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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENERAL AMERICAN AND RECEIVED PRONOUNCIATION 1 Introduccin a los estudios lingsticos ingleses 2012/2013 Grupo 6

Mara Almagro Carrin Marta Cano Snchez Isabel Mara Corbaln Daz Fabiola Gil Marn Jose Guardiola Toms Reza Kamali Dehgan

21st March, 2013

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENERAL AMERICAN AND RECEIVED PRONOUNCIATION

1. English pronunciation in the world a. RP & GA 2. Basic concepts to know a. Phonetics and Phonology b. Phoneme, phone and allophone 3. Contrasting systems a. Rhotic accent b. Differences in vowels and group of vowels c. Differences in consonants. Phoneme /t/ d. Change of primary stress 4. References

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENERAL AMERICAN AND RECEIVED PRONOUNCIATION

English is one of the most spoken languages all around the world. This is the reason why there are wide variations of pronunciation. All of these variations are classified in two different systems: Received Pronunciation (RP), which is the standard pronunciation of British English, also known as the BBC English and General American (GA) which is spoken in North America. The branches of linguistics that study differences between these two examples of pronunciation are Phonetics, which deals with the physical characteristics of speech sounds; and Phonology which studies the abstract categories that organise the sound system of a language. For a rightly understanding of this work is also indispensable become aware of the meaning of the following concepts: Units of the abstract level of sounds representation are called phonemes, and they will be represented between slashes /x/. T hose on the concrete phonetic level are simply speech sounds, this is, physical realisations, often referred as phones and will be represented bounded by square brackets [x]. The set of possible sounds for a single phoneme is called allophone. The allophone and its features is where the main effort of this investigation lies. Therefore, the main differences between RP and GA, which are related to allophone use, are the rhotic accent, some differences in vowel pronunciation, the differences in consonant pronunciation and the change of stress.

RHOTIC ACCENT One of the main differences between British English and American English is the rhotic accent. This characteristic is related to the pronunciation of the phoneme //. British English has a non-rhotic accent for this phoneme except in the zones of Scotland and Ireland and the most part of North America, where the phonic use of // is rhotic. However, New York City and the area of the Boston, do not meet this property, being closer to the British use. The rhotic speaker will pronounce the phoneme / / when this appears at the coda of a syllable in words such as hard [hd] [hd] or earth [:] [:]. In the case of the non-rhotic speakers, they will not pronounce the phoneme // if it comes before a consonant or in a stress vowel sound in the word-final apparition of a rsound such as hear [h], care [ke] or pour [p]. DIFFERENCES IN VOCALIC PRONUNCIATION It exists as well an opposition in the realisation of vocalic phonemes like vowels or diphthongs depending on the origins speaker . Here is a summing of the most spread cases. The GA transforms the British diphthong [] into [o] as we can see in the monosyllabic word go [g] [go] or the example of no [n] [no] Another change happens in a vowel [] like hot [ht] in Received Pronunciation that changes into [ht] in the American system. Other example could be what [wt] in RP that becomes [wt] in GA. The different pronunciation of the short vowel [] in GA which becomes longer vowel [:] in RP. It mainly happens before sounds like [s], [f], [], [ns], [nt],
[n] and [mpl]. For example: pass [p:s] in RP, and [ps] in GA; cant [k:nt] in RP, and [knt] in GA.

In the twentieth century there was a change from [ju:] to [u:] which affected the pronunciation of both systems. It consists of drop of the sound [j] before [u :], for example; chew [u:] or juice [u:s]. There are as well some minors changes related to pronunciation of single vowels, for example, privacy [prvsi] in RP pronunciation that changes to [prvsi] in GA, vitamin [vtmn] in PR which changes to [vtmn] in GA. DIFFERENCES IN CONSONANTS PRONUNCIATION The consonants field is not exclude from the contrasting of GA and RP. There are different realizations for many consonants between them, for instance: An aspirated sound like [tempt] in RP and [ tempt] in GA for the word
tempting.

A singularity in the pronunciation of the phoneme /t/ is the neutralisation, represented in IPA transcription as [] which occurs in the American accent. This allophonic phenomenon consists on the realization of the phoneme /t/ as if it were the phoneme /d/. This is what is called alveolar flap. In cases like metal [meal] (GA) [metal] (RP) we will have a homophony with the word medal. Other examples of alveolar flap are: writer [ra]. Meanwhile American speakers use the alveolar flap to pronounce /t/, there are some cases in British English in which this phoneme is realised as a deaspirated [t] or as a glottalized [ ]. The latter consists in a glottal stop that almost eliminates the /t/ sound. For instance, the American /krtn/ for curtain is glottal realised [k:tn] in RP. Other cases are but [b] or cat [k] CHANGE OF PRIMARY STRESS Stress is the emphasis that we give to a syllable or word. Within the stress we can distinguish two main accents: primary stress and secondary stress . Primary stress is the strongest degree that we give to a syllable in a word and secondary stress is a weak accent, less than the primary. The other syllables are called non-stressed.

Between RP and GA pronunciation sometimes it appears a difference in the position of primary stress. This difference lies in a shift of the stress from a syllable to other. Let us see the situations where this phenomenon happens. In French loanwords acquired during the Norman period the stress use to change its position depending on the origins speaker, for example, the word adult ['dlt] in Received Pronunciation will be pronounced ['dlt] in General American. The same process occurs with verbs ending in -ate, each speaker tends to change the stress if the word is long: donate, locate, migrate, and words with suffixes like -ary -ory -mony or adverbs in -ly. The length of the word causes a variation along its story which gives an unclear realization of its intonation.

References Plag, Braun, Lappe Schramm (2007) Introduction to English linguistics (pp. 16-23, 50-54) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter ISBN: 978-3-11-021408-6 Roca, I., Johnson, W. (1999) A course in phonology. Blackwell 8I34ROC. ISBN 9780631213468 Giegerich H. J. (1992) English phonology: an introduction. Cambridge University 8I34GIE. ISBN 0-521-33303-2 Carr, P. (1999) English phonetic and phonology: an introduction Blackwell. 8I34CAR. ISBN 978-1-4051-3454-5 Gmez, P. La web de Paco Gmez. Retrieved online from http://webpgomez.com Wikipedia. Rhotic and non-rhotic accent entry http://www.phonetizer.com

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