General & Contrastive Phonetics

Class 1
Objectives
 Approaches & principles influenced pronunciation teaching
 History of pronunciation teaching compared to other teaching methods
 Techniques and practice materials to teach pronunciation p.9-10
 Pronunciation curriculum
 Explain and exemplify the term “functional load” p.11
Accented Ness
What is an accent? Different perception of how different a speaker’s accent is from that of the L1
community.
Intelligibility
Two-way process involving both the speaker and listener
Vagueness of the word understand, they understand what?
The ability of listeners to recognise individual words
Comprehensibility
Relates to the reconstruction of the meaning of the message
Segments vs Segmental
Segments = consonants and vowel sounds (phonemes)
Fluency
Fluency\fluidity is the degree to which speech flows easily without pauses or dysfluency markers.

The history and scope of pronunciation teaching

Research is ahead of teaching and the addition of pronunciation to teaching is relatively new.
 Intuitive-imitative vs Analytic-Linguistic Approaches
 Inductive vs deductive approach
 Nativeness vs Intelligibility Principles
Two approaches to teaching pronunciation
- Intuitive-imitative approach
- Analytic-linguistic approach
Before pronunciation teaching
Grammar Translation Method was used
First wave was seen with Direct (or natural) Method
Second wave was the reform movement
4 core principles
What is new: an analytic-linguistic approach to language teaching
After the war came audiolingual\ oral approach
- Inductive teaching – observation and repetition
- Pronunciation is very important
- Pattern drills (PPP)
What is new: first method to have theory and teaching to large groups now possible
Methods of the 70`s
- The silent way
- Total physical response
- Suggestopedia
- Community Language Learning
Third wave: Classical Communicative styles of pronunciation teaching
 Shift from PPP to functional and skills-based teaching
 Grammar practice and drills replaced by fluency activities based on interactive small
groups
Factors to consider when designing a pronunciation curriculum
- The learner
- The role of the native language
Functional load

Class 3
Vowels: classification and allophonic processes
Speech sounds (Table in the portal)
Vowels:
- Most sonorant, and most audible sounds in speech
- Open vocal track
Two types of vowels
 Monophthongs: simple vowels – a stable vowel quality
 Diphthongs: complex vowels – change in vowel quality within a single syllable
Describing vowels
Five ways to describe vowels
o Height of tongue (low, mid, high)
o Placement of the tongue (back, central, front)
o Lips (rounded, spread, neutral)
o Muscles (tense or lax)
o Lowering of the velum (nasal or oral)
Vowel length
The tense-lax feature is important because it figures into the phonological rule system of English.
Reduce vowels

Week 3 exercises

Class 4
English vowels (Recap)
Watch video for the class
Nasalization of vowels
 Vowels in English are noticeably nasalized when they occur before nasal consonants in
same syllable
Effect of Environment: L-colouring (off-glide)
 There is vowel-like transition from the vowel to the final consonant. The actual sound of
this transition like a schwa, but there seems to be a glide transitioning between the main
vowel and the schwa
Canadian Raising
 The diphthongs /ai/ and /aw/ in Canadian English
o The nuclei (/a/ part) of the diphthong raised to /A/ when the vowel is before a
voiceless consonant
Class 5
Phonology of a language
1. The group of specific sounds used in that language
2. The permissible variations of those sounds when produced, and
3. The rules for combining those sounds
Vowels
They are speech sounds produced as a result of air moving through a relatively open vocal tract.
They contain the most acoustic energy and therefore are perceived as stronger sounds.

Consonants
They are speech sounds produced as a results of air moving through the vocal tract encountering
some constriction or obstruction.

Syllables have internal structure

 A syllable consists of a vowel sound alone or a vowel sound with consonants that precede
or follow it.
 There is only one vowel sound in a syllable
 Exception – atypical consonants – Consonants that function as a syllable’s sonority
Syllable types
 Open (end in a vowel)
 Closed (end in a consonant)
Phonological awareness
Phonological awareness is the understanding of different ways that oral language van be divided
into smaller components and manipulated.
A sub-category of phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken
words are made of individual sounds called phonemes.
Rather than working with larger units of spoken language, we ask students to listen for the
individual sounds or phonemes in a spoken word.

Phonic awareness
Phonic is where phonological awareness and phonemic awareness come together with writing
and looking at letters. Phonics is specifically matching phonemes (sounds) to graphemes (letters
that represent a sound). Phonics focuses on matching letters-graphemes to a specific sounds and
is done using written letters.

Syllabification
Maximum Onset principle
 A phonological principle that states that in a multi-syllabic word, in case of doubt
concerning…
 When building syllables, there is a strong preference to fill the onset position in syllables
cross-linguistically

Class 6
Phonemes – Allophones
1. Phonemes:
o A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. It
is an abstract concept that represents a category of sounds in a particular language.
o For example, in English, the words "bat" and "pat" differ by one sound: /b/ and /p/.
These are two different phonemes because changing /b/ to /p/ changes the meaning
of the word.
o Phonemes are language-specific, meaning that a sound considered a phoneme in
one language might not be a phoneme in another.
2. Allophone:
o An allophone is a variant of a phoneme. These are the different ways a phoneme
can be pronounced without changing the meaning of the word. Allophones are
usually context-dependent, meaning their usage is influenced by the sounds
around them.
o For example, in English, the /p/ sound in "pat" is aspirated (a small puff of air is
released), while in "spin," it is unaspirated (without a puff of air). Both are
allophones of the phoneme /p/ because this difference doesn't change the meaning
of the word.
o Allophones are typically perceived by speakers as the same sound even though the
pronunciation is slightly different.
In summary, phonemes are abstract sound categories that differentiate meaning, while
allophones are the actual spoken variations of those phonemes, which do not change meaning.
Class 7
Online class
1. Speech organs in Standard English
2. Consonant classification
3. Characteristics of consonant sounds
4. Phonetic symbols of consonants
5. Knowledge of important terms used in class (phonemic awareness, phoneme, allophone,
contrastive distribution, positional variation, Dental, Alveolar, Palatal, etc.)
6. Syllable structure
7. Maximal onset principle
8. Phonotactic constraints in language processing
9. How English consonants clusters present challenge to L2 learners
10. Effect of environment on consonants
11. Sounds and sounds contrast causes problem to students
12. Methods in textbook to help ESL/EFL students correct pronunciation errors
Position restriction: by their position within a word
- Syllable structure and phonotactic constraints
Positional variation: By the sounds that precede or follow them
Phonological hierarchy?
Syllables
 ‘Building blocks’ of words
 Syllables have internal structure
 The CV (consonant followed by vowel) structure = basic structure

Phonotactics
Refers to constraints on the possible ordering of phonetic segments within morphemes,
syllables and words in a language
Positional restrictions: consonants potentially occur in five different environments
1. Syllable initial
2. Syllable final
3. Intervocalic
4. Initial clusters
5. Final clusters
Remediating problems with initial consonant-cluster articulation (p. 104-105) final clusters
(p.106-108)
Effect of environment on Consonant (p.78-80)
1. Phonetic process: Aspiration [ᵸ]
2. Which phoneme: \p, t, k\
3. Environment needed
a. In an onset of a syllable
b. First consonant of that onset
c. In a stress syllable (primary or secondary)

1. Phonetic process: Non-release [`]

2. Phoneme affected: \p, t, k, b, d, g\
3. Environment needed:
a. When the stop occurs at the end of a word = optional
b. When the stop is followed immediately by another stop = obligatory

 It is often difficult for learners to distinguish minimal pairs ending in stop consonants
 The perceptual clue is distinguishing such word pairs tends to be VOWEL LENGTH

1. Phonetic process: Flapping – oral stop

2. Which phonemes are affected: \t, d\
3. Environment needed:
a. The \t\ or \d\ is in the onset of a syllable
b. The \t\ or \d\ is the only consonant of that onset
c. The syllable containing the \t\, \d\ is unstressed
d. The syllable containing the \t\, \d\ follows a syllable that is
i. Under (primary or secondary) AND
ii. Ends in a vowel (including a rhotic vowel)
e. Flapping is not ‘improper’ pronunciation; it is an obligatory feature Standard
Canadian and American English

1. Phonetic process: nasalized flap – disappearing \t\ [r]

2. Which phonemes are affected: the consonant sound \n\ and the consonant sequence \nt\
3. Environment needed
a. When the sequence occurs before an unstressed syllable, flapping is optional. It
occurs more in fast, casual speech more than in slower, more formal speech,
though even educated speakers do it.
b. Winter vs winner

1. Phonetic process: glottal stop

 2. Which phoneme: \t, d\
3. Environment needed
a. T or d precede a syllabic-n [n]

Class 10
Connected speech
Segmental: the examination of small and isolated sounds
Suprasegmental: the study of longer stretches (word-level and phrase level)
(combination) of sounds
Five adjustments
- Contractions, blends, and reductions (Blending)
- Linking (Glide)
- Assimilation (typology based on the direction)
- Deletion (sounds that disappear or not carefully articulated)
- Epenthesis

1. Consonant-to-vowel linking
2. Vowel-to-vowel linking
3. Consonant assimilation
4. Palatalization
Prosody is the cadence, or melody, of the language (i.e., stress, rhythm, intonation).
Rhythm: the timing patterns among syllables
Stress-timed rhythm/ syllable-timed rhythm
Segmentation: studies with adults have shown that the rhythmic structure of a language
determines the segmentation unit most natural to L1 listeners
Schwa – French/English
The problem of lack of vowel reduction
Exercise Underline content words and put parentheses around function words:
1. The ten words most frequently used in English are function, not content words.
2. There are 60 monosyllabic function words in English and 20 bisyllabic ones.
3. These relatively few words make up over 30 percent of the spoken language.
4. In other words, nearly every third word is a function word.
5. Unfortunately, these are the words that are most often mispronounced.
Corrected below
6. By mispronounced, we mean over-pronounced, which spoils the rhythm of a sentence.
7. A great way to improve your English is to learn to pronounce function words.
8. Function words are only stressed to give extraordinary emphasis. (e.g. I said in the desk, not on
it)

Class 11
The Rhythm of English Pronunciation: Prosodic aspects
- Thought groups
- Prominence
- Intonation
Thought groups (express an idea or thought)
Intonation unit: thought group that has its own intonation or pitch pattern.
Where we pause can change the meaning of a sentence, even when the words are the same!

Class 12
Prominence: the word that is the focus of attention and therefore is highlighted through strong
stress and higher pitch. Prominence in English acts as a highlighter.
Intonation (contour): the movement of pitch within an intonation unit: the melodic line showing
the rising and falling of the voice to various pitch levels during the articulation of an utterance in
order to reflect
1) Reflect grammatical function
2) Speaker’s attitude or emotion