Page 246 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes Self-Assessment
Listen to the following sentences. Put a stress mark ‘on each stressed syllable, then divide the sentences
into feet by placing a dotted line M at each foot boundary.
Example: M ‘Come to the M ‘party on M ‘Monday M ‘evening M
1. Each person in the group was trained in survival
2. About three hundred soliders were lined up
3. Buying a new computer is a major expense
4. All the people who came to the wedding were from England
5. Try to be as tactful as you can when you talk to him.
17.10 Summary

• English rhythm is a controversial subject on which widely differing views have been expressed.
On one side there have been writers such as Abercrombie (1967) and Halliday (1967) who set
out an elaborate theory of the rhythmical structure of English speech (including foot theory).
On the other side there are sceptics like Crystal (1969: 161-5) who reject the idea of an inherent
rhythmical pattern. The distinction between physically measurable time intervals and subjective
impressions of rhythmicality is discussed in Roach (1982) and Lehiste (1977). Adams (1979)
presents a review and experimental study of the subject, and concludes that, despite the
theoretical problems, there is practical value in teaching rhythm to learners of English. The
“stress-timed / syllable-timed” dichotomy is generally agreed in modern work to be an
oversimplification; a more widely accepted view is that all languages display characteristics of
both types of rhythm, but each may be closer to one or the other; see Mitchell (1969) and Dauer
(1983). Dauer’s theory makes possible comparisons between different languages in terms of
their relative positions on a scale from maximally stress-timed to maximally syllable-timed.
• For some writers concerned with English language teaching, the notion of rhythm is a more
practical matter of making a sufficiently clear difference between strong and weak syllables,
rather than concentrating on a rigid timing pattern.
• The treatment of rhythmical hierarchy is based on the theory of metrical phonology. Hogg and
McCully (1987) give a full explanation of this, but it is difficult material.
• Goldsmith (1990: ) and Katamba (1989: ) are briefer and somewhat simpler. A paper by Fudge
(1999) discusses the relationship between syllables, words and feet. James (1988) explores the
relevance of metrical phonology to language learning.
• An important question to be asked in relation to juncture is whether it can actually be heard.
Jones (1931) implies that it can, but experimental work (e.g. O’Connor and Tooley, 1964) suggests
that in many cases it is not perceptible unless a speaker is deliberately trying to avoid ambiguity.
It is interesting to note that some phonologists of the 1950s and 1960s felt it necessary to invent
a ‘phoneme’ of juncture in order to be able to transcribe minimal pairs like ‘grey tape’/’great
ape’ unambiguously without having to refer to grammatical boundaries; see, for example, Trager
and Smith (1951).
• There is a lot of disagreement about the importance of the various topics in this chapter from
the language teacher’s point of view. My feeling is that while the practice and study of connected
speech are agreed by everyone to be very valuable, this can sometimes result in some relatively
unimportant aspects of speech (e.g. assimilation, juncture) being given more emphasis than
they should. It would not be practical or useful to teach all learners of English to produce
assimilations; practice in making elisions is more useful, and it is clearly valuable to do exercises
related to rhythm and linking. Perhaps the most important consequence of what has been
described in this chapter is that learners of English must be made very clearly aware of the
problems that they will meet in listening to colloquial, connected speech.

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