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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

What is PSYCHOLINGUISTIC........?

Dictionary: psy·cho·lin·guis·tics (sī'kō-lĭng-gwĭs'tĭks)

n. (used with a sing. verb)
The study of the influence of psychological factors on the development, use, and interpretation of language.

psycholinguist psy'cho·lin'guist n.
psycholinguistic psy'cho·lin·guis'tic adj.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: psycholinguistics

Study of the mental processes involved in the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. Much psycholinguistic work has been devoted to the learning of language by children and on speech processing and comprehension by both children and adults. Traditional areas of research include language production, language comprehension, language acquisition, language disorders, language and thought, and neurocognition

Sci-Tech Encyclopedia: Psycholinguistics

An area of study which draws from linguistics and psychology and focuses upon the comprehension and production of language. Although psychologists have long been interested in language, and the field of linguistics is an older science than psychology, scientists in the two fields have had little contact until the work of Noam Chomsky was published in the late 1950s. Chomsky's writing had the effect of making psychologists acutely aware of their lack of knowledge about the structure of language, and the futility of focusing attention exclusively upon the surface structure of language. As a result, psycholinguists, who have a background of training in both linguistics and psychology, have been attempting since the early 1960s to gain a better understanding of how the abstract rules which determine human language are acquired and used to communicate appropriately created meaningful messages from one person to another via the vocal-auditory medium. Research has been directed to the evolutionary development of language, the biological bases of language, the nature of the sound system, the rules of syntax, the nature of meaning, and the process of language acquisition.

Columbia Encyclopedia: psycholinguistics

psycholinguistics, the study of psychological states and mental activity associated with the use of language. An important focus of psycholinguistics is the largely unconscious application of grammatical rules that enable people to produce and comprehend intelligible sentences. Psycholinguists investigate the relationship between language and thought, a perennial subject of debate being whether language is a function of thinking or thought a function of the use of language. However, most problems in psycholinguistics are more concrete, involving the study of linguistic performance and language acquisition, especially in children. The work of Noam Chomsky and other proponents of transformational grammar have had a marked influence on the field. Neurolinguists study the brain activity involved in language use, obtaining much of their data from people whose ability to use language has been impaired due to brain damage.

Bibliography
See D. Foss and D. Hakes, Psycholinguistics (1978); V. C. Tartter, Language Processes (1986); A. Radford, Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of English Syntax (1990).

Wikipedia: Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of subdisciplines; for example, as non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain become more and more widespread, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own right.
Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental psycholinguistics studies children's ability to learn language.

Areas of study

Psycholinguistics is interdisciplinary and is studied by people in a variety of fields, such as psychology, cognitive science, and linguistics. There are several subdivisions within psycholinguistics that are based on the components that make up human language.
Linguistic-related areas:

Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech sounds. Within psycholinguistics, research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds.
Morphology is the study of word structures, especially the relationships between related words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).
Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined together to form sentences.
Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.
Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.

Psychology-related areas:

The study of word recognition and reading examines the processes involved in the extraction of orthographic, morphological, phonological, and semantic information from patterns in printed text.
Developmental psycholinguistics studies infants' and children's ability to learn and process language, usually with experimental or at least quantitative methods (as opposed to naturalistic observations such as those made by Jean Piaget in his research on the development of children).

Theories

Theories about how language works in the human mind attempt to account for, among other things, how we associate meaning with the sounds (or signs) of language and how we use syntax—that is, how we manage to put words in the proper order to produce and understand the strings of words we call "sentences." The first of these items—associating sound with meaning—is the least controversial and is generally held to be an area in which animal and human communication have at least some things in common (See animal communication). Syntax, on the other hand, is controversial, and is the focus of the discussion that follows.
There are essentially two schools of thought as to how we manage to create syntactic sentences: (1) syntax is an evolutionary product of increased human intelligence over time and social factors that encouraged the development of spoken language; (2) language exists because humans possess an innate ability, an access to what has been called a "universal grammar." This view holds that the human ability for syntax is "hard-wired" in the brain. This view claims, for example, that complex syntactic features such as recursion are beyond even the potential abilities of the most intelligent and social non-humans. (Recursion, for example, includes the use of relative pronouns to refer back to earlier parts of a sentence—"The girl whose car is blocking my view of the tree that I planted last year is my friend.") The innate view claims that the ability to use syntax like that would not exist without an innate concept that contains the underpinnings for the grammatical rules that produce recursion. Children acquiring a language, thus, have a vast search space to explore among possible human grammars, settling, logically, on the language(s) spoken or signed in their own community of speakers. Such syntax is, according to the second point of view, what defines human language and makes it different from even the most sophisticated forms of animal communication.
The first view was prevalent until about 1960 and is well represented by the mentalistic theories of Jean Piaget and the empiricist Rudolf Carnap. As well, the school of psychology known as behaviorism (see Verbal Behavior (1957) by B.F. Skinner) puts forth the point of view that language is behavior shaped by conditioned response. The second point of view (the "innate" one) can fairly be said to have begun with Noam Chomsky's highly critical review of Skinner's book in 1959 in the pages of the journal Language.^[1] That review started what has been termed "the cognitive revolution" in psychology.
The field of psycholinguistics since then has been defined by reactions to Chomsky, pro and con. The pro view still holds that the human ability to use syntax is qualitatively different from any sort of animal communication. That ability might have resulted from a favorable mutation (extremely unlikely) or (more likely) from an adaptation of skills evolved for other purposes. That is, precise syntax might, indeed, serve group needs; better linguistic expression might produce more cohesion, cooperation, and potential for survival, BUT precise syntax can only have developed from rudimentary—or no—syntax, which would have had no survival value and, thus, would not have evolved at all. Thus, one looks for other skills, the characteristics of which might have later been useful for syntax. In the terminology of modern evolutionary biology, these skills would be said to be "pre-adapted" for syntax (see also exaptation). Just what those skills might have been is the focus of recent research—or, at least, speculation.
The con view still holds that language—including syntax—is an outgrowth of hundreds of thousands of years of increasing intelligence and tens of thousands of years of human interaction. From that view, syntax in language gradually increased group cohesion and potential for survival. Language—syntax and all—is a cultural artifact. This view challenges the "innate" view as scientifically unfalsifiable; that is to say, it can't be tested; the fact that a particular, conceivable syntactic structure does not exist in any of the world's finite repertoire of languages is an interesting observation, but it is not proof of a genetic constraint on possible forms, nor does it prove that such forms couldn't exist or couldn't be learned.
Contemporary theorists, besides Chomsky, working in the field of theories of psycholinguistics include George Lakoff and Steven Pinker.

Methodologies

Much methodology in psycholinguistics takes the form of behavioral experiments incorporating a lexical decision task. In these types of studies, subjects are presented with some form of linguistic input and asked to perform a task (e.g. make a judgment, reproduce the stimulus, read a visually presented word aloud). Reaction times (usually on the order of milliseconds) and proportion of correct responses are the most often employed measures of performance. Such experiments often take advantage of priming effects, whereby a "priming" word or phrase appearing in the experiment can speed up the lexical decision for a related "target" word later.^[2]
Such tasks might include, for example, asking the subject to convert nouns into verbs; e.g., "book" suggests "to write," "water" suggests "to drink," and so on. Another experiment might present an active sentence such as "Bob threw the ball to Bill" and a passive equivalent, "The ball was thrown to Bill by Bob" and then ask the question, "Who threw the ball?" We might then conclude (as is the case) that active sentences are processed more easily (faster) than passive sentences. More interestingly, we might also find out (as is the case) that some people are unable to understand passive sentences; we might then make some tentative steps towards understanding certain types of language deficits (generally grouped under the broad term, aphasia).^[3]
Until the recent advent of non-invasive medical techniques, brain surgery was the preferred way for language researchers to discover how language works in the brain. For example, severing the corpus callosum (the bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain) was at one time a treatment for some forms of epilepsy. Researchers could then study the ways in which the comprehension and production of language were affected by such drastic surgery. Where an illness made brain surgery necessary, language researchers had an opportunity to pursue their research.
Newer, non-invasive techniques now include brain imaging by positron emission tomography (PET); functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); event-related potentials (ERPs) in electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG); and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Brain imaging techniques vary in their spatial and temporal resolutions (fMRI has a resolution of a few thousand neurons per pixel, and ERP has millisecond accuracy). Each type of methodology presents a set of advantages and disadvantages for studying a particular problem in psycholinguistics.
Computational modeling - e.g. the DRC model of reading and word recognition proposed by Coltheart and colleagues^[4] - is another methodology. It refers to the practice of setting up cognitive models in the form of executable computer programs. Such programs are useful because they require theorists to be explicit in their hypotheses and because they can be used to generate accurate predictions for theoretical models that are so complex that they render discursive analysis unreliable. One example of computational modeling is McClelland and Elman's TRACE model of speech perception.^[5]
More recently, eye tracking has been used to study online language processing. Beginning with Rayner (1978)^[6] the importance and informativity of eye-movements during reading was established. Tanenhaus et al.,^[7] have performed a number of visual-world eye-tracking studies to study the cognitive processes related to spoken language. Since eye movements are closely linked to the current focus of attention, language processing can be studied by monitoring eye movements while a subject is presented with linguistic input.

Issues and areas of research

Psycholinguistics is concerned with the nature of the computations and processes that the brain undergoes to comprehend and produce language. For example, the cohort model seeks to describe how words are retrieved from the mental lexicon when an individual hears or sees linguistic input.^[2]^[8]
Recent research using new non-invasive imaging techniques seeks to shed light on just where certain language processes occur in the brain.
There are a number of unanswered questions in psycholinguistics, such as whether the human ability to use syntax is based on innate mental structures or emerges from interaction with other humans, and whether some animals can be taught the syntax of human language.
Two other major subfields of psycholinguistics investigate first language acquisition, the process by which infants acquire language, and second language acquisition. In addition, it is much more difficult for adults to acquire second languages than it is for infants to learn their first language (bilingual infants are able to learn both of their native languages easily). Thus, sensitive periods may exist during which language can be learned readily.^[9] A great deal of research in psycholinguistics focuses on how this ability develops and diminishes over time. It also seems to be the case that the more languages one knows, the easier it is to learn more.^[10]
The field of aphasiology deals with language deficits that arise because of brain damage. Studies in aphasiology can both offer advances in therapy for individuals suffering from aphasia, and further insight into how the brain processes language.

References

^ Chomsky, N. (1959). "A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior". Language 35 (1): 26–58. doi:10.2307/411334. ISSN 0097-8507.
^ ^a ^b Packard, Jerome L (2000). "Chinese words and the lexicon." The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 284-309.
^ Linebarger MC, Schwartz MF, Saffran EM. (1983). Sensitivity to grammatical structure in so-called agrammatic aphasics. Cognition, 13:361-92.
^ Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). DRC: "A dual route cascaded of visual word recognition and reading aloud." Psychological Review, 108, 204-256.
^ McClelland, J.L., & Elman, J.L. (1986). The TRACE model of speech perception. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 1-86.
^ Rayner, K. Eye movements in reading and information processing. Psychological Bulletin, 1978, 85, 618-660
^ Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M. & Sedivy, J. E. (1995). "Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension." Science, 268, 1632-1634.
^ Altmann, Gerry T.M. (1997). "Words, and how we (eventually) find them." The Ascent of Babel: An Exploration of Language, Mind, and Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 65-83.
^ Seidner, Stanley S.(1982). Ethnicity, Language, and Power from a Psycholinguistic Perspective. Bruxelles: Centre de recherche sur le pluralinguisme. pp. 4-7.
^ Seidner, Stanley S.(1982). Ethnicity, Language, and Power from a Psycholinguistic Perspective. Bruxelles: Centre de recherche sur le pluralinguisme. p. 11.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

English phonology

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English phonology is the study of the phonology (i.e., the sound system) of the English language. Like all other languages, spoken English has wide variation in its pronunciation both diachronically and synchronically from dialect to dialect. This variation is especially salient in English, because the language is spoken over such a wide territory, being the predominant language in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, in addition to being spoken as a first or second language by people in countries on every continent, notably South Africa and India. In general, the regional dialects of English are mutually intelligible.

Although there are many dialects of English, the following are usually used as prestige or standard accents: Received Pronunciation for the United Kingdom, General American for the United States and General Australian for Australia.

Phonemes

See IPA chart for English dialects for concise charts of the English phonemes.

The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by John C. Wells, for example, using symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, denotes 24 consonants and 23 vowels used in Received Pronunciation, plus two additional consonants and four additional vowels used in foreign words only. For General American, it provides for 25 consonants and 19 vowels, with one additional consonant and three additional vowels for foreign words. The American Heritage Dictionary, on the other hand, suggests 25 consonants and 18 vowels (including r-colored vowels) for American English, plus one consonant and five vowels for non-English terms [1].

Consonants

The following table shows the consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English. When consonants appear in pairs, fortis consonants (i.e., aspirated or voiceless) appear on the left and lenis consonants (i.e., lightly voiced or voiced) appear on the right:

Consonant phonemes of English
	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar²	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal¹	m			n			ŋ
Plosive	p b			t d			k ɡ
Affricate					tʃ dʒ
Fricative		f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ		(x)³	h
Approximant				ɹ^{1, 2, 5}		j	w⁴
Lateral				l^{1, 6}

Nasals and liquids may be syllabic in unstressed syllables, though these may be analyzed phonemically as /əC/.
Postalveolar consonants are usually labialized (e.g., [ʃʷ]), as is word-initial or pre-tonic /r/, though this is rarely transcribed.
The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is dialectal, occurring largely in Scottish English. In other dialects, words with these sounds are pronounced with /k/.
The sequence /hw/, a voiceless labiovelar approximant [hw̥], is sometimes considered an additional phoneme. For most speakers, words that historically used to have these sounds are now pronounced with /w/; the phoneme /hw/ is retained, for example, in much of the American South and in Scotland.
Depending on dialect, /r/ may be an alveolar [ɹ], postalveolar approximant, or labiodental approximant.
Many dialects have two allophones of /l/—the "clear" L and the "dark" or velarized L. In some dialects, /l/ may be always clear or always dark.

/p/	pit	/b/	bit
/t/	tin	/d/	din
/k/	cut	/ɡ/	gut
/tʃ/	cheap	/dʒ/	jeep
/f/	fat	/v/	vat
/θ/	thin	/ð/	then
/s/	sap	/z/	zap
/ʃ/	she	/ʒ/	measure
/x/	loch
/w/	we	/m/	map
/l/	left	/n/	nap
/ɹ/	run (also /r/, /ɻ/)	/j/	yes
/h/	ham	/ŋ/	bang

Allophones

Although regional variation is very great across English dialects, some generalizations can be made about pronunciation in all (or at least the vast majority) of English accents:

The voiceless stops /p t k/ are aspirated at the beginnings of words (for example tomato) and at the beginnings of word-internal stressed syllables (for example potato). They are unaspirated after /s/ (stan, span, scan) and at the ends of syllables.
For many people, /r/ is somewhat labialized in some environments, as in reed [ɹʷiːd] and tree [tɹʷiː]. In the latter case, the [t] may be slightly labialized as well.^[1]
In many dialects, /h/ becomes [ç] before [j], as in human [ˈçjuːmən].

Vowels

The vowels of English differ considerably between dialects. Because of this, corresponding vowels may be transcribed with various symbols depending on the dialect under consideration. When considering English as a whole, no specific phonemic symbols are chosen over others; instead, lexical sets are used, each named by a word containing the vowel in question. For example, the vowel of the LOT set ("short o") is transcribed /ɒ/ in Received Pronunciation, /ɔ/ in Australian English, and /ɑ/ in General American. For an overview of the correspondences, see IPA chart for English dialects.

Monophthongs of Received Pronunciation^[2]
	Front		Central		Back
	long	short	long	short	long	short
Close	iː	ɪ			uː	ʊ
Mid		ɛ	ɜː	ə	ɔː
Open		æ		ʌ	ɑː	ɒ

Monophthongs of Australian English
	Front		Central		Back
	long	short	long	short	long	short
Close	iː	ɪ	ʉː			ʊ
Mid	eː	e	ɜː	ə	oː	ɔ
Open	æː	æ	aː	a

The monophthong phonemes of General American differ in a number of ways from Received Pronunciation:

Vowels are more equal in length, differing mainly in quality.
The central vowel of nurse is rhotic /ɝ/ or a syllabic /ɹ̩/.
Speakers make a phonemic distinction between rhotic /ɚ/ and non-rhotic /ə/.
No distinction is made between /ɒ/ and /ɑː/, nor for many speakers between these vowels and /ɔː/.

Reduced vowels occur in some unstressed syllables. (Other unstressed syllables may have full vowels, which some dictionaries mark as secondary stress.) The number of distinctions made among reduced vowels varies by dialect. In some dialects vowels are centralized but otherwise kept mostly distinct, while in Australia and many US dialects all reduced vowels collapse to a schwa [ə]. In Received Pronunciation, there is a distinct high reduced vowel, which the OED writes ‹ɪ›.

[ɪ]: roses (merged with [ə] in Australian English)
[ə]: Rosa’s, runner
[l̩]: bottle
[n̩]: button
[m̩]: rhythm

English diphthongs
	RP	Australian	American
	RP	Australian	GA	Canadian
low	/əʊ/	/əʉ/	/oʊ/
loud	/aʊ/	/æɔ/	/aʊ/	/aʊ/
lout	/aʊ/	/æɔ/	/aʊ/	[əʊ]¹
lied	/aɪ/	/ɑe/	/aɪ/	/aɪ/
light	/aɪ/	/ɑe/	/aɪ/	[əɪ]¹
lane	/eɪ/	/æɪ/	/eɪ/
loin	/ɔɪ/	/oɪ/	/ɔɪ/
leer	/ɪə/	/ɪə/	/ɪɚ/³
lair	/ɛə/²	/eː/ ²	/ɛɚ/³
lure	/ʊə/²	/ʊə/	/ʊɚ/³

Canadian English exhibits allophony of /aʊ/ and /aɪ/ called Canadian raising. This phenomenon is also realized (especially for /aɪ/) by many US speakers, notably in the Northeast, as well as in South Atlantic English and the Fens of eastern England. In some areas, especially the Northeast US, /aɪ/) actually shifts to /ʌɪ/.
In Received Pronunciation, the vowels in lair and lure may be monophthongized to [ɛː] and [oː] respectively.^[3] Australian English speakers more readily monophthongize the former but it is listed here anyway.
In rhotic dialects, words like pair, poor, and peer can be analyzed as diphthongs, although other descriptions analyze them as vowels with /r/ in the coda.^[4]

Reduced vowels

Linguists such as Ladefoged^[5] and Bolinger^[6] argue that vowel reduction is phonemic in English, and that there are two "tiers" of vowels in English, full and reduced; traditionally many English dictionaries have attempted to mark the distinction by transcribing unstressed full vowels as having "secondary" stress, though this was later abandoned by the Oxford English Dictionary. Though full unstressed vowels may derive historically from stressed vowels, either because stress shifted over time (such as stress shifting away from the final syllable of French loan words in British English) or because of loss or shift of stress in compound words or phrases (óverseas vóyage from overséas or óverséas plus vóyage), the distinction is not one of stress but of vowel quality (Bolinger 1989:351), and over time, if the word is frequent enough, the vowel will tend to reduce.

English has up to five reduced vowels, though this varies with dialect and speaker. Schwa /ə/ is found in all dialects, and a rhotic schwa ("schwer") /ɚ/ is found in rhotic dialects. Less common is a high reduced vowel ("schwi") /ɪ̈/ (also "/ɪ/"); the two are distinguished by many people in Rosa's /ˈroʊzəz/ vs roses /ˈroʊzɪ̈z/. More unstable is a rounded schwa, /ö/ (also /ɵ/); this contrasts for some speakers in a mission /əˈmɪʃən/, emission /ɪ̈ˈmɪʃən/, and omission /ɵˈmɪʃən/. In words like following, the following vowel is preceded by a [w] even in dialects which do not otherwise have a rounded schwa: [ˈfɒlɵwɪŋ, ˈfɒləwɪŋ]. A high rounded schwa /ʊ̈/ (also "/ʊ/") may be found in words such as into /ˈɪntʊ̈/, though in many dialects this is not be distinguished from /ɵ/.

Though speakers vary, full and reduced unstressed vowels may contrast in pairs of words like Shogun /ˈʃoʊɡʌn/ and slogan /ˈsloʊɡən/, chickaree /ˈtʃɪkəriː/ and chicory /ˈtʃɪkərɪ̈/, Pharaoh /ˈfɛəroʊ/ and farrow /ˈfæroʊ/ (Bolinger 1989:348), Bantu /ˈbæntuː/ and into /ˈɪntʊ̈/ (OED).

Allophones

A distinction is made between tense and lax vowels in pairs like beet/bit and bait/bet, although the exact phonetic implementation of the distinction varies from accent to accent. However, this distinction collapses before [ŋ].
Wherever /r/ originally followed a tense vowel or diphthong (in Early Modern English) a schwa offglide was inserted, resulting in centering diphthongs like [iə] in beer [biəɹ], [uə] in poor [puəɹ], [aɪə] in fire [faɪəɹ], [aʊə] in sour [saʊəɹ], and so forth. This phenomenon is known as breaking. The subsequent history depends on whether the accent in question is rhotic or not: In non-rhotic accents like RP the postvocalic [ɹ] was dropped, leaving [biə, puə, faɪə, saʊə] and the like (now usually transcribed [bɪə, pʊə] and so forth). In rhotic accents like General American, on the other hand, the [əɹ] sequence was coalesced into a single sound, a non-syllabic [ɚ], giving [biɚ, puɚ, faɪɚ, saʊɚ] and the like (now usually transcribed [bɪɹ, pʊɹ, faɪɹ, saʊɹ] and so forth). As a result, originally monosyllabic words like those just mentioned came to rhyme with originally disyllabic words like seer, doer, higher, power.
In many (but not all) accents of English, a similar breaking happens to tense vowels before /l/, resulting in pronunciations like [piəɫ] for peel, [puəɫ] for pool, [peəɫ] for pail, and [poəɫ] for pole.

Transcription variants

The choice of which symbols to use for phonemic transcriptions may reveal theoretical assumptions or claims on the part of the transcriber. English "lax" and "tense" vowels are distinguished by a synergy of features, such as height, length, and contour (monophthong vs. diphthong); different traditions in the linguistic literature emphasize different features. For example, if the primary feature is thought to be vowel height, then the non-reduced vowels of General American English may be represented as follows:

General American full vowels, vowel height distinctive
i		u
ɪ		ʊ
e	ɚ, ə	o
ɛ	ɚ, ə	ɔ
æ		ɑ

If, on the other hand, vowel length is considered to be the deciding factor, the following symbols may be chosen:

General American full vowels, vowel length distinctive
iː		uː
i		u
eː	ɹ̩ː	oː
e	ʌ	o
a		aː

(This convention has sometimes been used because the publisher did not have IPA fonts available, though that is seldom an issue any longer.)

If vowel transition is taken to be paramount, then the chart may look like one of these:

General American full vowels, vowel contour distinctive
ij		uw
i		u
ej	ər	ow
e	ə	o
æ		ɑ

General American full vowels, vowel contour distinctive
ɪi̯		ʊu̯
ɪ		ʊ
ɛɪ̯	ɚɹ	ɔʊ̯
ɛ	ʌ	ɔ
æ		ɑ

(The transcriber at left assumes that there is no phonemic distinction between semivowels and approximants, so that /ej/ is equivalent to /eɪ̯/.)

Many linguists combine more than one of these features in their transcriptions, suggesting they consider the phonemic differences to be more complex than a single feature.

General American full vowels, height & length distinctive
iː		uː
ɪ		ʊ
eː	ɝː	oː
ɛ	ʌ	ɔ
æ		ɑː

Stress

Stress is phonemic in English. For example, the words desert and dessert are distinguished by stress, as are the noun a record and the verb to record. Stressed syllables in English are louder than non-stressed syllables, as well as being longer and having a higher pitch. They also tend to have a fuller realization than unstressed syllables.

Examples of stress in English words, using boldface to represent stressed syllables, are holiday, alone, admiration, confidential, degree, and weaker. Ordinarily, grammatical words (auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, and the like) do not receive stress, whereas lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) must have at least one stressed syllable.

English is a stress-timed language. That is, stressed syllables appear at a roughly steady tempo, and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this.

Traditional approaches describe English as having three degrees of stress: Primary, secondary, and unstressed. However, if stress is defined as relative respiratory force (that is, it involves greater pressure from the lungs than unstressed syllables), as most phoneticians argue, and is inherent in the word rather than the sentence (that is, it is lexical rather than prosodic), then these traditional approaches conflate two distinct processes: Stress on the one hand, and vowel reduction on the other. In this case, primary stress is actually prosodic stress, whereas secondary stress is simple stress in some positions, and an unstressed but not reduced vowel in others. Either way, there is a three-way phonemic distinction: Either three degrees of stress, or else stressed, unstressed, and reduced. The two approaches are sometimes conflated into a four-way 'stress' classification: primary (tonic stress), secondary (lexical stress), tertiary (unstressed full vowel), and quaternary (reduced vowel). See secondary stress for details.

Initial-stress-derived nouns mean that stress changes in many English words came about between noun and verb senses of a word. For example, a rebel [ˈɹɛb.ɫ̩] (stress on the first syllable) is inclined to rebel [ɹɨ.ˈbɛɫ] (stress on the second syllable) against the powers that be. The number of words using this pattern as opposed to only stressing the second syllable in all circumstances doubled every century or so, now including the English words object, convict, and addict.

Intonation

Prosodic stress is extra stress given to words when they appear in certain positions in an utterance, or when they receive special emphasis. It normally appears on the final stressed syllable in an intonation unit. So, for example, when the word admiration is said in isolation, or at the end of a sentence, the syllable ra is pronounced with greater force than the syllable ad. (This is traditionally transcribed as /ˌædmɨˈreɪʃən/.) This is the origin of the primary stress-secondary stress distinction. However, the difference disappears when the word is not pronounced with this final intonation.

Prosodic stress can shift for various pragmatic functions, such as focus or contrast. For instance, consider the dialogue

"Is it brunch tomorrow?"

"No, it's dinner tomorrow."

In this case, the extra stress shifts from the last stressed syllable of the sentence, tomorrow, to the last stressed syllable of the emphasized word, dinner. Compare

"I'm going tomorrow." /aɪm ˌɡoʊɪŋ təˈmɒroʊ/

"I'm going tomorrow." /aɪm ˌɡoʊɪŋ təˈˈmɒroʊ/

with

"It's dinner tomorrow." /ɪts ˈˈdɪnɚ təˌmɒroʊ/

Although grammatical words generally do not have lexical stress, they do acquire prosodic stress when emphasized. Compare ordinary

"Come in"! /ˈkʌm ɪn/

with more emphatic

"Oh, do come in!" /oʊ ˈˈduː kʌm ˌɪn/

This section requires expansion.

Phonotactics

Most languages of the world syllabify CVCV and CVCCV sequences as /CV.CV/ and /CVC.CV/ or /CV.CCV/, with consonants preferentially acting as the onset of a syllable containing the following vowel. According to one view, English is unusual in this regard, in that stressed syllables attract following consonants,^{[citation needed]} so that ˈCVCV and ˈCVCCV syllabify as /ˈCVC.V/ and /ˈCVCC.V/, as long as the consonant cluster CC is a possible syllable coda.^[7] In addition, according to this view, /r/ preferentially syllabifies with the preceding vowel even when both syllables are unstressed, so that CVrV occurs as /CVr.V/.^[7] However, many scholars do not agree with this view.^[7]

Syllable structure

The syllable structure in English is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C), with a maximal example being strengths (/strɛŋkθs/, although it can be pronounced /strɛŋθs/). Because of an extensive pattern of articulatory overlap, English speakers rarely produce an audible release in consonant clusters.^[8] This can lead to cross-articulations that seem very much like deletions or complete assimilations. For example, hundred pounds may sound like [hʌndɹɛb pʰaʊndz] but X-ray^[9] and electropalatographic^[10]^[11] studies demonstrate that inaudible and possibly weakened contacts may still be made so that the second /d/ in hundred pounds does not entirely assimilate a labial place of articulation, rather the labial co-occurs with the alveolar one.

When a stressed syllable contains a pure vowel (rather than a diphthong), followed by a single consonant and then another vowel, as in holiday, many native speakers feel that the consonant belongs to the preceding stressed syllable, /ˈhɒl.ɨ.deɪ/. However, when the stressed vowel is a long vowel or diphthong, as in admiration or pekoe, speakers agree that the consonant belongs to the following syllable: /ˈæd.mɨ.ˈreɪ.ʃən/, /ˈpiː.koʊ/. Wells (1990)^[7] notes that consonants syllabify with the preceding rather than following vowel when the preceding vowel is the nucleus of a more salient syllable, with stressed syllables being the most salient, reduced syllables the least, and secondary stress / full unstressed vowels intermediate. But there are lexical differences as well, frequently with compound words but not exclusively. For example, in dolphin and selfish, he argues that the stressed syllable ends in /lf/; in shellfish, the /f/ belongs with the following syllable: /ˈdɒlf.ɪn/, /ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/ → [ˈdɒlfɨn], [ˈsɛlfɨʃ] vs /ˈʃɛl.fɪʃ/ → [ˈʃɛlˑfɪʃ], where the /l/ is a little longer and the /ɪ/ not reduced. Similarly, in toe-strap the /t/ in a full plosive, as usual in syllable onset, whereas in toast-rack the /t/ is in many dialects reduced to the unreleased allophone it takes in syllable codas, or even elided: /ˈtoʊ.stræp/, /ˈtoʊst.ræk/ → [ˈtʰoˑʊstɹæp], [ˈtoʊs(t̚)ɹʷæk]; likewise nitrate /ˈnaɪ.treɪt/ → [ˈnʌɪtɹ̥ʷeɪt] with a voiceless /r/, vs night-rate /ˈnaɪt.reɪt/ → [ˈnʌɪt̚ɹʷeɪt] with a voiced /r/. Cues of syllable boundaries include aspiration of syllable onsets and (in the US) flapping of coda /t, d/ (a tease /ə.ˈtiːz/ → [əˈtʰiːz] vs. at ease /æt.ˈiːz/ → [æɾˈiːz]), epenthetic plosives like [t] in syllable codas (fence /ˈfɛns/ → [ˈfɛnts] but inside /ɪn.ˈsaɪd/ → [ɪnˈsaɪd]), and r-colored vowels when the /r/ is in the coda vs. labialization when it is in the onset (key-ring /ˈkiː.rɪŋ/ → [ˈkʰiːɹʷɪŋ] but fearing /ˈfiːr.ɪŋ/ → [ˈfɪəɹɪŋ]).

Onset

There is an on-going sound change (yod-dropping) by which /j/ as the final consonant in a cluster is being lost. In RP, words with /sj/ and /lj/ can usually be pronounced with or without this sound, e.g., [suːt] or [sjuːt]. For some speakers of English, including some British speakers, the sound change is more advanced and so, for example, in General American /j/ is also not present after /n/, /l/, /s/, /z/, /θ/, /t/ and /d/. In Welsh English it can occur in more combinations, for example in /tʃj/.

The following can occur as the onset:

All single consonant phonemes except /ŋ/
Plosive plus approximant other than /j/: /pl/, /bl/, /kl/, /ɡl/, /pr/, /br/, /tr/^[1], /dr/^[1], /kr/, /ɡr/, /tw/, /dw/, /ɡw/, /kw/	play, blood, clean, glove, prize, bring, tree^[1], dream^[1], crowd, green, twin, dwarf, guacamole, quick
Voiceless fricative plus approximant other than /j/:^[2] /fl/, /sl/, /fr/, /θr/, /ʃr/, /sw/, /θw/, /hw/	floor, sleep, friend, three, shrimp, swing, thwart, which
Consonant plus /j/: /pj/, /bj/, /tj/, /dj/, /kj/, /ɡj/, /mj/, /nj/, /fj/, /vj/, /θj/, /sj/, /zj/, /hj/, /lj/	pure, beautiful, tube, during, cute, argue, music, new, few, view, thew, suit, Zeus, huge, lurid
/s/ plus voiceless plosive:^[2] /sp/, /st/, /sk/	speak, stop, skill
/s/ plus nasal:^[2] /sm/, /sn/	smile, snow
/s/ plus voiceless fricative: /sf/	sphere
/s/ plus voiceless plosive plus approximant:^[2]^[3] /spl/, /spr/, /str/, /skr/, /skw/, /smj/, /spj/, /stj/, /skj/	split, spring, street, scream, square, smew, spew, student, skewer

Notes:

In some American dialects (especially as spoken by children), /tr/ and /dr/ tend to affricate, so that tree resembles "chree", and dream resembles "jream".^[12]^[13]^[14] This is sometimes transcribed as [tʃr] and [dʒr] respectively, but the pronunciation varies and may, for example, be closer to [tʂ] and [dʐ]^[15] or with a fricative release similar in quality to the rhotic, ie. [tɹ̝̊ɹ̥], [dɹ̝ɹ], or [tʂɻ], [dʐɻ].
Many clusters beginning with /ʃ/ and paralleling native clusters beginning with /s/ are found initially in German and Yiddish loanwords, such as /ʃl/, /ʃp/, /ʃt/, /ʃm/, /ʃn/, /ʃpr/ (in words such as schlep, spiel, shtick, schmuck, schnapps, Shprintzen's). /ʃw/ is found initially in the Hebrew loanword schwa. Before /r/ however, the native cluster is /ʃr/. The opposite cluster /sr/ is found in loanwords such as Sri Lanka, but this can be nativized by changing it to /ʃr/.
/skl/ occurs in the Greek loanword sclerosis; there is also /sfr/ (sphragistics).

Other onsets

Certain English onsets appear only in contractions: e.g., /zbl/ ('sblood), /zd/ (sdein), and /zw/ or /dzw/ (swounds or dswounds). Some, such as /pʃ/ (pshaw) or /fw/ (fwoosh), can occur in interjections. An archaic voiceless fricative plus nasal exists, /fn/ (fnese).

A few other onsets occur in further (anglicized) loan words, including /bw/ (bwana), /mw/ (moiré), /nw/ (noire), /pw/ (pueblo); /kv/ (kvetch), /ʃv/ (schvartze), /sθ/ (sthenics), /θl/ (thlipsis), /tv/ (Tver), /zl/ (zloty), and /zw/ (zwieback)

Some clusters of this type can be converted to regular English phonotactics by simplifying the cluster: e.g. /(d)z/ (dziggetai), /(h)r/ (Hrolf), /kr(w)/ (croissant), /(p)f/ (pfennig), /(f)θ/ (phthalic), /(t)s/ (tsunami), /vw/ (voilà).

Others can be substituted by native clusters differing only in voice: /sv ~ sf/ (svelte), /zb ~ sp/ (sbirro), /zgr ~ skr/ (sgraffito).

Nucleus

The following can occur as the nucleus:

All vowel sounds
/m/, /n/ and /l/ in certain situations (see below under word-level rules)
/r/ in rhotic varieties of English (eg General American) in certain situations (see below under word-level rules)

Coda

Most, and in theory all, of the following except those which end with /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ can be extended with /s/ or /z/ representing the morpheme -s/z-. Similarly most, and in theory all, of the following except those which end with /t/ or /d/ can be extended with /t/ or /d/ representing the morpheme -t/d-.

Wells (1990) argues that a variety of syllable codas are possible in English, even /ntr, ndr/ in words like entry /ˈɛntr.ɪ/ and sundry /ˈsʌndr.ɪ/, with /tr, dr/ being treated as affricates along the lines of /tʃ, dʒ/. He argues that the traditional assumption that pre-vocalic consonants form a syllable with the following vowel is due to the influence of languages like French and Latin, where syllable structure is CVC.CVC regardless of stress placement. Disregarding such contentious cases, which do not occur at the ends of words, the following sequences can occur as the coda:

The single consonant phonemes except /h/, /w/, /j/ and, in non-rhotic varieties, /r/
Lateral approximant + plosive or affricate: /lp/, /lb/, /lt/, /ld/, /ltʃ/, /ldʒ/, /lk/	help, bulb, belt, hold, belch, indulge, milk
In rhotic varieties, /r/ + plosive or affricate: /rp/, /rb/, /rt/, /rd/, /rtʃ/, /rdʒ/, /rk/, /rɡ/	harp, orb, fort, beard, arch, large, mark, morgue
Lateral approximant + fricative: /lf/, /lv/, /lθ/, /ls/, /lʃ/	golf, solve, wealth, else, Welsh
In rhotic varieties, /r/ + fricative: /rf/, /rv/, /rθ/, /rs/, /rʃ/	dwarf, carve, north, force, marsh
Lateral approximant + nasal: /lm/, /ln/	film, kiln
In rhotic varieties, /r/ + nasal or lateral: /rm/, /rn/, /rl/	arm, born, snarl
Nasal + homorganic plosive or affricate: /mp/, /nt/, /nd/, /ntʃ/, /ndʒ/, /ŋk/	jump, tent, end, lunch, lounge, pink
Nasal + fricative: /mf/, /mθ/ in non-rhotic varieties, /nθ/, /ns/, /nz/, /ŋθ/ in some varieties	triumph, warmth, month, prince, bronze, length
Voiceless fricative + voiceless plosive: /ft/, /sp/, /st/, /sk/	left, crisp, lost, ask
Two voiceless fricatives: /fθ/	fifth
Two voiceless plosives: /pt/, /kt/	opt, act
Plosive + voiceless fricative: /pθ/, /ps/, /tθ/, /ts/, /dθ/, /dz/, /ks/	depth, lapse, eighth, klutz, width, adze, box
Lateral approximant + two consonants: /lpt/, /lfθ/, /lts/, /lst/, /lkt/, /lks/	sculpt, twelfth, waltz, whilst, mulct, calx
In rhotic varieties, /r/ + two consonants: /rmθ/, /rpt/, /rps/, /rts/, /rst/, /rkt/	warmth, excerpt, corpse, quartz, horst, infarct
Nasal + homorganic plosive + plosive or fricative: /mpt/, /mps/, /ndθ/, /ŋkt/, /ŋks/, /ŋkθ/ in some varieties	prompt, glimpse, thousandth, distinct, jinx, length
Three obstruents: /ksθ/, /kst/	sixth, next

Note: For some speakers, a fricative before /θ/ is elided so that these never appear phonetically: /ˈfɪfθ/ becomes [ˈfɪθ], /ˈsiksθ/ becomes [ˈsikθ], /ˈtwelfθ/ becomes [ˈtwelθ].

Syllable-level rules

Both the onset and the coda are optional
/j/ at the end of an onset cluster (/pj/, /bj/, /tj/, /dj/, /kj/, /fj/, /vj/, /θj/, /sj/, /zj/, /hj/, /mj/, /nj/, /lj/, /spj/, /stj/, /skj/) must be followed by /uː/ or /ʊə/
Long vowels and diphthongs are not found before /ŋ/ except for the mimetic word boing!^[16]
/ʊ/ is rare in syllable-initial position^[17]
Stop + /w/ before /uː, ʊ, ʌ, aʊ/ (all presently or historically /u(ː)/) are excluded^[18]
Sequences of /s/ + C₁ + V̆ + C₁, where C₁ is a consonant other that /t/ and V̆ is a short vowel, are virtually nonexistent^[18]

Word-level rules

/ə/ does not occur in stressed syllables
/ʒ/ does not occur in word-initial position in native English words although it can occur syllable-initial, e.g., luxurious /lʌɡˈʒʊəriəs/
/θj/ occurs in word-initial position in a few obscure words: thew, thurible, etc.; it is more likely to appear syllable initial, e.g. /ɛnˈθjuːz/
/m/, /n/, /l/ and, in rhotic varieties, /r/ can be the syllable nucleus (ie a syllabic consonant) in an unstressed syllable following another consonant, especially /t/, /d/, /s/ or /z/
Certain short vowel sounds, called checked vowels, cannot occur without a coda in a single syllable word. In RP, the following short vowel sounds are checked: /ɛ/, /æ/, /ɒ/ and /ʌ/.

History of English pronunciation

Main article: Phonological history of the English language

Around the late 14th century, English began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift, in which

the high long vowels [iː] and [uː] in words like price and mouth became diphthongized, first to [əɪ] and [əʊ] (where they remain today in some environments in some accents such as Canadian English) and later to their modern values [aɪ] and [aʊ]. This is not unique to English, as this also happened in Dutch (first shift only) and German (both shifts).

The other long vowels became higher:

[eː] became [iː] (for example meet),
[aː] became [eː] (later diphthongized to [eɪ], for example name),
[oː] became [uː] (for example goose), and
[ɔː] become [oː] (later diphthongized to [oʊ], for example bone).

Later developments complicate the picture: whereas in Geoffrey Chaucer's time food, good, and blood all had the vowel [oː] and in William Shakespeare's time they all had the vowel [uː], in modern pronunciation good has shortened its vowel to [ʊ] and blood has shortened and lowered its vowel to [ʌ] in most accents. In Shakespeare's day (late 16th-early 17th century), many rhymes were possible that no longer hold today. For example, in his play The Taming of the Shrew, shrew rhymed with woe.^[19]

æ-tensing

æ-tensing is a phenomenon found in many varieties of American English by which the vowel /æ/ has a longer, higher, and usually diphthongal pronunciation in some environments, usually to something like [eə]. Some American accents, for example that of New York City or Philadelphia, make a marginal phonemic distinction between /æ/ and /eə/ although the two occur largely in mutually exclusive environments.

Bad-lad split

The bad-lad split refers to the situation in some varieties of southern English English and Australian English, where a long phoneme /æː/ in words like bad contrasts with a short /æ/ in words like lad.

Cot-caught merger

The cot-caught merger is a sound change by which the vowel of words like cot, rock, and doll (/ɒ/ in New England, /ɑː/ elsewhere) is pronounced the same as the vowel of words like caught, talk, and tall (/ɔ/). This merger is widespread in North American English, being found in approximately 40% of American speakers and virtually all Canadian speakers.

Father-bother merger

The father-bother merger is the pronunciation of the short O /ɒ/ in words such as "bother" identically to the broad A /ɑː/ of words such as "father", nearly universal in all of the United States and Canada save New England and the Maritime provinces; many American dictionaries use the same symbol for these vowels in pronunciation guides.

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English phonology

English phonology

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Contents

Phonemes

Consonants

Allophones

Vowels

Reduced vowels

Allophones

Transcription variants

Stress

Intonation

Phonotactics

Syllable structure

Onset

Nucleus

Coda

Syllable-level rules

Word-level rules

History of English pronunciation

æ-tensing

Bad-lad split

Cot-caught merger

Father-bother merger

Road To Prototype Curiculum