Aspects of Connected

Speech

Aspects of Connected
Speech

Speaking involves the pronunciation of

words, however when we speak, we do not
pronounce a word, stop, and then say the
next word in the sentence.
The fluent speech flows with a rhythm and
the words bump into each other.
To make speech flow smoothly, the way we
pronounce the end and beginning of some
words can change depending on the
sounds at the beginning and ending of
those words.
These changes are described as features

Rhythm
English speech is rhythmical and the rhythm is
found in the regular occurrence of stressed
syllables.
The major part of the rhythm is formed by the
word stress and sentence stress and that it
is called stress-timed rhythm.
Very often when we speak, we vary our rhythm,
for example when we are hesitant or nervous,
we tend to speak without rhythm and in some
styles of public speaking, and we speak very
rhythmically.

Linking /r/

Intrusive /r/

Intrusive /w/ and /j/

Liaison
a common feature of continuity and
natural flow of speech.
To link the words means to join them
together and it often entails different
types of fusing sounds at word
boundaries (Underhill,1994; p 65).

 The other version of the term

liaison is a smooth linking:
final consonant is linked to
following initial vowel
initial consonant is merged in
preceding final vowel

Juncture
a special situation when it is really
hard for foreign learners to
distinguish between two phrases
that sound nearly the same
Those phonetically resembling
connections or junctions consist of
words that are easily recognisable in
a way, they are pronounced in
isolation

Contractions
Contractions are one of the typical
features of connected speech which
arose naturally to simplify and speed
up communication and are used
either in spoken or in written
discourse.
If foreigners want to speak naturally
in English, they have to be aware of
their existence.

 Contraction could be embodied by

the definition saying that it is a
process when a weak form occurs
with or next to another word and
they together go through another
reduction.
Then, the two words are pronounced
as one (Underhill,1994: p. 65).

Common cases of contraction are

represented by this formula and
definitions:
personal pronoun + auxiliary verb and
verb + not
two single-syllable words are usually
combined into one syllable
an elision ( omission) of sounds
an omission of one or two letters also
occurs in the written form; their place
marked an apostrophe.

 Examples of contractions:
Hes, Its, Im, theyre , Ive,
theyve, hell, theyll, shed,
cant, couldnt, dont, doesnt,
havent, hasnt, wasnt, weren
t