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Thus, in this chapter we have:
observed historical background of the Prague phonological school.
to explore the important theories of the school.
Representatives of the Prague school.
mentioned the role of the Prague phonological school.
CHAPTER 2. THE ARTICULATORY ASPECT OF ENGLISH VOWELS
2.1 Modification of vowels in connected speech. Reduction
Vowels are normally made with the air stream that meets no closure or narrowing in the mouth, pharyngal and nasal cavities. That is why in the production of vowel sounds there is no noise component characteristic of consonantal sounds.
On the articulatory level the description of vowels notes changes:
in the stability of articulation,
in the tongue position,
in the lip position,
in the character of the vowel end.
Stability of Articulation. All English vowels are divided into three groups: pure vowels or monophthongs, diphthongs and diphthongoids.
Tongue Positions. The changes in the position of the tongue determine largerly the shape of the mouth and pharyngal cavities. The tongue may move forward and backward, up and down, thus changing the quality of vowel sounds.
Lip Position. The shape of the mouth cavity is also largely dependent on the position of the lips. When the lips are neutral or spread the vowels are termed unrounded.
Character of Vowel End. The quality of all English monophthongs in the stressed position is strongly affected by the following consonant of the same syllable. If a stressed vowel is followed by a strong voiceless consonant it is cut off by it. In this case the end of the vowel is strong and the vowel is called checked. Such vowels are heard in stressed closed syllables ending in a strong voiceless consonant, eg better, cart.
Reduction is a historical process of weakening, shortening or disappearance of vowel sounds in unstressed positions. Reduction reflects the process of lexical and grammatical changes. Reduction is closely connected not only with word stress but also with rhythm and sentence stress.
Reduction is realized:
in unstressed syllables within words
in unstressed form-words, auxiliary and modal verbs, personal and possessive pronouns within intonation groups and phrases.
Three different types of reduction are noticed in English.
1. Quantitative reduction, i.e. shortening of a vowel sound in the unstressed position, affects mainly long vowels
2. Qualitative reduction, i.e. obscuration of vowels towards [a, i, o], affects both long and short vowels
Vowels in unstressed form-words in most cases undergo both quantitative and qualitative reduction
+3. The third type is the elision of vowels in the unstressed position
There are several ways to distinguish full and reduced vowels in transcription. Some English dictionaries mark full vowels for secondary stress, so that e.g. ⟨ˌɪ⟩ is a full unstressed vowel while ⟨ɪ⟩ is a reduced, unstressed schwi.[a] Or the vowel quality may be portrayed as distinct, with reduced vowels centralized, such as full ⟨ʊ⟩ vs reduced ⟨ᵿ⟩ or ⟨ɵ⟩. Since the IPA only supplies letters for two reduced vowels, open ⟨ɐ⟩ and mid ⟨ə⟩, transcribers of languages such as RP English and Russian that have more than these two vary in their choice between an imprecise use of IPA letters such as ⟨ɨ⟩ and ⟨ɵ⟩,[b] or of custom non-IPA (extended IPA) letters such as ⟨ᵻ⟩ and ⟨ᵿ⟩.
Phonetic reduction most often involves a mid-centralization of the vowel, that is, a reduction in the amount of movement of the tongue in pronouncing the vowel, as with the characteristic change of many unstressed vowels at the ends of English words to something approaching schwa. A well-researched type of reduction is that of the neutralization of acoustic distinctions in unstressed vowels, which occurs in many languages. The most common reduced vowel is schwa.
Whereas full vowels are distinguished by height, backness, and roundness, according to Bolinger (1986), reduced unstressed vowels are largely unconcerned with height or roundness. English /ə/, for example, may range phonetically from mid [ə] to [ɐ] to open [a]; English /ᵻ/ ranges from close [ï], [ɪ̈], [ë], to open-mid [ɛ̈]. The primary distinction is that /ᵻ/ is further front than /ə/, contrasted in the numerous English words ending in unstressed -ia. That is, the jaw, which to a large extent controls vowel height, tends to be relaxed when pronouncing reduced vowels. Similarly, English /ᵿ/ ranges through [ʊ̈] and [ö̜]; although it may be labialized to varying degrees, the lips are relaxed in comparison to /uː/, /oʊ/, or /ɔː/. The primary distinction in words like folio is again one of backness. However, the backness distinction is not as great as that of full vowels; reduced vowels are also centralized, and are sometimes referred to by that term. They may also be called obscure, as there is no one-to-one correspondence between full and reduced vowels.[3]
Sound duration is a common factor in reduction: In fast speech, vowels are reduced due to physical limitations of the articulatory organs, e.g., the tongue cannot move to a prototypical position fast or completely enough to produce a full-quality vowel (compare with clipping). Different languages have different types of vowel reduction, and this is one of the difficulties in language acquisition (see e.g. Non-native pronunciations of English and Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages). Vowel reduction of second language speakers is a separate study.
Stress-related vowel reduction is a principal factor in the development of Indo-European ablaut, as well as other changes reconstructed by historical linguistics.
Vowel reduction is one of the sources of distinction between a spoken language and its written counterpart. Vernacular and formal speech often have different levels of vowel reduction, and so the term "vowel reduction" is also applied to differences in a language variety with respect to, e.g., the language standard.
Some languages, such as Finnish, Hindi, and classical Spanish, are claimed to lack vowel reduction. Such languages are often called syllable-timed languages.[4] At the other end of the spectrum, Mexican Spanish is characterized by the reduction or loss of the unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.[5][6] It can be the case that the words pesos, pesas, and peces are pronounced the same: [ˈpesə̥s].
In some cases phonetic vowel reduction may contribute to phonemic (phonological) reduction, which means merger of phonemes, induced by indistinguishable pronunciation. This sense of vowel reduction may occur by means other than vowel centralisation, however.
Many Germanic languages, in their early stages, reduced the number of vowels that could occur in unstressed syllables, without (or before) clearly showing centralisation. Proto-Germanic and its early descendant Gothic still allowed more or less the full complement of vowels and diphthongs to appear in unstressed syllables, except notably short /e/, which merged with /i/. In early Old High German and Old Saxon, this had been reduced to five vowels (i, e, a, o, u, some with length distinction), later reduced further to just three short vowels (i/e, a, o/u). In Old Norse, likewise, only three vowels were written in unstressed syllables: a, i and u (their exact phonetic quality is unknown). Old English, meanwhile, distinguished only e, a, and u (again the exact phonetic quality is unknown).
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