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Unit 17: Connected English Speech: Accent

Thus: Notes
‘cats’ ktsF ‘dogs’ dZlz
‘jumps’ d¥•mps ‘runs’ r• nz
‘Pat’s’ ptsF ‘Pam’s’ pmzF
Assimilation creates something of a problem for phoneme theory: when, for example, d in good’ l•d
becomes l in the context ‘good girl’, giving l•l lf+l or b in the context good boy’ l•d b]w, should we
say that one phoneme has been substituted for another? If we do this, how do we describe the
assimilation in ‘good thing’, where d becomes dental dI before the θ of ‘thing’, or in ‘good food’,
where d becomes a labiodental plosive before the f in ‘food’? English has no dental or labiodental
plosive phonemes, so in these cases, although there is clearly assimilation, there could not be said to
be a substitution of one phoneme for another. The alternative is to say that assimilation causes a
phoneme to be realised by a different allophone; this would mean that, in the case of l•l lf+l and
l•b b]w , the phoneme d of’good’ has velar and bilabial allophones. Traditionally, phonemes were
supposed not to overlap in their allophones, so that the only plosives that could have allophones
with bilabial place of articulation were p, b; this restriction is no longer looked on as so important.
The traditional view of assimilation as a change from one phoneme to another is, therefore, naïve:
modern instrumental studies in the broader field of coarticulation show that when assimilation
happens one can often see some sort of combination of articulatory gestures. In ‘good girl’, for example,
it is not a simple matter of the first word ending either in d or in l, but rather a matter of the extent to
which alveolar and/or velar closures are achieved. There may be an alveolar closure immediately
preceding and overlapping with a velar closure; there may be simultaneous alveolar and velar closure,
or a velar closure followed by slight contact but not closure in the alveolar region. There are many
other possibilities.
Much more could be said about assimilation but, from the point of view of learning or teaching
English pronunciation, to do so would not be very useful. It is essentially a natural phenomenon that
can be seen in any sort of complex physical activity, and the only important matter is to remember
the restriction, specific to English, on voicing assimilation mentioned above.

17.4 Elision

The nature of elision may be stated quite simply: under certain circumstances sounds disappear.
One might express this in more technical language by saying that in certain circumstances a phoneme
may be realised as zero, or have zero realisation or be deleted. As with assimilation, elision is typical
of rapid, casual speech. Producing elisions is something which foreign learners do not need to learn to
do, but it is important for them to be aware that when native speakers of English talk to each other,
quite a number of phonemes that the foreigner might expect to hear are not actually pronounced. We
will look at some examples, although only a small number of the many possibilities can be given here.
1. Loss of weak vowel after p, t, k.
In words like ‘potato’, ‘tomato’, ‘canary’, ‘perhaps’, ‘today’, the vowel in the first syllable may
disappear; the aspiration of the initial plosive takes up the whole of the middle portion of the
h
syllable, resulting in these pronunciations (where indicates aspiration in the phonetic
transcription):
h'
h’
h’
p tewtc• t mY+tc• k necri ph psF t dew
h’
h’
2. Weak vowel + n, l, r becomes syllabic consonant. For example:
‘tonight’ tnawt ‘police’ pliws ‘correct’ krekt
3. Avoidance of complex consonant clusters.
It has been claimed that no normal English speaker would ever pronounce all the consonants
between the last two words of the following:
θ
‘George the Sixth’s throne’ d¥]+d¥ xc sks sθw rcÉ n

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