Иностранный язык / Реферат: National varieties of English

Реферат: National varieties of English

· For speakers who do not merge caught and cot: The replacement of the cot vowel with the caught vowel before voiceless fricatives (as in cloth, off [which is found in some old-fashioned varieties of RP), as well as before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long), usually in gone, often in on, and irregularly before /ɡ/ (log, hog, dog, fog [which is not found in British English at all]).

· The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what and in many utterances of the words everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody; the word because has either /ʌ/ or /ɔ/; want has normally /ɔ/ or /ɑ/, sometimes /ʌ/.

· Vowel merger before intervocalic /ɹ/. Which vowels are affected varies between dialects, but the Mary-marry-merry, nearer-mirror, and hurry-furry mergers are all widespread. Another such change is the laxing of /e/, /i/ and /u/ to /ɛ/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ before /ɹ/, causing pronunciations like [pɛɹ], [pɪɹ] and [pjʊɹ] for pair, peer and pure. The resulting sound [ʊɹ] is often further reduced to [ɝ], especially after palatals, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir.

· Dropping of /j/ is more extensive than in RP. In most North American accents, /j/ is dropped after all alveolar and interdental consonant, so that new, duke, Tuesday, resume are pronounced /nu/, /duk/, /tuzdeɪ/, /ɹɪzum/.

· æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, /æ/ is approximately realized as [eə] before nasal consonants. In some accents, particularly those from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, [æ] and [eə] contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can [kæn] vs. tin can [keən].

· The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same. For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur after /aɪ/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [əɪ] and rider with [aɪ]. This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /aʊ/. In some areas and idiolects, a phonemic distinction between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly voiced consonant, e.g., [læ:·ɾɹ̩] for "ladder" as opposed to [læ·ɾɹ̩] for "latter".

· T-glottalization is common when /t/ is in the final position of a syllable or word (get, fretful: [ɡɛt], [fɹɛtfəl]), though this is always superseded by the aforementioned rules of flapping

· Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃], making winter and winner homophones. Most areas in which /nt/ is reduced to /n/, it is accompanied further by nasalization of simple post-vocalic /n/, so that V/nt/ and V/n/ remain phonemically distinct. In such cases, the preceding vowel becomes nasalized, and is followed in cases where the former /nt/ was present, by a distinct /n/. This stop-absorption by the preceding nasal /n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.

· The pin-pen merger, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now also sometimes found in parts of the Midwest and West as well, especially in people with roots in the mountainous areas of the Southeastern United States.

Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:

· The merger of the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, etc. homophones.

· The wine-whine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. homophones, in most cases eliminating ɛ/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western American English still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.

3. Eastern American english

C.G.Van Riper and D.E. Smith wrote in 1962:”It is difficult to generalize about Eastern American English ,since within the region where it is spoken there are many differing pronunciations.Eastern American pronunciation is typified as an “r-less”, or non-rhotic, type of American English pronunciation. Consequently ,it is characterized by the loss of [ɾ] in the final and preconsonantal positions,as in car [ka:] and park [pa:k] . EA speakers use [з:] and [ə] instead of the GA [ɝ] and [ɚ] in such words as bird,sister. One of the most striking features of EA, or more precisely, of Eastern New England is, perhaps, the use of the broad [a] ,in far , park,father...In contrast to GA Eastern American speakers use the RP [ɒ] in so-called “short-o” words, as in hot, crop, not, dog, in which places GA speakers use [ɑ] .In contrast to RP [ɒ] is also used in such words as caught , fought , law, horse. The word cot and caught come to the identical –[kɒt].

The frequent vowel in doll and solve is [ɑ] , though [ɔ] and [ɒ] can also occur.

In forest, orange, horrid ,tomorrow [ɑ] predominates. However , [ɒ] varies with [ɑ] , especially before the velar consonants [ə] and [ŋ] as in fog, long.

[ʌ] is normal in burry ,worry ,courage.

The diphtongs [aɪ] , [ɔɪ],[aʊ] are relatively stable, though some traces of [aʊ] and [æʊ] remain in rural areas.

Absorb, absurd, and desolate may have either [s] or [z] , greasy and the verb greasy have [s].

4. Southern American english

In the speech of the South there are subareas and gradations of social status, as reflected in speech ,to be found nowhere else in the country .Generally speaking ,SA has unique differences in the manner of articulation .Southerners lengthen certain vowels,they make the single vowels (monophthongs) into diphthongs and triphthongs .The articulation is more lax and unprecise and it is this rather than the rate ,or speed , of speech which characterizes “the southern drawl”. Few generalizations can be made about Southern pronunciation as there is great variation between the regions of the South , between older and younger people, and between people of different ethnic backgrounds.

The following features are characteristic of older SAE:

· Lack of yod-dropping, thus pairs like do/due and toon/tune are distinct. Historically, words like due, lute, and new contained /juː/ (as RP does), but report says that the only Southern speakers who make a distinction today use a diphthong /ɪu/ in such words. They further report that speakers with the distinction are found primarily in North Carolina and northwest South Carolina, and in a corridor extending from Jackson to Tallahassee.

o The distinction between /ær/, /ɛr/, and /er/ in marry, merry, and Mary is preserved by some older speakers, but few young people make a distinction. The r-sound almost becomes a vowel, and may be elided after a long vowel, as it often is in AAVE. The following phenomena are relatively wide spread in SAE, though the extent of these features varies across regions and between rural and urban areas. The older the speaker, the less likely he or she is to display these features:

· The merger of [ɛ] and [ɪ] before nasal consonants, so that pen and pin are pronounced the same, but the pin-pen merger is not found in New Orleans, Savannah, or Miami (which does not fall within the Southern dialect region). This sound change has spread beyond the South in recent decades and is now found in parts of the Midwest and West as well.

· Lax and tense vowels often neutralize before /l/, making pairs like feel/fill and fail/fell homophones for speakers in some areas of the South. Some speakers may distinguish between the two sets of words by reversing the normal vowel sound, e.g., feel in SAE may sound like fill, and vice versa.

Mean formant values for the ANAE subjects from the Southern U.S. (excluding Florida and Charleston, SC). The red symbol marks the position of monophthongized /aɪ/ before voiced consonants. The distinction between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ is preserved mainly because /ɔ/ has an upglide. /eɪ/ is backer and lower than /ɛ/.