vowel reduction

Question 1

Grammatical words (=function words)

Answer 1

Words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker.

Function words include articles, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, or particles (up, down, on), expletives,.

+ some adverbs are function words (like then and why)
+ interjections sometimes

Question 2

vowel reduction

Answer 2

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

Vowels which have undergone vowel reduction may be called reduced or weak. In contrast, an unreduced vowel may be described as full or strong.

Question 3

Function words are reduced to their weak form unless

Answer 3

1. They have prosodic prominence (e.g. in the case of focus)
2. They are sentence-final prepositions

Question 4

prosodic prominence

Answer 4

a linguistic entity is prosodically prominent when it stands out from its environment by virtue of its prosodic characteristics. That is, we define prominence as a property of a linguistic entity relative to an entity or a set of entities in its environment.

features include rhythm, tempo, & voice quality

Question 5

Does vowel reduction take place in lexical words?

Answer 5

Yes, in most unstressed syllables

Question 6

When are vowels reduced in the first syllable?

Answer 6

V’CV
i.e. when a vowel is followed by a stressed consonant and vowel pair, e.g. analysis, attorney, banana, Madonna.

Question 7

In what cases will the syllable not reduce?

Answer 7

1. VˈV, e.g. chaotic.
2. VCˈCCV, e.g. transparent.
3. Digraphs: authentic, Australia
4. Separable prefixes (→secondary stress): prepaid, rebuild, amoral,
   unnatural.

Question 8

digraph

Answer 8

two letters that make one sound

ch, sh, th, wh, ph, ck

/u:/: ue, oo, ew,

/ei/: ay, ai, ey,

Split digraphs are represented like this: a_e, i_e, o_e, e_e, u_e.

Question 9

Why are VCˈCV words tricky in vowel reduction on the first syllable?

Answer 9

• reduction with inseparable prefix: confuse, reduce, preserve, prefer.
• no reduction without inseparable prefix: spontaneous.

Question 10

In what cases does the last vowel reduce?

Answer 10

1. -ate (nouns, adjs): senate, private, considerate
2. -ent (nouns): experiment, document
3. -ine (nouns): discipline, medicine
4. -ile in GA: missile (cf. no reduction in SBE)

Question 11

In what cases will the last syllable not reduce?

Answer 11

1. disyllabics with inseparable prefix: survey, comment, colleague
2. -ise suffix: generalise (but promise, practise)
3. -ate (verbs): hesitate, meditate
4. -ent (verbs): experiment, document
5. -ine (adj): alpine, bovine
6. digraphs (except -ous, -our, -ain, -eign): follow, cuckoo, engineer

Question 12

How are vowels reduced in a non-final position?

Answer 12

1. <a, o> reduce most often to /ə/ : abide, ability, normal, balsam,
   potato (but -age → /ɪdʒ/: village, outage, …).
2. <i, y> reduce most often to /ɪ/: imagine, Latin, pencil, transit
   (but -ity → /əti/: density, purity, …).
3. <e> may reduce to /ɪ/: basket, bucket; or to /ə/: challenge, preference, petition.
   
   </e>
4. <u> may reduce to /ʊ/: education, amulet; or to /ə/: campus, support</u>

Question 13

How are vowels reduced in a word-final position?

Answer 13

1. <a> reduces most often to /ə/: soda, puma, etc.</a>
2. <e, i, y> reduced most often to /i/ (→/ɪ/) : catastrophe, confetti, happy, ability.
3. <o, u> tend to preserve their tense value, i.e. /əʊ, uː/:
   albino, potato, ego, memo, menu, guru, Zulu.