ENG 478/678
Some problems and issues in phonetics
STRESS
In English, stress affects the way we pronounce words, and therefore must be taken into account in any phonetic transcription system. The main effect (for our purposes) will be on vowels, an effect known as "vowel reduction."
Words of one syllable, as far as we are concerned, will all have primary stress. (In real speech there is a broad class of exceptions, but we will ignore the exceptions for now.) So each one-syllable word will be transcribed simply as pronounced. For example,
In words of two or more syllables, however, we will have only one syllable
with primary stress, and one (or more) unstressed syllables. Other syllables
may have some stress, but not as much as the primary-stressed syllable; this
is called secondary stress. Syllables with primary or secondary stress
will all contain full vowels, as in the words above. But vowels in
an unstressed syllable may undergo "vowel reduction."
The result is the reduced vowel, for which we use the phonetic symbol
"schwa"
.
For example,
Notice that in the first syllable of "tundra" we use the "caret" 
to symbolize the full vowel in mid central lax position, while the similar-sounding
but shorter "schwa"
is used in the second syllable to symbolize the reduced vowel.
Not all unstressed vowels are necessarily reduced. In words like "ÓNLY" [onli] and in most compound words ("mixup") an unstressed vowel is still full. But most of the time, the unstressed vowel will reduce to schwa. When I give you words of two or more syllables to transcribe, I will indicate stress.
Transcribe the following words. Make sure you give them normal
pronunciation:
AMÚSE
COMMÁND
PÁLACE
FACÁDE
PÚNISH
CÓTTAGE
SYLLABLES, VOWELS, AND SYLLABIC CONSONANTS
One of the definitions of the vowel specifies that it is the "nucleus of the syllable." That means that a vowel is the one essential element of the syllable. In other words, however many consonants a syllable may have (from zero to n) it will have one, and only one, vowel.
Listen to the second syllable, however, in a word like DAYTON or CERTAIN. Each has two syllables, but in normal (moderate or fast speech) pronunciation, the exact nature of the vowel in the second syllable is unclear--it doesn't actually seem to exist. Both syllables sound like *[tn]. But we just said that the vowel is the nucleus of every syllable; so a vowel has to be present in some form.
One solution (which we will adopt, following our textbook) is to allow for certain consonants to function as "syllabic consonants." A syllabic consonant is a consonant which functions like a vowel in that it can be the nucleus of a syllable. One way of understanding this is to imagine that a vowel has been reduced past the point of being a "schwa" to where it has no independent identity at all. It has been blended with or swallowed up by the consonant after it. This is true of the second syllable in DAYTON.
It is possible to articulate the word slowly and actually say 
,
where the [t] is released into the
which is followed by the [n]. But in normal pronunciation,
there is no "space" between the [t] and the
[n]. We show this when we make the [n]
a syllabic consonant, represented as 
.
The very small line under the phonetic symbol represents the vowel which is
a part of the syllabic consonant.
Here are the four syllabic consonants, with a few examples of their use:
syllabic 
as
in MADAME 
or COLUMN 
syllabic as
in CERTAIN 
or LEMON 
syllabic 
as in LITTLE 
or CAVALRY
syllabic 
as in EAGER 
or PERNICIOUS
Remember that there are only these four syllabic consonants, and that
each represents a reduced vowel followed by the consonant.
Because this is true, an alternative representation of each would be schwa
plus the consonant. In other words:
is the same as
is the same as
is the same
as 
, and
is the same as
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