Lecture 4
English vowels in stressed & unstressed syllables; Using weak & strong forms
(1): stress; Weak vowel /  / (‘schwa’)
Stress: More force / loudness etc on one syllable than
on others.
Word stress – over, above.
Primary & secondary stress: secondary stress is
less prominent. Example: ex ami nation
Sentence stress: Not all words in a sentence will have
stress at all
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack
built.
Lexical words: nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs
(Not) grammatical words: pronouns, determiners,
auxiliaries, prepositions, conjunctions
‘This is the ‘maiden ‘all for’lorn that ‘milked the ‘cow
with the ‘crumpled ‘horn
There are (‘)now ‘just over ‘two (‘)million ‘broadband
‘users in the ‘UK in ‘total,
Vowel distribution (handout, §2)
Most vowels can occur in both stressed and unstressed
syllables
/  / (‘schwa’) only occurs in unstressed syllables.  a
WEAK vowel
a’bove /, ‘crumpled //
Two other weak vowels included in the pronunciation
dictionary: /i/ and /u/ as in city // and into /
NOT phonemic in RP or GA: the course book (and the
course) treats them as variants of // and //  //
and into /
Vowel reduction
rebel (n.): /
rebel (v.): / or /
grammar: /()
grammatical: 
define:
definition:
Vowel reduction in connection with sentence stress
 weak forms.
See SI! p. 43-44.
Weak forms: Alternative pronunciations of certain
unstressed words  grammatical words. Usually involve
vowel reduction, sometimes loss of consonants.
‘This is the ‘house that ‘Jack ‘built.
/
‘This is the ‘house that he ‘built.
/
There are (‘)now ‘just over ‘two (‘)million ‘broadband
‘users in the ‘UK in ‘total
RP:


GA:


Conditions for using weak forms:
1) The word must have a weak form
2) The word must be unstressed
3) The word will normally be a grammatical word
(exceptions: Saint, Sir)