The Standard American Pronunciation

The Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specified Education of Uzbek State World Languages University

1st philology

Department of Phonology and Phonetics

Course paper

The Standard American Pronunciation

              Group: __

Student: ________________

Professor assistant: ________________

Tashkent - 2011

Outline:

I.                       Introduction………………………………….3

II.                   Body

a.The History of standard American Pronunciation…………………………..5

b. General American in the media………..8

c.   Regional home of general American….10

d.Phonology……………………………...12

e. Intonation……………………………...19

III.               Conclusion………………………………….21

IV.              Attachments………………………………..22

V.                  Bibliography…………………………….....24

I. Introduction

              All of us have an idea that the English is very wide spread language. It has several types of varieties, which exist almost in all the continents of the world. However, not all of us can imagine that those varieties themselves have their own sub-varieties, too. Every single type of English has at least two type of itself. So does the American English variety. General American is a notional accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. GA pronunciation is known to be the pronunciation standard of the USA. There are some reasons for it. GA is the form of speech used by the radio and television. It is mostly used in scientific, cultural and business intercourse. It has various divisions in it, but our main focus in this course paper will be on the history, phonology intonation, and the sound system including the way of talking as well.

Nevertheless, the purpose of the current project is not just to describe the standard American pronunciation, to study the phonology and to give information about the history of American Standart pronounciation.Of course, during those analyses the phonology will be precisely described to develop the conscious understanding of what is going on in this paper. This paper will help to draw the image if the “phonetic map” of the USA. That would be really easy because all the materials used to prepare this course paper are very understandable, interesting, and clear. Those materials have various origins, beginning from newspapers, books which belong mostly to the Uzbek and Russian phoneticians, like Abduazizov or Vasilyev, who had great job in developing their area of working, and ending with internet sources as well. Besides, I should mention that not only our sources were used. I also had a chance to have an access to the foreign sources, which helped me a lot. To those categories I can add the great works of William Labov, whose contribution to this area was marvelous.

Basically most of us know that localities in which people live has influential part in developing their pronunciation of the language. So does in English language that would be the American English variety in our case. Of course, there are other factors also such age, social status, beliefs; origin etc.This approach was influenced by the important and hard work of the well-known linguist Charles K. Thomas, of the Department of Public Speaking of University of Philadelphia. Thomas began his systematic survey of American pronunciation in 1932 and for the first five years confined his work to New York, later branching of to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and traveling further he spoke to more than 4000 people in 48 states obtaining resourceful material[1]. It is the kind of sub-category, but scientific studies show that it’s also can be classified as an independent category of American pronunciation.

    Theoretical value of this cours paper is shown in the works of Labow, Abduazizov, Alimardanov and others. They wrote a lot about American standard pronunciation. They showed differences between pronunciation of different regions of America and also compare them with each other. Practical value of American standard pronunciation is usage it while speaking on the classes or usage in different regions. The theoretical value of the course paper is usage it in the phonetics classes, while having tests on phonetics, on lectures of phonetics.

            According to those materials Thomas and other linguists distinguished        American pronunciation to four distinct types: 1) the New England type; 2) the Southern type; 3) the type used in New York City and its suburbs, and 4) the General American pronunciation which all those sections not already categorized. This course paper consists of introduction, body, conclusion and bibliography.

II.Body

a. The History of American standard pronunciation

General American after the Civil War the rapid and extensive move west of settlers from all dialect areas of the eastern US led to a leveling of eastern dialectal features and the creation of a more General American, or Middle American dialect. People who are said to speak "without an accent" are actually speaking with this leveled-out form of speech that developed from the mid-Atlantic stretching westward through the Ohio valley.[2]  Most features of Standard American developed from a levelled mixture of dialects mostly from the poorer classes along the middle Atlantic seaboard who immigrated west after the American Revolution to find a better life. Derived from the speech of settlers moving west of the original 13 colonies into the Ohio valley and beyond.  These people were of Scotch-Irish origin rather than upper class English, which explains the differences between Middle American and New England.  The post-vocalic [r], which dropped out in the speech of the upper British classes, was retained in the English of the Scotch Irish and other originally Celtic speaking peoples of Britain.  Competition between immigrants from Germany and the lower classes of the British Isles in the push westward tended to level many of the differences peculiar to one or another smaller group of people.  (The Pennsylvania Dutch is actually "Deutsch", in other words Germans. The Middle American dialect area contributed the most to speech in western states and forms the basis of the speech usually considered as standard American today.  There were, however, certain features that remained isolated and unique to one or another of the Middle American dialect group. This was especially true on the mid-Atlantic seaboard.  Maryland adds [r] after [a] before other cons. Now, this western, "leveled" English is itself showing signs of dialect genesis. The history of American English and of English is far from over.[3]

      What does the future hold for American dialects?  Will they evolve into separate languages?  Due to the levelling influence of mass communication and travel, probably not.  In fact, dialectal divergence in the US seems to be slowing down.  John Steinbeck, in his 1962 novel, Travels with Charley, in which he describes how he traveled by camper all over the US with a French poodle named Charley, expressed fear that American dialects would disappear because of the influence of mass communication.  Most dialectologists, however, believe that dialects are here to stay, since they are acquired from parents at an early age.  Thus the well established regional dialects of American English are not disappearing. In fact, the western, "leveled" English is itself showing signs of dialect genesis.  So the history of American English and of English is far from over.The origins of the dialect are diverse, and the source of many features is probably not recoverable. Labov has pointed out that the short a split is found in southern England as mentioned above.[4] He also claims that the vocalization and subsequent loss of (r) was copied from the prestigious London pronunciation, and so it started among the upper classes in New York and only later moved down the socioeconomic scale. This aristocratic r-lessness can be heard, for instance, in recordings of Franklin Roosevelt. After XVII, the r-ful pronunciation became the prestige norm, and what was once the upper class pronunciation became a vernacular one. Other vernacular pronunciations, such as the dental (d)'s and (t)'s may come from contact with languages such as Italian and Yiddish. Grammatical structures, such as the lack of inversion in indirect questions, have the flavor of contact with an immigrant language. As stated above, many words common in New York are of immigrant roots.

   Main reasons for developing pronounciation are: Poor communications between regions, different external influence. (Foreign invasion), etc. => a natural development of different varieties in different parts of the country

  Since 16th c.: an increasing social prestige of the south-east England pronunciation for reasons of politics, commerce and the presence of the Court 19th c.: the establishing. Of the London region pronunciation as the speech of the ruling class due to the conformist influence of public schools.[5]

b. General American in the media

General American, like British Received Pronunciation (RP) and most standard language varieties of many other societies, has never been the accent of the entire nation. However, it has become widely spoken in many American films, TV series, national news, commercial ads, and American radio broadcasts. [6]

The General American accent is most closely related to a generalized Midwestern accent and is spoken particularly by many newscasters. The famous news anchor Walter Cronkite is a good example of a broadcaster using this accent. This has led the accent to sometimes be referred to as a "newscaster accent." General American is sometimes promoted as preferable to other, regional accents. In the United States, classes promising "accent reduction" generally attempt to teach speech patterns similar to this accent.    The well-known television journalist Linda Ellerbee, who worked hard early in her career to eliminate a Texas accent, stated, "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere"; political comedian Stephen Colbert worked hard as a child to reduce his South Carolina accent because of the common portrayal of Southerners as stupid on American television. General American is also the accent typically taught to people learning English as a second language in the United States, as well as outside the country to anyone who wishes to learn "American English," although in much of Asia and some other places ESL teachers are strongly encouraged to teach American English no matter their own origins or accents.

  Now, however, a doctrine of political correctness inhibits the teaching of

standard pronunciation with the result that the media has become the final arbiter. Certain pronunciations that were once considered non-standard are catching on, even when they fly in the face of rules were imagined were still being taught in the early grades.

Apparently it is now possible to get out of school without learning the most basic rules for forming the plurals of nouns

c. Regional home of General American

   It is commonly believed that General American English evolved as a result of an aggregation of rural and suburban Midwestern dialects, though the English of the Upper Midwest can deviate quite dramatically from what would be considered a "regular" American Accent. The local accent often gets more distinct the farther north ones goes within the Midwest, and the more rural the area, with the Northern Midwest featuring its own dialect North Central American English. The fact that a Midwestern Dialect became the basis of what is General American English is often attributed to the mass immigration of Midwestern farmers to California and the Pacific Northwest from where it spread.

   The area of the United States where the local accent is largely free of regional features. The Telsur Project of William Labov and others examines a number of phonetic properties by which regional accents of the U.S. may be identified. The area with Midwestern regional properties is indicated on the map: eastern Nebraska (including Omaha and Lincoln), southern and central Iowa (including Des Moines), and western Illinois (including Peoria and the Quad Cities but not the Chicago area).

   Since the 1960s northeastern Ohio and much of the rest of the Inland North have been affected by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.

"The fact that the NCS is well established in Michigan is particularly interesting in light of the dominant beliefs about local speech. As research by Dennis Preston has shown Michiganders believe they are “blessed” with a high degree of linguistic security; when surveyed, they rate their own speech as more correct and more pleasant than that of even their fellow Mid-westerners. By contrast Indianans tend to rate the speech of their state on par with that Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find            

   Michiganders who will claim that the speech of national broadcasters is modeled on their dialect[7]. Even a cursory comparison of the speech of the network news anchors with that of the local news anchors in Detroit will reveal the fallacy of such claims.

   Nevertheless, the Michiganders faith that they speak an accentless variety is just an extreme version of the general stereotype of Midwestern English."

Particularly important in setting standards was John Kenyon, the pronunciation editor of the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary.

d. Phonology of American Standart pronunciation

*Consonants

   A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:

  The phoneme /ʍ/ is present only in varieties that have not undergone the wine-whine merger. /ʍ/ is often analyzed as a consonant cluster of /hw/. Also, many Americans realize the phoneme /ɹ/ (often transcribed as /r/) as a retroflex approximant [ɻ].

* Vowels

  General American has sixteen or seventeen vowel sounds that can be used in stressed syllables as well as two that can be used only in unstressed syllables. Most of the vowel sounds are monophthongs. The monophthongs of General American are shown in the table below:

   Depending on one's analysis, people who merge the vowels of cot and caught to /ɑ/ either have no phoneme /ɔ/ at all or have the [ɔ] only before /r/. Words like north and horse are usually transcribed /nɔɹθ/ and /hɔɹs/, but since all accents with cot and caught merged to /kɑt/ have also undergone the horse-hoarse merger, it may be preferable to transcribe north and horse /noɹθ/ and /hoɹs/. Thus, in these cases, the [ɔ] before /ɹ/ can be analyzed as an allophone of /o/. [ɝ] and [ɚ] are often analyzed as sequences of /ʌr, ər/, respectively. [ə] Is actually an indeterminate vowel that occurs only in unstressed syllables? Since the occurrence of [ə] is mostly predictable, it need not be considered a phoneme distinct from /ʌ/.

     The vowel of cot, usually transcribed /ɑ/, is actually more of a central vowel and may vary from [a–] to [ɑ+]. Some speakers who have maintained the contrast between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ realize /ɔ/ phonetically lower, closer to [ɒ].[8]

* The diphthongs of General American are shown in the next table:

     In many ways, compared to English English, North American English is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast (for example, in Eastern New England and New York City), partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes. In addition, many speech communities on the East    Coast have existed in their present locations longer than others. The interior of the United States, however, was settled by people from all regions of the existing U.S. and, therefore, developed a far more generic linguistic pattern.

     Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English and Scottish English as well as the fact most regions of England at this time also had rhotic accents. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter r is a retroflex [ɻ] or alveolar approximant [ɹ] rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of eastern New England, New York City and surrounding areas, South Philadelphia, and the coastal portions of the South. In rural tidewater Virginia and eastern New England, 'r' is non-rhotic in accented (such as "bird", "work", "first", "birthday") as well as unaccented syllables, although this is declining among the younger generation of speakers. (Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, the lost r was often changed into [ə] (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the er sound of fur or butter, is realized in AmE as a monophthongal r-colored vowel (stressed [ɝ] or unstressed [ɚ] as represented in the IPA). This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.

    Some other British English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:

        The shift of /æ/ to /ɑ/ (the so-called "broad A") before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or proceeded by a homorganic nasal. This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only eastern New England speakers took up this modification, although even there it is becoming increasingly rare.

        The realization of intervocalic /t/ as a glottal stop [ʔ] (as in [bɒʔəl] for bottle). This change is not universal for British English and is not considered a feature of Received Pronunciation. This is not a property of most North American dialects. Newfoundland English is a notable exception.

     On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in Britain, especially not in its standard varieties. Many of these are instances of phonemic differentiation and include:

        The merger of /ɑ/ and /ɒ/, making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, hence the Boston accent.

        The merger of /ɒ/ and /ɔ/. This is the so-called cot-caught merge, where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward.

     The red areas are those where non-rhotic pronunciations are found among some white people in the United States. AAVE-influenced non-rhotic pronunciations may be found among black people throughout the country.

        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 /g/ (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. One 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/ after alveolar consonants so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute are pronounced /nu/, /duk/, /tuzdeɪ/, /sut/, /ɹɪzum/, /lut/.

        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 Philadelphia to New York City, [æ] and [eə] can even 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/.

        Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃], making winter and winner homophones. This 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 found in parts of the Midwest and West as well.

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 /ʍ/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western AmE still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.[9] [10]

e. Intonation of American Standart Pronunciation

    GA intonation on the whole is similar to that of R. But there are of course, some differences that should be mentioned here.[11]

1.In sentences where the most common pre-nuclear contour in RP gradually decsending sequence, the countrepart, GA contour is a medium Level Head.

I do not want to go to the theatre

RP               GA

Its emphatic variant Mid-wavy-level Head.

2. The usal Medium or Low Fall in RP has its rising-falling counterpart in [12]      GA:

Come and see me tomorrow.RP                             GA

3. The rising tewrminal tone in Rp GA has a mid-rising countu:

Do you like it?

RP  GA

Or it may have a level tone in GA.

4. The Fall-Rise nuclear tone is different in Rp abd GA:

Really?

RP               GA

              These comparisons show that the main differencea in intonation concern the direction of the voice pitch the realization of the terminal tones.In GA the voice does not to the bottom mostly. This explains the fact that the English speech for Americans sounds “affected” and “pretentious” or “sophisticated”. And for the English , Americans sound “dull” , “monotonous” , “indifferent”.

              It should aslo be mentioned that the distribution of terminal tones in sentences types is also different in both variants of English.[13]

1.      GA “Yes,No” questions commonly have a falling terminal tone; the counterpart RP tone would be a rising one:

Shall we stay here?

RP GA

2. Requests in Rp are usually promounced with a Rise, whereas in  GA they may take a Fall-Rise:

Open the door?

RP GA

3. Leave-takings are often pronounced with a high pitch Fall-Rise in GA:

Good night.

III. Attachments

IV. Conclusion

In every country there is a specific dialect which they use in order to communicate together. This dominant dialect is often called the “Standard Dialect”. Standard American English (SAE) is a dialect of English that many Americans almost speak, but nowadays nobody speaks this dialect, many of these people speak a regional dialect. General American is also known as the Western Type of American English is accepted as the literary pronunciation in the USA which is used by 120 million people. It is also called Standard American English as mentioned above, but this term is not usually used. Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English, several Northeastern accents, and other distinct regional accents and social group accents like African American Vernacular English.

The use of English in the United States was inherited from British colonization. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America in the 17th century. During that time, there were also speakers in North America of Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, Russian (Alaska) and numerous Native American languages.

This course paper form phonetics has shown that General American is a rather innocuous blend of Northern and Northern Midland dialect, with none of the peculiar words or pronounciations of any particular area. 

Phonology of Standard American Pronounciation is clearly shown here. We knew that General American has sixteen or seventeen vowel sounds that can be used in stressed syllables as well as two that can be used only in unstressed syllables. I would like to say that American phonetitions use a pitch contour system to mark intonation in the text:

              It is certain that we have not covered here all the cases of different intonation structures used in RP and GA. Recently there have appeaered in this country several papers and books on the subject, so for further information see those books.[14] American speakers make much greater use of secondary stress polysyllabic words than British speakers do. In words ending in “-ary,-ory ,-ery, -mony, -ative ” the syllable containing the but last vowel bears tertiary stress (i.e. atress is somewhat weaker than secondary stress). We can conclude that one dialect is neither better nor worse than another, nor purer nor more corrupt; it is simply different.Main reasons that influence on the developing pronounciation are: Poor communications between regions, different external influence that are foreign invasion etc. That was my course paper from the theory of phonetics, and I believe I achieved my purpose.

V. Bibliography

1.        Abduazizov A. A  Phonetics. Theoretical Course. Tashkent 2007

2.        Alimardanov R.A. p34 Tashkent 2009

3.        Karnenskaja E.B., Misuno E.A., Rakovskaja L.D. Practical English Phonetics. 2003.

4.        Labov et al., pp. 197-245

5.        Labov, William (1973) Sociolinguistic Patterns U. of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 0-8122-1052-2

6.        Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: pp. 68-79

7.        Merkulova Yelena, Introduction to Phonetics. Moscow. 2005

8.        O.L. Zaytseva. English Phonetics: theory and practice. Pyatigorsk, PGLU – 2008

9.        “The Linguist”, U. of Pennsylvania Press, 1987

10.    Vassilyev. V. A. English Phonetics. Moscow 1970

11.    Yerko.O. K. Course of English Phonetics. Moscow. 2005

Web-resources:

1.        http://en.wikipedia.org

2.        http://www.accessmylibrary.com

3.        http://www.uta.f/phonetics

4.        http://www.utexas.edu/phonetics

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