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Linguistics

Notes 12.8 Pronunciation: General Theoretical Framework

12.8.1 Definition of Pronunciation

In its broadest sense, Roach (2002:61) views pronunciation
As shown in the following lines:
Pronunciation is the acts of producing the sounds of a language. The things that concern most
people are (1) standards of pronunciation and (2) the learning of pronunciation.
12.8.2 The Main Features of Pronunciation

The main features of pronunciation. In this regard, Kelly (2000:1) provides us with a diagram
illustrating the main features of pronun.
The Main Feature of Pronunciation
Phonemes Suprasegmental

Features

Constants Vowels

Intonation Stress

Voiced Unvoiced Single Diphthongs
Vowels
Word Sentence

Stress Stress
Short Long
Figure 12.5

12.9 Stress

Stress is also seen from the phonetic and phonological points of view. Jones (1969:245) defines ‘stress’
as” the degree of force with which a sound or a syllable is “uttered”. Hyman (1975:204) emphasizes
the function of stress, i.e., a word receives only one primary stress’. Words with several syllables
receive primary stress and secondary stress ‘ . Unstressed syllables, as stated by Heffner (1975:226),
are “used loosely for minimally stressed and always understood in that sense”.
English word stress is part of the language; it is used to communicate rapidly. To exemplify, the
words ‘photography’ and ‘photographer’ are distinguishable according to the position of stress (Roach,
2002: 89). Hyman (1925:205) puts forward two criteria that determine stress patterns in all languages:
a grammatical criterion, and a phonological one.
Sentence stress, at the other extreme, depends on the important words. In other words, the most
important lexical stress, i.e., noun, verb, adjective . and adverb in a given sentence can carry stress
(lbid.: 20).
Stress placement within a word is either unpredictable as adopted by Jones (1969) or predictable as
adopted by Chomsky and Hall é (1968). Aitchison (1994:12) believes that a basic feature of the skeleton
is the number of syllables”.

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