Title: Connected speech

Stress (or accent) and rhythm

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English is a stress-timed language, while French is syllable-timed

In stress-timed languages,  the accented or stressed syllables are pronounced at regular intervals while the unstressed syllables are shortened to keep the rhythm.  .

Content words or lexical words are the words in a sentence that contain or convey information. These wwords are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.

In words of more than one syllable, only one syllable is stressed. The stressed syllable is more dynamic, longer, louder, and higherin pitch

In phonetics, the stress (accent)  is indicated by an apostrophe  (') before the stressed syllable /'sɪləbl/

Unstressed vowel sounds are usually pronounced in their weak forms, and very often with a SCHWA sound /ə/

Linking

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Linking, occurs when word boundaries merge together to ease the shift from one word to another

There are two main types of linking

- catenation: when the last sound of a word is a consonant (C) and the first sound of the next word is a vowel.(V)
example: "what is it?" --> /wɒt ɪz ɪt/ --> /wɒ tɪ zɪt/

- intrusion: when an extra sound, either /r/, /w/ or /j/, intrudes between two words

examples:    "law and order" /lɔː ənˈɔːdə/ --> /lɔː rənˈɔːdə/

                   "blue automobile"   /bluː ˈɔːtəməʊbiːl/ --> /bluː ˈwɔːtəməʊbiːl/

                    "She answered" /ʃi ˈɑːnsəd/ --> /ʃi ˈjɑːnsəd/

Assimilation

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Assimilation occurs in connected speech when one or more sounds change in contact with other sounds. Assimilations can occur within words or between two words.

There are 3 types of assimilations.

- progressive assimilation: a preceding sound has an effect on a following one

example: "read this" /ri:d ðɪs/ --> /ri:d dis/

-regressive assimilation : a following sound has an effect on a preceding one

example: "have to " /həv tʊ/ --> /həf to/

- coalescent assimilation (yod coalescence) : a fusion of 2 sounds resulting in a new sound.  Coalescent assimilation occurs in English when an alveolar plosive or fricative  /t, d, s, z/  is followed by a semi-vowel /j/ to produce  /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ,/ or /ʒ/,

example: "don't you?", /dəʊnt jə/ --> /dəʊnʧjə/

Elision

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Elision is the omission of a sound in speech. Elision is common in casual conversation. Elision may refer to the omission of an unstressed vowel, consonant, or syllable. Elision is common in 3 consonant sound clusters

examples: "fast car" /fɑːst kɑː/ --> /fɑːs kɑː/

                "Britain" /ˈbrɪtn/

                "cup of tea" /kʌp ə  tiː/