Week 12: Suprasegmental features_connected speech, and stress

For this blog post, I have been practicing again my speech paying attention more on the suprasegmental features of the Received Pronunciation accent particularly on the connected speech, and stress. I choose to focus on these features because these will be the bases of my practice next week on prominence, rhythm, and intonation.

Connected Speech

This feature is important to be discussed with L2 learners of English, since in spoken English the words are not produced in isolation to each other. Instead, these words are "run together" which often referred to as connected speech (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010). From my reading on the book, I took notes some of the typical connected speech that occurs in English which I think I should work on in order to enhance my speech. These typical connected speech features are as follows:

• Contractions, blends: they occur when the boundary between two words are blurred. 
• contractions occur when the blurring is conventionalized such as he's for he is or he was and we've for we have. 
• blends occur when the blurring is not conventionalized such as who'll for who will, and there'd for there would. 
• there are also some phrase reductions that commonly occur in spoken English such as gonna for going to, wanna for want to, hafta for have to, and kinda for kind of.

In the archetype I only found one sample of contraction, that is, who'd for who had.

• Linking: it is when native speakers are connecting the sound of one syllable with the sound of the next syllable to avoid the speech being choppy. This may occur between two words or between two syllables within a word.
• insertion of glides
• insertion of /y/ glide following /iy/, /ey/, /ay/, and /ɔy/.
• word-internally: being, staying, crying, toying
• between words: be able, Roy Adams, stay up
• insertion of /w/ glide following /uw/, /ow/, /aw/.
• word-internally: bluish, going, however
• between words: do it, go away, now is

In the archetype, I found some /y/ insertions, that is, in the animal, see it, and the office.

• intervocalic consonant sharing in VC + V sequences:
• keep out → kee͜p͜out
• dream on → drea͜m͜on
• McIntosh apple → McInto͜sh͜appple

In the archetype, there are some intervocalic consonant sharing such as was a veterinary, that area, put on, an official, and letter implied. 

• Resyllabification in CC + V sequences: this occur when a word or syllable ending in a consonant cluster (CC) followed by a word or syllable with a vowel sound in its initial position. The final consonant of the cluster is often pronounced as part of the following syllable, such as in
• lef/t͜arm 
• wep/t͜over
• hat/s͜off
• adapt͜able

I found three resyllabifications in the archetype: district of, herself in, and picked up.

• lengthened articulation of consonant with geminate consonants: this occur when the final consonant sound of a word is identical with the initial consonant sound of the following word. The two consonant sounds are then pronounced as one single, elongated articulation of the consonant. They are not produced twice. 
• stop pushing [pː]
• rob Bill [bː]
• quick cure [kː]
• less serious [sː]   

I found two lengthened consonants in my archetype: deserted district, and street tower.

• unreleased consonant in stop + stop or stop + affricate sequences: this occurs when a stop consonant is followed by another stop or affricate. The first stop is not released to facilitate the linking.
• pet cat
• soap dish
• blackboard
• good jury

• Assimilation: this occurs when a given sound takes on the characteristics of a neighboring sound. The assimilated sounds can either precedes or follows the conditioning sounds, or two sounds influence each other (reciprocal) 
• plural form /s/ versus /z/ which is influenced by the precedings sound, whether it is voiced or voiceless.
• bags → /g/ is voiced → /baeg → z/
• backs → /k/ is voiceless → /baek → s/
•  -d ending in past and past progressive 
• moved → /v/ is voiced → /muwv → d/
• fished  → /ʃ/ is voiceless → /fiʃ → t/
• in grandpa, the /p/ causes /nd/ to be pronounced as /m/

for this practice, I focused only on these three features since these three are the connected speech features that I noticed in my archetype.

Stress

For the stress part, I practiced both word-level and sentence-level stress, paying attention to the reduced vowel as well as prominence. I re-used my transcription for my post on stress and prominence for the practice this time. I need to do my practice on stress again since I realize that this feature is not present in my native language, but it is an important features of English. So I find the need to always practice it over and over again. 

After several times practicing, and several attempts recording my speech, here is the recording for this week:

Next week, I will focus my practice on prominence, rhythm, and intonation.