AP Chapter 7: Connected Speech

Citation form: the transcription of the proper, careful way of pronunciation; surrounded by virgils

Connected speech: the transcription of an utterance that is formed by joining two or more words together; more common in everyday speech; surrounded by brackets

• Varies from speaker to speaker (dialect)

• In clinical settings, usually, you will only have to transcribe single words in assessments

  • Connected speech transcriptions will generally only happen with an in-depth speech pattern analysis

Phonological processes

• Assimilations: when a phoneme takes on the phonetic features of its phonetic environment

  • Aka coarticulation (because its an overlap of two articulations)

  • Allophonic and phonemic changes

  • Will stay in the same place

  • Ex: “That guy” becomes “Thakguy” when pushed together (because k and g are both velar)

  • Progressive assimilation: changes that are based on the phoneme that precedes it

  • Regressive assimilation: changes that are based on the phoneme that follows it

  • Contiguous assimilation: change that is influenced by a sound that is right next to it

  • Non-contiguous assimilation: change that is influenced by a sound that is NOT right next to it

• Elision: the elimination or deletion of a phoneme during speech production

  • Aka omission or deletion

  • Ex: Give me that → Gimme that (deleted /v/)

• Epenthesis: addition of a phoneme

  • Aka intrusion

  • Can occur because of articulation, variation in production, speech disorders, or dialects

  • Ex: hamster → hampster or break → barek

• Metathesis: transposition (switching) of sounds in a word

  • Can occur because of a slip of the tongue, personal speaking style, dialect, or speech disorder

  • Ex: spaghetti → pasggheti

• Vowel reduction: full form of vowel is produced with less weight

  • Strong form → weak form

  • Weak form often pronounced as the schwa (upside down and backwards e) sound

Speech can be split into two parts

• Segmental: the study of individual sound, their articulation etc.

  • What you say

• Suprasegmental: the study of the communicative features such as pause stress, intonation etc.

  • “How you say what you say”

Suprasegmental aspects: features of speech production that go beyond the boundaries of the individual phonemes, affecting the entire utterance

• Aka prosody

• Intonation: a pattern/melody of pitch variations in connected speech

  • Distinguishes the type of phrases or sentences being produced by the speaker

  • Intonational phrases: change in fundamental frequencies that spans the length of a meaningful utterance (word, phrase, sentence, etc.)

    • Tonic syllable: the syllable that receives the greatest pitch change

    • Tonic accent: the emphasis given to the tonic syllable

  • Rising intonation: intonation that goes up in pitch at the end of an utterance; indicates uncertainty, usually in the form of a question

    • Yes-No questions

    • Tag questions (Ex: “John is Caleb’s brother, isn’t he?”

  • Falling intonation: intonation that falls in pitch at the end of an utterance; indicates a complete statement or command

    • Wh- questions

• Word stress: stressed syllable spoken with more articulatory force

  • Distinguishes the given and new information

  • Stressed based on

    • Importance of word

      • Content words tend to receive sentence stress (over function words)

    • Intent of speaker

• Tempo: the duration of sounds or words; the overall rate of speech

  • Length of phonemes, words, and pauses

    • Glide & approximate phonemes have the longest duration and stop phonemes have the shortest

  • Longer

    • Stressed

    • Dipthongs

    • Vowels in open syllables

    • Vowels that precede a voiced consonant

  • Shorter

    • Unstressed

    • Monothongs

    • Vowels in closed syllables

    • Vowels that precede a voiceless consonant

  • A lengthened phoneme is indicated by [ ː ] (two triangles written like a colon)

  • The location of pauses can cause change the meaning of a sentence

    • Ex: I fed her cat food

      • If there is a pause after her vs if there is a pause after cat

    • | indicates a pause (just a pause or a comma)

    • || indicates the end of a sentence pause ( . ? ! )

• Junction: how syllables and words are linked together in conversational speech

  • External Juncture: connects two intonational phrases

    • IPA symbol: / | / and / || /

  • Internal Juncture: connect words in the same intonational phrase because the transition between syllables can become blurred.

    • IPA symbol: / + /