Stress and vowel reduction in English
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Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress). Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel (schwa) or with certain other vowels that are described as being "reduced" (or sometimes with a syllabic consonant as the syllable nucleus rather than a vowel). Various phonological analyses exist for these phenomena.
For example, in the following sentence, a speaker would typically pronounce have with a schwa, as /həv/ or /əv/ (
- Alice and Bob have arrived.
But in other contexts where the word carries stress, it would be pronounced in its "strong" (unreduced) form as /hæv/ (homophonous with halve[note 1]). For example:
- Alice and Bob have three children.
- [In response to the question "Have Alice and Bob arrived?"] They have.
Lexical and prosodic stress
Lexical stress (word stress) is regarded as
Moreover, even within a given letter sequence and a given part of speech, lexical stress may distinguish between different words or between different meanings of the same word (depending on differences in theory about what constitutes a distinct word): for example, initial-stress pronunciations of
Some words are shown in dictionaries as having two levels of stress: primary and secondary. For example, the RP pronunciation of organization may be given as /ˌɔːɡənaɪˈzeɪʃən/, with primary stress on the fourth syllable, secondary stress on the first syllable, and the remaining syllables unstressed. For different ways of analysing levels of stress in English, see § Degrees of lexical stress below.
English also has relatively strong prosodic stress—particular words within a phrase or sentence receive additional stress to emphasize the information they convey. There is also said to be a natural "tonic stress" that falls on the last stressed syllable of a prosodic unit – for more on this, see below under § Descriptions with only one level of stress.
English is classified as a stress-timed language, which means that there is a tendency to speak so that the stressed syllables come at roughly equal intervals. See Isochrony § Stress timing.
Reduced vowels
Certain vowel sounds in English are associated strongly with absence of stress: they occur practically exclusively in unstressed syllables; and conversely, most (though not all) unstressed syllables contain one of these sounds. These are known as reduced vowels, and tend to be characterized by such features as shortness,
) The exact set of reduced vowels depends on dialect and speaker; the principal ones are described in the sections below.Schwa and r-coloured schwa
Schwa, [ə], is the most common reduced vowel in English.[2] It may be represented in spelling by any of the vowel letters, such as the a in about, the o in harmony, the u in medium, the e in synthesis, the i in decimal or the y in analysis (although the last three are pronounced instead as a near-close vowel by some speakers – see the following section).
In many
Reduced vowels in the close unrounded area
In some dialects of English there is a distinction between two
Like schwa, [ɪ̈] does not correspond in spelling to any single vowel letter. It can be represented by a (for example, message [ˈmɛsɪ̈dʒ], climate [ˈklaɪmɪ̈t], orange [ˈɒɹɪ̈ndʒ]), e (puppet), i (limit), u (minute), or y (polyp).
Among speakers who make this distinction, the distributions of schwa and [ɪ̈] are quite variable, and in many cases the two are in free variation: the i in decimal, for example, may be pronounced with either sound. A symbolization convention recently introduced by Oxford University Press for some of their English dictionaries[4][5] uses the non-IPA "compound" symbol ⟨ᵻ⟩ (ɪ) in words that may be pronounced with either [ɪ̈] or schwa. For example, the word noted is transcribed /ˈnəʊtᵻd/.[6]
The final vowel of words like happy and coffee is an unstressed front close unrounded vowel most commonly represented with [i], although some dialects (including more traditional
Reduced vowels in the close rounded area
According to
Analogously to the ⟨ᵻ⟩ symbol mentioned above, Oxford University Press have devised the non-IPA symbol ⟨ᵿ⟩ to represent a vowel that may be either /ʊ/ or /ə/ in
A rounded vowel [u], corresponding to the [i] happY vowel, is widely used in British works
Syllabic consonants
The other sounds that can serve as the peaks of reduced syllables are the
In other words, a syllabic consonant can be phonologically analyzed as consisting of either just the consonant or of an underlying schwa followed by the consonant. The consonants that can be syllabic in English are principally /l/, /m/, and /n/, for example in cycle (spelled by L followed by a silent e), prism, and prison. In
Unstressed full vowels
All full (unreduced; also called strong) vowels may occur in unstressed position (except under theoretical approaches that routinely assign secondary or tertiary stress to syllables containing such vowels – see § Degrees of lexical stress below). Some examples of words with unstressed syllables that are often pronounced with full vowels in Received Pronunciation are given below (pronunciation may be different in other varieties of English).
- Unreduced short vowels: /ɛ/ in the final syllable of document when used as a verb (compare the /ə/ heard when the word is used as a noun);[16]/æ/ in the first syllable of ambition; /ɒ/ in the second syllable of neon; /ʌ/ in words with the negative prefix un-, such as unknown (compare /ə/ in until).
- Long vowels: /ɑː/ in the final syllable of grandma; /ɔː/ in the final syllable of outlaw; /uː/ in tofu; /ɜː/ in the noun convert; /iː/ in manatee. Note that this last may stand in contrast to the happY vowel found at the end of humanity. This contrast is further described under § Distinctions between reduced and unreduced vowelsbelow.
- Diphthongs: /eɪ/ in Monday; /əʊ/ in piano; /aʊ/ in discount; /aɪ/ in idea; /ɔɪ/ in royale.
Full vowels can often be found in unstressed syllables in
Many other full unstressed vowels also derive historically from stressed vowels, due to shifts of stress over time (such as stress shifting away from the final syllable of French loan words, like ballet and bureau, in British English), or the loss or change of stress in compound words or phrases (as in óverseas vóyage from overséas or óverséas plus vóyage). There is a tendency, though, for such vowels to become reduced over time, especially in common words.
With vowels represented as ⟨ɪ⟩ and ⟨ʊ⟩, it may be hard to ascertain whether they represent a full vowel or a reduced vowel. A word that illustrates the contrast is chauvinism, where the first i is the reduced vowel /ɨ/, and the second is unreduced /ɪ/.
Degrees of lexical stress
Descriptions with primary and secondary stress
In many phonological approaches, and in many dictionaries, English is represented as having two levels of stress: primary and secondary. In every lexical word, and in some grammatical words, one syllable is identified as having primary stress, though in monosyllables the stress is not generally marked. In addition, longer words may have one or more syllables identified as having secondary stress. Syllables that have neither primary nor secondary stress are called unstressed.
In International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions, primary stress is denoted with ⟨ˈ⟩ and secondary stress with ⟨ˌ⟩. IPA stress marks are placed before the stressed syllable. When citing words in English spelling, primary stress is sometimes denoted with an acute accent ⟨´⟩ and secondary stress with a grave accent ⟨`⟩, placed over the vowel of the stressed syllable.
Secondary stress is frequently indicated in the following cases:
- In words where the primary stress falls on the third syllable or later, it is normal for secondary stress to be marked on one of the first two syllables[18] of the word. In words where the primary stress falls on the third syllable, secondary stress usually falls on the first rather than the second syllable. For example, ìnterjéction and èvolútion have their primary stress on the third syllable, and secondary stress on the first syllable. However, in certain words with primary stress on the third syllable, the second syllable may have secondary stress corresponding to the primary stress of a shorter related word or base. For example, electricity is pronounced by some speakers with secondary stress on the second syllable (elèctrícity), corresponding to the primary stress in eléctric. In words where the primary stress falls on the fourth syllable or later, the position of the secondary stress on either the first or second syllable often corresponds to the position of the primary stress in a shorter related word or base. For example, òrganizátion and assòciátion, which both have primary stress on the fourth syllable, have secondary stress on the first and second syllable respectively: the same positions as the primary stress on the first syllable of organize and the second syllable of associate.
- In words where the primary stress falls on the third or fourth syllable from the end, a following syllable may be marked with secondary stress.
- In many OED, although both of them assign secondary stress to the counter of counterintelligence.
- In some dictionaries (particularly American ones), all syllables that contain a full (unreduced) vowel are ascribed at least secondary stress, even when they come after the primary stress (as in the counterfoil example above). Bolinger (1986:358–360) notes that such dictionaries make use of the secondary-stress mark to distinguish full vowels from reduced vowels in unstressed syllables, as they may not have distinct symbols for reduced vowels. John Wells remarks, "Some analysts (particularly Americans) argue [...] that the presence of a strong [= full] vowel is sufficient evidence that the syllable in question is stressed. In the British tradition we regard them as unstressed."[17]
Note that this last-mentioned group of syllables are those ascribed tertiary stress in the approach described in the next section.
Descriptions with primary, secondary and tertiary stress
In some theories, English has been described as having three levels of stress: primary, secondary, and tertiary (in addition to the unstressed level, which in this approach may also be called quaternary stress). For example,²coun.ter.³in.¹tel.li.gence has a primary, secondary, and tertiary stress, and ¹coun.ter.³foil has a primary and tertiary stress. Exact treatments vary, but it is common for tertiary stress to be assigned to those syllables that, while not assigned primary or secondary stress, nonetheless contain full vowels (unreduced vowels, i.e., those not among the reduced vowels listed in the previous section).[19][20] Dictionaries do not generally mark tertiary stress, but as mentioned above, some of them treat all syllables with unreduced vowels as having at least secondary stress.
Descriptions with only one level of stress
Phoneticians such as
The difference between what is normally called primary and secondary stress, in this analysis, is explained by the observation that the last stressed syllable in a normal
This combination of lexical stress, phrase- or clause-final prosody, and the lexical reduction of some unstressed vowels, conspires to create the impression of multiple levels of stress. In Ladefoged's approach, our examples are transcribed phonemically as cóunterintélligence /ˈkaʊntər.ɪnˈtɛlɪdʒəns/, with two stressed syllables, and cóunterfoil /ˈkaʊntərfɔɪl/, with one. In citation form, or at the end of a prosodic unit (marked [‖]), extra stress appears from the utterance that is not inherent in the words themselves: cóunterintélligence [ˈkaʊntər.ɪnˈˈtɛlɪdʒəns‖] and cóunterfoil [ˈˈkaʊntərfɔɪl‖].
To determine where the actual lexical stress is in a word, one may try pronouncing the word in a phrase, with other words before and after it and without any pauses between them, to eliminate the effects of tonic stress: in the còunterintèlligence commúnity, for example, one can hear secondary (that is, lexical) stress on two syllables of counterintelligence, as the primary (tonic) stress has shifted to community.
Comparison
The following table summarizes the relationships between the aforementioned analyses of levels of stress in English: Ladefoged's binary account (which recognizes only one level of lexical stress), a quaternary account (which recognizes primary, secondary and tertiary stress), and typical dictionary approaches (which recognize primary and secondary stress, although their interpretations of secondary stress vary).
Description | Example | Binary approach |
Quaternary approach | Dictionary approaches |
---|---|---|---|---|
The most prominent syllable when a word is spoken alone. | organization | Stressed | Primary stress | Primary stress |
Other phonetically prominent syllables in a word. | organization | Secondary stress | Secondary stress | |
Other syllables with unreduced vowels. | counterfoil | Unstressed | Tertiary stress | Secondary stress (esp. U.S.) or unstressed |
Syllables with reduced vowels. | counterfoil | Unstressed (quaternary stress) | Unstressed |
As described in the section above, the binary account explains the distinction observed between "primary" and "secondary" stress as resulting from the prosodic, tonic stress that naturally falls on the final stressed syllable in a unit. It also recognizes the distinction between unstressed syllables with full vowels, and unstressed syllables with reduced vowels, but considers this to be a difference involving vowel reduction and not one of stress.
Distinctions between reduced and unreduced vowels
As mentioned in the previous section, some linguists make a phonemic distinction between syllables that contain reduced vowels (as listed above – syllabic consonants are also included in this category), and those that, while being phonetically unstressed, nevertheless contain a full (unreduced) vowel. In some analyses syllables of the latter type are ascribed secondary stress (those of the former type being regarded as completely unstressed), while in others the reduced/unreduced distinction is regarded as one of vowel quality not involving any difference in stress. This last approach is taken by linguists such as Ladefoged[22] and Bolinger,[23] who thus consider that there are two "tiers" of vowels in English, full and reduced.
A distinction of this type may become useful for the analysis of a potential contrast between words such as humanity, chicory, shivery and manatee, chickaree, shivaree. When assuming a separate set of reduced vowels, the former may end with /ɨ/, while the latter may end with an unreduced /iː/. Another example, for some speakers, is provided by the words farrow and Pharaoh; the former may end with a reduced /ɵ/ while the latter may end with the unreduced /oʊ/.[24] Alternatively, these reduced vowels can be analyzed as instances of the same phonemes as full vowels. In that case, it may be the phonemic secondary stress that distinguishes these words.
Reduced vowel set | Secondary stress | No distinction | |
---|---|---|---|
shivery – shivaree | /ˈʃɪvərɨ – ˈʃɪvəriː/ | /ˈʃɪvəriː – ˈʃɪvəˌriː/ | /ˈʃɪvəriː/ (both) |
farrow – Pharaoh | /ˈfærɵ – ˈfæroʊ/ | /ˈfæroʊ – ˈfæˌroʊ/ | /ˈfæroʊ/ (both) |
Some linguists have observed phonetic consequences of vowel reduction that go beyond the pronunciation of the vowel itself. Bolinger (1986) observes that a preceding
Alternation between full and reduced vowels
It is a feature of English that reduced vowels frequently alternate with full vowels: a given word or morpheme may be pronounced with a reduced vowel in some instances and a full vowel in other instances, usually depending on the degree of stress (lexical or prosodic) given to it.
Alternation depending on lexical stress
When the stress pattern of words changes, the vowels in certain syllables may switch between full and reduced. For example, in photograph and photographic, where the first syllable has (at least secondary) stress and the second syllable is unstressed, the first o is pronounced with a full vowel (the diphthong of GOAT), and the second o with a reduced vowel (schwa). However, in photography and photographer, where the stress moves to the second syllable, the first syllable now contains schwa while the second syllable contains a full vowel (that of LOT).
Alternation depending on meaning
There are a number of English verb-adjective pairs that are distinguished solely by vowel reduction. For example, in some dialects, separate as a verb (as in 'what separates nation from nation') has a full final vowel, [ˈsɛpəreɪt], whereas the corresponding adjective (as in 'they sleep in separate rooms') has a reduced vowel: [ˈsɛpərət][27] or [ˈsɛprət].[28] A distinction may be made in a similar way between a verb and a noun, as in the case of document (pronounced with a schwa in the noun's final syllable and sometimes pronounced with a full vowel /ɛ/ in the verb's final syllable). Finally, differences in syllabic stress and vowel reduction (or lack of the latter) may distinguish between meanings even within a given part of speech, with the best-known such pairs in American English being offense and defense (in each case with the first syllable accented in the context of sports and the second syllable accented in legal contexts).
Alternation depending on type of enunciation
In some words, the reduction of a vowel depends on how quickly or carefully the speaker enunciates the word. For example, the o in obscene is commonly reduced to schwa, but in more careful enunciation it may also be pronounced as a full vowel (that of LOT). Compare this with the o in gallon, which is never a full vowel, no matter how carefully one enunciates.[25]
Weak and strong forms of function words
Some monosyllabic English
An example of such a word is the modal verb can. When appearing unstressed within a sentence and governing a verb (as in I can do it), the weak form /kən/ is used. However the strong form /kæn/ is used:
- when the word is stressed: I don't have to do it, but I can do it
- when the word is phrase-final, i.e. without a governed verb: we won't be doing it, but they can if they want
- when the word is referred to in isolation: The verb "can" is one of the English modals.
In the case of most words with such alternative forms, the weak form is much more common (since it is relatively rare for function words to receive prosodic stress). This is particularly true of the English articles the, a, an, whose strong forms are used within normal sentences only on the rare occasions when definiteness or indefiniteness is being emphasized: Did you find the cat? I found a [eɪ] cat. (i.e. maybe not the one you were referring to). The weak form of the is typically [ði] before a vowel-initial word (the apple) but [ðə] before a consonant-initial word (the pear), although this distinction is being lost in the United States.[22][pages needed] A similar distinction is sometimes made with to: to Oxford [tu] vs. to Cambridge [tə].
The exact set of words that have weak forms depends on dialect and speaker; the following is a list of the chief words of this type in Received Pronunciation:[29][30]
- Always reduced:
- a, an, and, be, been, but, he, her, him, his, just, me, or, she, than, that (as conjunction), the, them, us, we, who, you, your.
- Reduced, but stressed at the end of a sentence:
- as, at, for, from, of, to, some, there.
- Reduced, but stressed at the end of a sentence and when contractedwith the negative not:
- am, are, can, could, do, does, had, has, have, must, shall, should, was, were, will, would.
In most of the above words the weak form contains schwa, or a syllabic consonant in the case of those ending /l/, /m/ or /n/. However, in be, he, me, she, we, been, him the vowel may be the reduced form of /ɪ/, or else [i]; and in do, who, you it may be the reduced form of /ʊ/, or [u]. (For the and to, see above.) These various sounds are described in the § Reduced vowels section above.
The weak form of that is used only for the conjunction or relative pronoun (I said that you can; The man that you saw), and not for the demonstrative pronoun or adjective (Put that down; I like that colour).
Another common word with a reduced form is our, but this is derived through
Other words that have weak forms in many varieties of English include your (weakly pronounced as [jə], or [jɚ] in
spellings yer and me.In highly formal registers with exaggeratedly careful enunciation, weak forms may be avoided. An example is singing, where strong forms may be used almost exclusively, apart (normally) from a, although weak forms may be used more frequently as tempo increases and note-values shorten.[citation needed]
The vowel reduction in weak forms may be accompanied by other
Synchronically, 'em [əm] functions as a weak form of them, though historically it is derived from a different pronoun, the Old English hem.[31]
The homonymy resulting from the use of some of the weak forms can lead to confusion in writing; the identity of the weak forms of have and of sometimes leads to misspellings such as "would of", "could of", etc. for would have, could have, etc.
English weak forms are clitics: they form a rhythmic pattern with an adjacent word, and cannot occur alone.
Notes
- ^ In English dialects that have not undergone the trap–bath split.
See also
References
Citations
- ^ Wells (2008), p. 844.
- ^ Knight (2012), p. 71.
- ^ Ladefoged (2006), p. 95.
- ^ Upton, Kretzschmar & Konopka (2001), p. xiii.
- ^ Key to Pronunciation. "Oxford English Dictionary". Oxford University Press.
- ^ "noted". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ Wells (1982), p. 291.
- ^ Wells (2012).
- ^ Kreidler (2004).
- ^ McCully (2009).
- ^ Roach (2009).
- ^ Upton, Kretzschmar & Konopka (2001), p. xvii.
- ^ Wells (2008).
- ^ Jones et al. (2011).
- ^ Knight (2012), p. 103.
- ^ "DOCUMENT | Meaning & Definition for UK English". Lexico.com. Archived from the original on September 19, 2020. Retrieved 2022-08-24.
- ^ a b John Wells, "strong and weak", in John Wells's phonetic blog, 25 March 2011 [1]
- ^ Wells, John (16 November 2011). "GIGO". John Wells's phonetic blog. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
- ^ Hirst & Di Cristo (1998), p. 57.
- ^ Katalin (2008), p. 89.
- ^ Ladefoged (2006), p. 83.
- ^ a b Ladefoged (2006).
- ^ Bolinger (1986).
- ^ Bolinger (1986), p. 348.
- ^ a b Bolinger (1986), p. 358.
- ^ Wells (1990), pp. 76–86.
- ^ OED
- ISBN 1-876429-14-3
- ^ Roach (2009), p. 89–96.
- ISBN 9781118944530.
- ^ "'em". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
Sources
- ISBN 0-8047-1241-7
- Celce-Murcia, Marianne; Brinton, Donna M.; Goodwin, Janet M. (1996), Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-40504-1
- Hirst; Di Cristo (1998), Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages
- Jones, D.; Roach, Peter; Setter, J.; Esling, J. (2011), English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th Ed., Cambridge University Press
- Katalin (2008), Beginner's English Dialectology
- Knight, Rachael-Anne Knight (2012), Phonetics- A course book, Cambridge University Press
- Kreidler, Charles (2004), The Pronunciation of English, Blackwell
- Ladefoged, Peter (2006), A Course in Phonetics, Thomson
- Garcia Lecumberri, M. Luisa (2000), English Transcription Course, ISBN 0-340-75978-X
- McCully, C. (2009), The Sound Structure of English, Cambridge University Press
- Roach, Peter (2009), English Phonetics and Phonology, 4th Ed., Cambridge University Press
- Upton, C; Kretzschmar; Konopka (2001), Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, Oxford University Press
- ISBN 0-52128540-2
- Wells, John C. (1990), "Syllabification and allophony", in Ramsaran, Susan (ed.), Studies in the pronunciation of English, pp. 76–86
- Wells, John C. (2008), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd Ed., Longman
- Wells, John C. (2012-06-07), HappY Again, retrieved 2015-07-31