Aspects of Connected Speech

Group members:

SANA

&

SIDRA

Aspects of Connected Speech

• Weak Forms• Elision• Assimilation

Assimilation

• A general term phonetics which refers to the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another so that the sound become more alike, or identical.

/t/ + /j/ = /tS/

…but use your head! /b@tSu:z j@ hed/

what you need…. /wotSuni:d/

the ball that you brought /th@bo:lth@tSu:bro:t/

last year…. /la:stSi@/

/d/ + /j/ = /dZ/

could you help me? /kudZu:helpmi:/

would yours work? /wudZo:zw3:k/

she had university exams

/Si:hadZu:ni:versItijigzamz

• Coalescent assimilation is common in colloquial speech and is becoming ever more so. Note that it can occur:

- between word boundaries (as above examples)

- within words e.g. tube /tju:b/ = /tSu:b/

The fact that two extremely recurrent words in English, you and your, start with /j/ means that understanding of this simple mechanism is vital to the understanding of spoken English. Do you and also did you are often pronounced as /dZ@/:

Do you live here? /dZ@ liv hi@/

Did you live here? /(di)dZ@ liv hi@/

Assimilation can be:• of Place• of Voicing• of Manner

We will look at the first two

Assimilation of PlaceThe most common form involves the movement of place of articulation of the alveolar stops /t/, /d/ and /n/ to a position closer to that of the following sound. For instance, in the phrase ten cars, the /n/ will usually be articulated in a velar position, /teN ka:z/ so that the tongue will be ready to produce the following velar sound /k/. Similarly, in ten boys the /n/ will be produced in a bilabial position, /tem boIz/ to prepare for the articulation of the bilabial /b/.

This phenomenon is easy to find also in Italian: think of the different pronunciations of the ‘n’ in Gian Paolo, Gian Franco and Gian Carlo.

BEFORE A VELAR (/k/, /g/)

/n/ /ng/

e.g. bank = /baNk/

/d/ /g/

e.g. good girl = /gug g3:l/

/t/ /k/

e.g. that kid = /thak kid/

BEFORE A BILABIAL (/m/, /b/, /p/)

/n/ /m/

e.g. ten men /tem men/

/d/ /b/

e.g. bad boys /bab boiz/

/t/ /p/

e.g. hot mushrooms /hop muSru:mz/

ASSIMILATION OF VOICING

The vibration of the vocal folds is not something that can be switched on and off very swiftly, as a result groups of consonants tend to be either all voiced or all voiceless. Consider the different endings of ‘dogs’ /dogz/ and ‘cats’ /kats/, of the past forms of the regular verbs such as ‘kissed’ /kist/ and ‘sneezed’ /sni:zd/.

The assimilation of voicing can radically change the sound of several common constructions:

have tohas to

/hav tu://haz tu:/

/haft@/, /hast@/

e.g. I have to go! /aihaft@ g@U/

used to /ju:zd tu:/ /ju:st@/e.g. I used to live near you. /aiju:st@lIvni@ju:/