Part 1 The importance of phonetic study 1)Phonetics is the science of speech sounds. It deals with the sound system of a language. A language consists of three important elements, namely, speech sounds, vocabulary and grammar. Speech sound is the material form on which word and grammar rely for existence. Divorced from speech sound, word and grammar are non-existent. So the first
Speech sounds seldom occur in isolation. They are nearly always joined together to form words and groups of words. In connected speech, sounds, under the influence of their neighbors,are replaced by other sounds. Sometimes two neighboring sounds influence each other and are replaced by third sound which is different from both the original sounds
The length of a sound is the length of time during which it is held on continuously in a given word or phrase. The principal facts concerning length in English are given in the following rules: 203. Length of vowels 1. English vowels /i:/, /a: / /:/, /u:/, /a: /are longer than the other English vowels in similar context, i.e., when surrounded by the same sounds, and pronounced with the same degree of stress. Thus
We have seen that every word of two or more syllables, when said alone, has a stress on one of its syllables. This is called word-stress. But in connected speech we do not hear a stress on every word. Some words lose their stresses, especially when we talk quickly, other words keep their stresses and these stressed syllables form what is called sentence-stress
When we talk, we don't talk in single words but in groups of words spoken continuously. These groups of words which are closely connected in meaning and in grammar are called sense groups. sense group is tone-group-(语调群) in intonation. long sentence can be cut up into two or more tone-groups We may make a short pause after each group, but not during the group
The importance of phonetic study 1) Phonetics is the science of speech sounds. It deals with the sound system of a language. A language consists of three important elements, namely, speech sounds, vocabulary and grammar. Speech