Update: 2011-12-31 11:37 PM +0630

TIL

ENGLISH PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY
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informT-W.htm

Daniel Jones. Edited by Peter Roach, James Hartman and Jane Setter. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Scanned by Maung Kan Tun and edited by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR .

Information panels W to T
73. Tap | 74. Tense | 75. Tone | 76. Tone unit | 77. Trill | 78. Triphthong | • Two-three tone problem | 79. Uvular | 80. Velar | 81. Velarization | 82. Vocal folds | • Vocalic R | 83. Voice onset time | 84. Voicing | 85. Vowel | • Vowel length | 86. Vowel reduction | 87. Weak form |

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73. Tap

p527. A sound which resembles [t] or [d] , being made by a complete closure between the tongue and the alveolar region, but which is very brief and is produced by a sharp upward throw of the tongue blade. A soon as contact is made, the effects of gravity and air pressure cause the tongue to fall again.

Examples for English

The tap sound (for which the phonetic symbol is [ɾ] (U027E)) is noticeable in Scottish accents as the realisation of /r/ , and in US English it is often heard as a (voiced) realization of /t/ when it occurs after a stressed vowel and before an unstressed one, e.g.:

<getting better> (US) /ˈget̬,ɪŋ  ˈbet̬.ɚ/ [g̊ẹɾɪŋb̥ẹɾɚ]

In British English it used to be quite common to hear a tap for /r/ in careful or emphatic speech (e.g. <very> [v̥ẹɾɪ] ), though this is less often heard now. It is increasingly common to hear the American-style tapped /t/ in England.

Several varieties of tap are possible: they may be voiced or voiceless. For instance, Scottish pre-pausal /r/ is often realised as a voiceless tap, as in <here> [hiɾ̥] . Taps may also be produced with the SOFT PALATE lowered, resulting in a nasalised tap which is sometimes heard in the US English pronunciation of words like <mental> [mẹɾ̃əɫ] . A closely related sound is the FLAP, and the TRILL also has some similar characteristics.

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74. Tense

p531. See Lax.

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75. Tone

p540. An identifiable movement or level of PITCH that is used in a linguistically contrastive way.

Examples for English

In English, tone forms the central part of INTONATION, and the difference between, for example, a rising and a falling tone on a particular word may cause a different interpretation of the sentence in which it occurs, e.g.:

► <it was ˋ cold> (meaning 'it was cold' )
► <it was ˊ cold> (meaning 'was it cold?')

UKT:Note the accent symbols:
[ ˋ ] (U02CB) -- WinXP character map calls it "Modifier Letter Grave Accent"
[ ˊ ] (U02CA) -- WinXP character map calls it "Modifier Letter Acute Accent"

There are often recognised as being at least five tones in English: a fall, a rise, a fall-rise, a rise-fall and a level tone.

Meanings are frequently ascribed to each tone; the scope of this panel does not allow us to discuss this further.

In intonation, tone may be spread over many syllables. E.g., in:

► <his ˇ car could have broken down>
   (in which the pitch movement falls on <car> and rises on <down>)

In other languages

In some languages (known as 'tone languages') the linguistic function of tone is to change the meaning of a word: in Mandarin Chinese, for example, [ma] said on a high pitch means <mother> while [ma] said on a low rising tone means <hemp>. It is usual to identify tones as being a property of individual syllables.

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76. Tone unit

p541. A unit of speech consisting of one or more syllables or feet.

Examples for English

A tone unit must contain a tonic syllable, that is, a syllable on which a pitch movement begins. Only one tonic syllable is allowed in an English tone unit. The tone unit may also contain a 'head' (from the first stressed syllable up to the tonic syllable), a 'pre-head' (any unstressed syllables preceding the head) and a 'tail' (all syllables after the tonic syllable). The tonic syllable is underline in each of the examples which follow:

► < ˋyes >
    tonic
► < ˈJoe said ˋyes >
    head + tonic
► < and then ˈJoe said ˋyes >
    pre-head + head + tonic
► < and then ˈJoe said ˋyes to me >
    pre-head + head + tonic + tail

As each of the non-tonic elements is optional, it is possible to have any combination together with the tonic syllable, e.g.:

► < was it ˇyou >
    pre-head + tonic
► < it was ˇyesterday >
   pre-head + tonic + tail
► < ˇnow I understand >
    tonic + tail

In the study of INTONATION it is usual to divide speech into larger units than syllables. If one studies only short sentences said in isolation it may be sufficient to make no subdivision of the utterance, but in longer utterances there must be some points at which the analyst marks a break between the end of one pattern and the beginning of the next. These breaks divide speech into 'tone-units', and are called 'tone-unit boundaries', e.g.;

< the ˇlast time I saw her | was ˋyesterday | >

If the study of intonation is part of phonology, these boundaries should be identifiable with reference to their effect on pronunciation rather than to grammatical information about word and clause boundaries: statistically however, we find that in most cases tone-unit boundaries do fall at obvious syntactic boundaries, and it would be rather odd to divide two tone-units in the middle of a phrase. The most obvious factor to look for in trying to establish boundaries is the presence of a pause, and in slow careful speech (e.g. in lectures, sermons and political speeches) this may be done quite regularly. However, it seems that we detect tone-unit boundaries even when the speaker does not make a pause, if there is an identifiable break or discontinuity in the rhythm or in the intonation pattern.

There is evidence that we use a larger number of shorter tone-units in informal conversational speech, and fewer, longer tone units in formal styles.

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77. Trill

p548. A speech sound produced by the rapid vibration of one the vocal organs.

Examples

The parts of the body that are used in speaking (the 'vocal apparatus') include some 'wobbly bits' that can be made to vibrate. When this type of vibration is made as a speech sound, it is called a trill. The possibilities include a BILABIAL trill, where the lips vibrate (used as a mild insult, this is sometimes called "blowing a raspberry", or, in the US, a 'Bronx Cheer'), a tongue-tip trill which is produced in many languages for a sound represented alphabetically as <r>, and a uvular trill, which is a rather dramatic way pronouncing a "uvular r" as found in French, German and many European languages, most commonly used in acting and singing.

In British English, the trill most likely to occur is the ALVEOLAR trill, which is (perhaps confusingly) represented by the symbol [r] , and is an allophone of the English phoneme /r/. However, it most frequently occurs in restricted contexts, such as singing.

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78. Triphthong

p549. A vowel glide with three distinguishable vowel qualities.

Examples for English

In British English there are said to be five triphthongs, formed by adding /ə/ (U0259) to the diphthongs /eɪ aɪ ɔɪ aʊ əʊ/ . US English treats most of these sequences differently, e.g.:

<layer> /leɪəʳ/ (US) /ˈleɪ.ɚ/
<liar> /laɪəʳ/ (US) /ˈlaɪ.ɚ/
<loyal> /lɔɪəl/ (US) /ˈlɔɪ.əl/

<power> /paʊəʳ/ (US) /paʊɚ/ [UKT: note, there is no "dot" preceding ɚ]
<mower> /məʊəʳ/ (US) /ˈmoʊ.ɚ/

UKT: Note that /əʳ/ (U0259 U02B3) in British English generally becomes /ɚ/  (U025A) in US English.

There are many other examples of sequences of three vowel qualities, e.g. <play-off> /pleɪɒf/ , <reopen> /riəʊpən/ , so the five listed above must have some special characteristic. One possibility is that speakers feel them to be one syllable; this may be the case, but there does not seem to be any clear way of proving this. This is a matter which depends to some extent on the accent: many BBC speakers pronounce these sequences almost as pure vowels (prolongations of the first element of the triphthong), so that the word <Ireland>, for example, sounds like /ˈɑː.lənd/ . In Lancashire and Yorkshire accents, on the other hand, the middle vowel ( /ɪ/ or /ʊ/ ) is pronounced with such a close vowel quality that it would seem more appropriate to transcribe the triphthongs with /j/ or /w/ in the middle (e.g. <fire> /ˈfaj.ər/ , emphasising the disyllabic aspect of their pronunciation. 

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Two-three tone problem

UKT

Our task of comparing Eng-Lat to Bur-Myan is not easy because English have only two "tones" for vowels the short and the long, whereas Burmese has three, the creak, the modal, and the emphatic. The one way to reconcile them is to think in terms of 5 registers:

creak, short, modal, long, emphatic

The Bur-Myan "creak" register is strictly not a vowel, because it could not be sung continuously like regular vowels. It may be looked on as a "semi-consonant".

The English short vowel is sometimes close to creak and sometimes to modal. Similarly the English long vowel is between modal and emphatic. For the vowel /a/, we have

{aa.}, {a}, {/ə/}, {aa}, {aa:}
-- the short-a /æ/ and the long-a /a/ are transcribed as a and ā in Pal-Lat. Since both Bur-Myan and Eng-Lat do not have dedicated graphemes to represent the central vowel, schwa /ə/, I have to use {/ə/} for the modal. The Bur-Myan schwa is found in words like {a.ni} meaning the "colour red" in which schwa is represented by {a.} or {a·}. [In Romabama the "middle dot · " is reserved for schwa.] In some Bur-Myan words {a.} stands for the sound of {aa.}, but in others as schwa {/ə/} or {a·}.  The following example is provided by my colleague, Saya Kalasan, a noted Manipuri-Burmese {poaN~Na:} author on Astrology-Astronomy, who speaks and writes Sanskrit and Hindi in addition to Burmese and English:

{a·mé/ a·mé/ a·mé. þa: ha/ a. ko a. lwun: tèý//}

Now which is the "consonant" {a.} and which is the "vowel"?

The correspondence between two tones of English and three tones of Burmese is a problem (as far as I know), and lacks a concise name, because of which I will refer to it as the Two-Three Tone problem.

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79. Uvular

p572. A consonant sound made between the back of the tongue and a lump of soft tissue (uvula) which is in the back of the mouth, dangling from the end of the soft palate.

Examples for English

English does not have any examples of uvular sounds as phonemes, but sounds with this place of articulation are widely found in other languages.

In other languages

The voiceless uvular PLOSIVE [q] is found as the phoneme /q/ in many dialects of Arabic. Uvular FRICATIVES [χ ʁ ] (U03C7 and U0281) are found quite commonly: German, Hebrew, Dutch and Spanish, for example, have voiceless ones, and French, Arabic and Danish have voiced ones. The uvular NASAL [ɴ] (U0274) is found in some Inuit languages. The uvular itself is active only when it vibrates in a uvular TRILL, [ʀ] (U0280).

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80. Velar

p575. Velar consonant sounds are produced between the tongue and the SOFT PALATE, or 'velum'.

Examples for English

Velar sounds occurring as English phonemes are /k g/ and /ŋ/. The first two are PLOSIVES, and the last, a NASAL. Although /k g/ can occur syllable-initially and finally, /ŋ/ is restricted to syllable-final position only in English, e.g.:

<cap> /kæp/
<gap> /gæp/
<sack> /sæk/
<sang> /sæŋ/
<sag> /sæg/

/k/ and /g/ are one of the pairs of consonants said to be distinguished from each other by being FORTIS or LENIS rather than voiced or voiceless.

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81. Velarization

p576. A type of secondary articulation in which a constriction in the vocal tract is added to the primary constriction which gives a consonant its place of articulation.

Examples for English

In the case of English DARK L, the /l/ phoneme is articulated with its usual primary constriction in the alveolar region, while the back of the tongue is raised as for an [u] vowel creating a secondary constriction (see DARK L).

In other languages

Arabic has a number of consonant phonemes that are velarized, and are known as 'emphatic' consonants.

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82. Vocal folds

p581. An essential part of the larynx, performing a number of important linguistic functions. The term 'vocal cords' is also used.

The vocal folds may be firmly closed to produce what is sometimes called a GLOTTAL STOP, and while they are closed the larynx may be moved up or down move air out of or into the vocal tract; this is done in the production of 'ejective' and 'implosive' constants. When brought into light contact with each other the vocal folds tend to vibrate if air is forced through them, producing VOICING, also called 'phonation'. This vibration can be made to vary in many ways, resulting in differences in such things as PITCH, loudness and voice quality. If a narrow opening is made between the vocal folds, friction noise can result and this is found in whispering and in the glottal fricative [h]. A more widely open glottis is found in most voiceless consonants.

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83. Voice onset time (V.O.T.)

p581. A measure of the timing of the start of voicing.

All languages distinguishes between voiced and voiceless consonants, and PLOSIVES are the most common consonants to be distinguished in this way. However, this is not a simple matter of a plosive being either completely voiced or completely voiceless: the timing of voicing in relation to the consonant articulation is very important. In one particular case this is so noticeable that it has for a long time been given its own name: ASPIRATION, in which the beginning of full voicing does not happen until some time after the release of the plosive (usually voiceless). This delay, or 'lag', has been the subject of much experimental investigation which has led to the development of a scientific measure of voice timing called voice onset time or V.O.T.. The onset of voicing in a plosive may lag behind the plosive release, or it may precede ('lead') it, resulting in a fully or partially voiced plosive. Both can be represented on the V.O.T. scale, one case having positive values and the other negative values.

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84. Voicing

p581. A term used to refer to the vibration of the VOCAL FOLDS. A sound made with this vibration is called voiced, and one without vibration is called voiceless. Most vowels in most languages are voiced, though voiceless vowels are found in some languages. Among consonants, it is very common to find pairs that are distinguished from each other by the presence or absence of voicing, but in English we find that consonants such as /b  d  g  v  ð  z  ʒ/ , though frequently described as voiced (in contrast with the corresponding voiceless consonants /p  t  k  f  θ  s  ʃ/ ) often have little or no voicing. See FORTIS, LENIS, ONSET TIME. Whispering is speech that is entirely voiceless.

UKT: Alternative terms for voiceless (vl) and voiced (vd): surd and sonant, respectively. If you are Burmese-Myanmar, you can use the Pali-Myanmar {a.Gau-tha.} and {Gau-tha.}, respectively.

In other languages

Many pairs of consonants distinguished by the voiced-voiceless contrast are found in different languages. Welsh has voiced and voiceless LATERAL consonants, while Burmese has voiced and voiceless NASAL consonants.

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85. Vowel

p583. Definition

The class of sound which makes the least obstruction to the flow of air. They are almost always found at the centre of a syllable, and it is rare to find any sound other than a vowel which is able to stand alone as a whole syllable.

UKT: Note the phrase "the class of sound" in the above. When I was asked (back in the US in the late 50's -- years before I became aware of the IPA), how many "vowels" are there in Burmese, I had answered "more than a, e, i,  o, u". I was under the impression that by vowels, we mean the vowel-script . At least to make myself clear, I will try to differentiate vowel-script from vowel-sound. English-Latin has only 5 vowel-scripts, whereas Burmese-Myanmar has about 10. Both English and Burmese has about the same number of vowel-sounds. To make up for the paucity of vowel-script, English-Latin has to resort to digraphs such as [ae] or [æ] .

Examples for English

Here we examine the vowel monophthongs of English. In phonetic terms, each vowel has a number of properties that distinguish it from other vowels. These include the shape of the lips, which may be rounded (as for an [u] vowel), NEUTRAL (as for [ə] (U0259)) or spread (as in a smile, or an [ i ] vowel -- photographers traditionally ask their subjects to say <cheese> /ʧiːz/ so that they will seem to be smiling):

Secondly, the front, the middle, or the back of the tongue may be raised, giving different vowel qualities: the BBC English /æ/ vowel of <cat> /kæt/ is a front vowel, while the /ɑː/ of <cart> /kɑːt  (us) kɑːrt/  is a back vowel:

The tongue (and the lower jaw) may be raised close to the roof of the mouth, or the tongue may be left low in the mouth with the jaw comparatively open. In British phonetics we talk about 'close' and 'open' vowels, whereas American phoneticians more often talk about 'high' and 'low' vowels. The meaning is clear in either case, e.g.:

Vowels also differ in other ways: they may be 'nasalised' (see NASALISATION) by being pronounced with the soft palate lowered as for [m  n]  or [ŋ]. Vowels may be voiced, as the great majority are, or voiceless: in English the first vowel in <perhaps> or <potato> is often voiceless. It is claimed that in some languages (including English) there is a distinction to be made between TENSE and LAX vowels, the former being made with greater force than the latter.

In other languages

Nasalisation is phonemically contrastive in French, where we find 'minimal pairs' such as <très> /trɛ/ (very) and <train> /trɛ̃/ (train), where the [ ˜ ] (U02DC) diacritic indicates nasality. Concerning voiceless vowels: in Portuguese, for example, unstressed vowels in the last syllable of a word are often voiceless. Less usual is the case of stressed voiceless vowels, but these are found in French: close vowels, particularly /i/ but also the close front round /y/, become voiceless for some speakers when they are word-final before a pause (for example <oui> [wi̥], <midi> [midi̥] , and also <entendu> [ɑ̃tɑ̃dẙ] )

UKT: Compare the IPA /æ/ /ɑ/ /ɑː/ vowels to the Burmese /a./, /a/, /a:/ . Note that the Burmese vowels are definitely the front, the middle and the back vowels.
   The French <très> is similar to a make-up Burmese (Mx,f;) where the {ra. ris}  sound is to be pronounced as in Pali. The final [s] is silent.

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Vowel length

From Wikipedia

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in many other languages, for instance in Czech, Hindi, Sanskrit, Fijian, Finnish, Japanese, Hawaiian, Classical Latin, German, Latvian, Old English, Samoan, Thai, and Vietnamese. It plays a phonetic role in the majority of English dialects, and is said to be phonemic in a few dialects, such as Australian English and New Zealand English. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, which is exceptional among the spoken variants of Chinese.

English does indeed rely on vowel length. Listening to German speakers speak English makes this very apparent. They say "pot" and "pod" with the same vowel length (also "kit / kid", "lab / lap"). A native English speaker uses a long vowel with words ending in a soft consonant. (For example, pick / pig, cease / seize etc.)

Most languages do not distinguish vowel length, and for those that do, usually the only distinction is between short vowels and long vowels. There are very few languages that distinguish three vowel lengths, for instance Mixe. Some languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Japanese also have words where long vowels are immediately followed by more vowels, e.g. Japanese hōō "phoenix" or Estonian jäääär "ice edge".

See the whole article from Wikipedia in TIL library on Vowel length.

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86. Vowel reduction

p583. The process by which an unstressed vowel may change to become like the mid central vowel 'schwa' /ə/ (U0259). In the words <photograph>, <photographic> and <photography>, the vowels in the first three syllables alternate between full vowels and /ə/ according to the position of stress, e.g.:

<photograph> /ˈfəʊ.tə.grɑːf/ (US) /ˈfoʊ.t̬ə.græf/
<photographic> /ˌfəʊ.təˈgræf.ɪk/ (US) /-ˈtɑːg.rə/

Although the word <man> is pronounced /mæn/, the reduced form can be seen in <postman> /ˈpəʊst.mən (US) ˈpoʊst-/ , <chairman'> /ˈʧeə.mən (US) ʧer-/ , etc.

Another example of vowel reduction is found in the alternation between /e/ (U0259) and /ɪ/ (U026A) in, for example, the first syllables of <exhibition>  /ˌek.sɪˈbɪʃ.ən/ and /ɪgˈzɪb.ɪt/.

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87. Weak form

p589. A variant form of a word, used when it is unstressed.

Examples for English

A very important aspect of the dynamics of English pronunciation is that many very common words have not only a 'strong' or 'full' pronunciation (which is used when the word is said in isolation), but also one or more weak forms which are used when the word occurs in certain contexts. Words which have weak forms are, for the most part, function words such as conjunctions (e.g. <and> , <but>) , articles (e.g. <a> , <the>) , pronouns (e.g. <she> , <he> , <her> ), prepositions (e.g. <for> , <to> ) and some auxiliary and modal verbs (e.g. <do> , <must> ). Generally the strong form of such words is used when the word is being quoted (e.g. the word <and> is given its strong form in the sentence 'We use the word and to join clauses'),  when it is being contrasted (e.g. <for> in 'There are arguments for and against') and when it is at the end of a sentence (e.g. <from> in 'Where did you get it from?'). Often the pronunciation of a weak-form word is so different from its strong form that if it were heard in isolation it would be impossible to recognise it: for example, <and> can become /ṇ/ in <us and them>, <fish and chips>, and <of> can become /f/ or /v/ in <of course>. The reason for this is that to someone who knows the language well these words are usually predictable in their normal context.

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