** alveolar flap (occurs in most Scottish, Welsh, Indian and some South African dialects, some conservative dialects in England and Ireland; not to be confused with flapping of and )
** alveolar trill (occurs in some very conservative Scottish dialects and some Indian, South African and Welsh accents)
** voiced uvular fricative (occurs in northern Northumbria, largely disappeared; known as the Northumbrian burr)
* In most dialects is labialized 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 . 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 flap that may become indistinguishable from , so ''winter'' may be pronounced similarly or identically to ''winner'' .
*Yod-coalescence 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, Cockney, Estuary English, Hiberno-English (some speakers), Newfoundland English, South African English, and to a certain extent in New Zealand English and Scottish English (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, 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 consonants are strongly labialized: .
* 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 vowels 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 sets 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 and in General American. 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) to a diaphoneme, which represents this interdialectal correspondence. A commonly used system of lexical sets, devised by John C. Wells, 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.

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 symbols used (see Vowel 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), Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh), and to some degree in Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Portland) and Eastern Canadian English, 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 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. Some American accents, for example those of New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore, 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 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 ; thus the symbol has been created for an r-colored schwa (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 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.
* 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 consonant; this is chiefly a feature of Canadian speech ( Canadian raising), but is also found in parts of the United States. Thus ''writer'' may be distinguished from ''rider'' even when flapping causes the and to be pronounced identically.

Unstressed syllables

Unstressed syllables 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 position and weakness—that are particularly often found as the nuclei of unstressed syllables. These include:
* schwa, , 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, , as in in General American and some other rhotic dialects, which can be identified with the underlying sequence .
* syllabic consonants: 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).
* , 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). Among speakers who retain the distinction there are many cases where free variation between and is found, as in the second syllable of ''typical''. (The OED 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, 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 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 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).

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. 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.) 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, 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 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, 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 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. For more details of this analysis, see Stress and vowel reduction in English.

For stress as a prosodic feature (emphasis of particular words within utterances), see below.

Phonotactics

Phonotactics 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 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''. However, this view is not widely accepted, as explained in the following section.

Syllable structure

The syllable 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. 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'', 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:

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 interjections. An archaic voiceless fricative plus nasal exists, (''fnese''), as does an archaic (''snew'').

Several additional onsets occur in loan words (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''), (''pfennig''), (''phthalic''), (''tsunami''), (''!kung''), and (''Xhosa'').

Others can be replaced by native clusters differing only in voice: (''sbirro''), and (''sgraffito'').

Nucleus

The following can occur as the nucleus:
*All vowel sounds
*, and in certain situations (see below under word-level patterns)
* in rhotic varieties of English (e.g. General American) 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 -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:

*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 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'', 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'' and ''Song'' (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 + C₁ + V̆ + C₁, where C₁ 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) 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.
*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 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. 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 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.

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 or sentence stress.
*''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 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-questions 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 has always been significant. Former pronunciations of many words are reflected in their spellings, as English orthography 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, 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). 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'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 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 morphemes, 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) 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 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 pronunciation of Greek letters
* General American
* Non-native pronunciations of English
* Old English phonology
* Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers
* Phonological development
* Phonological history of English vowels
* Phonological history of English consonants
* Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩
* Received Pronunciation
* Regional accents of English
* Rhoticity in English
* T-glottalization
* R-colored vowel
* International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects
* :Splits and mergers in English phonology

Notes

References

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Further reading

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*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
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*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
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*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.
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*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.
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*Locke, John L., (1983), ''Phonological Acquisition and Change''. New York, United States. Academic Press, 1983. Print.
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*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