This time I tried to focus my practice on prominence and intonation. I read again my blog post for week 8 on prominence and week 9 on intonation trying to recall what I have learned and accomplished, and what I should practice on more. I listened to my recording on intonation several times trying to figure out whether or not I put the prominence on the right words. I also tried to listen to my intonation patterns.
listening to the recording several times, I can hear that I really tried hard to put the prominence on the most important words so that sometimes they do not sound natural. However, I think the overall intonation patterns are quite accurate since there are not many variations in terms of prominence placing and intonation patterns in my archetype since it is only someone reading a story. I guess if the person is telling a story instead of reading it, the intonation would be quite different.
What I learned from my recording this week is that when I focus on some features, I tend to put my attention primarily on these certain features and probably miss some other features. For example, in my recording for week 9, I focused on intonation, so the intonation patterns are quite accurate, but I feel that I was loose in segmental features such as vowels such as /æ/ in began that I pronounced as/bi'gʌn/ and consonants such as /θ/ in north that I pronounced as a glottal stop. I also missed some non-rhotic /r/ as in there,letter, and surprising.
Here is my recording for this week:
For this recording, I really tried to not only pay attention on prominence and intonation, but still my recording is absolutely not 100% accurate. I think I still missed the /θ/ in north and also some non-rhotic /r/. For me, it is quite a challenge to not pronounce the /r/ sound since the /r/ in my native language, Indonesian, is a flap /r/ in which the /r/ is rolled. Also, I am more exposed to North American English with its rhotic /r/. Thus, if I am not really pay attention to that particular feature while speaking, I will tend to mispronounce it.
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.
