16. Sounds in connected speech (assimilation, vowel reduction and elision).

Connected speech in linguistics, is a continuous sequence of sounds forming utterances or conversations in spoken language. It's analysis shows sounds changes affecting linguistics units traditionally described as phrases, words, lexemes, morphemes, syllables, phonemes or phones.[1] The words that are modified by those rules will sounds differently in connected speech than in citation form (canonical form or isolation form).

In everyday speech sounds are very seldom pronounced as separate units. Speech is performed in larger units: words, phrases and texts. There are very big differences between pronouncing a word in isolation and a word in connected speech. There is a problem of defining the phonetic status of sounds in connected speech. As a result there are some processes of phonetic changes in connected speech:assimilation;vowel reduction;elision.

Assimilation is the adaptive modification of a consonant by neighboring sound:eighth –at three

alveolar [t] becomes dental [Ɵ]

Vowel reduction is a quantitative or qualitative weakening of vowels in unstressed positions: board – blackboard

man – postman

Elision is a complete loss of sounds, both vowels and consonants. In informal speech we can lose many sounds. The process cannot be neglected in defining the phonemic status of speech sounds. These phenomena represent the economy of energy from the part of the speaker. Usually the listener doesn’t even notice this because these changes don’t influence the meaning. The target of listener is usually to understand the meaning but sometimes the meaning can also be influenced, for example [z] can represent has, is, does, plural, possessive, third person singular.

Consonants can be modified according to the place of articulation: assimilation takes place when a sound changes its character in order to look like a neighboring sound and the characteristic which is involved in this is almost always a place of articulation:1) eighth –at the –said that

[t] [d] alveolar + [Ɵ] [ð] interdental = dental [t] [d]

Partial regressive assimilation

2)tree – true – dry – dream

[t] [d] alveolar + post alveolar [r] = post alveolar [t] [d]

Partial regressive assimilation

3)horseshoe – this shop

[s] [z] alveolar + [ʃ] post alveolar = post alveolar [s] [z]

Complete regressive assimilation

4)graduate – congratulate – did you – could you

[t] + [j]; [d] + [j] = affricates [ʧ] [ʤ]

Partial regressive assimilation

5)symphony

[m] bilabial + [f] labiodentals = [m] labiodentals

17. Morphology in grammar. Morphological structure of the word.

Morphology is a part of grammar which deals with forms of the words and parts of speech; and is based on paradigmatic relations. Morphology is the study of the structure and form of words in language or a language, including inflection, derivation, and the formation of compounds. At the basic level, words are made of "morphemes." These are the smallest units of meaning: roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes).Morpheme is the elementary meaningful lingual unit built up from phonemes and used to make words. It has meaning, but its meaning is abstract; morphemes constitute the words; they do not exist outside the words.In traditional grammar, the study of the morphemic structure of the word is based on two criteria: the positional criterion - the location of the morphemes with regard to each other, and the semantic (or functional) criterion - the contribution of the morphemes to the general meaning of the word.

MORPHEMS

Root-morphemes (roots)express the concrete, “material” part of the meaning of the word and constitute its central part.

Affixal morphemes (affixes)

specify the meaning -

lexical ( word-building (derivational) affixes)

- together with the root constitute the stem of the word

- With the help of lexical affixes new words are derived, or built

Grammatical

( word-changing affixes)

- expressing different morphological categories, such as number, case, tense and others

- with the help of grammatical affixes the form of the word is changed.

According to the positional criterion

Prefixes (situated before the root in the word)

Under-estimate

- only lexical (in Eng.) Suffixes (situated after the root)

Underestim-ete

- lexical

- grammatical (inflections, inflectional endings).

underestim-ate-s

-are – lexical =esteem(n)+ate =esteemate(v)

-s – grammatical = 3person singular

-(e)s, -ed, - ing, - er, - est, - en - most of them are homonymous!!

Walks, dogs, my friend’s

Grammatical suffixes form word-changing, or morphological paradigms of words (boy-boys)

Lexical affixes form lexical (word-building, derivational) paradigms of words united by a common root (to decide - decision - decisive - decisively)

Infix – is a regular vowel interchange which takes place inside the root and transforms its meaning “from within”.

a lexical infix – blood – to bleed; a “grammatical infix/inner inflections” – tooth – teeth

Since infixation is not a productive (regular) means of word-building or word-changing in modern English, it is more often seen as partial suppletivity.

Full suppletivity takes place when completely different roots are paradigmatically united.

go – went

When studying morphemes, we should distinguish morphemes as generalized lingual units from their concrete manifestations, or variants in specific textual environments; variants of morphemes are called “allo-morphs” .

Morphems

1. Free morphemes - can build up words by themselves. HAND-s

Bound morphemes - used only as parts of words. Hand-S

2. Overt (открытые)/ “zero morpheme” hand-s

Covert (закрытые) - shows the meaningful absence of a morpheme distinguished in the opposition of grammatical forms in paradigms. handØ

3. Full /meaningful morphemes

Empty morphemes - have no meaning and are left after singling out the meaningful morphemes; some of them used to have a certain meaning, but lost it in the course of historical development.

“children”= child- is the root of the word, bearing the core of the meaning,

-en is the suffix of the plural,

-R - is an empty morpheme, having no meaning at all, the remnant of an old morphological form.

4. Segmental morphemes - consisting of phonemes.

Supra-segmental morphemes - leave the phonemic content of the word unchanged, but the meaning of the word is specified with the help of various supra-segmental lingual units.

cOnvert (a noun) - convErt (a verb)

5. Additive morphemes - are freely combined in a word. look+ed, small+er

Replacive morphemes/root morphemes -replace each other in paradigms. sing -sang – sung.

6. Continuous morphemes - combined with each other in the same word. Worked

Discontinuous morphemes - consist of two components used jointly to build the analytical forms of the words. have worked, is working.