PHONOLOGICAL UNITS OF ENGLISH AND PROSODIC FEATURES

Revision questions:

1. Mention the four phonological units.

English has 4 phonological units: the phoneme, the syllable, the foot and the
tone group.

2. Define a phoneme, an allophone, a minimal pair or CIUE.

Phonemes are the linguistically contrastive or significant sounds (or sets of

sounds) of a language. Such a contrast is usually demonstrated by the
existence of minimal pairs or contrast in identical environment (C.I.E.).

Allophones are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme. A

phoneme is a set of allophones or individual non-contrastive speech segments.
Allophones are sounds, while a phoneme is a set of such sounds.

Minimal pairs are pairs of words which vary only by the identity of the
segment (another word for a single speech sound) at a single location in the
word (eg. [mt] and [kt]).

3. Define allophones in free variation and in complementary distribution.

Give examples.

Occasionally allophone selection is not conditioned but may vary from person
to person and occasion to occasion (i.e. free variation).

Allophones are usually relatively similar sounds which are in mutually exclusive
or complementary distribution (C.D.). The C.D. of two phones means that the
two phones can never be found in the same environment (i.e. the same
environment in the senses of position in the word and the identity of adjacent
phonemes). If two sounds are phonetically similar and they are in C.D. then
they can be assumed to be allophones of the same phoneme.

4. What is the unit of syllabicity? What is its basic structure? What is an

open and close syllable?
The unit of syllabicity is sonority or prominence where some sounds are said to
have greater prominence than others and these form the basis of syllables.
Syllable boundaries fall at points of weak promince.

The basic structure of syllabicity is CV (consonant followed by vowel) which has

been suggested as a basic phonological unit.

Almost all languages have CVCV or CV words.

If a language has CCV words, it also has CV words.
Hardly any language has V or VC words without CV ones. One of the rare
exception to this is the Arrandic group of Aboriginal languages
The first systematic utterances of children are usually of this form
regardless of language type.

Open syllables are syllables that end in a vowel. The most common open
syllable is the CV syllable.

Closed syllables are syllables that have at least one consonant following the
vowel. The most common closed syllable is the CVC syllable.

5. What is phonotactics?

It is the part of phonology that deals with the rule governing the possible
positions and combinations of morphemes.

6. What is a foot? Describe the structure of a foot. Why is English a left-

dominant language?

Foot is the phonological unit of rhythm. Words are made up of rhythmic units
called feet and these comprise one or more syllables. Feet represent the
rhythmic structure of the word and are the units that allow us to describe stress
pattern. In English a foot starts with a stressed syllable and ends with the last
unstressed syllable before the next stress.

Structure: In each foot, one of the syllables is more prominent or stronger than
the other syllable(s) and it is called the strong syllable or ictus. It is the head of
the syllable. For example, in party, the first syllable is strong and the second
syllable is weak.
English is a left-dominant language because the stress will go towards the left
of the word (left-dominant feet have a strong first syllable with the following
syllables weak). For example, consultation has two feet, /kn.sl/ and /te.n/.
In each of these feet, the first or left-most syllable is strong and the second is
weak, that is, left-dominant.

7. What is the difference between a tone and intonation language?

The difference between a tone and intonation language is that in a tone

language, the tone can determine the meaning of a word, and changing from
one tone to another can completely change the meaning. While an intonation
language uses tones and pitch differences for other purposes.

8. What is a tone group? Describe its structure.

The tone group is the unit of intonation and information. A tone group is a
sequence of speech dominated by prominent or accented word. The accented
contains the strongest, most prominent syllable (usually its primary stressed
syllable). The strongest syllable in the accented word is often referred to as the
nuclear syllable or the tonic syllable. A tone group can contain one or more
rhythmic feet.

Each tone-unit has one and only one tonic syllable which is an obligatory
component of the tone unit.

9. What is the head, pre-head, nucleus or tonic syllable and tail?

The head is all that part of a tone-unit that extends from the first stressed
syllable up to (but not including) the tonic syllable. If there is no stressed
syllable before the tonic syllable, there cannot be a head.

Pre-head is composed of all the unstressed syllables in a tone-unit preceding

the first stressed syllable. Pre-heads are found in two main environments:

a) When there is no head (i.e. no stressed syllable preceding the tonic

syllable)
b) When there is a head.
10.Transcribe and mark the elements in the following units:

Syllables STRIPES

Feet: //I was =really =happy to =see them//

Tone groups: //I was =really =happy to =see them//

11.How can tonality make a difference in meaning? (Give 3 examples)

Tonality can make a difference of meaning.
These pairs of utterances are alike except for the number of tone
units that they have:
I learned about the accident from my cousin ,/ who lives in Chatam
I learned about the accident from my cousin who lives in Chatam.
These sentences show a distinction between a non- restrictive clause
and a restrictive one:
The postman left four letters/ and a package for David
The postman left four letters and a package for David.
(These would not be distinguished in writing , creating ambiguity.
How many items have David received from the postman?)
These sentences show that tonality can remove ambiguity( it doesnt
mean that we constantly use tonality to remove ambiguity- Ambiguity
may be a problem in writing)
My brother/ Peter/ and Dennis/ had a big argument.
My brother Peter/ and Dennis/ had a big argument.
(In written form, the first sentences would have commas before and
after Peter, thus clarifying the number of people involved in the
argument)

12.What are the phonic cues used to identify tone group boundaries?
The phonetic cues used to identify tone group boundaries are:
Change of pitch.
Change of pace.
Grammatical criteria.
Semantic criteria.
Pause.

13.What are the factors that determine the division into tone groups?
There are four factors that determine the division into tone groups:

1. Speed of the delivery: the faster we speak, the fewer divisions into tone
groups we will make.

2. The speakers choice of division and organization of the information: as

tonality is a system, the speaker has a set of choices to decide on the way he
will plan, present and perform the information. The listener may differentiate
tone groups through a speakers pause, change of pitch, pace or when he
perceives a connection with a grammatical unit.

3. Length constraints: in a tone group, the maximum stipulated are from 5 to 6

stresses. A breath-group cannot be taken into account for tone group division
because with only one breath we can produce more than six stresses.

4. Correlation with syntactic units: theres a tendency in English for the tone
group to coincide with a clause. This is very flexible.

14.What are prosodic features?

Prosodic features are features of speech that can be added to the basic
segments, usually to a sequence of more than one sound. It is traditional in the
study of the language to regard speech as being basically composed of a
sequence of sounds, (vowels and consonants). The term prosody is then used
to refer to these additional features.

According to Ortz Lira nad Finch, prosodic features are features of speech such
as PITCH, LOUDNESS and QUANTITY that affect stretches of utterance longer
than a segment, such as a syllable, a word or a sentence.

According to Gimson, prosodic features are such features that may extend in
time beyond the limits of the phoneme and embrace much higher units of the
utterance.

15.Mention the prosodic features and give a short definition of each one.
The following features are some of the most relevant prosodic ones:
Stress: a property of syllables which makes them stand out as more
noticeable than others. It seems likely that stressed syllables are produced with
greater effort than unstressed ones.

Tempo: the linguistic use of speech rate or speed. Every speaker knows how
to speak at different rates. There is evidence to suggest that we do use such
variations contrastively to help to convey something about our attitudes and
emotions.

Rhythm: the pattern of prominent and non-prominent syllables in an

utterance.

Pause: a relatively brief silence or other speech phenomenon producing a

similar impression.

Pitch: the aspect of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds may be

ordered on a scale running from low (grave) to high (acute)

Juncture: the way one sound is attached to its neighbours. It is the transition
from sound to sound either within the word or within the sentence.

Loudness: the auditory impression of the amount of energy present in

sounds. We all use grater loudness to overcome difficult communication
conditions (bad telephone line). It is clear that individuals differ from each
other in the natural loudness level of their normal speaking voice.

Intonation: in a restricted sense, intonation means the variations in the pitch

of the voice used to convey or alter the meaning.

Length: an aspect of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds or sound

sequences can be ordered on a scale running from short to long. It thus refers
to the perceived length of a sound, utterance or silence. A change in length
would eventually imply a change in speed or rhythm of the unit.

16.What is juncture? What are the four ways of realizing juncture?

Juncture refers to the phonological, and in actual speech, phonetic
features that mark the beginning and the end of linguistic units, i.e, they
signal the boundary between syllables, words and clauses, thus enabling us
to distinguish, for example, between a name/ an aim and between night
rate/ nitrate.
The four ways of realizing juncture are:
Pauses: the most obvious junctural features, or boundary signals
which include those filled with hesitation noises such as er and um.
Certain phonemes and phonemes combinations: at the phonological
level, linguistic boundaries are marked by restrictions on the possible
position and combination of morphemes. Certain phonemes and
phonemes combinations never occur at the beginning or at the end of
a syllable or word, for example, and certain phoneme combinations
do not occur within a word at all.
Suprasegmental features: at the phonetic level, linguistic boundaries
are signaled by the suprasegmental features of loudness, pitch, and
duration, which are components of stress, and thus shape the
intonation of connected speech.
Allophones in complementary distribution: the most reliable boundary
signals are the rule-governed phonetic processes that take place
when phonemes occur at the beginning or end of linguistic units,
such as the partial devoicing of some lenis consonants in word- initial
position, and the full devoicing of these consonants in word- final
position. In other words, maybe the most reliable clues as to how
distinguish the separate words of an utterance come from allophones
in complementary distribution.

17.What is open and close juncture? Give examples.

The most common attempt to establish a typology of juncture is based on

the notions of open and close. Junctural features at a word boundary
are referred to as open juncture or plus juncture (because in a phonetic
transcription proper , it may represented by a plus sign). If that word
boundary is not preceded or followed by a pause, i.e, if the words in both
sides of the boundaries are run together, we speak of internal open
juncture. For example: the sequence night rate. It has internal open
juncture between /t/ and /r/, and it is the location of the internal open
juncture that distinguishes a name/ an aim. In beetroot and bedroom, for
 example, there is internal open juncture between /t/ and /d/. If the word
boundary is preceded or followed by a pause , i.e if the word boundary
occurs at the beginning or at the end of an utterance, we speak of external
open juncture.

The normal transitions between sounds within a word, on the other hand,
are referred to as close juncture. For example: the word nitrate has a
close juncture between /t/ /r/. Sequences like a name and an aim, or that
stuff and thats tough, seem to have the same close juncture between all
their sounds. In that case, it is not the boundary signals, but the context
which help us distinguish the separate words.

18.What is prominence?
It is that property which makes some syllables stand out from others.
Prominence at the level of the word or word stress.
Prominence at the level of the sentence or sentence stress.
19.What are the characteristics that make a syllable prominent? Define
them.
Prominent syllables stand out due to pitch, quality, quantity and/or stress.
Pitch
- Articulatory point of view: pitch depends on the tension and the
consequent rate of vibration of the vocal folds.
- Auditory point of view: it is that quality of a sound, in terms of which it
can be placed on a scale running from high to low, or acute to grave.
Quality
- Articulatory point of view: it is the way in which articulators and
resonators work together.
- Auditory point of view: it is that feature in terms of which two sounds
that have the same loudness, quantity and pitch are perceived as different.
Quantity
- Auditory point of view: it is that property of a sound that enables us to
place it on a scale going from long to short. = Length
Stress / Loudness
- Articulatory point of view: it is caused by greater muscular energy and
breath force.
- Auditory point of view: it is that property of a sound which enables us to
place it on a scale going from loud to soft.
20.What are the degrees or categories of stress?

The degrees or categories of stress are:

1) Primary Stress

2) Secondary Stress

3) Tertiary Stress

21.Transcribe the following words using scalar notation classify syllables

according to the degree of stress.

Fantastic shop assistant seventeen