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In the
work of Halliday[73] the following names are proposed:
Tonicity for the placing of the principal accent on a particular syllable of a word, making it the tonic
syllable. This is the domain also referred to as prosodic stress or sentence stress.
Tone for the choice of pitch movement on the tonic syllable. (The use of the term "tone" in this sense
should not be confused with the tone of tone languages, such as Chinese.)
These terms ("the Three Ts") have been used in more recent work,[74][75] though they have been criticized for
being difficult to remember.[76] American systems such as ToBI also identify contrasts involving boundaries
between intonation phrases (Halliday's tonality), placement of pitch accent (tonicity), and choice of tone or
tones associated with the pitch accent (tone).
Example of phonological contrast involving placement of intonation unit boundaries (boundary marked by |):
a) Those who ran quickly | escaped. (the only people who escaped were those who ran quickly)
b) Those who ran | quickly escaped. (the people who ran escaped quickly)
Example of phonological contrast involving placement of tonic syllable (marked by capital letters):
a) I have plans to LEAVE. (= I am planning to leave)
b) I have PLANS to leave. (= I have some drawings to leave)
Example of phonological contrast (British English) involving choice of tone (\ = falling tone, \/ = fall-rise
tone)
a) She didn't break the record because of the \ WIND. (= she did not break the record, because the
wind held her up)
b) She didn't break the record because of the \/ WIND. (= she did break the record, but not because of
the wind)
It has been frequently claimed that there is a contrast involving tone between whquestions and yes/no questions, the former being said to have falling tone (e.g. "Where did you
\PUT it?") and the latter a rising tone (e.g. "Are you going /OUT?"), though studies of spontaneous
speech have shown frequent exceptions to this rule.[77] "Tag questions" asking for information are
said to carry rising tones (e.g. "They are coming on Tuesday, /AREN'T they?") while those asking
for confirmation have falling tone (e.g. "Your name's John, \ISN'T it.").
The English consonant system has been relatively stable over time, although a number of
significant changes have occurred. Examples include the loss (in most dialects) of the [] and [x]
sounds still reflected by the gh in words like night and taught, and the splitting of voiced and
voiceless allophones of fricatives into separate phonemes (such as the two differentphonemes
represented by th). There have also been many changes in consonant clusters, mostly
reductions, for instance those that produced the usual modern pronunciations of such letter
combinations as wr-, kn- and wh-.
The development of vowels has been much more complex. One of the most notable series of
changes is that known as theGreat Vowel Shift, which began around the late 14th century. Here
the [i] and [u] in words like price and mouth became diphthongized, and other long vowels
became higher: [e] became [i] (as in meet), [a] became [e] and later [e] (as
inname), [o] became [u] (as in goose), and [] became [o] and later [o] (in RP now []; as
in bone). These shifts are responsible for the modern pronunciations of many written vowel
combinations, including those involving a silent final e.
Many other changes in vowels have taken place over the centuries (see the separate articles on
the low back, high back andhigh front vowels, short A, and diphthongs). These various changes
mean that many words that formerly rhymed (and may be expected to rhyme based on their
spelling) no longer do.[78] For example, in Shakespeare's time, following the Great Vowel
Shift, food, good and blood all had the vowel [u], but in modern pronunciation good has been
shortened to [], whileblood has been shortened and lowered to [] in most accents. In other
cases, words that were formerly distinct have come to be pronounced the same examples of
such mergers include meetmeat, panepain and toetow.
See also[edit]
English orthography
General American
Phonological development
Pronunciation of English th
Received Pronunciation
Rhoticity in English
T-glottalization
R-colored vowel
References[edit]
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9.
Bibliography[edit]
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lines. Later versions contain about 800 of the worst irregularities in English spelling and
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