Sound Patterns of Spoken English

by Shockey, Linda

• ISBN13: 9780631230809
• ISBN10: 0631230807
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1/17/2003
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Sound Patterns of Spoken English is a concise, to-the-point compendium of information about the casual pronunciation of everyday English as compared to formal citation forms. The book examines changes that occur to certain sounds and in certain parts of words and syllables in the casual, unmonitored speech of native English speakers. It outlines major phonological processes found in conversational English; reviews and criticizes attempts to include these processes in phonological theory; and surveys experimental approaches to explaining casual English pronunciation. Among the varieties of English covered are General American and Standard Southern British, but many other accents are mentioned, especially those of mainland Britain. Sound Patterns of Spoken English is of interest to students and scholars in a wide variety of fields, including sociolinguistics, lexicography, rhetoric, language learning and speech sciences, and has an accompanying website http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/shockey with examples from different accents.

Author Biography

Linda Shockey is Lecturer in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at the University of Reading. She specializes in acoustic and articulatory phonetics and phonology and is co-editor of In Honor of Ilse Lehiste (1988).

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	ix
Preface	x
Setting the Stage	1	(13)
Phonetics or Phonology?	3	(8)
More mind than body (fossils again)	7	(1)
A 50/50 mixture	7	(1)
More body than mind	8	(1)
Functional phonology and perception	9	(1)
Have we captured the meaning of `phonology'?	10	(1)
Influence of phonology on phonetics	10	(1)
Back to basics	11	(1)
Fast Speech?	11	(2)
Summary	13	(1)
Processes in Conversational English	14	(35)
The Vulnerability Hierarchy	14	(5)
Frequency	14	(2)
Discourse	16	(1)
Rate?	17	(1)
Membership in a linguistic unit	18	(1)
Phonetic/Phonological	18	(1)
Morphological	19	(1)
Reduction Processes in English	19	(1)
Varieties examined	19	(1)
Stress as a Conditioning Factor	20	(12)
Schwa absorption	22	(5)
Reduction of closure for obstruents	27	(2)
Tapping	29	(1)
Devoicing and voicing	30	(2)
Syllabic Conditioning Factors	32	(10)
Syllable shape	32	(1)
Onsets and codas	33	(1)
CVCV alternation	34	(2)
Syllable-final adjustments	36	(6)
Syllable shape again	42	(1)
Other Processes	42	(4)
ð-reduction	43	(1)
h-dropping	44	(1)
`Palatalization'	44	(2)
Icons	46	(1)
Weak Forms?	46	(2)
Combinations of these Processes	48	(1)
Attempts at Phonological Explanation	49	(23)
Past Work on Conversational Phonology	49	(3)
Natural Phonology	52	(1)
Variable Rules	53	(1)
More on Rule Order	54	(2)
Attempts in the 1990s	56	(11)
Autosegmental	56	(2)
Metrical	58	(1)
Articulatory	58	(1)
Underspecification	59	(1)
Firthian prosodics	60	(1)
Optimality theory	61	(3)
A synthesist	64	(3)
And into the New Millennium	67	(4)
Trace/Event theory	67	(4)
Summary	71	(1)
Experimental Studies in Casual Speech	72	(39)
Production of Casual Speech	72	(17)
General production studies	72	(8)
Production/Perception studies of particular processes	80	(9)
Perception of Casual Speech	89	(20)
Setting the stage	89	(4)
Phonology in speech perception	93	(11)
Other theories	104	(5)
Summary	109	(2)
Applications	111	(16)
Phonology	111	(6)
Writ small in English, writ large in other languages	111	(2)
Historical phonology	113	(4)
First and Second Language Acquisition	117	(7)
First language acquisition	117	(2)
Second language acquisition	119	(5)
Interacting with Computers	124	(2)
Speech synthesis	125	(1)
Speech recognition	125	(1)
Summary	126	(1)
Bibliography	127	(15)
Index	142