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Consonant Clusters

Sometimes in certain consonant clusters (a string of two or more consonants in a word) the sounds may
be reduced or dropped. Below are some of these reductions.

The sts cluster

In the consonant cluster 'sts', the /t/ can be dropped.

Listen to these examples. The first word is with proper enunciation, the second with
the reduced sounds. Then listen to the words in sentences.

costs (cos:s) A Porsche costs way too much for me.

masts (mas:s) The masts on the sailing ship were over forty feet tall.

tests (tes:s) Most students are not that fond of tests.

The sks cluster

In the consonant cluster 'sks' the /k/ may be dropped.

Listen to these examples. The first word is with proper enunciation, the second with
the reduced sounds. Then listen to the words in sentences.

masks (mas:s) At a costume party, masks are mandatory.

asks (as:s) A certain relative of mine often asks me for money.

desks (des:s) The desks used in classrooms are usually uncomfortable.


The th cluster
In the consonant cluster 'th', the /th/ can be changed or dropped.

Listen to these examples. The first word is with proper enunciation, the second with the reduced sounds.
Then listen to the words in sentences.

The 'th' may become a /t/ as in months (munts)

There are twelve months in a year.

The 'th' may become a /k/ as in strengths (strengks)

Athletes strengths are sapped if they exercise excessively.

The 'th' may become a /thv/ as in twelfths (twelfs)

The recipe calls for seven-twelfths of a cup of butter.

The nt cluster

In the consonant cluster 'nt', if it is followed by a vowel sound, the /t/ may be dropped. A flapped 'n' is
used in
its place.

Listen to these examples. The first word is with proper enunciation, the second with the reduced sounds.
Then listen to the words in sentences.

The center of town is that way. (cen'ner)

The renter of the house couldn't pay the rent. (ren'ner)

That shirt costs twenty dollars. (twen'ny)

Reduction of is that/is there

In rapid speech sometimes speakers reduce 'is there' and 'is that'.

Listen to these examples. The first word is with proper enunciation, the
second with the reduced sounds. Then listen to the words in sentences.

Is there becomes zere.

Is there any tea left?


Is that becomes zat.

Is that a raccoon?

Assimilation

Sometimes the sounds of words are changed by assimilation, which is linking two sounds to make a new
one.

Listen to these examples. The first word is with proper enunciation, the
second with the reduced sounds. Then listen to the words in sentences.

't + y' becomes /ch/ Don't your parents like music? (don't jur) 'd + y' becomes
/j/ Could you tell me a story? (could ju) 's + y' becomes /sh/ Do you
miss your mother? (miss sure) 'z + y' becomes /zh/

Where's your brother? (where's sure)

Dropped Auxiliaries

Sometimes auxiliary verbs are dropped.

Listen to these examples. The first word is with proper enunciation, the
second with the reduced sounds. Then listen to the words in sentences.

what are you becomes whachya What are you doing? what do you
becomes whadaya What do you do for a living? what did you becomes
whaja What did you do yesterday.

Presenting diphthongs - similarities and differences


The English language has twenty vowel sounds. To see all the English sounds,
refer to the English Phoneme Chart. The first 12 of the English vowel sounds
are MONOPHTHONGS. The tongue stays at ONE fixed location in the mouth to
produce each MONOPHTHONG.

Sounds 13 to 20, the next eight English vowel sounds, are DIPHTHONGS.
They present greater difficulty to people learning English because the tongue
travels between two fixed locations. It is important to know exactly what to
do with the speech organs (i.e. the position of the tongue, lip-shape &
tension, size of mouth opening) in each location and the manner and
direction of the movement.

THE FIRST THREE DIPHTHONGS have the vowel sound in


"pit" or "if" as the FINISHING POSITION. To make this sound, your tongue has
to be high and towards the front of your mouth and your lips kept relaxed.

13) as in day, pay, say, lay. The starting position is


with tongue in mid position at front of mouth as in "egg", "bed" or "Ted". Therefore you
move the tongue up to make the diphthong.

14) as in sky, buy, cry, tie. The starting position is ,


the same sound as in "car" or the noise "ah" which you make when you open your mouth
at the dentist's. To make the diphthong you need a big jaw movement, less opening as
you move the tongue up and front.
15) as in boy, toy, coy or the first syllable of soya. The starting

position is , the sound in "door" or "or". Your tongue needs to be low,


but you need to pull it back and make your mouth round. To make the diphthong, you
relax the lip rounding and move your tongue forward and up.

THE NEXT THREE DIPHTHONGS have the neutral "shwa" vowel sound

, which occurs in grunting noises and the weak forms of "the" and
"a", as the FINISHING POSITION. To make the neutral vowel sound keep your
tongue fixed in the centre of your mouth, lips fairly relaxed and just grunt!

16) as in beer (the drink), pier, hear. The starting position is

as in "if" or "pit" with tongue front and high and lips relaxed.

17) as in bear (the animal), pair and hair. The starting position is

as in "egg" or "bed" with tongue in mid position at front of mouth. To


make the diphthong, using a small controlled movement, pull your tongue slighty back
from mid front to the mid central position in your mouth.

18) as in "tour", "poor" (talking posh!) or the first syllable of "tourist".

The starting position is with tongue pulled back but small mouth
aperture as in "hook", "book" or "look".

To make the diphthong, this time the small controlled tongue movement goes from the
back postion to the mid central position, losing the lip rounding and relaxing your mouth
from the tight starting position.

THE LAST TWO DIPHTHONGS have the back vowel (tongue


pulled back but small tight mouth aperture as in "hook", "book" or "look") as the
FINISHING POSITION.

19) as in "oh", "no", "so" or "phone". The starting position is the

neutral vowel sound, also known as "shwa" , which sounds like a


grunt, as in the weak form of "the" or "a". To start in this way, the tongue should be fixed
in mid central position in your mouth with lips relaxed. To make the diphthong, it is a
short controlled movement in the opposite direction of 5) above: from the centre to the
back moving your relaxed lips into a tighter small round aperture. Your cheeks should
move in a bit!

20) as in all the words of "How now brown cow!". The starting

position is the vowel sound as in "at" "bad" or "rat" with tongue front
but also low (i.e. mouth open). To make the diphthong the journey for your tongue from
front low (mouth very open) to back high (small tight mouth aperture) is a very long
excursion. Your jaw will move a lot too.

All English diphthongs are falling, apart from /juː/, which can be analyzed as [i̯uː].

Standard English diphthongs

American
RP Austral
(British) ian Canadi
GA
an

low [əʊ̯] [əʉ̯] [oʊ̯]

lou
[aʊ̯]
d [aʊ̯
[aʊ̯] [æɔ̯]
lou ]
[əʊ̯][t2 1]
t

lied [aɪ̯]

lig [aɪ̯] [ɑe̯]


[əɪ̯][t2 1]
ht

lan
[eɪ̯] [æɪ̯] [eɪ̯]
e

loin [ɔɪ̯] [oɪ̯] [ɔɪ̯]

loo
[uː] [ʉː] [ʊu̯][t2 2]
n

lea
[iː] [ɪi̯][t2 2] [ɪi̯][t2 2]
n

lee
[ɪə̯] [ɪə̯] [ɪɚ̯][t2 3]
r

lair [ɛə̯][t2 4] [eː][t2 4] [ɛɚ][t2 3]

lur
[ʊə̯][t2 4] [ʊə̯] [ʊɚ̯][t2 3]
e

1. ^ a b Canadian English exhibits allophony of /aʊ̯/ and /aɪ̯/ called


Canadian raising. GA and RP have raising to a lesser extent in /aɪ̯/.
2. ^ a b c The erstwhile monophthongs /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongized in
many dialects. In many cases they might be better transcribed as [uu̯]
and [ii̯], where the non-syllabic element is understood to be closer than
the syllabic element. They are sometimes transcribed /uw/ and /ij/.
3. ^ a b c In rhotic dialects, words like pair, poor, and peer can be
analyzed as diphthongs, although other descriptions analyze them as
vowels with [ɹ] in the coda.
4. ^ a b c In Received Pronunciation, the vowels in lair and lure may be
monophthongized to [ɛː] and [oː] respectively (Roach (2004:240)).
Australian English speakers more readily monophthongize the former.

Syllables and their parts

Words can be cut up into units called syllables. Humans seem to need syllables as a way
of segmenting the stream of speech and giving it a rhythm of strong and weak beats, as
we hear in music. Syllables don't serve any meaning-signalling function in language; they
exist only to make speech easier for the brain to process. A word contains at least one
syllable.

Most speakers of English have no trouble dividing a word up into its component
syllables. Sometimes how a particular word is divided might vary from one individual to
another, but a division is always easy and always possible. Here are some words divided
into their component syllables (a period is used to mark the end of a syllable):

tomato = to.ma.to
window = win.dow
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: su.per.ca.li.fra.gi.lis.ti.cex.pi.a.li.do.cious (some
people might put some of the periods in different places in this word).

Syllables have internal structure: they can be divided into parts. The parts are onset and
rhyme; within the rhyme we find the nucleus and coda. Not all syllables have all parts;
the smallest possible syllable contains a nucleus only. A syllable may or may not have an
onset and a coda.

Onset: the beginning sounds of the syllable; the ones preceding the nucleus. These are
always consonants in English. The nucleus is a vowel in most cases, although the
consonants [ r ], [ l ], [ m ], [ n ], and the velar nasal (the 'ng' sound) can also be the
nucleus of a syllable. In the following words, the onset is in bold; the rest underlined.

read
flop
strap

If a word contains more than one syllable, each syllable will have the usual syllable parts:

win.dow
to.ma.to
pre.pos.te.rous
fun.da.men.tal

Rhyme (or rime): the rest of the syllable, after the onset (the underlined portions of the
words above). The rhyme can also be divided up:

Rhyme = nucleus + coda

The nucleus, as the term suggests, is the core or essential part of a syllable. A nucleus
must be present in order for a syllable to be present. Syllable nuclei are most often highly
'sonorant' or resonant sounds, that can be relatively loud and carry a clear pitch level. In
English and most other languages, most syllable nuclei are vowels. In English, in certain
cases, the liquids [ l r ] and nasals [ m n ] and the velar nasal usually spelled 'ng' can also
be syllable nuclei.

The syllable structure analysis of the words 'read', 'flop', 'strap' and 'window' are as
follows (IPA symbols are used to show the sounds in the word/syllable):

read = one syllable


Onset = [ r ]
Rhyme = [ id ] (within the rhyme:)
Nucleus = [ i ]
Coda = [ d ]

flop = one syllable


Onset = [ f l ]
Rhyme = [ a p ]
Nucleus = [ a ]
Coda = [ p ]

window = 2 syllables

First syllable: [wIn]


Onset = [ w ]
Rhyme = [ I n ]
Nucleus = [ I ]
Coda = [ n ]

Second syllable: [ d o ]
Onset = [ d ]
Rhyme = [ o ]
Nucleus = [ o ]
(This syllable has no coda)

Linguists often use tree diagrams to illustrate syllable structure. 'Flop', for example,
would look like this (the word appears in IPA symbols, not English spelling). 's' =
'syllable'; 'O' = 'onset'; 'R' = 'rhyme'; 'N' = 'nucleus'; 'C' = 'coda'. (The tree may not come
out well-aligned on your screen, because your computer may show this page in a
different font). The syllable node at the top of the tree branches into Onset and Rhyme;
the Onset node branches because it contains two consonants, [ f ] and [ l ]. The Rhyme
node branches because this syllable has both a nucleus and a coda.

s
/ \
O R
/\ / \
| | NC
| | | |
[f l a p]

Liquids and nasals as syllable nuclei

The English liquids [ r l ] and the nasals [ m n ] can be the nuclei of syllables under
certain conditions. [ r ] can be a nucleus as easily as a vowel, in any position: the words
'bird', 'word', 'her', 'fur', the first syllable of 'perceive' and 'surname' and the final syllables
of 'mother', 'actor' (in casual pronunciation) all have [ r ] as the nucleus; in other words,
there is no vowel in the pronunciation of these syllables, even though they have one in
the spelling.

[ l ] and the nasals [ m n ] become syllable nuclei when they follow an alveolar consonant
in the last syllable of a word. This happens in the relaxed or casual rather than very
formal articulation of the word. Compare casual vs. formal pronunciations of 'button',
'bottle', 'bottom'.

When one of these sounds is a syllable nucleus, this is shown in transcription by putting a
very short vertical line under the IPA symbol
[ r l m n ].
' ' ' '

(If the vertical lines don't line up under the symbols on your screen, it is due to webpage
transfer complications.)

A word with a syllabic [ r ] as nucleus is 'bird':

Summary of the elements of a phonological system

The phonological system of a language includes various units plus patterns which are
used to combine theunits into larger units. The units of a phonological system are:

• features: aspects or characteristics of a speech sound that arise from the way the
sound is articulated or the way it sounds to the ear. 'Voicing' is a feature that
varies according to whether or not the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation
of a sound; the sound [ s ] is voiceless, but the sound [ z ] is voiced, for example.
Other features include 'manner', or what sort of gesture or position is used to make
a consonant sound (a 'stop' involves blocking the airstream completely for a
fraction of a second, as for [ p ], while a 'fricative' involves creating a narrow
opening through which air escapes, as for [ f ]. There are also suprasegmental
features, which are 'overlaid' on syllables or words. One such feature is stress,
known outside linguistics as 'where the accent is in a word'. In 'potato', the stress
falls on the second syllable; in 'promise' on the first.
• segments: a segment is a speech sound such as [ m ] or [ i ]. Speech sounds are
made by putting several features together. [ m ], for example, is created by
vibrating the vocal cords (feature: voiced), closing the mouth at the lips (feature:
bilabial), and lowering the soft palate so that air can escape through the nose
(feature: nasal). These three gestures occur simultaneously. The result is a voiced
bilabial nasal, [ m ]. Thus, segments are units that are built up from features;
features are the building blocks for segments.
• syllables: a syllable is a rhythmic unit of speech. Syllables exist to make the
speech stream easier for the human mind to process. A syllable comprises one or
more segments; segments are the building blocks for syllables. Details on the
syllable are found below.
• words: words are made of syllables.

The patterns or rule systems of a phonological system include:

• phonotactics, also known as sequence constraints. These are restrictions on the


number and type of segments that can combine to form syllables and words; they
vary greatly from one language to another. In English, for example, a word may
begin with up to three consonants, but no more than three. If a word does begin
with three consonants, the first will always be [ s ], the second must be chosen
from among the voiceless stops [ p t k ] and the third from among the liquids [ l
r ] or glides [ w y ]. Thus we get words such as 'squeeze' [ s k w i z ] in English,
but not words such as [ p s t a p ].
• phonological processes, including coarticulation processes, are modifications of
the feature structure of a sound that occur for one of two reasons: to make sounds
that are near each other more alike, thus make articulation easier (assimilation), or
to make sounds more different from each other (for instance, aspiration makes
voiceless stops such as [ p ] and [ k ] more different from voiced ones such as [
b ] and [ g ].

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