Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription is the first textbook to clearly describe Australian English speech patterns. This groundbreaking work addresses pronunciation characteristics and provides detailed instruction in both phonetic and phonemic transcription of the dialect. Through comprehensive coverage of traditional and revised systems of phonemic transcription, Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription offers an astute and engaging exploration of one of the core global dialects of English. Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription is complemented by an extensive website, www.cambridge.edu.au/academic/austenglish, which provides further explanatory materials and exercises with audio examples. This unique text, in tandem with these valuable pedagogical features, is an essential resource for students and teachers of linguistics, speech pathology and language education. is a member of the Centre for Language Sciences in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University. She has 25 years experience in teaching and research in phonetics and phonology, and is regarded as one of the foremost authorities on the Australian English accent.
Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Information on this title: /9780521145893 C 2012 This publication is copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Cover design by Marianna Berek-Lewis Typeset by Aptara Corp. Printed in Hong Kong by Everbest Printing A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication data Cox, Felicity. Australian English pronunciation and transcription /. 9780521145893 (pbk.) Includes bibliographical references and index. English language Australia. English language Dialects Australia. 427.994 ISBN 978-0-521-14589-3 Paperback Additional resources for this publication at www.cambridge.edu.au/academic/austenglish Reproduction and communication for educational purposes The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of the pages of this work, whichever is the greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact: Copyright Agency Limited Level 15, 233 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000 Telephone: (02) 9394 7600 Facsimile: (02) 9394 7601 E-mail: info@copyright.com.au Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents... List of tables List of figures Acknowledgements Consonant symbols for Australian English Vowel symbols for Australian English pageix xi xiii xv xvii 1 Introduction to Australian English speech production 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Phoneme and allophone 5 1.3 Phonemic and phonetic transcription 6 1.4 Australian English transcription conventions 9 1.5 Australian English 10 1.5.1 How did Australian English develop? 11 1.5.2 The standard Australian English accent 15 1.5.3 Broadness 16 1.5.4 Regional variation 18 1.5.5 Australian English in the twenty-first century 18 2 Consonants and vowels 20 2.1 Introduction 20 2.2 Respiration 21 2.3 Phonation 22 2.4 Articulation 26 2.5 Differentiating consonants and vowels 27 2.6 Describing consonants 27 2.6.1 Place of articulation 29 2.6.2 Manner of articulation 38 2.6.3 Voicing 41 2.6.4 Complex articulation and phonetic detail 42 2.6.5 Non-pulmonic consonants 44 v
vi Contents 2.6.6 Australian English regional and social effects for consonants 47 2.7 Describing vowels 48 2.7.1 Vowel space 50 2.7.2 Vowel characteristics 51 2.7.3 Australian English vowel characteristics 56 2.7.4 Lexical sets 60 2.8 Major classes 62 2.9 Summary 66 3 Syllables, word stress and sentence stress 68 3.1 Introduction 68 3.2 Syllables 69 3.3 Phonotactic constraints 71 3.4 Syllabification 75 3.5 Word stress 76 3.6 The metrical foot 77 3.7 Creating words from feet 78 3.8 Heavy and light syllables 80 3.9 Morphology and word stress 81 3.10 Stress in connected speech 83 3.11 Summary 87 4 Phonemic transcription of Australian English 90 4.1 Introduction 90 4.2 Symbols for the phonemic transcription of Australian English 91 4.2.1 Consonant symbols 91 4.2.2 Vowel symbols 91 4.3 Phonemes of Australian English 92 4.3.1 Consonants 92 4.3.2 Vowels 93 4.4 Lexical stress 99 4.4.1 Primary stress 99 4.4.2 Secondary stress 100 4.4.3 Compound words 102 4.4.4 Unstressed syllables 102 4.5 Syllabic consonants 107 4.5.1 Syllabic /n/ 107 4.5.2 Syllabic /m/ 108 4.5.3 Syllabic /l/ 108 4.6 Connected speech 109 4.6.1 Function words 110 4.6.2 Epenthetic consonants 112 4.7 Characteristics of /t/ 114
Contents vii 4.7.1 Flaps/taps 114 4.7.2 Glottal stops 115 4.8 Assimilation 116 4.8.1 Alveolar to bilabial stops 116 4.8.2 Alveolar to velar stops 116 4.8.3 Alveolar to postalveolar fricatives 117 4.8.4 Word-internal assimilation 117 4.8.5 Affrication 118 4.9 Consonant deletion/elision 118 4.10 Voicing of stops, fricatives and affricates 119 4.11 Tips for phonemic transcription 120 5 Phonetic transcription of Australian English 125 5.1 Allophonic variation and phonetic transcription 125 5.2 Phonetic transcription of consonants 126 5.2.1 Symbol selection 126 5.2.2 Aspiration and release of oral stops 126 5.2.3 Variants of /t/ 131 5.2.4 Devoicing 133 5.2.5 Assimilation of velar oral stops 135 5.2.6 Assimilation of alveolar consonants 136 5.2.7 Syllabic consonants 138 5.2.8 Clear and dark realisations of /l/ 139 5.2.9 Allophones of /h/ 141 5.2.10 Gemination 142 5.2.11 Labialisation 142 5.3 Phonetic transcription of vowels 142 5.3.1 Coarticulation and dialect effects 143 5.3.2 Prelateral contexts 143 5.3.3 Nasalisation 145 5.3.4 Allophones of /e:/and/iə/ 145 5.3.5 Allophones of schwa /ə/ 146 5.3.6 Allophonic vowel length 146 5.4 Tips for phonetic transcription 147 6 Evaluation of two phonemic transcription systems 151 6.1 Introduction 151 6.2 Historical background 152 6.3 Vowel transcription 154 6.4 The revised transcription system for Australian English 155 6.5 The HCE system relative to the IPA cardinal vowels 160 6.6 Flexibility in transcription choice 161 6.7 Reform 162 6.8 Conclusion 162
viii Contents Glossary 164 References 178 Solutions 184 Index 231 International Phonetic Alphabet 238
Tables... 2.1 List of Australian English consonant phoneme symbols with illustrative words page 28 2.2 Table of symbols for Australian English consonant phonemes indicating place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing features 28 2.3 Phonemic vowel symbols for the HCE and MD systems 49 2.4 Lexical sets for Australian English 62 2.5 Major class features 63 2.6 Feature matrix for AusE monophthongal vowels 65 2.7 Feature matrix for [+voice, +consonantal] AusE phonemes 65 3.1 Some examples of the structure of English syllables 70 4.1 The consonant phonemes of Australian English 93 4.2 The vowel phonemes of Australian English 94 6.1 Comparison between phonemic vowel symbols for HCE and MD 153 ix
Figures... 2.1 Major cartilages of the larynx page 23 2.2 Major structures of the larynx viewed from above 24 2.3 Important articulatory landmarks 26 2.4 Illustration of bilabial place of articulation with the soft palate raised for oral consonants such as /p, b/ 31 2.5 Illustration of bilabial place of articulation with the soft palate lowered for nasal consonants such as /m/ 31 2.6 Illustration of labiodental place of articulation with the soft palate raised for oral consonants such as /f, v/ 32 2.7 Illustration of dental place of articulation with the soft palate raised for oral consonants such as /θ, ð/ 33 2.8 Illustration of alveolar place of articulation with the soft palate raised for oral consonants such as /t, d/ 33 2.9 Illustration of alveolar place of articulation with the soft palate lowered for nasal consonants such as /n/ 34 2.10 Illustration of postalveolar place of articulation with the soft palate raised for oral consonants such as /ʃ, ʒ,, / 34 2.11 Illustration of retroflex place of articulation with the soft palate raised 35 2.12 Illustration of palatal place of articulation with the soft palate raised for the oral consonant /j/ 36 2.13 Illustration of velar place of articulation with the soft palate raised for oral consonants such as /k, ɡ/ 36 2.14 Illustration of velar place of articulation with the soft palate lowered for nasal consonants such as /N/ 37 2.15 Illustration of the relationship between supralaryngeal and laryngeal events during the production of various voicing categories for oral stops 42 2.16 Front tongue position for vowels 52 2.17 Back tongue position for vowels 52 xi
xii Figures 2.18 High/close tongue position for vowels 53 2.19 Low/open tongue position for vowels 53 2.20 The traditional vowel map showing some of the IPA cardinal vowels 55 2.21 Schematic representation of the stressed monophthongs of Australian English positioned within the vowel space relative to some IPA cardinal vowels 57 2.22 The diphthongs of Australian English 59 3.1 The structure of the syllable illustrated with the word dance 70 3.2 The sonority profile for English speech sounds according to manner of articulation 73 3.3 The relationship between syllable constituents and sonority 73 3.4 The foot structure of the words: a) elbow, b) oxygen, c) cat 79 3.5 The relationship between syllable weight and stress for the words: a) benevolent, b) volition, c) distinction 81 3.6 Prosodic tree diagrams for the words: a) confident, b) confidential, c) confidentiality 82 3.7 An example of a prosodic tree diagram for the word apparent 82 6.1 Spectrogram of the word herd produced by a young adult male speaker 156 6.2 The average F1/F2 monophthong vowel space for 116 young women from Sydney 156 6.3 Spectrogram of the word hoyd produced by a young adult male speaker 158 6.4 F1/F2 monophthong vowel space with superimposed diphthong trajectories for /æi, əë,oi/ from 116 young women from Sydney 158 6.5 F1/F2 monophthong vowel space with superimposed diphthong trajectories for /ɑe/and/æɔ/ from 116 young women from Sydney 159 6.6 Schematic representation of the stressed monophthongs of Australian English positioned within the vowel space relative to some IPA cardinal vowels 159 6.7 The diphthongs of Australian English 161
Acknowledgements... This book is the product of many years of research into the phonetics of Australian English and the teaching of its various idiosyncrasies and nuances. Many people have been integral to the completion of this work including the teachers and mentors who inspired me, the students who challenged me and the colleagues who encouraged me. I have been incredibly fortunate to have studied with, and worked alongside, passionate and engaging scholars such as John Bernard, David Blair, John Clark, Arthur Delbridge and Jonathan Harrington, upon whose shoulders I have the privilege to stand. In particular, I am indebted to Sallyanne Palethorpe whose commitment to excellence in research is a true inspiration. I am grateful to Robert Mannell and my fellow phoneticians, both past and present, for their collegiality, advice and helpful discussions, and to Linda Cupples and my colleagues in the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University for their kindness and support. A special thank you must go to Linda Buckley, a woman with an amazing eye for detail who helped with the manuscript in all manner of ways. Of course any errors that remain are entirely my own. A special thank you is also due to the volunteers who donated their time to become the voices behind the scenes and to Chris Callaghan who has recorded speakers for my research endeavours over many years. This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary generosity of my family. In particular, I cannot begin to express my gratitude to Garry Frost, a man of integrity and talent whose patience, humour and commitment sustains me and whose quiet unassuming manner is an enduring source of reassurance and encouragement. xiii
Consonant symbols for Australian English... /p/ pie /θ/ thigh /ɡ/ guy /b/ buy /ð/ thy /N/ hang /m/ my /s/ sigh /h/ high /f/ fie /z/ zoo / / chin /v/ vie / / rye / / gin /t/ tie /l/ lie /ʃ/ shy /d/ die /w/ why /ʒ/ Asia /n/ nigh /k/ kite /j/ you xv
Vowel symbols for Australian English... HCE MD Example word i: i beat i i bit e ε bet e: εə cared bat ɐ: a Bart ɐ Ø but ɔ ɒ pot o: ɔ bought υ υ put Ë: u boot : Bert i ei bait ɑe ai bite oi ɔi Boyd ɔ aυ bout əë oυ boat iə iə beard ə ə the (not thee ) xvii