CH5 English utterances Flashcards
Citation form
Word as it would be pronounced in isolation, in careful speech, with regular falling intonation
Reduced form
A repeated word may have no stress so can appear shorter, more reduced, and have less defined formants
How stops appear on spectrograms
White gap (silence) followed by thin vertical stripe (release burst)
How fricatives appear on spectrograms
Dark patch near top of spectrogram
How vowels, approximants, and nasals appear on spectrograms
With 2-5 formant bands
Strong form
When the word is emphasized, such as in citation form
Weak form
When the word is in an unstressed position
Words that are particularly susceptible to reduction and almost never stressed in connected speech
Closed-class words : syntactic categories that rarely get updated and often serve a functional (grammatical) role rather than a substantive (lexical) one
Assimilation
One sound changes due to influence of neighboring sound
Phonological processes across boundaries
Flapping : [ˈbʌɾɚ] ‘butter’ vs [ˈbʌɾaɪ̯] ‘…but I…’
Unreleased stops : [læk ̚toʊ̯s] ‘lactose’ vs [læk ̚tə] ‘…lack to…’
Dentalization : [sɪn̪θ] ‘synth’ vs [ɪn̪θiɹi] ‘…in theory…
Palatalization [ : d͡ʒudeɪ̯t] ‘due date’vs [wʌtd͡ʒuseɪ̯] ‘…what d’you say?
True or false : Citation form assumes the word is in isolation, so there is no across word processes
True
Stationary target
Idealized pronunciation of a segment in isolation
In shorter productions, a ____smaller/bigger proportion of the segment is articulated at the stationary target compared to the transition
Smaller
How is a smaller portion of the segment articulated at the stationary target in shorter words?
You are moving towards the target then you go back before reaching it
_____rare/frequent words undergo a greater degree reduction/coarticulation
Frequent
Deletion from Coarticulation
If gestures overlap between segments, the middle segment can be obscured: still articulating last segment; already starting the next one
Epenthesis from Coarticulation
2 segments in sequence overlap in gestures creating a new segment that was not there originally
E.g. t between n and f
- Transition from nasal to oral sound while keeping an alveolar place of articulation
- [t] has some properties of n, some properties of [f]
In citation forms, a stressed syllable is usually
produced by …
Pushing more air out of the lungs in one syllable relative to others
A stressed syllable often has a longer _____
Vowel
2-word compound nouns vs verbs stress
Nouns : stress only on first element
Verbs : stress on both elements
(noun and adjective compound = stress on both)
Tonic accent
When a syllable is especially prominent because it accompanies the final peak in the intonation
If syllables are stressed, they may or may not be the ____ _____ syllables that carry the major pitch changes in the phrase
Tonic stress
Unstressed syllables may or may not have a reduced _____
Vowel
2 processes to avoid stress clash
- Words with multiple stressed syllables usually alternate between stressed and unstressed
- Stress can change position in words in different sentences to avoid adjacent stress : words that might have been stressed are nevertheless often unstressed
Intonation
Pattern of pitch changes
Tonic accent
Major pitch change in a sentence
The tonic accent usually occurs on the ____ stressed syllable in a tone group in neutral intonation
Last
Continuation rise
When there are 2+ intonational phrases within an utterance, and the first one ends in a small rise
A ___ _____ intonation means that there is something more to come
Low rising
Usually, in an intonational phrase, the ___ stressed syllable that conveys new information is the tonic syllable.
Last
The tonic syllable has a falling pitch, unless …
it is the first of 2+ intonational phrases : there may then be a continuation rise in the pitch
Questions that can be answered by yes or no usually have a _____falling/rising intonation
Rising
Wh- questions usually have a _____falling/rising intonation
Falling
ToBI (Tones and Break Indices)
H: High tone
L: Low tone
*: pitch accent mark
* Acoustic prominence associated with a particular word in a sentence
* Must be combined with H or L tones
%: boundary accent mark
* Acoustic prominence associated with a phrase/utterance boundary
* Must be combined with H or L tones
Break index
Describes strength of boundary across words
0 = same word
1 = different word
3 = clause
4 = phrase
(Larger break index = larger pause)
Stressed syllables tend to be…
- Louder than unstressed syllables
- Longer than unstressed syllables
- More airflow
Number of primary stress in a polysyllabic word
1
Number of secondary stress in a polysyllabic word
Unlimited
Categorical processes
UR → SR
* E.g. Eng. /kæt+z/ → /kæts/
Gradient phonetic processes
- Often not transcribed
- E.g. non-systematic vowel lengthening
True or false : there is no coarticulation in citation form
False
