TIL

ENGLISH PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY

Information panels -- general

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 H to M
32. Homographs | Homonym | 33. Intonation | 34. Labiodental | 35. Larynx | 36. Lateral | 37. Latin words and phrases | 38. Lax | 39. Length | Length mark | 40. Lenis | 41. Liaison | 42. Monophthong | UKT. Mouth

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 DJPD 16 index | Contents | Introduction | Information panels | Pronouncing letters

32.Homographs

p257. When two lexical items have the same form in spelling, these are known as homographs. Homographs can be pronounced the same as or different to each other.

Examples

Here are some examples of homographs with the same pronunciation:

• <bank>  /bæŋk/  (e.g. financial institution; area of ground by a river)

• <well>  /wel/  (e.g. source of water; healthy; adv.)

Other homographs differ in their pronunciation, but usually only in the vowel sound used, e.g.:

• <bow>
 -- (e.g. s slip knot with a double loop /bəʊ/ (us)  /boʊ/ -- (approx.: Burmese: {bo:})
 -- (e.g. incline the head or trunk; submit)  /baʊ/ -- (near but not quite: {baung:})

• <dove>
 -- (pigeon)  /dʌv/ -- (approx: {daat}
 -- (past tense of <dive>)  /dəʊv/  (us)  /doʊv/ -- (approx: {deik})

UKT: Transliterations into B-Myanmar are meant to show how divergent the pronunciations can be.

Homographs also appear in noun/verb, noun/adjective and verb/adjective pairs. The difference in pronunciation indicates which part of speech is being used, e.g.:

Pronunciation tip

In most cases it is necessary to check the pronunciation of a word individually, as the correct realization is not obvious from the form of the word. However, some rules are available. For example, the pronunciation of word pairs ending with -ate is predictable depending on the part of speech. In two syllable words where the stress moves to show the difference between a noun and a verb (e.g. <insert>, <export>), the noun is almost always stressed on the first syllable and the verb on the second.

UKT: See STRESS.

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Homonym

from: AHTD

n. 1. One of two or more words that have the same sound and often the same spelling but differ in meaning.
2. a. A word that is used to designate several different things. b. A namesake.
3. Biology A taxonomic name that is identical to one previously applied to a different species or genus and that therefore is unacceptable in its new use.

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33. Intonation

p284. The use of the pitch of the voice to convey linguistic information. The word is used with two rather different meanings. In a restricted sense, it is the variations in the pitch of a speaker's voice used to convey or alter meaning. In a broader and more popular sense, intonation is equivalent to 'prosody', where variations in such things as voice quality, tempo and loudness are included.

Examples for English

Intonation is said to convey emotions and attitudes. Other linguistic functions have been claimed: interesting relationships exist in English between intonation and grammar, for example. In a few extreme cases a perceived difference in grammatical meaning may depend on the pitch movement, e.g.:

• <she didn't go because of her˅ timetable>
   (meaning 'she did go, but it was not because of her timetable')
   (UKT: notice the intonation mark U02C5)
• <she didn't go because of her ˋ timetable>
   (meaning 'she didn't go, the reason being her timetable').
   (UKT: notice the intonation mark U02CB)

Other 'meanings' of intonation include things like the difference between statement and question, e.g.:

• <it was ˋ cold>
   (meaning "it was cold")
   (UKT: notice U02CB - modifier letter grave accent)
• <it was ˊ cold> (U02CA)
   (meaning "was it cold?)
   (UKT: notice U02CA - modifier letter acute accent)

the contrast between 'open' and 'closed' lists, e.g.:

• <would you like ˊwine, ˊsherry or ˊbeer>
   ('open', implying other things are also on offer)
• <would you like ˊwine, ˊsherry orˋ beer>
   ('closed', implying no further choices are available)

and the indication of whether a relative clause is restrictive or non-restrictive, e.g.:

• <the students who were ˇ nervousˋ failed>
   (restrictive relative clause: only students who were nervous failed)
• <the ˅ students, who were ˇ nervous,ˋ failed>
   (non-restrictive relative clause: all students were nervous and all failed)

Another approach to intonation is to concentrate on its role in conversational discourse: this involves such aspects as indicating whether the particular thing being said constitutes new information or old, the regulation of turn-taking in conversation, the establishment of dominance and the elicitation of co-operative responses. As with the signalling of attitude, it seems that though analysts concentrate on pitch movements there are many other prosodic factors being used to create these effects.

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34. Labiodental

p305. A consonant articulated with contact between the lips and the teeth.

UKT: [f] and [v] are articulated with the upper front teeth in contact with lower lip. /f/ are /v/ are absent in B-Myanmar.

Examples for English

By far the most common type of labiodental articulation is one where the lower surface of the lower lip touches the upper front teeth, as in fricative [f] (voiceless) and [v] (voiced); these two occur in English, e.g.:

The fricative noise made by the /f/ and /v/ is very weak. In final position, as /f/ is FORTIS and /v/ is LENIS, 'pre-fortis clipping' of the vowel occurs. This has the effect of shortening the vowel in <safe>, making it much shorter than the one in <save>.

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35. Larynx

p307. The larynx is located in the throat and its main biological function is to act as a valve that can stop air entering or escaping from the lumps and also (usually) prevents food and other solids from entering the lungs. It consists of a rigid framework or box made of cartilage and, inside, the vocal folds, which are two small lumps of muscular tissue like a very small pair of lips with the division between them (the 'glottis') running from front to back of the throat. There is a complex set of muscles inside the larynx that can open and close the vocal folds as well as changing their length and tension.

In speech the larynx has many important functions including the following:
1. the distinction between voiced and voiceless sounds
2. the control of pitch
3. the production of the glottal fricative [h] and the glottal stop [ʔ]
4. producing variation in voice quality.

UKT: Because of the importance of larynx in speech production, I have downloaded the following from University of Washington Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery http://depts.washington.edu/otoweb/patients/pts_specialties/pts_voice-prob/pts_voice-prob.htm

Description of the Larynx

The larynx, or voice box, is an organ in the neck that plays a crucial role in speech and breathing. The larynx is the point at which the aerodigestive tract splits into two separate pathways: the inspired air travels through the trachea, or windpipe, into the lungs, and the food enters the esophagus and passes into the stomach.
Because of its location, the larynx has three important functions:
• control of the airflow during breathing
• protection of the airway
• production of sound for speech.

The framework of the larynx is made up of the thyroid cartilage. The anterior portion of the thyroid cartilage can be easily felt in thin necks as the "Adam's apple". The diagram to the left shows the larynx viewed from the front. The larynx rests on a ring of cartilage called the cricoid. Below the cricoid are the rings of the trachea. Above the larynx is a U-shaped bone called the hyoid. The hyoid supports the larynx from above and serves an important role in moving the larynx upwards during swallowing.

In the center of the larynx lie the vocal cords. The vocal cords are probably the most important part of the larynx, as they play a key role in all three functions mentioned above. The vocal cords are muscular bands covered by a thin layer called mucosa. There is a right and left cord, forming a "V" when viewed from above. At the rear portion of each vocal cord is a small structure called the arytenoid. Many small muscles are attached to the arytenoids. These muscles pull the arytenoids apart from each other during breathing, thereby opening the airway. During speech the arytenoids and therefore the vocal cords are brought close together. As the air passes by the closed vocal cords, they vibrate like reeds on a musical instrument and produce a sound. The sound is modified by our throat, tongue and lips to produce speech.
	The diagram above shows the cords in the open position. The cords should open like this during breathing.	The cords above are shown in the closed position as during speech.

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36. Lateral

p308. A lateral consonant consonant is one where there is obstruction to the passage of air in the centere (mid-line) of the air-passage and the air flows to the side of the obstruction.

Examples for English

In English the /l/ phoneme is lateral both in its "clear" and its "dark" allophones (see CLEAR L and DARK L); the blade of the tongue is in contact with the alveolar ridge as for /t d n/ but the sides of the tongue are lowered to allow the passage of air, e.g.:

When an alveolar plosive (UKT: /t d/) precedes a lateral consonant (UKT: /l/ ) in English it is usual for it to have a 'lateral release'. This means that to go from /t/ or /d/ to /l/ we simply lower the sides of the tongue to release the compressed air, rather than lowering and then raising the tongue blade. A syllabic /l/ is the usual result of this in word final position (see SYLLABIC CONSONANT), e.g.:

Most laterals are produced with the air passage to both sides of the obstruction (they are 'bilateral'}, but sometimes we find air passing to one side only ('unilateral').

In other languages

Other lateral consonants are found in other languages; the Welsh <ll> sound is a voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ] (U026C)

UKT: Most laterals are produced with the air passage to both sides of the obstruction (they are bilateral), but sometimes we find air passing to one side only (unilateral). Other lateral consonants are found in other languages: the Welsh "ll" sound is a voiceless lateral fricative [ ɬ ] (U026C) (UKT: similar to Burmese {hla.}), and Xhosa and Zulu have a voiced lateral fricative [ ɮ ] (U026E); several Southern African languages have lateral clicks (where the plosive occlusion is released laterally) and at least one language (of Papua New Guinea) has a contrast between alveolar and velar lateral. A bilabial lateral is an articulatory possibility but it seems not to be used in speech. -- From: entry Lateral in Peter Roach, A Little Encyclopaedia of Phonetics , http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~llsroach/encyc.pdf

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37. Latin words and phrases

p309. Words, names and phrases from Latin have entered the English language at many different times. Some words and names are in relatively common use and have been completely anglicised, while others are used in particular types of discourse which to some extent determine their pronunciation. The pronunciation used by academic scholars of Latin has tended to be based on a reconstruction of what was supposed to be the pronunciation in Roman time. Ecclesiastical Latin, previously used in the Roman Catholic church and closely similar to the pronunciation of Italian, has largely disappeared, but phrases such as Gloria in excelsis or Humanae Vitae are still heard. Legal Latin is also now much less widely used used than it used to be, but some phrases survive, such as habeas copus (usual pronunciation /ˌheɪ.bi.əsˈkɔː.pəs/ (us) /-ˈkɔːr-/ and ultra vires ( /ˌʌl.trəˈvaɪə.riːz/ /ˌʊl.trɑːˈvɪə.reɪz/ (us) /ˌʌl.trəˈvaɪ.riːz/ )  Most of the Latin words, phrases and names in this dictionary are ones that have been fully anglicized, but there is no set of rules to determine exactly how this is done.

Examples:

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38. Lax

p310. A lax sound is produced with relatively little articulatory energy. Since there is no established standard for measuring articulatory energy, this concept has meaning if it is used relative to some other sounds that are felt to be articulated with a comparatively greater amount of energy (i.e. tense).

Examples for English

It is mainly American phonologists who use the terms lax and tense in describing English vowels; the short vowels /ɪ e æ ʌ ɒ ʊ ə/ are classed as lax, while what are referred to in our description of BBC pronunciation as the long vowels and the diphthongs are tense. The terms can also be used of consonants as equivalent to FORTIS (tense) and LENIS (lax), though this is not commonly done in present-day descriptions.

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39. Length

p.313. A term used in phonetics to refer to a subjective impression of how much time a sound takes; it is distinct from physically measurable 'duration'. Usually, however, the term is used as synonymous with duration.

Examples for English

Length is important in many ways in speech: in English and most other languages, stressed syllables tend to be longer than unstressed (see RHYTHM, STRESS and WEAK FORM). Some languages have phonemic differences between long and short sounds, and BBC English is claimed by some writers to be of this type, contrasting for short vowels /ɪ e æ ʌ ɒ ʊ ə/ with long vowels /iː ɜː ɑː ɔː uː/ (though other, equally valid analyses have been put forward). However, the context in which these sounds occur must be taken into account. For example, the vowel /iː/ is said to be longer than /ɪ/ as well as having a different quality, but the vowel in <beat> /biːt/ is unlikely to be longer than the vowel in <bid> /bɪd/ as the phonetic environment in <beat> causes the vowel to be shorter.

In other languages

When languages have long/short consonant differences, as does Arabic, for example, it is usual to treat the long consonants as geminate; it is odd that this is not done equally regularly in the case of vowels. Perhaps the most interesting example of length differences comes from Estonian, which has traditionally been said to have a three-way distinction between short, long and extra-long consonants and vowels.

UKT: geminate Linguistics 1. A double or long consonant. [from geminus twin] -- AHTD.

Length mark -- by UKT
Though the length mark [ː] may not be very important in English, it is very important in Burmese vowels. There are three distinct lengths: short [ ˑ ] (U02D1), normal and long [ ː ] (U02D0) exemplified in the following three words.

{ka.}	{ka}	{ka:}
to dance	to shield	to spread one's legs

Note that in Romabama [ . ] U002E) represents a very short sharp sound and [ : ] (U003A) a very long glottal sound. Refer to Vowels and diphthongs in Introduction.

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40. Lenis

p313. A lenis sound is weakly articulated (the word comes from Latin, where it means 'smooth, gentle'). The opposite is FORTIS.

Examples for English.

In general, the term lenis is used of voiced consonants (which are supposed to be less strongly articulated than their corresponding voiceless ones), and is resorted to for languages such as German, Russian and English where voiced PHONEMES like /b d g/ are not always voiced. (See the entry at FORTIS for examples.) However, it is claimed that the language which most clearly shows a distinction between fortis and lenis consonants is Korean.

UKT "/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." From DJPD16: VELAR consonants.

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41. Liaison

p315. The linking or joining together of sounds.

Examples for English

In English the best-known case of liaison is the 'linking r': there are many words in English (e.g. <car>, <here>, <tyre>) which in a RHOTIC accent such as US English or Scots would be pronounced with a final /r/, but which in BBC pronunciation end in a vowel when they are pronounced before a pause or before a consonant. When they are followed by a vowel, British English speakers pronounce /r/ at the end, e.g.:

In BBC English there is also 'intrusive r' -- an /r/ inserted between two vowels at word boundaries where there is none in the spelling. This does not occur after close vowels ( /iː uː/), or diphthongs which end with a close element ( /eɪ aɪ ɔɪ aʊ əʊ/), e.g.:

It is said that liaison is done to link the words without sliding the two vowels together though many languages do run vowels together.

Another aspect of liaison of English is the movement of a single consonant at the end of an unstressed word to the beginning of the next if that is strongly stressed. A well-known example in British English is <none at all>, where the /t/ of <at> becomes initial (and therefore strongly aspirated) in the final syllable for many speakers.

UKT: See Pronouncing the letter R.

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42. Monophthong

p350. A single vowel. The term is used only in contrast with the word DIPHTHONG, which originally meant a 'double sound'.

UKT: See TRIPHTHONG for comparison

Examples for English

British English has 12 vowels monophthongs /ɪ  e  æ  ʌ  ɒ  ʊ  ə  iː  ɑː  ɔː  ɜː  uː/, and US English has 11, or 12 if r-colored SCHWA /ɚ/ is taken into account. In British English these are traditionally divided into short and long, with a length mark [ː] used to show that there is a difference in length as well as vowel quality. This convention is extended in this dictionary to US English vowels. Long vowels are permitted to appear in a stressed syllable without a CODA, whereas short vowels are not. It should be noted that the schwa vowel, /ə/, never appears in stressed syllables and has a different distribution to the other short vowels.

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Mouth

From: Henry Gray (1825–1861), Anatomy of the Human Body, 1918. http://www.bartleby.com/107/242.html

The cavity of the mouth (Cavum Oris; Oral or Buccal Cavity) is placed at the commencement of the digestive tube (Fig 994). it is a nearly oval-shaped cavity which consists of two parts: an outer, smaller portion, the vestibule, and an inner, larger part, the mouth cavity proper. The Vestibule (vestibulum oris) is a slit-like space, bounded externally by the lips and cheeks; internally by the gums and teeth. It communicates with the surface of the body by the rima or orifice of the mouth. Above and below, it is limited by the reflection of the mucous membrane from the lips and cheeks to the gum covering the upper and lower alveolar arch respectively. It receives the secretion from the parotid salivary glands, and communicates, when the jaws are closed, with the mouth cavity proper by an aperture on either side behind the wisdom teeth, and by narrow clefts between opposing teeth. The Mouth Cavity Proper (cavum oris proprium) (Fig. 1014) is bounded laterally and in front by the alveolar arches with their contained teeth; behind, it communicates with the pharynx by a constricted aperture termed the isthmus faucium. It is roofed in by the hard and soft palates, while the greater part of the floor is formed by the tongue, the remainder by the reflection of the mucous membrane from the sides and under surface of the tongue to the gum lining the inner aspect of the mandible. It receives the secretion from the submaxillary and sublingual salivary glands.

FIG. 994– Sagittal section of nose mouth, pharynx, and larynx. (See enlarged image)

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