English phonology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008)

English phonology is the study of the phonology (i.e., the sound system) of the English language. Like all languages, spoken English has wide variation in its pronunciation both diachronically and synchronically from dialect to dialect. This variation is especially salient in English, because the language is spoken over such a wide territory, being the predominant language in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States in addition to being spoken as a first or second language by people in countries on every continent, and notably in South Africa and India. In general the regional dialects of English are mutually intelligible.

Although there are many dialects of English, the following are usually used as prestige or standard accents: Received Pronunciation for the United Kingdom, General American for the United States and General Australian for Australia.

Phonemes

See IPA chart for English dialects for concise charts of the English phonemes.

The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by John C. Wells, for example, using symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, denotes 24 consonants and 23 vowels used in Received Pronunciation, plus two additional consonants and four additional vowels used in foreign words only. For General American it provides for 25 consonants and 19 vowels, with one additional consonant and three additional vowels for foreign words. The American Heritage Dictionary, on the other hand, suggests 25 consonants and 18 vowels (including r-colored vowels) for American English, plus one consonant and five vowels for non-English terms [1].

Consonants

The following table shows the consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English. When consonants appear in pairs, fortis consonants (i.e., aspirated or voiceless) appear on the left and lenis consonants (i.e., lightly voiced or voiced) appear on the right:

Consonant phonemes of English Bilabial Labio-
dental Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar² Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal¹ m n ŋ
Plosive p  b t  d k  ɡ
Affricate tʃ  dʒ
Fricative f  v θ  ð s  z ʃ  ʒ (x)³ h
Approximant ɹ/ɻ^{1, 4} j (ʍ)³  w ²
Lateral l^{1, 5}

Nasals and liquids may be syllabic in unstressed syllables.
Postalveolar consonants are usually labialized (e.g., [ʃʷ] though this is rarely transcribed).
The voiceless velar fricative and voiceless labiovelar approximant are dialectal with the former occurring largely in Scottish English and the latter being retained in much of the American South and Scottish English. In other dialects, words with these sounds are pronounced with /k/ and /w/ respectively.
Depending on dialect, /ɹ/ may be an alveolar, a postalveolar, a retroflex approximant or a labiodental approximant.
/l/ is velarized in the syllable coda

/p/ pit /b/ bit
/t/ tin /d/ din
/k/ cut /ɡ/ gut
/tʃ/ cheap /dʒ/ jeep
/m/ map /n/ nap /ŋ/ bang
/f/ fat /v/ vat
/θ/ thin /ð/ then
/s/ sap /z/ zap
/ʃ/ she /ʒ/ measure
/h/ ham
/x/ loch
/ʍ/ whine (also transcribed /hw/) /w/ we
/ɹ/ run (also transcribed /r/ or /ɻ/)
/l/ left
/j/ yes

Vowels

The vowels of English differ considerably between dialects. Because of this, corresponding vowels may be transcribed with various symbols depending on the dialect under consideration. When considering English as a whole, no specific phoneme symbols are picked over others; instead lexical sets are used, each named by a word containing the vowel in question. For example, the vowel of the LOT set ("short O") is transcribed /ɒ/ in Received Pronunciation and Australian English, and /ɑ/ in General American. For an overview of the correspondences see IPA chart for English dialects.

Monophthongs of Received Pronunciation[1] Front Central Back
long short long short long short
Close iː ɪ uː ʊ
Mid ɛ ɜː ə ɔː
Open æ ʌ ɑː ɒ
Monophthongs of Australian English Front Central Back
long short long short long short
Close iː ɪ ʉː ʊ
Mid eː e ɜː ə oː ɔ
Open æː æ aː a

The monophthong phonemes of General American differ in a number of ways from Received Pronunciation:

Vowels are more equal in length, differing mainly in quality.
The central vowel of nurse is rhotic /ɝ/ or a syllabic /ɹ̩/.
Speakers make a phonemic distinction between rhotic /ɚ/ and non-rhotic /ə/
No distinction is made between /ɒ/ and /ɑ/, nor for many people with /ɔ/.

Reduced vowels occur in some unstressed syllables. (Other unstressed syllables may have full vowels, which some dictionaries mark as secondary stress.) The number of distinctions made among reduced vowels varies by dialect. In some dialects vowels are centralized but otherwise kept mostly distinct, while in Australia and many US dialects all reduced vowels collapse to a schwa [ə]. In Received Pronunciation, there is a distinct high reduced vowel, which the OED writes <ɪ>.

[ɪ]: roses (merged with [ə] in Australian English)
[ə]: Rosa’s, runner
[l̩]: bottle
[n̩]: button
[m̩]: rhythm

English diphthongs RP Australian American
GA Canadian
low /əʊ/ /əʉ/ /oʊ/
loud /aʊ/ /æɔ/ /aʊ/ /aʊ/
lout [əʊ]¹
lied /aɪ/ /ɑe/ /aɪ/ /aɪ/
light [əɪ]¹
lane /eɪ/ /æɪ/ /eɪ/
loin /ɔɪ/ /oɪ/ /ɔɪ/
leer /ɪə/ /ɪə/ /ɪɚ/³
lair /ɛə/² /eː/ ² /ɛɚ/³
lure /ʊə/² /ʊə/ /ʊɚ/³

Canadian English, exhibits allophony of /aʊ/ and /aɪ/ called Canadian raising. The phenomenon also occurs (especially for /aɪ/) in many US speakers, in South Atlantic English, and in the Fens.
In Received Pronunciation, the vowels in lair and lure may be monophthongized to [ɛː] and [oː] respectively.[2] Australian English speakers more readily monophthongize the former but it is listed here anyway.
In Rhotic dialects, words like pair, poor, and peer can be analyzed as diphthongs, although other descriptions analyze them as vowels with /ɹ/ in the coda.^{[citation needed]}

Transcription variants

The choice of which symbols to use for phonemic transcriptions may reveal theoretical assumptions or claims on the part of the transcriber. English 'lax' and 'tense' vowels are distinguished by a synergy of features, such as height, length, and contour (monophthong vs. diphthong); different traditions in the linguistic literature emphasize different features. For example, if the primary feature is thought to be vowel height, then the non-reduced vowels of General American English may be represented as follows:

Contents