2020-02-23 BWH

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
https://pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - Notes from past classes
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International Phonetic Alphabet - The set of characters used by linguists to represent the sounds of different languages.
https://r12a.github.io/pickers/ipa/ - A resource for copying pronunciation characters from the IPA.
http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm - You can click the chart of IPA characters to hear what sound each one represents.
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Weak and Reduced pronunciation in English
- Unstressed syllables and words often have reduced pronunciation, where especially vowel sounds don’t get pronounced fully.
- The words that are usually reduced are sometimes called “function” words, in contrast to “content” words that give key information about the sentence.

content words: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, negatives, demonstratives
function words: pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, articles, conjunctions

- We reduce words that give grammatical information and come from small sets of possibilities. You could list all the function words (apart from longer prepositions) on a single page.
- In most sentences, the options available for each position of a function word are very limited, so native speakers don’t need or expect much information to know which word is said.

Are they ready? 	reduced: /ɚ/ or /əɹ/
Yes, they are. 	not reduced: /ɔɹ/ or /ɑɹ/
	- Auxiliary verbs are not reduced at the end of a clause (before a comma, period, or conjunction)
https://thesoundofenglish.org/content-function-words/ also explains this distinction

- Generally you’ll be understood as long as you more or less match the rhythm of native speakers. You don’t need to fully reduce function words in your own speech.
- “can”, “that”, and “had” are sometimes exceptions to this, because failing to distinguish between reduced and full forms might make it sound like you’re saying a different word, or might simply be confusing.

“that” and “had” can be repeated in certain sentences, with a different meaning for each
I had had lunch already when my wife got home. - The first “had” should be reduced to make it clear that it’s the auxiliary for the past perfect tense.
	“had had” = /hədˈhæd/
He said that that was the first book he read. - The first “that” is a conjunction and should be reduced, while the second should be stressed because it’s a demonstrative pronoun (“pointing” word).
	“that that” = /ðətˈðæt/

James, while John had had “had had”, had had “had”. “Had had” had had the teacher’s approval.
Without reducing auxiliary “had”, this would sound like:
	James, while John had had had had, had had had. Had had had had the teacher’s approval.
(Meaning: While John had used past perfect, James had used simple past. Past perfect had been correct.)

I know that that “that” had had “had had” after it in the original sentence.
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https://books.google.com/ngrams/ - Compare the frequency of words and phrases in English books over time. (This shows that “had had” and “that that” are about equally common in written English.)
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If you pronounce “can” fully when we expect it to be reduced, native listeners might hear “can’t”. This is especially true if the next word starts with a ‘t’ or similar consonant.

I can talk now. - “can” should be reduced to /kən/ or even /kn/, “talk” should have the main stress
I can’t talk now. - “can’t” should be pronounced fully as /kænt/. It should have as much stress as “talk”.
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“caught/cot merger” describes varieties of English where those two words sound identical.
(Native Bostonians might even add “cart” to the list of homophones.)
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Rhythm and Timing
- English is a stress-timed language, which means that the time between stressed syllables is more or less the same regardless of how many unstressed syllables are between them.
- This is especially noticeable in English rhymes, such as https://allpoetry.com/disobedience

(If the last syllable of a word with more than one syllable is -y, it’s almost always pronounced /i/, as it is in “happy”.)

- Even in prose and conversation, this fact means that unstressed words and syllables are noticeably shorter than stressed words and syllables, especially when there are many in a row.
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There’s a large set of words in English where the stress changes the meaning between noun and verb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun
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Future topics:

(DONE) pronunciation (rules?) - especially for communicating with patients and children

Use of borrowed words

say/tell (and other often confused pairs)

tense overview/review (auxiliaries and prepositions, e.g.)

how to form good complex sentences (including punctuation)