Fixed tonicity

We've often made the difference between stress and prominence in that the former is system-bound, as the language system tells you what should be done. By way of example, you cannot choose how to stress convict; if you mean the verb, it should be conˈvict. However, if you mean 'a person who has been sent to jail' you have no other choice but to say ˈconvict. Prominent syllables, on the other hand, are those syllables which are made to stand out in connected speech by virtue of being important for the meaning we want to make. We can say that prominence is context-bound and it is up to speakers to decide that one syllable will be made prominent instead of another one.

It's also been said that the last prominent syllable in a tone unit is the tonic syllable (= that on which the major pitch movement is initiated). Along these lines, we can say that in a tone unit such as //I want that//, any of the syllables can be the tonic, depending on the meanings speakers want to make. Nevertheless, there are a great number of ready-made phrases and expressions of current use in English in which the tonic is not the choice of the speakers but a feature which is dictated by the language itself. We may say these cases are instances of fixed tonicity. Below are some expressions bearing this type of tonicity. The meaning in each case has not been added. With the help of a dictionary, would you contribute the meanings absent?

By ˈall means
ˈKeep your ˈnose clean.
There's ˈnothing ˈto it really.
ˈGet your ˈact together.
ˈSet/put your (own) ˈhouse in order.
I've had my ˈhands full.
(She) of ˈall people
They ˈget on like a ˈhouse on fire

Whatchamacallit

There are a number of words in English used to refer to things or people when you don't know or remember their names. From the point of view of stress, it may be useful to remember that these lexical items are always stressed on the first syllable and they are single stressed. Their origin may be clear as some of these words have sprung from questions, such as What is it? or What is her name? and have become single lexical units: whatsit and whatshername. It may be difficult, however, to trace the origin of whatchamacallit, as its present spelling reflects its phonological identity. It derives from the interrogative What you may call it? In some dictionaries, the way it is spelt represents a more straightforward orthographic-phonological relationship. For example, in the Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary, you will find it as what-d'you-ma-call-it and in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, apart from whatchamacallit, you will see what-you-may-call-it. Different spellings may have arisen due to the fact that this word is normally used in spoken English. Below you will find some of these......whatchamacallit?.......expressions.

ˈso-and-so
ˈdoodah
ˈwhatchamacallit
ˈwhatsisname
ˈwhatsit
ˈthingy
ˈthingamajig
ˈthingamabob
ˈthingammy

Singular or plural?

When studying nouns and their singular and plural forms, you must have seen the difference between British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) with respect to number. One such difference is reference to group nouns, in particular, in connection with teams. You may remember that whereas in one variety you use a singular form of the verb (and also a personal pronoun in the singular to refer to the group) in the other variety you use a plural form of the verb (and the corresponding plural pronoun). So, newspaper headlines announcing a team win could read Argentina wins the match or Argentina win the match depending on the variety in question. Do you remember which is which? Check out in the two news reports below published today. This is also important from the point of view of pronunciation in that, as you already know, the way the suffixes -s and -es are pronounced differs on the basis of the final sound of the root word. After reading the reports, can you say which nouns and verbs from them have a voiced or voiceless ending, and which are pronounced with an extra syllable at the end?

Holland vs. Brazil in Los Angeles Times (AmE)
Holland vs. Brazil in The Independent (BrE)

Make that sound right!

A continuous, annoying sound has been with soccer fans throughout June 2010. That's the vuvuzela from the World Cup stadiums. This sound has been so powerful that almost all broadcasters around the world have been unable to silence them. You may wonder how this relates to our class - not necessarily by how it sounds but by how the word itself does. You may recall that as a kind of golden rule of word stress, if a word's primary stress falls on the third syllable, there will be a secondary stress on the first one. So this is how this Tswana word should be pronounced in English: 'vuvu'zela. However, if you don't feel confident enough to pronounce this non-English-sounding word, you can opt for stadium horn, which is the English equivalent, only that you will need to remember its stress pattern. If we go by the rule we mentioned in class for a combination of noun + noun compound (namely, what type of thing is the N2?), we'll obtain a single-stressed 'stadium horn. Can you think of other World-Cup-related terms and their stress patterns? I'm eager to listen to you on this post!

Think time

Every now and then, posts will be published for the purpose of making you think about issues connected with English pronunciation in particular and linguistic and cultural things in general. I hope you enjoy this section.
One of the tools we can make use of when learning a foreign language is a pronouncing dictionary. In the latest edition of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (LPD), authored by J. C. Wells, we can find a number of relevant facts about the (changing) pronunciation of English. Below is a link to a video where Prof. Wells explains how a number of words are pronounced. After watching the video, comment on what you've found most interesting. Do you think it is worth learning about these things?
Dr. Wells about preference polls in LPD

Phonetic fonts

In the first part of the Phonetics and Phonology course, you'll have to use the special phonetic fonts which represent the phonemes used in broad (= phonemic) transcription. These fonts do not normally come with word processors. Below is a link to the UCL page you can visit to download them into your own hard disk so that you can make and visualize your transcriptions on your Word documents. On the page you will see the headings DOULOS, SOPHIA or MANUSCRIPT and the phonetic fonts offered. You can download one, some or all of them. You have to save the files on your C or D disks (depending on how your computer has been configured) in a folder called FONTS within the WINDOWS folder. After this easy step, open a Word document and select the fonts you want from the font box. As is stated on the page following the link below, most sounds are mapped onto the qwerty keyboard symbol configuration. Under each set of fonts, you will see the symbols you can get if you press SHIFT and the regular keys. For example, to obtain the ɒ symbol , you need to press SHIFT + Q.
IPA fonts