2.6.
The sounds of the language
When we are speaking, we construct words and phrases with individual sounds, and we also use pitch
change, intonation and stress to convey different meanings.
The teaching of pronunciation will be the focus of Chapter 16, where we will also discuss how ‘perfect’
our students’ pronunciation should be (16.1). In this section, we will look at fi ve pronunciation issues:
pitch, intonation, individual sounds, sounds and spelling, and stress.
2.6.1. Pitch
One of the ways we recognise people is by the pitch of their voice. We say that one person has a very
high voice whereas another has a deep voice. When someone’s voice is very high, we talk about them
having a ‘high-pitched’ voice.
While most of us have a pitch range that we normally operate at, in times of tension, for example, the
pitch of our voices may change dramatically. We often speak at a higher pitch than normal if we are
frightened or excited. When we are tired, bored or fed up, our pitch may be lower than is customary.
The pitch we use is, therefore, a device by which we communicate emotion and meaning. If we start
speaking at a higher pitch than usual, this is noticeable. A low grunt gives some indication of mood, too!
2.6.2. Intonation
On its own, pitch is not very subtle, conveying, as we have seen, only the most basic information about
mood and emotion. But once we start altering the pitch as we speak (e.g. changing pitch direction), we are
able to convey a much subtler range of meanings. The music of speech, that is the intonation we use, is a
crucial factor in speaking.
One of the uses of intonation is to show the grammar of what we are saying. For example, if the pitch of
our voice falls when we say clock in the following sentence, this indicates that we are making a statement:
You’ll arrive at eight o’clock
Notice that the pitch direction changes on one syllable (clock). We call this the nucleus of the tone unit (I’ll
arrive at eight o’clock). A tone unit is any collection of sounds/words with one nucleus. The falling tone,
therefore, indicates that this tone unit is a statement.
We could, however, use the words to mean something quite different grammatically, as in this example:
You’ll arrive at eight o’clock
The rising tone now indicates that this is a question, and the fact that eight is the nucleus shows that this is
the information in question.
Utterances are often made up of more than one tone unit, e.g.:
You’ll arrive at eight o’clock, okay
Once again, the rising tone on kay indicates that this is a tag question, asking the listener to confirm the
speaker’s choice.
Intonation is also used to convey attitude. We have already seen how pitch tends to be higher overall
when we are frightened, but the relative highs and lows of changes in pitch direction can indicate anything
from surprise to excitement or even a lack of interest or dismissiveness. One of the things that characterises
the way parents talk to children, for example, is the exaggerated highs and lows of pitch change. In the same
way, we tend to exaggerate when we want to show particular enthusiasm or empathy, but the changes in
pitch direction tend to be less extreme when we are being non-committal.
Finally, intonation plays a crucial role in spoken discourse since it signals when speakers have finished
the points they wish to make, tells people when they wish to carry on with a turn (i.e. not yield the floor to
another speaker) and indicates agreement and disagreement. Thus a falling tone at the end of an utterance
indicates that the speaker has finished their point, whereas a rising tone suggests they wish to keep going.
High pitch in response to a previous speaker suggests that we wish to make a contrast with what they have
said, whereas a low pitch tends to indicate that we wish to add something which is broadly in agreement
with what has been said.
In this context, falling tones are sometimes called proclaiming tones and are used when giving new
information (or adding to what has been said) whereas fall–rise tones ( ↘ ↗ ) are called referring tones and
are used when we refer to information we presume to be shared with our listeners or when we want to check
information.
Intonation is a notoriously tricky area since very many students (to say nothing of their teachers) find it
difficult to hear changes in pitch direction – or rather, they sometimes cannot identify which direction it is.
Nevertheless, there are ways we can help them with this, as we shall see in Chapter 16.
2.6.3. Individual sounds
Words and sentences are made up of sounds (or phonemes) which, on their own, may not carry
meaning, but which, in combination, make words and phrases. The phonemes /k/ (like the c in can), /æ/ (like
the a in can) or /t/ (like the t in tooth) are just sounds, but put them together in a certain order and we get
/kæt/ (cat), a word that is instantly recognisable. If we change just one of these sounds (/b/ for /k/, for
example) we will get a different word (bat); if, on the other hand, we changed /æ/ for /ɒ/ – like the o in hot –
we would get another different word, /kɒt/ (cot). These examples use the sounds of a variety of British
English often referred to as standard southern English (SSE), which has 47 phonemes.
Competent speakers of the language make these sounds by using various parts of the mouth (called
articulators), such as the lips, the tongue, the teeth, the alveolar ridge (the flat little ridge behind the upper
teeth), the palate, the velum (the soft tissue at the back of the roof of the mouth, often called the soft palate)
and the vocal cords (folds) (see Figure 4).
As an example, we can see that the consonant /t/ is made when the tip of the tongue is placed on the
alveolar ridge above it, and when air from the lungs forces the tongue away from the ridge in an explosive
burst. That is why /t/ is referred to as an ‘alveolar plosive’. Figure 5 shows which parts of the mouth are
used for alveolar plosives.
The consonant /d/ is made in a similar way to /t/, but there are crucial differences. When we say /t/, as
in /tʌn/ (ton), the first sound is just air expelled from the mouth (try saying t, t, t to yourself, holding your
hand in front of your mouth). In the larynx, the vocal cords (the two flaps of muscular tissue which, when
pressed together, vibrate when air is forced through them) are completely open, so there is no obstruction
for the air coming from the lungs. When we say /d/, as in /dʌn/ (done), however, the vocal cords are closed,
the air from the lungs forces them to vibrate, and voiceless /t/ is now voiced to become /d/. Furthermore,
there is little aspiration (air breathed out) compared to what there was with /t/ (again, if you hold your hand
in front of your mouth this will become clear). Figure 6 shows the position of the vocal cords for voiceless
sounds (like /p/, /t/ and /k/) and voiced sounds (like /b/, /d/ and /g/).
Vowel sounds are all voiced, but there are features which differentiate them. The first is the place in the
mouth where they are made. The second feature, which is easier to observe, is the position of the lips. For
/ɑː/, for example, the lips form something like a circle, whereas for /iː/, they are more stretched and spread.
Figure 7 shows these two positions.
One sound which does not occur in many phonemic charts, but which is nevertheless widely used, is the
glottal stop, created when a closure of the vocal folds stops air completely and we say /əpɑːɁmənt/
(apartment), for example, instead of /əpɑːtmənt/ or /aɪsɔːɁɪt/ (I saw it) instead of /aɪsɔːrɪt/. The glottal stop is
often used instead of other stop (or plosive) consonants.
Speakers of different languages have different sounds. Thus, there is no equivalent in English for the
‘click’ used by Xhosa speakers, so English speakers find it difficult to produce. French people are
accustomed to the awkward way in which British speakers mangle French vowels because they are not the
same as English ones. Japanese speakers, on the other hand, do not have different phonemes for /l/ and /r/
and so have difficulty differentiating between them, and often find it nearly impossible to make the different
sounds.
We cannot leave this discussion of sounds without reminding ourselves that SSE is just one variety of
British English. It has prominence in the world of English language teaching partly through the wide use of
British English exams such as Cambridge English: First and IELTS. But as we saw in 1.1.1, there are
numerous other varieties. Australian English has many similar sounds to British English, but quite a few
different ones as well. And these sounds themselves may be different from the English of New Zealanders.
In numerical terms, at the very least, one of the most important varieties of English is the one often referred
to as General American (GA).
We will return to pronunciation – and the phonemes we need to teach – in Chapter 16.
2.6.4. Sounds and spelling
Whereas in some languages there seems to be a close correlation between sounds and spelling, in
English this is often not the case. The sound /ʌ/, for example, can be realised in a number of different
spellings (e.g. won, young, funny, flood). The letters ou, on the other hand, can be pronounced in a number
of different ways (e.g. cloud, /klaʊd/, pour /pɔː/, enough /ɪnʌf/, through /θruː/, though /ðəʊ/, trough /trɒf/, or
even journey /dʒɜːni/. A lot depends on the sounds that come before and after them, but the fact remains that
we spell some sounds in a variety of different ways, and we have a variety of different sounds for some
spellings.
Words can change their sound(s), too, and this is not indicated by the way we spell them. Thus we say
that in British English, was sounds like this: /wɒz/. However, when it occurs in a sentence like I was robbed,
the vowel sound changes from a stressed vowel /ɒ/ to an unstressed vowel /ə/, e.g. /aɪwəzˈrɒbd/ (ˈ before a
syllable indicates that the syllable is stressed – see below). The unstressed sound in was, /ə/, is called the
schwa and is one of the most frequent sounds in English, created by shortening of the vowel and the placing
of stress elsewhere.
Other changes occur when sounds get close or slide into each other in connected speech: sometimes
elision takes place where sounds ‘disappear’ into each other. Thus /kɑːnt/ (can’t) finishes with the sound /t/,
but when it is placed next to a word beginning with /d/, for example, the /t/ disappears (e.g. /aɪkɑːndɑːns/ – I
can’t dance). Sometimes assimilation takes place, where the sound at the end of one word changes to be
more like the sound at the beginning of the next. Thus the /d/ at the end of /bæd/ becomes a /ɡ/ when placed
next to a word starting with /ɡ/, e.g. /bæɡ ɡaɪ/ (bad guy) or an /n/ becomes an /m/, e.g. /bɪm men/ (bin men).
2.6.5. Stress
British and American English speakers often differ in where they place the stress in words. Thus ballet
in British English is stressed on the first syllable (bal), whereas in American English, the stress usually falls
on the second syllable (let).
Stress is the term we use to describe the point in a word or phrase where pitch changes, vowels lengthen
and volume increases. In a one-syllable word like dance, we know which syllable is stressed since there is
only one. A word with more than one syllable is more complex, however. We might stress the word export
on the second syllable (exPORT) if we are using it as a verb. But if we stress the first syllable (EXport), the
word is now a noun.
In multi-syllable words there is often more than one stressed syllable (e.g. singularity, information,
claustrophobia). In such cases we call the strongest force the primary stress and the weaker force the
secondary stress, e.g. ˌsingulˈarity, ˌinforˈmation, ˌclaustroˈphobia. Note that primary stress has a
superscript mark whereas secondary stress is marked below the line. Secondary stress is not the same as
unstressed syllables, as the presence of the schwa shows, e.g. /ˌɪnfəˈmeɪʃən/.
Words are often not pronounced as one might expect from their spelling. The word secretary would
appear, on paper, to have four syllables, but when it is spoken, there are sometimes only three, e.g
/ˈsekrətri/, or even, in rapid speech, only two, e.g. /ˈsektri/.
It is worth noticing, too, that when a word changes shape morphologically, the stressed syllable may
shift as well. In English, we stress Japan on the second syllable ( jaPAN ), but when we turn the word into
an adjective the stress moves to the new syllable ( japanESE ). However, this does not always happen (e.g.
amERica, amERican)
Stress is vitally important in conveying meaning in phrases and sentences. The utterance Hi! Nice to see
you! is made up of two phrases ( Hi and Nice to see you ). We can refer to these as tone units . It is on the
stressed part of a tone unit (the nucleus – or tonic syllable) that intonation/pitch changes are most marked.
For example Nice to SEE you! In British English the stress often falls on the end of the phrase, to give it end
weight. So a neutral way of saying Brad wants to marry my daughter might have the stress on the dau of
daughter . But if the speaker changes the stress placement (and thus the part of the sentence where the
intonation change takes place), then the meaning of the sentence changes, too, so that an affi rmative
statement, for example, may well become a question, e.g.
Brad wants to MARRY my daughter? (= I can’t believe the relationship is that serious.) or BRAD
wants to marry my daughter? (= I can’t believe it! I knew Steve was keen on her, but Brad?)
